Maggie Lena Walker was an African American woman who became a banker, business leader, and social reformer. She was the first woman to establish and become the president of a bank in the United States. Walker was born in 1864 in Richmond, Virginia.…
Maggie Lena Walker was an African American woman, a banker, a business leader, and a civic leader. In 1903, she was the first woman to establish a bank in the United States, the Saint Luke Penny Savings Bank in Richmond. She was also the first…
"Agitate – Educate – Legislate” was the slogan of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, which advocated the prohibition of alcohol. Established in 1874 in Ohio, the union became a national movement and Virginia women established a state chapter in…
Touted as the largest and most magnificent exposition of all time, the New York World’s Fair opened at Flushing Meadows in April 1939. In the Court of States, one exhibition was strikingly different from the rest: the Virginia Room, “an island of…
During World War II booklets were published to assist homemakers, who were mostly women at that time, provide for their families and meet the requirements of the wartime ration system created after the U.S. entered the war in December 1941. President…
During World War II, the United States Army established a unit that enabled women to fill non-combat roles. Prior to the creation of this unit women mostly served as nurses supporting combat troops. In May 1941, Rep. Edith Nourse Rogers of…
After the United States entered WW I in 1917, young men who worked in agriculture left to join the military or find better jobs working for the government and the burgeoning defense industry. The departure of them men left farms without enough people…
American society underwent changes during both WWI and WWII. The roles of women shifted from domestic roles as caretakers and home makers to working in male- dominated fields like agriculture and manufacturing in factories. Many factories shifted…
Between 1877 and the mid-1960s, authorities enforced racial segregation throughout Virginia. In 1902, the Virginia State Constitution, authorized by the Virginia General Assembly, instituted a poll tax in which all Black and persons of color would…
In January 1975, the National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year was a presidential commission established by President Gerald Ford. The purpose of the commission was to work in conjunction with the International Women’s Year…