Laborers for Liberty: American Women 1865-1890 (Young Oxford History of Women in the United States) - Softcover

Sigerman, Harriet

9780195124040: Laborers for Liberty: American Women 1865-1890 (Young Oxford History of Women in the United States)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0195124049 ISBN 13: 9780195124040

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1998

In the years following the Civil War, American women discovered new opportunities and obstacles in their quest for social and political equality. As the nation's boundaries and industrial might expanded, more women worked on the land as well as in factories. Women found new educational opportunities, but at the same time faced old barriers to their entry into male-dominated professions such as medicine and law. They also embarked on a remarkable endeavor, organizing hundreds of women's clubs to pursue common interests and promote social causes. Clubwomen sought to enhance their own education, end the consumption of alcohol and prevent violence against women, increase women's educational opportunities, initiate reforms within their own communities, and obtain the right to vote. Laborers for Liberty brings alive the stories and contributions of women from all class and ethnic backgrounds as they faced the challenges and opportunities of a nation preparing for the 20th century.

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About the Author:

Harriet Sigerman is the author of An Unfinished Battle: American Women 1848-1865 and Land of Many Hands: Women in the American West. She holds a Ph.D. in American history from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and was a researcher there for the Stanton Anthony Papers. She lives in New Jersey.

From School Library Journal:

Grade 6 Up-Sigerman covers a wide range of women's experiences in the United States from the end of the Civil War until the beginning of the 20th century. She opens with an extensive examination of the lives of both black and white women in the Reconstruction South. Descriptions of sharecropping, mass legalization of former slaves' marriages, and the will to prosper in spite of the devastation of their families' wealth all give a deeper perspective to the history found in typical textbooks. Life on the frontier comes vividly alive through the excerpts from women's diaries, which are marked here by their frankness and overarching interpretation. Of particular note is the change in Native American tribes as they moved from hunter-gatherer societies to marginalized, sedentary residents of reservations; the formerly equal women saw their roles trivialized, paralleling the treatment of their white counterparts. Women's roles during industrialization and their political activity to gain suffrage are all chronicled. Supplemented by a generous array of photographs, this book is a readable but substantial counterpoint to other history books at this level.
Ruth K. MacDonald, Quinnipiac College, Hamden, CT
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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