American Articles

Article / Updated 05-04-2022

This case has become the litmus test for confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court bench. No judge who comes out openly against Roe v. Wade is likely to be confirmed. In Roe, the Supreme Court ruled 7–2 that women have the right to an abortion, at least during the first trimester of pregnancy. The court characterized abortion as a “fundamental” constitutional right, which means that any law aiming to restrict it is subject to the standard of strict scrutiny. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1982), the high court modified Roe by giving the state the right to regulate an abortion, even in the first trimester, as long as that regulation doesn’t pose an “undue burden” on the woman’s fundamental right to an abortion. One such “undue burden” identified in Casey was any requirement for the woman to notify her husband. A Texas law that placed certain restrictions on abortion clinics in the state was struck down by the Supreme Court, in a 5–3 vote, as placing an “undue burden” on abortion rights in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt (2016). In Stormans Inc. v. Wiesman (2016), a five-justice majority on the court refused to hear a challenge to a Washington state law making it illegal for pharmacists to refuse to dispense contraceptive drugs. In a dissent, Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Clarence Thomas, wrote: “This case is an ominous sign … If this is a sign of how religious liberty claims will be treated in the years ahead, those who value religious freedom have cause for great concern.” Roe v. Wade continues to be as controversial as it is important.

Article / Updated 05-04-2022

Roe versus Wade, better known as Roe v. Wade, is the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion within the first two months of pregnancy. Up until then, individual state laws regulated abortions, thereby forcing women to illegal clinics or untrained practitioners. The lack of proper medical supervision in these situations was dangerous for the women. The roots of this case lie in Dallas, Texas, in 1969. At the time, obtaining or attempting an abortion was illegal in Texas, except in cases where the woman could die. Twenty-one-year-old Norma McCorvey was single and pregnant. Thinking that abortions were legal in cases of rape and incest, she tried to get an abortion by falsely claiming she was raped. But because there was no police report to prove it, she sought the alternative, an illegal abortion. Once again, her efforts failed — police had shut down the illegal clinic. Norma's next step was to find a lawyer to sue for the right to get an abortion. Two young attorneys named Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee, dedicated to women's advocacy, took Norma's case and dubbed their plaintiff "Jane Roe" to protect her identity. On March 3, 1970, Coffee filed a complaint, Roe v. Wade (later amended to a class-action suit), at the Dallas federal district courthouse, suing the State of Texas over the constitutionality over its abortion laws. Henry Wade was the defending district attorney. Roe won the case when the district court decided that the Texas laws were vague and infringed on the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. The Ninth Amendment protects citizens' rights not listed in other parts of the Constitution, including the right to privacy. Norma's attorneys argued that this extended to a woman's right to decide to bear children or not. The Fourteenth Amendment ensures that no state can abridge a citizen's fundamental rights without due process. The case was appealed and landed in the U.S. Supreme Court. On January 22, 1973, the Court handed down its decision in favor of Roe, declaring: [The] right to privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the district court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy."[ The Supreme Court ruling didn't come in time for Norma McCorvey to have an abortion. She delivered a child even before the district court ruled in her favor in 1970; that child was immediately adopted. Roe v. Wade remains as polarizing as ever. Right-to-privacy proponents, anti-abortionists, religious groups, and women's rights advocates are just some of the organizations involved in this heated socio-political issue.

Article / Updated 05-04-2022

Father's Day, celebrated in the United States on the third Sunday of June, got a jump start from the formation of Mother's Day. Credit for beginning Father's Day celebrations is given to Sonora Smart Dodd from Spokane, Washington. At the turn of the century, Mother's Day observances were growing across the United States. The federal government had yet to recognize the holiday, but many states had adopted the third Sunday in May as a special celebration day honoring mothers. It was during a Mother's Day church service on June 20, 1909, that Sonora Smart Dodd was struck with the idea of creating a special holiday to honor fathers, too. When Sonora was 16, her mother died while giving birth to her sixth child, the last of five sons. Back then, like today, single parenthood was no easy task. By Sonoma's account, though, Mr. Smart did a wonderful job. Because of this love and esteem, Sonoma Smart Dodd believed that her father deserved a special time of honor just like that given to mothers on Mother's Day. In 1909, Sonoma Smart Dodd approached the Spokane YMCA and the Spokane Ministerial Alliance and suggested that her father's birthday — June 5 — become a celebration day for Father's Day. Because they wanted more time to prepare, the Ministerial Alliance chose June 19 instead. The first Father's Day was thus observed in the State of Washington on June 19, 1910. The idea of officially celebrating fatherhood spread quickly across the United States, as more and more states adopted the holiday. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge recognized Father's Day as the third Sunday in June of that year and encouraged states to do the same. Congress officially recognized Father's Day in 1956 with the passage of a joint resolution. Ten years later, in 1966, President Lyndon Johnson issued a proclamation calling for the third Sunday in June to be recognized as Father's Day. In 1972, President Richard Nixon permanently established the observance of the third Sunday in June as Father's Day in the United States. Sonora Smart Dodd lived to see her idea come to fruition. She died in 1978 at the ripe old age of 96.

Article / Updated 03-09-2022

Women's suffrage was a controversial subject as women's roles developed in society. By the time the twentieth century arrived, American feminists had been seeking the right to vote for more than 50 years. The suffrage movement was fanned even hotter in 1869, when African American males were given the right to vote through the Sixteenth Amendment, while women of all races were still excluded. One place where women were increasingly included was in the workplace. As the country shifted away from a rural, agrarian society to an industrial, urban one, more and more women had jobs — eight million by 1910. Moreover, they were getting better jobs. In 1870, 60 percent of working women were in domestic service. By 1920, it was only 20 percent, and women made up 13 percent of the professional ranks. Women were getting out of the house for more than just jobs, too. In 1892, membership in women’s clubs was about 100,000. By 1917, it was more than one million. And women’s increasing independence was reflected in the fact that the divorce rate rose from 1 in every 21 marriages in 1880 to 1 in 9 by 1916. Because women had always had nontraditional roles in the West, it wasn’t surprising that Western states and territories were the first to give females the right to vote: Wyoming in 1869, Utah in 1870, Washington in 1883, Colorado in 1893, and Idaho in 1896. By 1914, all the Western states except New Mexico had extended the voting franchise to women. By 1917, the suffrage movement was building momentum. In July of that year, a score of suffragists tried to storm the White House. They were arrested and taken to the county workhouse. President Woodrow Wilson was not amused, but sympathetic, and pardoned them. The next year, a constitutional amendment — the Nineteenth — was submitted to the states. When ratified in 1920, it gave women the right to vote in every state. Despite the significance of the Nineteenth Amendment, many leaders of the women’s movement recognized that the vote alone wouldn’t give women equal standing with men when it came to educational, economic, or legal rights. “Men are saying, perhaps, ‘thank God this everlasting women’s fight is over,’” said feminist leader Crystal Eastman after the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified. “But women, if I know them, are saying, ‘now at last we can begin.’”

Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-07-2022

This cheat sheet focuses on 50 key dates in the history of first ladies of the United States. These events mark the unique and continuing evolution of the office of First Lady and the first ladies themselves.

Article / Updated 03-07-2022

From the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, black women were in a difficult position. Between the civil rights and feminist movements, where did they fit in? They had been the backbone of the civil rights movement, but their contributions were deemphasized as black men — often emasculated by white society — felt compelled to adopt patriarchal roles. When black women flocked to the feminist movement, white women discriminated against them and devoted little attention to class issues that seriously affected black women, who tended to also be poor. Historically, black women have chosen race over gender concerns, a choice that was especially poignant during Reconstruction when African American female leaders, such as Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, supported the Fifteenth Amendment giving black men the right to vote over the objections of white women suffragists. Black women have a long feminist tradition dating back to 19th-century activists such as Maria W. Stewart and Sojourner Truth as well as organizations like the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs (NACWC) and the National Council of Negro Women, founded in 1896 and 1935, respectively. Events of the 1960s and 1970s, not to mention black men's changing attitudes regarding the role of black women, focused awareness around new concerns such as race, gender, and class, and several organizations attempted to address these issues: The ANC (Aid to Needy Children) Mothers Anonymous of Watts and the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO): Johnnie Tillmon was an early pioneer of addressing the concerns of poor black women. A welfare mother living in Los Angeles's Nickerson Projects, Tillmon helped found ANC (Aid to Needy Children) Mothers Anonymous of Watts in 1963. She was later tapped to lead the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), founded in 1966. Through these organizations, Tillmon addressed such issues as equal pay for women, child care, and voter registration. Black Women's Liberation Committee (BWLC): Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) member Francis Beal was one of the founders of the Black Women's Liberation Committee (BWLC) in 1968. In 1969, Beal helped clarify the struggles of black women in the influential essay "Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female" that also appeared in the landmark 1970 anthology The Black Woman, which ushered in a new wave of black female writers. Beal identified capitalism as a key factor in the chasm between black men and women. During the early 1970s, the BWLC evolved into the Third World Women's Alliance. National Organization for Women (NOW): Reverend Dr. Anna Pauline (Pauli) Murray is a cofounder of the nation's most prominent feminist organization, the National Organization for Women (NOW), founded in 1966. The National Black Feminist Organization: While many black women remain active in mainstream feminist organizations only, other black women have created organizations aimed at addressing black women's unique concerns more effectively. The National Black Feminist Organization launched in 1973 with the specific goal of including black women of all ages, classes, and sexual orientation. Although it and similar organizations didn't outlive the 1970s, the legacy of black feminism lives on. In 1983, Alice Walker coined the term womanism, a feminist ideology that addresses the black woman's unique history of racial and gender oppression. Women such as Angela Davis; law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw; academics Patricia Hill Collins, Beverly Guy Sheftall, and Bell Hooks; and historians Darlene Clark Hine, Paula Giddings, and Deborah Gray White have greatly expanded the context in which black women and their history and activism are discussed by underscoring black women's issues related to race, gender, and class.

Article / Updated 03-07-2022

It is an inescapable fact that there were no “Founding Mothers,” at least not in the sense the term "Founding Fathers” is used to describe the male leaders of the American Revolution. No women served in Congress, signed the Declaration of Independence, or helped draft the Articles of Confederation or US Constitution. While specifics varied from state to state and sometimes from community to community, women during this period generally had little legal standing. So tiny was their role in politics that even to suggest having a larger one was a subject of great humor — at least to men. When Abagail Adams wrote her husband John in 1776 to “remember the ladies” while drafting the fledgling country’s new government, he replied, “I cannot help but laugh. . . . Depend upon it. We know better than to repeal our Masculine systems.” To a colleague, however, John took a more serious, if just as chauvinistic, tone. Extending the right to vote too widely under the new government would open a Pandora’s box of universal demands: “There will be no End to It. New Claims will arise. Women will demand a Vote.” American revolutionary women labored on the home front Women could and did enter the political arena by writing letters, circulars, and tracts and helping to operate lines of communication and information. And as in all great wars, it fell to women to do everything but fight to keep things going. When Americans quit buying machine-made cloth from England, for example, American women had to make it by hand. “I rise with the sun and all through the long day I have no time for aught but my work,” wrote a Connecticut farmer’s wife whose husband was off to the war. Even during family prayer time, she admitted, her mind was on “whether Polly remembered to set the sponge for the bread, or put water in the leach tub or to turn the cloth in the dyeing vat. . .” Less specific but more important, women were expected, at least in Patriot families, to infuse the children with the spirit of representative democracy and the value of individual liberty. It was a task that historian Linda Kerber labeled “republican motherhood,” and political leaders urged Revolutionary-era men to remind their spouses of its importance. “Let their husbands point out the necessity of such conduct,” wrote Christopher Gadsden of South Carolina, “that it is the only thing that can save them and their children from distresses, slavery and disgrace…”. In addition to bearing the brunt of wartime shortages and other hardships, it also fell to women to bear the losses of men who would not come home from the fighting, as well as steeling themselves to send off their husbands and sons to war — or going themselves. Women near the battle front in the American Revolution A widowed Irish immigrant in South Carolina, Elizabeth Jackson lost two of her three sons to the war. She nonetheless volunteered to act as a nurse for wounded Americans held on British prison ships in Charleston Harbor. After contracting cholera, she summoned her remaining 15-year-old son, who had been fighting the British since he was 12 and bore the slash marks of a British officer’s sword to prove it. “Avoid quarrels if you can,” Andrew Jackson recalled his mother telling him before she died, “ . . . (but) if you ever have to vindicate your honor, do it calmly.” Women often served as nurses, cooks, seamstresses, and laundresses to the various militias and Continental Army. General Washington wasn’t keen on the practice, since the women had to be fed precious rations. And, try as he might with repeated orders to the contrary, they often hitched rides in supply wagons, thus slowing things down. But since his own wife Martha often traveled with him, Washington did not order his commanders to ban women entirely from the army camps. If they didn’t tag along with their husbands, sons, and brothers, women might make uniforms, gather food, or perform other tasks for the troops. One group of three dozen Philadelphia residents were so persistent in raising funds for the army, a Loyalist complained “people were obliged to give them something to get rid of them.” They ultimately raised the staggering modern-day equivalent of $300,000. “Necessity,” a Revolutionary War woman recalled in 1810, “taught us to make exertions which our girls of the present day know nothing of.”

Cheat Sheet / Updated 02-23-2022

US history is as complex and fascinating as the people who populate the country. A timeline of significant events in the life of the United States of America starts with hunters crossing the Bering Strait, through the fight for independence, and to the election of 44 men to serve as president. The election of the 43rd, Barack Obama, is of historical significance in itself as he was the first African American president.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 01-27-2022

The US Constitution was written and signed by men who craved independence from Britain but who were nonetheless steeped in its history and ideals. The document starts with some basic precepts of English governance, but then adds some uniquely American twists — three branches of government that act to check and balance each other, for example. Although much thought went into the Constitution, the framers left it open to amendment. The first ten amendments were ratified just four years after the Constitution itself and are known as the Bill of Rights.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 01-12-2022

The American Civil War encompasses a vast number of political, social, and military events. This cheat sheet outlines the concepts required to understand the civil war, as well as the key political events leading to the war, the major events of the war, and the people who played key roles.