Smithsonian American Women's History Museum

🌼 Happy first day of spring! 🌸 Digitization is an essential part of increasing the discoverability of women’s history. Horticultural HERstories amplifies the contributions of American women to the history of landscape, garden design, and horticulture through digital resources. Smithsonian Gardens received support from our museum to work with a digital content curator to identify stories from living, museum, and archival collections that could be developed into digital resources for public audiences. The Smithsonian Digitization Program Office partners with others to increase the quantity, quality, and impact of the institution's digitized collections. Together, these resources are now online for research and discovery. Learn more about our Discoverability Lab projects: https://s.si.edu/4izDNFj #WomensHistoryMonth #SmithsonianWHM #SmithsonianWomensHistory

Kathy Hopinkah Hannan entered the corporate world in the early 1980s and found a role model in her trailblazing female mentor. Eventually she became National Managing Partner and Vice Chairman of KPMG, LLP and the first woman of Native American ancestry to serve as National Board President of Girl Scouts of the USA. Now retired, Hannan seeks to pay forward the lessons she learned as a young woman about the importance of financial independence. As part of our multi-year oral history and education project “We Do Declare: Women’s Voices on Independence” we are exploring the multifaceted meaning of independence to women in their own lives over the past 50 years through the lens of economic power. https://s.si.edu/3FCKEix

Celebrate #WomensHistoryMonth by making women’s stories more discoverable online! Join us for a Wikipedia edit-a-thon focusing on women who have been made visible through exhibitions, publications, and programs across the Smithsonian. Wikipedia is a vital link within the network of online information. Women with articles in Wikipedia are easier to find. We’ll boost the discoverability of these women by creating and editing articles in Wikipedia. Help us share the stories of women musicians, fiber artists, journalists, doctors, and more. New editors are encouraged to attend the introductory session at 11am. This event is presented with support from Wikimedia DC. ➡️ RSVP: https://s.si.edu/4hlSfPD #SmithsonianWHM #SmithsonianWomensHistory

Born #OnThisDay in 1878, Violet Dandridge was one of the earliest women employed as an illustrator by the Smithsonian. In 1903, she embarked on expeditions to document invertebrates alongside renowned scientists Mary Jane Rathbun, the first woman to be a full-time curator at the Smithsonian, and Harriet Richardson. Dandridge surveyed the East Coast with Rathbun and Richardson to collect and document over 1,000 invertebrate specimens. She captured the delicate features of a wide variety of animals in crisp detail. These illustrations, including this lateral view of a feather star, provided crucial insight for scientists to determine the unique features of each animal. Beyond her pioneering work in science, Dandridge was also an active participant in the women's suffrage movement. Read more about early women in science: https://s.si.edu/4bxj3v0 #SmithsonianWHM #SmithsonianWomensHistory #WomensHistoryMonth Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History 📷: Portrait of Serena “Violet” Dandridge, year unknown. Image courtesy of Bedinger Family History and Genealogy. Illustration of the lateral view of a feather star (Ptilocrinus pinnatus) by Violet Dandridge published in “A Monograph of the Existing Crinoids” by Austin Hobart Clark in 1915.

You can experience part of our "Becoming Visible" exhibit at all DC public libraries! These posters and bookmarks are based on our award-winning digital exhibition, "Becoming Visible: Bringing American Women’s History Into Focus,” which explores the uneven process of women becoming visible in American history through the stories of five remarkable women from the past — including Elizabeth Keckly, author and dressmaker to Mary Todd Lincoln. ➡️ Grab your own bookmark all DC Public Library branches through March 31 and learn more about Keckly in our digital exhibition: https://s.si.edu/426FwvM #SmithsonianWHM #SmithsonianWomensHistory #WomensHistoryMonth

Metadata is, in essence, data about data: information that describes an object or document. Metadata attached to a photograph, for instance, might include details about the date it was taken, the people in the photo, or the context behind the image. It's more than just a way to categorize materials—it's a tool that gives women’s activities and experiences the visibility they deserve, enabling important historical discoveries. At the Smithsonian, collections metadata depicts, describes, and structures information about the Institution’s collections. Our Discoverability Lab researches how the quality of collections metadata affects the discoverability of women’s history and experiments with interventions to improve metadata practices to surface more women’s history. Learn more: https://s.si.edu/4huqB2P #SmithsonianWHM #SmithsonianWomensHistory #WomensHistoryMonth

Juliette Gordon Low founded the Girl Scouts #OnThisDay in 1912, when she signed in the organization’s very first troop of 18 girls in her hometown of Savannah, Georgia. ⁣ Low will be featured on the next coin in the American Women Quarters™ Program, our partnership with the United States Mint. ⁣ Low, who went by “Daisy” with her family, was highly educated and widely traveled. ⁣⁣ She met General Sir Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the British Boy Scouts, while living in England. Inspired by Robert's work, Agnes Baden-Powell, Robert's sister, founded Girl Guides as a sister organization to the Boy Scouts. Juliette Gordon Low formed her first Girl Guide patrol in Scotland in 1911, followed by two in London, before returning to the United States to start Girl Scouts of the USA. 🖼️: “Juliette Gordon Low” by Edward Hughes, 1887. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. Gift of the Girl Scouts. Frame conserved with funds from the Smithsonian Women’s Committee. #SmithsonianWHM #WomensHistoryMonth #SmithsonianWomensHistory #GirlScoutsDay #NationalGirlScoutsDay #GirlScouts ⁣

Black women often faced gender inequality in similar measure to race-based discrimination, positioning their activism as revolutionary. Pauli Murray was one such activist. She became one of the world’s unsung human rights icons and prolific activists. Born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1910, Murray dedicated her life to excelling against what she termed “Jim and Jane Crow” discrimination that saw Blacks as inferior to Whites, and women inferior to men. Murray knew firsthand the sting of both after being denied admittance into the University of North Carolina and being ignored as the only female at Howard University’s Law School in the 1940s. Murray’s insight was critical in changing separate but equal laws, including Plessy v. Ferguson. Murray worked alongside Ruth Bader Ginsburg, former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court to include women in the Equal Protection Clause that allowed women the same protections against discrimination as racial minorities. Murray was a co-founder of the National Organization for Women. Ginsburg credits lawyer and activist Pauli Murray for inspiring an amicus brief she wrote for the historic 1971 Supreme Court case Reed v. Reed, which was the first time the nation’s highest court recognized women as victims of sex discrimination. In 1977, she became the first African American Episcopalian priest and is celebrated today as an early pioneer of same gender loving, non-binary person rights. She also joined with George Houser, James Farmer and Bayard Rustin to form the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Murray played an important role in several civil, social, and legal organizations including the National Organization of Women (NOW), which she co-founded in 1966. She wrote and theorized extensively on her experiences of black womanhood asserting that, for her, gender, race, and sexuality could not be separated. Learn more about other woman activists like Murray: https://s.si.edu/4knM1BI. #WomensHistoryMonth #SmithsonianWHM 📸 Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Milton Williams Archives, © Milton Williams.

Harriet Tubman has been known by many names and roles: Araminta Ross (her birth name), Moses (a nickname), conductor, daughter, sister, wife, mother, aunt. All encompass the intersecting identities and experiences of her life. In 1849, Tubman escaped from the Southern plantation where she was enslaved. She later led others to freedom along the Underground Railroad. In 2017, a photograph from the late 1860s that had been lost to history for more than a century surfaced. Its discovery changes the way we see Tubman—not just as an icon of freedom and human dignity, but also as a courageous young woman. Read more: https://s.si.edu/4ifTX6e 📷: Collection of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture shared with the Library of Congress #HarrietTubmanDay #WomensHistoryMonth #SmithsonianWHM #SmithsonianWomensHistory

🎊 Celebrate #InternationalWomensDay with our Women’s History Month match! 🎊 This is your chance to help tell American women’s history. Support the museum now, while all gifts are being matched up to $25,000! https://s.si.edu/4i3vAbY 📷: Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt, 1935, by Underwood & Underwood, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of George R. Rinhart, in memory of Joan Rinhart, NPG.2011.77.7. #WomensHistoryMonth #SmithsonianWHM #SmithsonianWomensHistory #IWD2025