Any resemblance to a boring history class is purely coincidental!
A familiar portrait of Charlotte, a chalk drawing by George Richmond in 1850. wikicommons
After a life of starts and stalls trying to find a way to support themselves, Charlotte Brontë and her sisters Emily and Anne finally hit on the career that paired their lives of heartbreak, horrors, love, and challenges with their vivid imaginations (and a heavy dose of Lord Byron.)
Women’s health is in the news these days but this is hardly a 20teens issue, we talk about it all the time when we hop in our WayBack machine. Lydia Pinkham did her part to get women access to safe medical care during her lifetime (and revolutionized marketing in the process!) We’ve refreshed the 2015 audio and thought it was a good time for us all to realize that everything old is new again.
Babe Didrikson Zaharias was many things and, although quiet and humble weren’t two of them, her contributions to women’s sports made her a role model for anyone who has ever strapped on a pair of sneakers or golf shoes. Her drive and large personality made her someone we all need to know.
Babe in her All American jacket, courtesy Lamar University’s Babe Didrikson Zaharias Collection
One of the publicity photos Annie had made on her adventure, 1894.
Her moments in the spotlight may have been limited, but Annie Cohen Kopchovsky lived them hard and bright as a marketer, adventurer, storyteller, and the first woman to bicycle* around the world.
(*or possibly, “around the world with a bicycle”- she played a little loose with the rules at points.)
We have only a general idea of what she looked like, this is as good a guess as any…except she wasn’t much for the fighting, more a behind the scenes pirate-master.
History knows her by many names: Shi Xiang Gu, Shi Yang, Cheng I Sao, Zheng Yi Sao, Ching Shih and no one knows what her original name was! We had to pick one to use so we went with the easiest for our American accents: Ching Shih. (more…)
Most grade school kids will tell you that Harriet Tubman was an escaped slave and conductor on the Underground Railroad which is a great start–but she was so much more! A nurse, a spy, a military leader, a public speaker, a humanitarian, a wife and mother who did everything in her power to keep her family together…and she did it all with a traumatic brain injury.
She was a hero in every sense of the word.
Countess Ada Lovelace’s mind was extraordinary in the truest sense, truthfully there was very little that was ordinary about her. She was the only legitimate daughter of the poet, Lord Byron and his only wife, Annabella (the 11th Baroness Wentworth thankyouverymuch.) She never met her wild and wildly popular father, was raised by a mother who protected her from the fame-by-association that came with having that kind of parent, educated in a manner that most girls of the time never experienced and, eventually, used that education along with her logical and creative brain to write the world’s first computer program. (more…)
The only image of her done in her lifetime and this was close to the end of it. Marketing materials of the Virginia Company
The story of Pocahontas is legendary: Native American Princess saves early English settler’s life, they fall in love, she thinks he dies so she moves in with the English, converts to Christianity and marries another Englishman only to learn her original love was still alive. Pocahontas. Captain John Smith. Ring any bells? But do the bells in that story ring true? At all?
Did she really save John Smith from being murdered? Photo: U.S. Capital building, Architect of the Capital
Pocahontas was a young Powhatan who was instrumental in the survival of the earliest English colonists and did live with them, but “princess”? Not exactly.
“Young woman?” How about little kid?
“Love with Captain John Smith?” Friendship, yes, love…not so much.
“Moves in with English?” Try imprisoned. “Pocahontas” wasn’t even always her name, she had several: Amonute, Matoake and Rebecca. “Pocahontas” was a nickname.
And that “colonist” thing? Let’s use “emigrant,” shall we? The English didn’t discover the land around the modern Chesapeake Bay on the eastern shores of the current United States, that land was already home to a very large nation of native American tribes all governed under the umbrella of the Powhatan Chiefdom and led by the Paramount Chief–the English stole it. Heck, they weren’t even the first Europeans to land in the area, the Spanish beat them by decades.
First English map of the area, by John Smith
Pocahontas was the daughter of that chief. When she was about 11, John Smith and friends landed in her backyard and never left. In this episode we give you all the sides to that story from her birth up, through her imprisonment by the English, marriage to John Rolfe, influence on the economic home-run that was Virginia tobacco…all the way until her early death at the age of 21 when she was on tour in England.
TIME TRAVEL WITH THE HISTORY CHICKS
Books!
Oral history of the Mattaponi Reservation People, one of the tribes in the Powhatan Chiefdom
Paula Gunn Allen a more spiritual look at her life
YA by Gail Fay
Movies!
If you feel you must (and go in knowing the real story)
1995 Disney “White men are dangerous.”
Straight to video (and best seen at fast forwarded speed)
2005, lovely to look at (the dressing in English clothing scene is probably pretty spot on) but…argh, why must there be a romance??
The diet of the early British settlers in the Powhatan territories was very limited…and ghastly. Smithsonian article about cannibalized girl, the Powhatan Chiefdom, and more about life in general for the Jamestown settlers.
Jamestown and Williamsburg, Virginia have a lot of of early American historical activity waiting for you (and don’t forget to #historychicksfieldtrip on Instagram):
Jamestown settlement living history museum
You wouldn’t have to travel much farther to get to the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington or New York City.
And you could travel and travel and travel but you wouldn’t be able to get to the National Women’s History Museum because, well, it doesn’t exist…yet. Read about the efforts and how you can play a part in helping to establish this very important museum in Washington, D.C. as well as some great articles about women that need to be remembered. National Women’s History Museum
It’s a little cheesy, but kids might like this Virginia Department of Education video about the 11 currently recognized Virginia Indian tribes.
And, in closing, we leave you with the only good song from Disney’s Pocahontas…
