March is recognised worldwide as Women’s History Month, and it’s also when we celebrate International Women’s Day (8 March). To mark this time of recognition and reflection, we’ve compiled 30 striking vintage photographs of amazing women whose talents, tribulations and activism helped shape the United States.
Click through the gallery to uncover the legacies of America’s wonder women, from abolitionists, aviators and athletes to suffragists, scientists and Hollywood stars…
Born into slavery on a Maryland plantation, Harriet Tubman (far left in this image taken with family and friends, c. 1885) escaped bondage in 1849 via the Underground Railroad. This clandestine network of people ('conductors'), routes and safehouses helped enslaved people from the South escape to the North; Tubman later became a conductor herself. In addition to leading more than 70 people to freedom, she served as a Union nurse and spy in the American Civil War. Plans to replace former president and slave owner Andrew Jackson with her image on the $20 banknote are currently afoot. You can also tour parts of the Underground Railroad today.
Victoria Woodhull (pictured here in 1874) was remarkable in many ways. Not only was she the first woman to run for president and one of the first female stockbrokers on Wall Street (along with her sister Tennessee), but she possessed surprisingly liberal beliefs for her time. Her support of the free love movement, which sought to destigmatise romantic relationships outside of marriage, was among Woodhull’s most controversial views in Victorian society. Despite being shunned by fellow women’s rights activists in the US for her radical opinions, she became widely known for her philanthropy when she ultimately moved to England.
The first Native American woman to receive a medical degree, Dr Susan La Flesche Picotte graduated top of her class at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1889. She was inspired to study medicine when, as a child on the Omaha Reservation in Nebraska, she witnessed the inhumane death of one of her elders while waiting for a white doctor to arrive. After graduation, she moved back to her Nebraska community and became the sole physician for more than 1,200 people, opening the first ever privately funded hospital on a Native American reservation.
Nellie Bly was the pseudonym of Elizabeth Cochran, a pioneering journalist and adventurer. She defied the gender norms of her time to report on issues typically preserved for male journalists; in 1887, Bly famously went undercover at the psychiatric facility on Blackwell’s (now Roosevelt) Island to expose its poor treatment of patients. Two years later, she set off on a round-the-world journey with the aim of beating the record of Phileas Fogg, the fictional hero of Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days. She made it in 72 days, six hours, 11 minutes and 14 seconds.
Pictured here are several members of the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) in 1896, including Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. While its contributions to gender equality in the US were significant, the politics of the NWSA were far from perfect; it fought exclusively for the voting rights of white women at a time when neither Black men nor women could vote. Outside the NWSA, other suffragists such as Alice Paul of the National Woman’s Party were imprisoned and tortured after picketing the White House. The work of both organisations was instrumental in the 19th Amendment being ratified in 1920, allowing (most) American women the right to vote.
Zitkala-Sa ('Red Bird'), also known as Gertrude Simmons, was a Native American writer, musician and activist dedicated to the women’s suffrage movement and securing equal rights for Indigenous peoples. A member of the Yankton Sioux Tribe, she lobbied for the Indian Citizenship Act which, though it was passed in 1924, did not guarantee Native Americans the right to vote. She continued to campaign for voting rights for her community the rest of life, but it wasn’t until 1962 – 24 years after her death – that Native Americans in every state won the right to vote.
Even before she founded the disaster relief initiative American Red Cross (ARC) in 1881, Clara Barton was a force of nature. She once established a free school in Bordentown, New Jersey so successful that the townsmen wanted to run it themselves, and later nursed injured Union troops and distributed crucial supplies during the American Civil War. Barton created the ARC after observing the work of the International Red Cross overseas; this image from 1906 depicts the ARC headquarters in San Francisco in the days after a catastrophic 7.9-magnitude earthquake and subsequent fire brought the city to its knees.
Aged just 17, Elizabeth (Betty) Robinson (pictured second from the left) from Illinois made history when she became the first female Olympic gold medallist in a track and field event. Unaware of her talent until a teacher saw her running for a train a year prior, Robinson had to join the boys’ track team at her school due to the lack of opportunities for girls at the time. The 1928 Olympics, held in Amsterdam, was the first where women could participate in track events. Robinson won the 100-metre sprint final (only her fourth ever meet) by half a metre.
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Documentary photographer Dorothea Lange often used her camera as a tool to invoke social change. Her assignments during the Great Depression in 1930s America captured the human impact of the crisis, offering sobering accounts of the hardships endured. This image, entitled Migrant Mother, is Lange’s most famous work – and unquestionably one of the most striking photos ever made. The portrait catches 32-year-old Florence Owens Thompson in a moment of contemplation, surrounded by her three young children at a pea-pickers’ camp in California. The photo prompted the government to send aid to the camp.
When she was appointed Secretary of Labor by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, Frances Perkins became the first woman to ever serve in a president’s cabinet. Perkins had defended workers’ rights and safety ever since witnessing the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in 1911, where 146 workers were trapped and killed. This advocacy continued during her political career; she abolished child labour, established a minimum wage and unemployment benefits, and went against many of her peers to support Jewish immigration to the States. The Department of Labor she once led is now housed in a building bearing her name.
The first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic (and the first person ever to fly solo from Hawaii to mainland America), Amelia Earhart was a record-setting pilot and a vocal supporter of women in aviation. In June 1937, Earhart took off from Oakland, California on a mission to circumnavigate the globe. A month later, her plane lost contact with the US Coast Guard and was never seen again; her disappearance remains a much-debated mystery. Earhart’s childhood home and an aircraft hangar museum dedicated to her legacy (both in her hometown of Atchison, Kansas) are open to visitors.
On 29 February 1940, Hattie McDaniel became the first African American person to ever win an Academy Award. McDaniel portrayed the character of Mammy, a housemaid and former enslaved woman, in the epic romance Gone With The Wind, also starring Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable. Prior to taking the role, McDaniel had been one of the first African American women to sing on US radio, and defied racial segregation during the Great Depression to perform at an all-white club. Here, she is presented with her Oscar statuette for Best Supporting Actress by Fay Bainter, who had taken home the award in 1938.
During the First and Second World Wars, America's women served their country both in overalls and in uniform. Called to action by the famous poster of 'Rosie the Riveter', many women on the home front worked at factories and shipyards as welders, machinists and riveters, as well as taking up roles like pilots, farmers, codebreakers and more. This circa-1941 photograph shows a team of female firefighters on a training exercise at the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, Hawaii – the site of a surprise aerial attack by Japanese forces that year.
The daughter of second-generation Chinese-American parents, Anna May Wong (pictured here in 1942) starred in a number of silent movies during the 1920s, but grew frustrated with the roles she was offered. Due to a ban on depictions of interracial relationships in film, she was never permitted to play a romantic lead and was often typecast. Her crusade against racism in the movie industry culminated in Wong becoming the first Asian American to land a leading role in a US TV series – The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong. In 2022, it was announced she would also become the first Asian American to feature on US currency.
As the longest-serving First Lady in US history (1933-45), Eleanor Roosevelt was a widely admired and influential figure in her own right. Her greatest achievements arguably came after she left the White House, following her husband Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death in 1945. When Harry S. Truman assumed the presidency, he appointed her America’s first delegate to the newly founded United Nations. She is photographed here in 1949 with a poster showing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a defining document she spearheaded while chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights.
As an infant, Helen Keller contracted an illness (possibly scarlet fever) that left her blind and deaf. Growing up, she learned Braille and how to associate objects by touch with words spelled out on her palm in finger signals, as well as lip-reading, which she accomplished by placing her fingers on people's lips and throats as they spoke. In 1904, she became the first deaf and blind person to earn a bachelor's degree, and subsequently dedicated her life to writing, education, social justice and the women's suffrage movement. She is shown here (centre) in 1953 with her companion and President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
One of Hollywood's most enduring icons, Marilyn Monroe was so much more than the physical beauty that worked both for and against her. A gifted actor and natural comedian, she sought to be taken seriously by her detractors, commanding meaty roles in films like Niagara and Don't Bother to Knock. Pictured here in 1954 arriving at a US Armed Forces base in Korea, Monroe performed 10 concerts in four days for more than 100,000 troops. She called the experience – which she cut her honeymoon with Joe DiMaggio short for – the best thing that ever happened to her.
Rosa Parks lived in Montgomery, Alabama under racial segregation (‘Jim Crow’) laws. These dictated, among other things, that Black people must ride at the back of a bus, while the front was reserved for white passengers. On 1 December 1955, when Parks was told to surrender her seat to a white man on a crowded bus service, she refused. Her small act of resistance was the start of the Civil Rights Movement in the US. She is shown in this stoic image being fingerprinted after her arrest during the Montgomery Bus Boycott. A museum in her name now stands in the city.
Though we still have a long way to go to achieve universal LGBTQ+ acceptance, attitudes in America have improved markedly since the 1960s. During her time as editor at The Ladder, published by the first known lesbian-rights organisation in the US, Barbara Gittings decried a harmful 'medical' report in the August 1964 issue that described homosexuality as a disease. Gittings, pictured here protesting in Philadelphia, was a driving force in getting the American Psychiatric Association to stop conflating homosexuality with mental illness. She also successfully campaigned for libraries to stock gay literature.
Rachel Carson’s writings on the environmental dangers of synthetic pesticides paved the way for the modern green movement. The marine biologist, author and conservationist (right) published her fourth title Silent Spring in 1962. A departure from her earlier works about life beneath the waves, this seminal book was a damning indictment of noxious chemicals like DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) and their devastating effects on the natural world. President John F. Kennedy ordered an investigation into Carson’s claims, which were subsequently confirmed and resulted in a domestic ban on DDT in the 1970s.
A prominent voice of the women’s liberation movement during the late 20th and early 21st centuries, Ohio-born Gloria Steinem was also one of the founders of New York magazine in 1968, where she became a renowned editor, political journalist and social commentator. By the 1970s, Steinem had begun speaking out at protests and demonstrations on various feminist causes; this image shows her standing in support of welfare funds for elective terminations in 1979. She helped establish the National Women’s Political Caucus in 1971 and launched Ms. magazine, a pioneering women’s publication, the same year.
One of Gloria Steinem’s co-founders of the National Women’s Political Caucus was Shirley Chisholm, the first African American woman to be elected to Congress. There, she fought to end the Vietnam War and advocated for racial, gender and economic equality, as well as running for president. Before winning her seat in Congress in 1968, Chisholm had worked in education and was closely involved with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Congresswoman Chisholm is pictured here in 1972 at the South Central Community Child Care Center, Los Angeles. A Netflix drama telling her story lands on the platform later this month.
Here, Margaret Hamilton stands as tall as this enormous stack of history-making papers. Containing pages and pages of handwritten computer code created by Hamilton and her team, these documents were fed into the in-flight command and lunar modules used to land humankind on the Moon for the very first time. Hamilton was the lead software engineer – ‘software engineer’ being a term she coined herself – on NASA’s Apollo programme at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Her work was crucial in taking astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the groundbreaking Apollo 11 mission in 1969.
In 1973, retired tennis ace Bobby Riggs challenged 10-time major singles champ Billie Jean King to a ‘Battle of the Sexes’. Held at the Houston Astrodome, the infamous match (pictured) was watched by more than 90 million viewers on television, making it one of the most popular televised sporting events in history. King sensationally beat Riggs in straight sets and earned the $100,000 winner-takes-all prize. Her victory contributed to a boom in women’s sports participation and helped advocate for gender pay parity in all areas of the workforce.
The Indianapolis 500 is a prestigious automobile race and one of the world’s most popular single-day sporting events. In 1977, Iowa native Janet Guthrie entered the history books when she became the first woman to compete in the race. Though she had to drop out that year due to issues with her car, she qualified again the following year (pictured) and finished in ninth place – even with a broken wrist. Guthrie was equally impressive off the race track, having earned her pilot’s licence at just 17 years old and served as an aerospace engineer.
Marsha P. Johnson was a central figure in the LGBTQ+ liberation movement in 1960s and 70s New York. An unapologetic advocate for gay and transgender rights, homeless LGBTQ+ youth, and those affected by HIV and AIDs, Johnson was on the front line during the infamous Stonewall Inn clashes between police and gay rights activists in 1969. Despite numerous personal struggles, Johnson, who was transgender, remained committed to these causes until her death under suspicious circumstances in 1992. She is seen here (front-left) beaming her signature smile during the 1982 Pride March in NYC.
Aged 32 on 18 June 1983, Sally Ride became the first American woman and then the youngest American to have ever ventured into space. Ride applied for the NASA programme after seeing an ad in the newspaper; she was one of only six women accepted in 1978. Media coverage leading up to her first mission focused more on whether she would be taking makeup and bras on the journey than the historic trip itself. She spoke out against sexism and championed women in Science, Engineering, Technology and Mathematics throughout her life, becoming a role model to many.
Co-founder of the United Farm Workers Association, Dolores Huerta (centre) was one of the leading labour activists of the 20th century. Growing up in New Mexico, she inherited the values of her parents; her father was a farmworker and a union activist, and her mother ran a hotel offering discounted rates for farm labourers. Huerta led strikes and demonstrations that evolved into nationwide boycotts and resulted in fairer wages, benefits and conditions for agricultural labourers. She also transformed the landscape for female workers, insisting they have an equal voice in the workplace and equal representation in unions.
Having fled her home country of Cuba (then under Fidel Castro’s regime) with her family when she was just eight years old, Ileana Ros-Lehiten shattered a glass ceiling in 1989 when she became the first Hispanic woman elected to the US Congress. Pictured here with President George H. W. Bush on the day she was sworn in, Ros-Lehiten was also the first Republican politician to openly back marriage equality, which passed in 2015. She was also a committed advocate for women in the military and access to education for all, and opposed dictatorships all over the world.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg was blazing a trail even before becoming only the second woman to sit on the US Supreme Court. She was one of just nine women (and the top student) in her 500-strong class at Harvard, and went on to teach some of the first classes on women and the law at Rutgers Law School. She became the first female professor at Columbia Law School in 1972 and later presented several successful arguments against gender discrimination in front of the Supreme Court. She joined the bench as a justice in 1993 and served for 27 years – this photo was taken just before her confirmation hearing.