There are many aspects to Women's History, and we've only focused on highlighting a few areas here. Some of our obvious omissions are the history of women from other countries, women in medicine, and women in the arts. This page is meant to be a springboard for your continued research, and we are hopeful that you will find something interesting that will lead you on into a whole new area of investigation. The resources that we have drawn from are largely from government documents and archival collections, or through resources that SJSU owns. We are continuously adding to this site in order to make it a dynamic resource that changes and expands. At this time, we are mainly focusing on the history of women in the United States, and while we are making some forays into the earlier years of the suffrage movement, the main scope of this page will surround the last century.
Special Collections & Archives Exhibit, located on the 5th floor of MLK Library:
Faricita Hall Wyatt attended San Jose State College from 1932-1935. She graduated in 1935 with an A.B. degree in Speech. Wyatt was also a member of many clubs, groups, and teams, including the San Jose Players acting club, the Debate Team, the Negro Verse Speaking Choir, the Asilomar Conference Planning Committee, as well as serving as secretary of the Cosmopolitan Club. During World War II Wyatt enlisted in the Women’s Army Corps as a lieutenant. In 1958, she accepted a position as chief secretary to Democratic congressman Jeffrey Cohelan, and also worked with the NAACP, YWCA, and YMCA. Wyatt received her teaching certificate from U.C. Berkeley in 1962 and went on to teach at Skyline High School in Oakland. She was a painter and author, with two of her books of poetry being published in 1965 and 1974. Wyatt passed away in 1993. Her personal papers are available to view at the African American Museum & Library of Oakland.
Click play to watch Dr. Aptheker's Oct. 22nd, 2020 talk on Woman Suffrage.
Held virtually on October 22, 2020, Dr. Bettina Aptheker discusses the history of woman suffrage, with particular focus on suffrage history for women of color, as well as ways in which woman suffrage was always intertwined with struggles against racism, white supremacy, lynching, settler colonialism, and anti-immigrant insularity. This history resonates with our present moment as laws restricting voting rights, the wholesale removal of tens of thousands from the voting polls, and punitive sanctions continue to plague what should be the hallmark of our democracy: easy access to voter registration for all citizens, easy access to polling places on election day, freedom from intimidation, freedom from the fraudulent practices of state officials, especially gerrymandering, and freedom from international intrigue to manipulate voters and hack into electronic voting systems.
A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft.
