March is National Women’s History Month! Use it as a time to teach the young people in your life about the accomplishments of women with examples from history and from your own family.
To help you get started, here are five of whyzz.com’s favorite historical women and some kid-friendly information on each!
Susan B. Anthony
In the United States, people get their voices heard by voting in elections. Anyone over the age of eighteen can vote, but there was a time not too long ago when that wasn’t true! African American men couldn’t vote until 1870. Women weren’t allowed to vote until 1920!
Susan B. Anthony lived from 1820 to 1906. During her life, she fought for equal voting rights for all Americans. She wanted African Americans, women, and everyone else to be able to have their say in government. To her, it did not matter what color skin a person had or if they were a man or woman. She felt everyone should have the same rights.
She organized conventions and made many speeches about equal voting. She was even president of the National American Women Suffrage Association. Suffrage might sound like a bad thing, but it actually means the right to vote!
Susan B. Anthony died fourteen years before the Nineteenth Amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution, giving women the right to vote, but her efforts during her life played a huge part in making the Nineteenth Amendment happen!
Amelia Earhart
Amelia Earhart was born on July 14, 1897 in Atchison, Kansas. She is famous for being a brave and adventurous aviator, an advocate for women in the air-travel industry, and most specifically for being the first woman to ever fly solo over the Atlantic Ocean!
When Earhart first began flying in the 1920s, the aviation industry was still quite new, and it was out of the ordinary for women to fly. Planes did not have the technology that they have today, and flying could involve some risk. But Earhart had fallen in love with aviation and was determined to pursue her passion!
After she’d been flying for a few years, Earhart was invited to fly as a passenger on a transatlantic flight. That might not sound like a big deal, but at the time, no woman had ever been on that trip! Her participation in the flight (which took place June 17–18, 1928) earned her great fame even though she hadn’t piloted the plane, and she became determined to prove she truly deserved the praise!
On May 20–21, 1932, Earhart not only became the first woman to fly alone across the Atlantic, but she also did so in record time! About three years later, she flew solo from Hawaii to California, making her not only the first woman to fly that route but also the first person to successfully complete it! It also made her the first person to have flown solo across both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
Aside from her record-breaking flights, Earhart also made a name for herself by writing books about her experiences and endorsing luggage and clothes for female fliers. She was a symbol of what could be accomplished by perseverance!
Helen Keller
Helen Keller lived from 1880–1968. Although she was born with sight and hearing, Helen lost both as the result of illness when she was just nineteen months old. She is famous for learning to read, write, and communicate in spite of her impairments, and for many other exceptional accomplishments!
Having grown up without sight or hearing from such a young age, Helen had no way of communicating with the world around her until 1887, when Anne Sullivan (later Anne Sullivan Macy) began working as Helen’s teacher. Anne tried to teach Helen the names of things by tracing their spelling into her hand, but it was difficult for Helen to make the connection between the fingerspelling and the objects.
