Secondary Article

Women voting in New Jersey in 1797, depicted in Harper’s Weekly (1880)

This series of lessons may be taught as part of a week-long unit on women, or individual women or time periods might be selected, as a study of how the role of women have changed over time as part of United States and New Jersey History.

Lesson Creator: New Jersey Center for Civic Education, Rutgers University, Piscataway

Grade level:  Secondary

Overview: The lessons are developed chronologically so that students might understand the limitations and opportunities available to women in New Jersey during specific time periods. Teachers may want to select specific women as examples or compare them across time periods.

Objectives: Students will be able to

• Explain changes in societal attitudes towards the role of women
• Analyze and evaluate how New Jersey women have contributed to the improvement of society

New Jersey Student Learning Standards for Studies Standards (2020):

6.1.8.HistoryUP.3.b: Examine the roles and perspectives of various socioeconomic groups (e.g., rural farmers, urban craftsmen, northern merchants, and southern planters), African Americans, Native Americans, and women during the American Revolution, and determine how these groups were impacted by the war.

6.1.8.HistorySE.3.b: Analyze a variety of sources to make evidence-based inferences about how prominent individuals and other nations contributed to the causes, execution, and outcomes of the American Revolution.

6.1.8.CivicsHR.4.a: Examine sources from a variety of perspectives to describe efforts to reform education, women’s rights, slavery, and other issues during the Antebellum period.

6.1.8.HistoryUP.5.b: Examine the roles of women, African Americans, Native Americans in the Civil War.

6.1.12.HistoryUP.2.a: Using primary sources, describe the perspectives of African Americans, Native Americans, and women during the American Revolution and assess the contributions of each group on the outcome of the war.

6.1.12.HistorySE.2.a: Construct responses to arguments in support of new rights and roles for women and for arguments explaining the reasons against them.

6.1.12.CivicsDP.3.a: Compare and contrast the successes and failures of political and social reform movements in New Jersey and the nation during the Antebellum period (i.e., the 1844 State Constitution, abolition, women’s rights, and temperance).

6.1.12.EconNE.3.a: Evaluate the impact of education in improving economic opportunities and in the development of responsible citizens.

6.1.12.CivicsDP.4.b: Analyze how ideas found in key documents contributed to demanding equality for all (i.e., the Declaration of Independence, the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Gettysburg Address).

6.1.12.HistoryUP.5.a: Using primary sources, relate varying immigrants’ experiences to gender, race, ethnicity, or occupation.

6.1.12.CivicsDP.6.a: Use a variety of sources from multiple perspectives to document the ways in which women organized to promote government policies designed to address injustice, inequality, and workplace safety (i.e., abolition, women’s suffrage, and the temperance movement).

6.1.12.EconNM.7.a: Assess the immediate and long-term impact of women and African Americans entering the work force in large numbers during World War I.

6.1.12.EconET.8.a: Relate social, cultural, and technological changes in the interwar period to the rise of a consumer economy and the changing role and status of women.

6.1.12.HistoryCC.11.c: Explain why women, African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and other minority groups often expressed a strong sense of nationalism despite the discrimination they experienced in the military and workforce.

 6.1.12.CivicsDP.13.a: Analyze the effectiveness of national legislation, policies, and Supreme Court decisions in promoting civil liberties and equal opportunities (i.e., the Civil Rights Act,the Voting Rights Act, the Equal Rights Amendment, Title VII, Title IX, Affirmative Action, Brown v. Board of Education).

6.1.12.HistoryCC.13.b: Explore the reasons for the changing role of women in the labor force in post- WWII America and determine its impact on society, politics, and the economy.

6.1.12.HistorySE.13.a: Use a variety of sources to explain the relationship between the changing role of women in the labor force and changes in family structure.

Essential Questions:

• How have attitudes about women changed?
• How have New Jersey women contributed to the improvement of society?
• How have individuals or groups taken actions to promote the dignity and rights of people?
• How does understanding multiple perspectives help us to make more informed decisions?
• How have events of the past shaped the present?

Procedures/Activities:

Brainstorming Activity.  Have students brainstorm women’s responsibilities at various times in history (e.g., the colonial period, during the American Revolution, after the Civil War, during the period of industrial development, during World War II, in the 1960s and 70s, and today).  Responses may include cooking, cleaning, shopping, taking care of children, nursing, educating children, etc. During the colonial period, the country was primarily agricultural and women worked on the farms alongside men, feeding animals, growing food, making clothing (weaving and sewing) in addition to taking care of the house and children.  During the American Revolution, women maintained the farm and the home and children as well as protecting their family, supporting the troops and nursing injured soldiers. As the market economy grew and women no longer made everything for themselves at home, opportunities to work outside the home expanded and many more women, especially young women and even young girls, supported their family’s income by working in factories, particularly textile factories, weaving and sewing with machines, as well as teaching in schools and working in offices.  Now that we have an “information” society and instant communication, how has the role of women changed?

Create a graphic organizer.  Use Handout 1: Timeline of New Jersey Women, and place NJ women on the timelines.  Add more boxes as necessary.  Ask:  What trend do you see on the chart? (There were more women doing exceptional things born around the turn of the 20^th century.)  Why do you think that happened? ( More opportunities became open to women.)

Critical thinking activity:  Have students form groups to study one or more New Jersey women in detail. Use the information provided in this lesson or have students do their own research. Jigsaw the groups and have students share what they learned.  Have the class analyze the contributions of the New Jersey women and their time periods using Handout 2. Then discuss:

• How have New Jersey women contributed to the improvement of society?
• Why would you consider these women courageous? Can you picture yourself doing what they did? To what cause do you feel it is worth devoting your time?
• How has the role of women changed over time?

1. New Jersey Women in Colonial America

Background:  Although women were a critical part of the development of the country in the colonial period, women in the English colonies in North America were considered dependents, much like children. Beginning with the First Great Awakening, a revitalization of religious piety that swept through the American colonies between the 1730s and 1770s, women started to form female voluntary associations within their churches, giving them a separate but influential role.

Sarah Kiersted: Sarah Kiersted had settled in New Netherland prior to its takeover by the British in 1664. At a time when many women were illiterate, Kiersted learned the language of the Leni-Lenape and became a trusted interpreter for the Lenape chief, Orafam, as he negotiated peace between natives and the colonists. Although it remains unclear how Kiersted acquired the native language skills, one source speculates that she learned as a child from her father, a fur trapper.  Kiersted was the wife of a surgeon for the Dutch West India Co. and a mother of 10.  The Indian chief so valued her friendship and service through the years that before his death near the age of 90, he gifted Kiersted a deed for about 2,250 acres, stretching from the Hackensack River to Overpeck Creek. The first non-native land owner in the region, Kiersted was able to retain rights to the property even after the British seized control of the region. She never lived on the land. Today, the land makes up Ridgefield Park, as well as parts of Teaneck and Bogota.  For additional information on Sarah Kiersted, see Sarah Kiersted - New Jersey Women's History

Annis Boudinot Stockton:  Born in 1736, Annis Boudinot married Richard Stockton, an attorney from an elite Princeton, New Jersey family.  Annis was one of the first women to be published in the Thirteen Colonies. She wrote and published her poems in leading newspapers and magazines of the day and was part of a Mid-Atlantic writing circle. She was the author of more than 120 works, but it was not until 1985, when a manuscript copybook long held privately was given to the New Jersey Historical Society, that most of her works became known. Before that, she was known to have written 40 poems. Annis became known as the "Duchess of Morven", the name of the Stockton estate in Princeton, New Jersey. They entertained prominent guests, including George Washington, with whom she had a correspondence, including numerous poems. She died in 1801.

Portrait of Annis Boudinot Stockton

For additional information see, Annis Boudinot Stockton | George Washington's Mount Vernon); or read My Story: Annis Boudinot Stockton, November 1776 – njcssjournal

2. New Jersey Women During the American Revolution

Background:  The effort to rely on domestic rather than imported products leading up to and during the American Revolutionary War turned domestic actions such as spinning and weaving American cloth into patriotic acts.  Women made critical contributions not only by providing clothing, bandages and food for the army; but also by raising funds, storing ammunition and other war materials; caring for the sick and wounded; serving as spies and couriers; managing farms, businesses and families in the absence of husbands and fathers; and defending their families and homes. The mobilization of women in such public roles challenged traditional ideas of female dependence on men. The contradiction was resolved by the concept of “republican motherhood,” which gave women a domestic, patriotic duty to educate their sons to be virtuous citizens, rather than for them to be direct, active participants in the body politic.

Patience Lowell Wright: Born on Long Island in 1725, Patience Lowell and her family moved to Bordentown, New Jersey when she was four years old. Her father, John Lovell, was a devout Quaker. She became passionate about sculpting, and moved to Philadelphia. She married fellow Quaker Joseph Wright and we moved back to Bordentown. Her husband died unexpectedly in 1769. Together with her sister Rachel, also a widow, she started a business making wax sculptures. They moved to London where Benjamin Franklin introduced them to important people who wanted to be sculpted.  When war broke out. Patience used her wax statues to smuggle out letters to the Continental Congress, passing on military and political news from business and social conversations. Patience died in London in 1786.  For additional information on Patience Lowell Wright, see Patience L. Wright | American Battlefield Trust

Ann Cooper Whitall: Born into the Cooper family in Woodbury in 1716 and married fellow Quaker James Whitall, Ann kept a diary between 1760 and 1762 and recorded how to live a Christian life. On October 22, 1777, around 1200 Hessians attacked Fort Mercer, an earthen fort on the New Jersey side of the Delaware in Gloucester County that had been constructed by the Continental Army, Ann calmly sat down to do some spinning. When a stray shot entered the house she simply moved to the cellar to continue. After the battle, she turned her home into a hospital and nursed wounded soldiers. A few weeks later the American army was forced to abandon Fort Mercer and the British army ransacked their house. Her actions when war came to our doorstep led future generations to hail her as the “Heroine of Red Bank.” Ann Cooper Whitall died in 1797 at the age 82 during a yellow fever epidemic that also took five of her children.   For additional information on Anne Cooper Whithall, see Ann Cooper Whitall - New Jersey Women's History.

Theodosia Ford: Born in 1741 in Connecticut, Theodosia’s family moved to Morristown, NJ, when Theodosia was less than a year old because her father was assigned as pastor to the Morristown First Presbyterian Church.  In 1762, Theodosia married Jacob Ford, a land, mill and mine owner in Morristown. He built a large Georgian mansion house on 200 acres. Theodosia had five children. After 1776, her husband, a militia colonel, was largely away from home.  He had been trying to complete the house in Morristown while also running the gunpowder mill he owned, supplying gunpowder to the Patriot forces, and serving as colonel of the local militia regiment.  Men from the shrinking and dilapidated Continental Army had arrived in Morristown after winning the battles of Trenton and Princeton.  Jacob Ford had returned home because he was not well. He died of pneumonia on January 10, 1777 and Theodosia was left alone to deal with his affairs, take care of the children, and deal with the 35 soldiers assigned to spend the winter in their house. Less than two years later, colonial Quartermaster Nathanial Greene requested the use of the spacious Ford house as a winter headquarters for General Washington. Theodosia agreed to the rental of several rooms, reducing the family space to two rooms. General Washington and his staff moved into her home on Dec. 1, 1779 and remained until June 1780 during one of the harshest winters ever recorded. Theodosia Ford died in 1824.  For additional information on Theodosia Ford, see My Story: Theodosia Ford, Morris County, NJ, January 1777 – njcssjournal

Molly Pitcher: “Molly Pitcher” was a nickname given to a woman said to have fought in the American Revolutionary War Battle of Monmouth. The name itself may have originated as a nickname given to women who carried pitchers and buckets of water to men on the battlefield during the war.  It is generally believed that the woman at the Battle of Monmouth was Mary Ludwig Hays McCauley.

Mary Ludwig was born in 1754, on a farm near Trenton, New Jersey. In 1768, she moved to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where she met William (also known as John) Hays, a local barber. They married the following year. At the Battle of Monmouth on June 28, 1778, Mary Hays spent much of the early day carrying water to soldiers and artillerymen, often under heavy fire from British troops. The weather was hot, over 100 degrees.  Sometime during the battle, William Hays collapsed, either wounded or suffering from heat exhaustion.  As her husband was carried off the battlefield, Mary Hays took his place at the cannon. For the rest of the day, in the heat of battle, Mary continued to "swab and load" the cannon using her husband's ramrod. At one point, a British musket ball or cannonball flew between her legs and tore off the bottom of her skirt. Mary supposedly said something to the effect of, "Well, that could have been worse," and went back to loading the cannon. Mary Ludwig Hays McCauley died in 1832.

Molly Pitcher at the Battle of Monmouth, Currier and Ives lithograph, Library of Congress

For additional information, watch the 90-second video about Molly Pitcher at Molly Pitcher at the Battle of Monmouth; or read,  Molly Pitcher | American Battlefield Trust)

Revolutionary Women Activity: Invite students to go to Meet Your Revolutionary Neighbors - Crossroads of the American Revolution.  Then have them address the following questions in a class discussion or short essay:

• How did these women defy the acceptable role for their gender during this time period?
• How does war open possibilities that otherwise might not exist?
• What other roles did New Jersey women play during the American Revolution? For more information, go to Meet Your Revolutionary Neighbors at Meet Your Revolutionary Neighbors - Crossroads of the American Revolution

3. New Jersey women in the antebellum period: Abolition and the Underground Railroad in New Jersey

Background:  In spite of their enormous contributions during the war and the ringing Revolutionary War rhetoric about “freedom” and “equality,” women still had few legal rights afterwards.  Alone among the 13 states, New Jersey’s first state constitution allowed women (but only unmarried women who owned property), as well as free African Americans, to vote. Although these women formed a tiny percentage of New Jersey’s electorate, in 1807 the New Jersey legislature limited the vote to white, male citizens who paid taxes.  See “The Petticoat Politicians of 1776: New Jersey’s First Female Voters” at  The Petticoat Politicians of 1776: New Jersey’s First Female Voters.

The Second Great Awakening, a religious revival that reached its peak in the 1820s, brought together religious beliefs and a sense of civic mission with female voluntary organizations formed to improve the community. Women carved out a public space—a ”women’s sphere”—between the home and the formal organizations of government.  To a large extent, the women’s sphere reflected a change in the work force:  the movement from an agrarian culture where the whole family worked on the farm to a wage labor economy where men went to work outside the farm while middle class wives remained at home with domestic chores to do.

Although women in the early 1800s had few legal rights, they exercised those few rights they did have—most notably their First Amendment rights to associate and to petition the government—to promote change. Women who never imagined demanding rights for themselves, signed petition opposing the removal of Cherokee Indians from their tribal lands and the expansion of slavery into new western territories.  It is estimated that petitions from women made up approximately 70 percent of the petitions sent to Congress seeking the abolition of slavery in the 1830s, until Congress enacted a “gag rule” in 1836 which continued until 1844.

As northern states ended slavery, slaves from southern states fled north where they could be free. In 1804, New Jersey had passed a law gradually eliminating slavery (when a female became 21 and a male 25).  New Jersey became a crossroad for fugitive slaves, often helped by Quaker women and one remarkable escaped slave, Harriet Tubman.   New Jersey was close to the two most active Underground Railroad cities--New York and Philadelphia--and to Maryland and Delaware.  Also there were a large number of all-black communities in NJ that served as sanctuaries for fugitive slaves.  For example, in the mid 1800's Salem County, NJ had a population of 2,075 free blacks and a large number of Quakers, all who aided them in their escape.  No other northern state exceeded New Jersey in the number of all-black communities that served as Underground Railroad sanctuaries for southern fugitive slaves. Fugitive slaves crossed the Delaware Bay to New Jersey, travelled across at various safe houses to Jersey City and at the Morris Canal basin fled by boat across the Hudson River (called the “River Jordan”) to go to Canada, New England or New York City

Following increased pressure from Southern politicians, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 as part of the Compromise of 1850, a group of bills designed to quiet calls for Southern secession. The 1850 Act made it easier to retake fugitive slaves. It also denied slaves the right to a jury trial and increased the penalty for helping fugitives to escape to $1000 (a lot of money in the 1850s!) and six months in jail. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was met with even more impassioned criticism and resistance than the earlier measure. The Underground Railroad reached its peak in the 1850s. It is estimated that more than 100,000 slaves escaped to freedom.

Harriet Tubman: Harriet Tubman was the most famous “conductor” of the Underground Railroad. Born into slavery around 1820 in Dorchester County, Maryland, Tubman escaped and fled to Pennsylvania in 1849. She worked summers in Cape May, NJ and returned to Maryland and rescued members of her family and others.  She made 19 trips into the South and, over a period of ten years, conducted approximately 300 people to freedom in the North across New Jersey to New York City or to Canada, without ever losing any of her charges.

Harriet Tubman, Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-7816

Her formula for success was quite simple: although she frequently changed her routes leading to the North, Ms. Tubman always began the escapes on Saturday nights. This was significant for two reasons. First, slaves were often not required to work on Sunday. Therefore, their owners might not notice their absence until Monday morning. Secondly, newspapers would not be able to report runaway slaves until the beginning of the week. These two facts often gave Tubman and the escapees enough time to get a head start to their destination in the free states.  During the Civil War Tubman worked for the Union as a cook, a nurse, and even a spy. After the war she settled in Auburn, New York, where she would spend the rest of her long life.  She died in 1913.

Numerous books have been written about Harriet Tubman, as well as videos, televisions shows, and websites:

• Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman: An American Hero (Larson)
• Harriet Tubman: the Road to Freedom (Clinton)
• Harriet Tubman: The Moses of her People (Bradford)

For additional information about Harriest Tubman, see:

• Harriet Tubman: Biography, Abolitionist, Underground Railroad
• Harriet Tubman: Facts, Underground Railroad & Legacy | HISTORY
• The Life of Harriet Tubman for Kids | Learn facts about Harriet Tubman | Black History Month
• Harriet Tubman

Abigail Goodwin: Less well-known than Harriet Tubman, Abigail Goodwin was responsible for helping hundreds if not thousands of slaves find freedom in the north through the Underground Railroad in New Jersey. Abigail Goodwin (1793-1867) was the daughter of a Quaker farmer in Salem, New Jersey, who had freed his slaves during the American Revolution.  She and her sister, Elizabeth, were fervent abolitionists.  Abigail was thrown out of the Orthodox Quaker Meeting in Salem for joining a group of radical Quakers fighting for the total abolition of slavery.

Abigail Goodwin, From William Still, The Underground Railroad, 1872

When Amy Reckless, a slave for one of Salem County’s wealthiest families, who set herself free  returned to Salem, she partnered with the Goodwin sisters in collecting goods and financial contributions to help fugitive slaves escape.  By the 1830s, Abigail had emerged as an active figure in the Underground Railroad movement and the Goodwin home became a key station on the Underground Railroad.  She often raised money and sent it to abolitionists to purchase slaves in the Carolinas and free them. She provided lodging, food, clothing and money to the fugitives who came to her home to continue their journey. 

Due in part to her efforts many slaves living in Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia were aware of this region as a safe haven for runaways. Abigail Goodwin devoted her life to helping runaway slaves and encouraging the end of slavery and she has been noted as one of the most important Underground Railroad agents. 

For more information about Abigail Goodwin go to Abigail Goodwin, Quaker Abolitionist | Salem County Cultural & Heritage Commission.  Also see the “Slavery and the Underground Railroad in New Jersey”  lesson at https://civiced.rutgers.edu/nj-lessons/new-jersey-history-lessons

4.New Jersey women after the Civil War

Background: For a small group of women the fight against slavery offered a model for analyzing their own oppression and for mobilizing to change the status quo.  In the 1840s, women’s rights advocates and their supporters worked in a number of states to obtain legal and economic rights for women—rights to property, custody of their children in a divorce and to their own earnings and inheritances.  Meeting at the Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in1848, and at women’s rights conventions throughout the northeast and midwest  that followed in the 1850s, women began to publicly articulate their demands for equal rights. The Seneca Falls Convention unanimously supported advocacy for a woman’s right to property, custody of their children, right to earnings and inheritance.  Female suffrage was not a primary issue.  A resolution supporting women’s right to vote passed only by a bare majority.

By 1865, 29 states, including New Jersey, had enacted some form of women’s property reform, such as sole control over property they brought into the marriage or received afterwards.  Yet, when the Fifteenth Amendment was passed by Congress in 1869, it only extended the vote to African American males, not women.  The battle for women’s suffrage moved to the states. In 1869, Wyoming granted women the right to vote, followed by Colorado, Utah and Idaho.  In 1915, the New Jersey Legislature voted down a measure to grant women the right to vote. Women in New Jersey, as in most of the country, did not gain the right to vote until passage of the 19^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920.

During this time period after the Civil War, a larger number of women were getting a decent education and colleges for women were opening. More women were becoming teachers and nurses, as well as earning a living by making textiles, shoes and hats, doing laundry, taking in boarders or domestic service.  Yet, proscriptions against married women working outside the home placed limits even on the career aspirations of affluent, educated women who might want to marry. The prevailing idea was that men were the breadwinners and should bring home wages sufficient to sustain the family and protect women from the harsh realities of the working world. 

After the Civil War, women’s efforts  to improve society expanded to include the Temperance Movement, efforts to help the poor and disabled, to gain rights as workers, and to eliminate corruption in government and in the economy.

Clara Barton: Clarissa "Clara" Barton was born in 1821 in Massachusetts. She became an educator in 1838. Barton became interested in providing a good education for all children in the community while visiting a friend in Bordentown, NJ. Although laws existed in New Jersey for free public education, they were never implemented. There were private schools for the wealthy and pauper schools for others. Barton started the nation’s first free public school in Bordentown in 1852 with six children in a one-room school house. By the following year, there were over 600 children in the program, receiving lessons from teachers housed in locations all over the city.

Clara Barton, c. 1866 U.S. National Park Service

In 1855, Barton moved to Washington D.C. and began work as a clerk in the U.S. Patent Office. This was the first time a woman had received a substantial clerkship in the federal government and at a salary equal to a man's salary. Subsequently, under political opposition to women working in government offices, her position was reduced to that of copyist, and then eliminated entirely.  At a time when relatively few women worked outside the home, Barton never married and built a career helping others. With the outbreak of the Civil War, Barton set up a system of procurement getting food and comfort to both sides of the conflict. In 1864 she was appointed by the Union as “lady in charge" of the hospitals at the front along the James River in Virginia. She became known as the "Angel of the Battlefield."

After the war, Barton ran the Office of Missing Soldiers and created a network that helped families find and reunite with their loved ones. As the war ended, she helped locate thousands of missing soldiers, including identifying the dead at Andersonville prison in Georgia. Barton lobbied for U.S. recognition of the International Committee of the Red Cross, and became president of the American branch when it was founded in 1881. Barton continued her humanitarian work throughout several foreign wars and domestic crises before her death in 1912.  For additional information, visit Clara Barton: Biography, and American Red Cross Founder Nurse Clara Barton Biography;  or watch a short video at Clara Barton - Famous Nurse | Mini Bio | BIO

5. New Jersey women during the Progressive Era (1890-1920)

Background: The pace and intensity of industrialization accelerated dramatically after the Civil War. Especially after 1890, immigrants, seeking work or freedom from oppression, flooded to the United States and cities grew rapidly.  Railroads stretched across the continent moving people and goods.  Businesses were turning into large corporations with growing influence. The Progressive Era was a time of great flux and hope. Unions were being formed to protect workers and expand their rights, although few included women. The women’s suffrage movement was building towards victory.

In the 1890s, the majority of wage earning women had been single and between 15 and 25 years old. Between 1900 and 1940, the percentage of wage earning women over 25 grew from 18% to 31% of female workers.  Not only were more women working, but they were working at an expanded array of businesses and professions.  A few fearless women were challenging the status quo and entering professions to become doctors and lawyers.

Workers did not yet have the right to strike, although withholding their labor was often the only way to influence corporate decisions.  The country was wracked by strikes in the late 1800s and early twentieth century.  Immigrant textile workers, many of them women, won a stunning victory in 1912 in Lawrence, Massachusetts, for higher pay when they walked off their jobs in response to a pay reduction.  A strike by silk workers in Paterson, New Jersey, the following year hoped to replicate these efforts.  However, the right of employees to join labor unions and to bargain collectively through their representatives with their employers was not established until 1935.

Beginning at the turn of the 20^th century, some middle and working-class women obtained sales or clerical jobs in newly expanding retail stores or business offices. The poorest women—immigrants, African Americans and other minorities—continued to work after marriage often in the lowest paid and least desirable jobs because they needed to earn wages for their families. Without union protection, many women began to look to state regulation to address their low wages and harsh industrial working conditions.  A number of states pressed by (often female) reformers, enacted protective labor legislation for women and children to provide safe and clean working conditions, minimize health hazards, shorten hours and put a floor under wages.

Elizabeth White: Elizabeth Coleman White (1871-1954) grew up on her father's cranberry farm in Whitesbog, an agricultural community in the Pine Barrens in Pemberton Township, New Jersey.  Whitesbog was the largest cranberry farm in the state and its founder (her father) was a nationally recognized leader in the cranberry industry.  At the time, people did not believe that blueberries could be domesticated.  In 1911, Elizabeth White became interested in blueberry propagation and, using her father's farm, she collaborated with Dr. Frederick Coville, a U.S. Department of Agriculture botanist, to identify wild blueberry plants with the most desirable properties, crossbreed the bushes and create vibrant new blueberry varieties based on wild varieties. By 1916, they had developed blueberry plants that could be grown and sold commercially.  In 1927, she helped to start the New Jersey Cooperative Blueberry Association. Thanks to Elizabeth White, blueberries are now produced in 38 states, with Michigan producing the most but New Jersey not far behind! For additional information on Elizabeth White,  see Elizabeth Coleman White - New Jersey Women's History;  or read and view video at Elizabeth Coleman White – New Jersey Hall of Fame.

Elizabeth Coleman White

Mary Philbrook: Mary Philbrook was born in Washington, D.C. in 1872, but her family moved to Jersey City by the time she was six. She attended Public School #11 (now the Martin Luther King, Jr. School) and then Jersey City High School (now William L. Dickinson High School).  Philbrook left school before graduating to become a stenographer in a law office, and she applied to be admitted to the New Jersey Bar in February 1894. The fact that Mary had not attended college, law school, or even finished high school was no barrier to her admission as a lawyer.  At the time, candidates to be lawyers did not need to go to law school or even college to apply to take the bar exam. Some three hundred female lawyers were practicing in thirty other states, but the New Jersey Court decided that "[a] woman is not, by virtue of her citizenship, vested by the Constitution . . . with any absolute right. . . to practice as an attorney."

New Jersey suffragists  lobbied the New Jersey legislature to pass a law in 1895 allowing women to become lawyers in the state, and Mary Philbrook was the first to be admitted on June 6, 1895.  In 1906 she was admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court, the first woman from New Jersey to be so appointed. Philbrook volunteered to be counsel for the Legal Aid Society in Jersey City.  She supported the militant activism of Alice Paul and her National Woman's Party in Washington, D.C.  After the passage of the 19th amendment, Philbrook worked with Alice Paul for the passage of an equal rights amendment. In 1947 Philbrook led a successful effort to change the wording of the New Jersey Constitution to insure equal rights for women. As a result the word "persons" is used to include both sexes, making sexual discrimination unconstitutional. Mary Philbrook died in 1958.

Mary Philbrook

Every year, the Rutgers School of Law - Camden confers the Mary Philbrook Public Interest Award to a distinguished individual who has honored the spirit of Mary Philbrook by serving the public interest in the legal field. The award is presented at a gala dinner that also honors law school students who have particularly distinguished themselves in public interest law.  For additional information on Mary Philbrook, see Mary Philbrook - New Jersey Women's History

Maria Boggio Botto: Maria Boggio (1870-1915) was born in Italy and married Pietro Botto at age 15 in 1885. They emigrated to the United States in 1892 and found work as silk weavers in West Hoboken. In 1908 they had saved enough money to build a house in Haledon, near the last trolley stop from Paterson, and moved there, continuing to work as silk weavers at the silk factories in Paterson.

The Botto House, Haledon, NJ, used during the Paterson Silk Strike in 1913

Their home, on a hill in the countryside but easily accessed from Paterson, became a popular meeting place for silk workers. During the long and unsuccessful labor protest against the Paterson silk mills in 1913, the striking workers had been prohibited from meeting and marching in Paterson by the mayor. But the socialist mayor of Haledon invited them there and the Botto house became the focus of meetings and rallies.  In addition, Maria Botto provided room and board for striking workers. She died at age 45 in 1915. The Botto home on Norwood Road is now a national historic landmark as the American Labor Museum.  For additional information see Marietta Boggio Botto - New Jersey Women's History

Hannah Silverman: Born in 1896, Hannah Silverman was a 17-year old picket-line captain during the Paterson Silk Strike, which began on February 25, 1913 when some 24,000 workers walked off their jobs shutting down 300 silk mills. Silverman fought for an eight-hour working day, minimum pay of $12 a week, better working conditions and the right to have a union.  Addressing a crowd of 20,000 striking workers one Sunday she said, “I’ve been to county jail three times already, but they can’t keep me away from the picket lines!” The Paterson Daily News called Silverman “one of the leading lights in the present strike,” and The New York Times found her “pretty and intelligent” and a “match” for prosecutors in courtroom savvy.

Hannah Silverman, 1913

Stretching over six long months, the silk-workers strike ended in defeat for the workers. It took until 1919 for silk mill employees to receive an eight-hour workday. Silverman’s labor activism ended with the close of the strike. She died in 1960 at the age of sixty-four.  For additional information see Hannah Silverman and the 1913 Paterson Silk Strike 

Alice Paul: Alice Paul was born in 1885 to a Quaker family. Her father was a successful businessman and the family lived at Paulsdale, a 173-acre farm in Mt. Laurel, New Jersey. Her Quaker family supported gender equality and the need to work for the betterment of society. Alice Paul graduated from Swarthmore College and was the commencement speaker. She worked in the settlement movement in New York and went to study social work in England, where she met radical suffragettes, who were taking public action such as protests to bring attention to the secondary status of women. Paul joined the movement and was arrested several times.

She returned to the U.S. and, while other suffragists continued to focus on state campaigns to gain the right to vote, Paul joined with Lucy Burns to work for the passage of a constitutional amendment ensuring women’s right to vote in the United States. They organized a publicity event—a parade of several thousand women in Washington, D.C., in March 1913, the day before Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration. Although planned as an elegant progression of symbolically dressed, accomplished, and professional women, the parade quickly devolved into a riot. Paul used this event to rally public opinion to the women's cause. In 1916, Paul stood with other radical suffragists outside the White House holding banners demanding the right to vote and criticizing President Wilson.

After the U.S. entered World War I in 1917, the picketers began to be arrested and sent to a Workhouse in Virginia. They staged hunger strikes and were beaten and forced fed. The growing public support for the women led President Wilson to endorse a Constitutional Amendment to grant women the right to vote in 1917 and the Nineteenth Amendment, which gave the right to vote to women in the United States, was passed in 1919 and became law the following year, thanks to Alice Paul and her fearless colleagues. Paul died in 1977.

For additional information about Alice Paul, see the 90-second video about Alice Paul at Alice Paul, Women's Rights Activist;  or read at Dr. Alice Paul (U.S. National Park Service); or read a detailed lesson on “Alice Paul and the Suffragist Movement” at https://civiced.rutgers.edu/nj-lessons/new-jersey-history-lessons

Caroline Bamberger:  Caroline Bamberger Fuld (1864–1944) was an American businesswoman and philanthropist most noted for co-founding (with her brother Louis Bamberger) the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.  She grew up in Baltimore, the fifth of six children to immigrants from Bavaria, Germany, who had dry goods stores.  Caroline married Louis Meyer Frank and moved to Philadelphia in 1883. A decade later, Caroline, her brother, her husband and her brother’s friend Felix Fuld, founded L. Bamberger and Co. in Newark, NJ. The historic Bamberger's flagship store in downtown Newark was a massive 14-story building that covered an entire city block.  Bamberger’s developed new methods of retail advertising and selling, including a phone exchange that was devoted solely to Bamberger's, with local direct-dial numbers for most of New Jersey's suburbs for telephone orders, known as "Tele-Service."

Louis Frank died in 1910 and Caroline married Felix Fuld three years later. Neither marriage produced children.  Louis Bamberger lived with Caroline and Felix Fuld on a jointly owned thirty-three-acre estate that straddled Newark and its suburbs, South Orange and East Orange, where they had gardens and asold L. Bamberger and Co. to R. H. Macy and Co., fortuitously before the stock market crash. Subsequently, Carolyn devoted her energies to philanthropy.  She contributed to Jewish charities,  small working farm. After Felix Fuld’s death in 1929, Louis Bamberger and Carolyn Bamberger Fuld sold L. Bamberger and Co. to R. H. Macy and Co., fortuitously before the stock market crash. Subsequently, Carolyn devoted her energies to philanthropy.  She contributed to Jewish charities, including Newark's Beth Israel Hospital, the Jewish Relief Committee, and Hadassah. In 1931, she was elected national director of the National Council of Jewish Women.  Most remembered, however, is the decision in 1929 by Caroline and her brother to support and endow financially what became the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.  Caroline Bamberger Fuld and Louis Bamberger contributed $5 million in 1930 for its initial endowment, and approximately $18 million altogether.  Caroline was vice-president of the nascent Institute until 1933, and thereafter was a life trustee.  The Institute became an important center for scholarship and counted among its first professor Albert Einstein and other refugees from Hitler’s Germany. For additional information see Carrie Bamberger Frank Fuld | Jewish Women's Archive

Caroline Bamberger Fuld, 1920

Effa Manley Born in 1900 in Philadelphia, the daughter of a white woman married to a black man, Effa continually walked the line between black and white. Following high school, Effa moved to New York City where she worked, as a white woman, in a department store in New York City, though she lived in predominantly black neighborhoods and married black men.  Often found at Yankee Stadium watching Babe Ruth, Manley dedicated her time to local social organizations and causes. For example, in 1935 she walked the picket line in a successful campaign to get local businesses to hire black employees, a “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” campaign.

Effa Manley, Baseball Hall of Fame Library, BL 757-86

She met her second husband, Abraham Manley, at the 1932 World Series. In 1935, the Manleys co-owned a Negro League baseball team, called the Eagles, in Brooklyn, New York. The team relocated to Newark, New Jersey the following year.  Effa handled the bulk of the team’s off-the-field activities, from scheduling games to arranging transportation to negotiating contracts with players. She was easily the most-powerful woman in baseball in the 1940s. “She was unique and effervescent and knowledgeable,” said Monte Irvin, the Hall of Famer who played shortstop and outfield for the Newark Eagles. “She ran the whole business end of the team.” Under her stewardship, the Eagles won the Negro League World Series in 1946.

Manley also helped to improve the conditions for the players in the Negro Leagues. She spoke out in favor of better scheduling, improved pay, and upgraded accommodations and assisting players with jobs. She also used her position with the club to promote a variety of causes and benefits. As treasurer for the New Jersey chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Effa used Eagles games as opportunities for fundraisers, including an anti-lynching day. The team invited soldiers during World War II to Eagles games for free. The club hosted benefits for causes such as the Harlem Fight for Freedom Committee and the Newark Community Hospital.

The Negro Leagues faded as a result of the integration of Major League Baseball in 1947. The Manleys sold the Eagles in 1948, but not before trading Larry Doby, from Paterson, NJ, the second player to integrate to the Cleveland Indians.  Effa required that the Indians pay her for Doby’s contract, setting a precedent for Negro League players going into the majors.  In the 1950s, Manley turned her energies to the Civil Rights Movement.  In 1976, she co-authored Negro Baseball ... before Integration, about notable Negro League players, and wrote letters lobbying for Negro leaguers to be admitted into the Cooperstown Baseball Hall of Fame.  She died in 1981. In 2006, Manley was elected as an executive/pioneer to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Of the nearly 300 members of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Effa is the only woman.

For additional information, see Effa Manley: Pioneering Woman in Baseball & Champion of Civil Rights, Effa Manley - Behind The Plaques, and  Manley, Effa | Baseball Hall of Fame

6. New Jersey women during World War II

Background: As late as 1930, 57% of all wage-earning women were African-Americans or foreign-born. They worked as domestic servants or as machine operatives in the apparel and textile industries. Even industries that employed both men and women discriminated in wages: industrial wages for women were traditionally 50-65% of the level of wages for men. The idea of a man’s “family wage” remained predominant.

After U.S. entry into World War II, America began full-scale mobilization which required a larger industrial workforce at a time when one-sixth of the American adult population (16 million men and 300,000 women) entered the military.  Immigration had been largely cut off by the National Origins Act of 1924. For the first time, employers sought out women in large numbers for jobs that were traditionally held by men. To entice women into war work, the government mounted a massive propaganda campaign. “Rosie the Riveter” became a national heroine, portrayed in magazines, advertisements and posters emphasizing women’s patriotic duty.  By 1944, there were more women employed in factories than there had been in the entire labor force in 1940. Women read blueprints, worked machine tools, maintained airplanes, oiled and ran trains. They worked as stevedores, blacksmiths, drill press operators, bus and taxi drivers.  New Jersey had many of its own “Rosie the Riveters” and interviews with several of them are available online.

“Rosie the Riveter”; American women entered the workforce in unprecedented numbers during World War II, as widespread male enlistment left gaping holes in the industrial labor force. Between 1940 and 1945, the female percentage of the U.S. workforce increased from 27 percent to nearly 37 percent, and by 1945 nearly one out of every four married women worked outside the home.  During the war, women replaced male workers in ordnance plants, shipyards, aircraft factories, and steel mills. But they also seized newly opened opportunities as musicians, scientists, doctors, attorneys, university professors, governmental officials, athletes, and teachers. The federal government itself hired a huge number of women. For their labor, women received high wartime wages, regulated hours, decent working conditions, and such support services as canteens and the day care provided through the Lanham Act. Moreover, the Women's Bureau, the War Production Board and the War Manpower Commission all endorsed the principle of equal pay.

Norman Rockwell’s cover of the Saturday Evening Post, May 29, 1943

 “Rosie the Riveter,” star of a government campaign aimed at recruiting female workers for the munitions industry, became perhaps the most iconic image of working women during the war.  See the video at Rosie the Riveter: Helping to Win WWII

Additional activity:  The New Jersey Digital Highway has a variety of lessons about New Jersey women during World War II.  For interviews with three such New Jersey women (Jean C. Comeforo, Mary Robinson and Alice Jennings Archibald) and two Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP’s), go to Interviews and Stories | New Jersey Digital Highway.  Have students compare and contrast the different experiences of each woman.  How did each woman view her contribution to the war effort?

7. New Jersey  women in the 1950s and 60s

Background: By the end of World War II the female portion of the U.S. labor force had grown from 11 to 23%. The number of women in unions had also grown dramatically from 9% in 1940 to 22% in 1944. During the war, pressures for wives and children to stay at home were removed or at least eased and child care for working mothers became available. The most important impact of the war on working women was an increase in pay, although not anywhere near what men earned for the same jobs.  Although a bill to require equal pay for women was introduced and debated in 1945, it failed to pass.

Until the early 1960s, newspapers published separate job listings for men and women. Jobs were categorized according to sex, with the higher level jobs listed almost exclusively under "Help Wanted—Male." In some cases the ads ran identical jobs under male and female listings—but with separate pay scales. Separate, of course, meant unequal: between 1950 and 1960, women with full time jobs earned on average between 59–64 cents for every dollar their male counterparts earned in the same job.

Separate Help Wanted Sections for Men and Women in the Elizabeth Daily Journal, Sept. 2, 1958

It wasn't until the passage of the Equal Pay Act on June 10, 1963 (effective June 11, 1964) that it became illegal to pay women lower rates for the same job strictly on the basis of their sex. Demonstrable differences in seniority, merit, the quality or quantity of work, or other considerations might merit different pay, but gender could no longer be viewed as a drawback on one's resumé. 

Two landmark decisions in the 1970s helped to narrow the pay gap. In 1970, the Third Circuit ruled in Schultz v. Wheaton Glass Co.  that jobs need to be "substantially equal" but not "identical" to fall under the protection of the Equal Pay Act. An employer cannot, for example, change the job titles of women workers in order to pay them less than men. In Corning Glass Works v. Brennan, the U.S. Supreme Court held in 1974 that employers cannot justify paying women lower wages because that is what they traditionally received under the "going market rate." A wage differential occurring "simply because men would not work at the low rates paid women" was unacceptable.

The blatant discrimination apparent in these court cases seems archaic today, as does the practice of sex-segregated job listings. The workplace has changed dramatically in the decades since the passage of the Equal Pay Act.  But what has not changed, however, is women's pay. The wage gap has narrowed, but it is still significant. Women earned 59% of the wages men earned in 1963; in 2012 they earned 80.9% of men's wages—an improvement of about half a penny per dollar earned every year. .

Why do you think that there is still such a disparity? Are women not “leaning in” sufficiently and demanding their due? Do men not provide their share of domestic chores at home, requiring more time and energy to be spent by their wives? Does the absence of high quality day care for children impede the ability of women to seek and engage in more demanding positions?

Marie Katzenbach:  Marie Louise Hilson was born in 1882 in Trenton, New Jersey. She attended the Trenton Model School and at 18 went to work at an orphanage, the Union Industrial Home. She pushed for the children at the home to be educated in public schools, and when she joined the Board of Managers in 1913, she advocated for psychiatric treatment and special education.  She also worked as a librarian at the Trenton Free Library for 10 years, serving as chief of the cataloguing department.

Image courtesy of Nicholas DeB.Katzenbach

In 1911 Hilson married Edward L. Katzenbach, who would go on to serve as Attorney General of New Jersey from 1924 to 1929. They had two sons: Edward Lawrence Katzenbach, Jr. (February 24, 1919 – April 23, 1974), who served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Education and Manpower Resources under John F. Kennedy, and Nicholas Katzenbach (January 17, 1922 – May 8, 2012), United States Attorney General and Under Secretary of State under Lyndon B. Johnson.

Marie Katzenbach was appointed to the State Board of Education in 1921. She served for decades and in 1956, became the first woman to head the State Board of Education. During her tenure she was instrumental in transforming the two-year “normal” schools into four-year colleges. She also pushed for the designation of Rutgers as the State University in 1955, taking particular interest in developing Douglass College for women.  Katzenbach Hall, a residential hall on the Douglass Campus built in 1963, is named for her.

 In 1923 Katzenbach was named to the board for the New Jersey School for the Deaf and was involved in the planning of the school's Trenton campus. She remained associated with the school for the rest of her life, and in 1965 it was renamed the Marie H. Katzenbach School for the Deaf in her honor. (See Marie H. Katzenbach School for the Deaf)

Katzenbach was elected as vice-president of the State Constitutional Convention in 1947, and was responsible for altering the language of the New Jersey Constitution to ensure that women were considered “persons” under state law.  Katzenbach died at age 81, when she was seriously injured when her car ran into the education building. She died in 1970 at the age of 87 at her home in Princeton, New Jersey. For additional information, see Marie Hilson Katzenbach - New Jersey Women's History

Anne Morrow Lindbergh: Writer and aviation pioneer Anne Morrow was born in 1906 in Englewood, NJ.  Her father, Dwight W. Morrow, was a partner at J.P. Morgan & Co. who became American ambassador to Mexico and a Republican senator from New Jersey in the early 1930s. Her mother, Elizabeth Reeve Cutter Morrow, was a poet and teacher who later served as acting president of Smith College 1939-40. Anne Morrow was a 21-year old senior at Smith College in 1927 when she met Charles Lindbergh, arguably the most famous man in the world after completing the first-ever nonstop solo transatlantic flight earlier that year.  In 1929 she married Lindbergh and much of the early years of their marriage was spent flying.  In 1931 they journeyed in a single-engine plane over Canada and Alaska, and on to Japan and China. The flight was the inspiration for Anne Morrow Lindbergh's first book, "North to the Orient."

Anne Morrow Lindbergh on the cover of LIFE magazine, May 15, 1939

The Lindberghs’ first child, Charles Jr., was 20 months old in 1932 when he was stolen from his crib in his bedroom in the family’s sprawling but isolated home in Hopewell, New Jersey.  After weeks of negotiation with the kidnapper and an abortive delivery of $50,000 in ransom money, the body of the "Lindbergh baby" was found in the woods near the Lindbergh home on May 12; he had been killed shortly after the kidnapping. "The Crime of the Century," including the subsequent arrest, trial and conviction of the carpenter Bruno Richard Hauptmann, captivated the attention of the international media for the next several years. Hauptmann was executed for the crime in 1936, still protesting his innocence. (See the lesson, “New Jersey in the 1930s: The Depression and the Media” at https://civiced.rutgers.edu/)

In 1934, the National Geographic Society awarded Anne Morrow Lindbergh its Hubbard Gold Medal for her accomplishment of 40,000 miles of exploratory flying over five continents with her husband.  In addition, she was awarded the Cross of Honor of the U.S. Flag Association in recognition of her successes in surveying transatlantic air routes. She was also the first licensed female glider pilot in the United States.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh was an acclaimed author whose books and articles spanned the genres of poetry to non-fiction, touching upon topics as diverse as youth and age; love and marriage; peace, solitude and contentment, as well as the role of women in the 20th century.  Her 1956 book, Gifts from the Sea, presented eight inspirational essays concerning the meaning of a woman's life and was on the best seller list for months. She died in 2001. For additional information see and view video at Anne Morrow Lindbergh – New Jersey Hall of Fame;  or read at Anne Morrow Lindbergh | American Experience | Official Site | PBS

Virginia Apgar: Virginia Apgar was born in 1909 in Westfield, NJ, where she was raised.  She graduated from Mount Holyoke College, where she studied zoology with minors in physiology and chemistry, and from the Columbia University College of Physicians in 1933. In 1949, Apgar became the first woman to become a full professor at the Columbia University’s medical college, where she did clinical and research work.  In 1953, she introduced the first test, called the Apgar score, to assess the health of newborn babies. The Apgar score is calculated based on an infant's condition at one minute and five minutes after birth.

As part of the March of Dimes campaign to prevent birth defects, Dr. Apgar advises mother to “Be Good to Your Baby before It is Born;” c. 1968

In 1959, Apgar left Columbia and earned a Master of Public Health degree from Johns Hopkins University. Also starting in 1959 until her death in 1974, Apgar worked for the March of Dimes Foundation, serving as vice president for Medical Affairs and directing its research program to prevent and treat birth defects.  Because gestational age is directly related to an infant’s Apgar score, Apgar was one of the first at the March of Dimes to bring attention to the problem of premature birth, now one of the March of Dimes top priorities. During this time, she wrote and lectured extensively, authoring articles in popular magazines as well as research work.

For additional information about Virginia Apgar, see Virginia Apgar | National Women's History Museum

Mary Roebling: Mary Gindhart was born in West Collingswood, New Jersey on July 29, 1905. In 1921, at the age of sixteen, Mary married a young soldier and musician named Arthur Herbert. They had a daughter but their marriage was cut short when Arthur died of blood poisoning in 1924. After the death of her husband, Mary became a secretary in a Philadelphia brokerage house while taking night classes in business administration and merchandising at the University of Pennsylvania. At the brokerage house, she met Siegfried Roebling, grandson of Colonel Washington Roebling, the builder of the Brooklyn Bridge. Siegfried ran one of the family's businesses, the Trenton Trust Company. He and Mary married in 1931 and had a son. Another tragedy befell Mary, however, when her second husband died in 1936.

Mary Roebling inherited Trenton Trust stock from her husband and took his seat on the Trenton Trust Company board. She was elected president of the board on January 21, 1937 and became the first woman to serve as president of a major American bank. Roebling established innovative practices of public relations and merchandising, as well as drive-in banking and a railroad station branch for Trenton commuters. Under her leadership, Trenton Trust's assets increased from 17 to 137 million in a twenty-eight year period. She served as either president or chair of the board until 1972 when the bank merged with National State. She then chaired the combined banks until 1984. From 1958 to 1962, Roebling served as governor of the American Stock Exchange--its first female governor.

Through several administrations, Roebling served as a civilian aide to the Secretary of the Army. She was made president of the new Army War College Foundation in 1978. Throughout her life, Mary Roebling was a strong supporter of equal rights for women. Her goal was "equal pay for equal work with equal opportunity for advancement." The promotion of women in business was extremely important to her. She felt that companies were not using women to their fullest advantage, and that women were concentrated in lower-echelon jobs and paid accordingly. She died on October 25, 1994 at her home in Trenton, NJ.

For additional information on Mary Roebling, see mary-roebling; or read mary-herbert-roebling.

Additional activity for New Jersey women in the 1950’s and ‘60’s: Consider the following questions for discussion:

• Evaluate the progress that women have made since 1945 in obtaining equal pay for equal work
• Identify the impediments that limit women’s progress towards full pay equity today.

8. New Jersey Women in Politics

Background: In 1940, women were still rarely speaking in public, held very few public offices, and had barely begun voting.  By 2015, 84 members of the U.S. House of Representatives or just under 20% were female, as well as 20 in the U.S.  Senate.  By 2020, 27.4% of the House members were women. 

Mary Norton: Mary Teresa Hopkins was born in Jersey City in 1875, the eldest daughter of staunch Roman Catholic, working-class, Irish parents. She attended a local parochial school, but did not complete her elementary education in consideration of her family's financial situation, a fact not revealed during her lifetime. She pursued an informal education at home with the assistance of her brother James. The family resources instead were reserved for James to be educated for the priesthood--not an uncommon sacrifice for daughters in Roman Catholic families of the times. Instead of becoming a priest, however, James Hopkins became the principal of Dickinson High School (then the High School of Jersey City) and later Superintendent of Schools in Jersey City. Norton's mother died when she was seventeen. When her father remarried, Norton and her two sisters moved to an apartment in New York City, attended Packard Business College for secretarial training, and worked in clerical positions to support themselves.

In 1909, Mary Teresa Hopkins married Robert Francis Norton, a widower with two children (raised by his mother) who managed a firm that made copper products in Jersey City. Their only son, Robert, died in infancy the following year.  Norton turned to public service and volunteer work. In 1912, she helped launch a nonsectarian day-care center that operated out of the basement of the St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church. During the World War I years, she also organized a Red Cross workroom for women in the parish hall basement.  Based on her experience helping working women, Jersey City Mayor Frank Hague asked for Norton’s help in encouraging the newly enfranchised women to vote as Democrats.  Norton became a county freeholder in 1923, and then ran for and won a seat in congress in 1925, the first woman elected as a Democrat from an eastern state.  She chaired the State Democratic Committee from 1932 to 1935 and again from 1940 to 1944. In 1937, Norton became the senior Democrat on the House Labor Committee, a position which enabled her to shape the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which set a floor for wages and a ceiling for hours.  Working with Labor Secretary Frances Perkins and President Franklin Roosevelt, Norton played a strong role in creating a labor force that brought women and minorities to vital jobs in defense plants during World War II.

Norton refused to support the Equal Rights Amendment, as did the majority of women in the 1930s and 40s because it would nullify state laws that protected women in industry.  Instead, Norton worked for an equal pay law.  In 1944-45, she introduced the “Women’s Equal Pay Bill” and the “Fair Employment Practices Bill.”  After the defeat of these bills, she resigned from the Labor Committee in 1946. After serving a quarter-century, she retired at age seventy-five. Norton died in 1959.  For additional information about Mary T. Norton, see Mary Teresa Norton - New Jersey Women's History

Florence Price "Flo" Dwyer: Florence "Flo" Louise Price was born in 1902, in Reading, Pennsylvania. She left college to marry M. Joseph Dwyer, the Toledo football coach and, later, an industrial relations executive. The couple moved to Elizabeth, New Jersey. Florence Dwyer's role as a member of the local Parent Teacher Association initiated her interest in politics. She joined the Republican Club in Elizabeth in the 1930s, was a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1944, and subsequently worked as a lobbyist in Trenton for the New Jersey Business and Professional Women's Clubs. She served in the New Jersey State Assembly 1949-57 eventually rising to the assistant majority leader post. In 1956, at the urging of New Jersey Senator Clifford Case, Dwyer entered the Republican primary for a U.S. House district encompassing Union County.  With support from President Eisenhower, she won. In her next four campaigns, she won increasingly by larger margins.  Redistricting in 1966 cost Dwyer her traditional Elizabeth base, so she sought re–election in another newly realigned district, which included part of Union County and eastern Essex County where she crushed her opponents.

Congresswoman Florence P. Dwyer, 1956, LC-USZ62-135423

The Congresswoman was not afraid to stand apart from other Republicans.  She was an early supporter of civil rights reform. Just a month into her first term in 1957, she introduced a version of the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration's Civil Rights Bill. In 1960, Dwyer introduced a bill to create a "Commission on Equal Job Opportunity Under Government Contracts," which aimed at providing for fair contract award processes for minority businesses and individuals. In March 1957, Representative Dwyer and colleague Cecil Harden of Indiana introduced "Equal Pay for Equal Work" legislation. " Dwyer also was a firm and early supporter of the ERA. In the 1972 elections she campaigned actively for Republican candidate and State Senator Matthew J. Rinaldo, who won the seat to succeed her. Dwyer retired to Elizabeth, New Jersey, where she resided until her death in 1976. For additional information on Florence Dwyer, see Florence Dwyer,73,Dies; Representative in Jersey - The New York Times and Jersey Honors Representative Dwyer - The New York Times

Millicent Fenwick: Millicent Hammond was born in New York City in 1910. Her father, Ogden Haggerty Hammond, was a wealthy financier and New Jersey state legislator; her mother, Mary Picton Stevens Hammond, died aboard the U.S.S. Lusitania in 1915 after a German U–boat torpedoed the ship. Millicent accompanied her father to Madrid when President Calvin Coolidge appointed him U.S. Ambassador to Spain. She attended Columbia University and later studied at the New School for Social Research. In 1934, she married businessman Hugh Fenwick, and they raised two children. The Fenwicks divorced in 1945 and Millicent Fenwick went to work to support her children. She modeled briefly for Harper’s Bazaar and then took a job as associate editor on the staff of Condé Nast’s Vogue magazine. In 1948, she wrote Vogue’s Book of Etiquette, a 600–page “treatise on proper behavior.” It sold more than a million copies. Fenwick left Vogue in 1952 and inherited a fortune when her father passed away a few years later.

Congresswoman Millicent Fenwick, 1976, LC-USZ62-122204

Fenwick joined the National Conference of Christians and Jews in an attempt to counter anti–Semitic propaganda in the United States after Hitler came to power in Germany in the 1930s and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1946. She served on the Bernardsville, New Jersey, board of education; and then as a member of the Bernardsville borough council. She won a seat in the New Jersey State Assembly at the age of 59 and served several years until New Jersey Governor William Cahill appointed her the state’s first director of consumer affairs.

Elected to Congress in 1974, Millicent Fenwick was an outspoken patrician who served four terms; earned the epithet “Conscience of Congress” with her fiscal conservatism, human rights advocacy, and dedication to campaign finance reform. Fenwick’s blueblood mannerisms belied her lifelong commitment to liberal activism on behalf of consumers, racial minorities, and women’s rights.  Although she was a fiscal conservative, Fenwick supported liberal social issues, such as equal rights, food stamps, abortion, and human rights. After leaving the House of Representatives following the 1982 election, Fenwick was appointed by President Ronald Reagan as United States Ambassador to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Rome, Italy.  She held this position until 1987, when she retired from public life at the age of 77. Fenwick died at age 82 in 1992.

Congresswoman Fenwick is said to be the inspiration behind Lacey Davenport, a fictional character in Garry Trudeau's comic strip Doonesbury. Find some old Doonesbury cartoons with Lacey Davenport and compare them with what you know about Congresswoman Millicent Fenwick.

For additional information, see the 90-second video about Millicent Fenwick, or read and view video at millicent-fenwick-2

Helen Meyner: Helen Day Stevenson was born in 1929, to parents who worked for the American Red Cross, establishing units in Europe and Africa during World War I. William Stevenson later served as the president of Oberlin College in Ohio and also as U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines. Helen earned her bachelor’s degree in 1950 and immediately began to serve as a field worker for the Red Cross in Korea from 1950 to 1952 and then as a tour guide at the United Nations. From 1953 to 1956 she was hired by a major airline to travel around the globe on a promotional tour.  In 1956, she volunteered for the presidential campaign for her mother’s distant cousin, Adlai Stevenson. During the campaign, she met New Jersey Governor Robert Meyner, and they married in 1957. After Robert Meyner left office in 1962, Helen began writing a twice–weekly column for the Newark Star–Ledger, which she continued until 1969. She also hosted a New York–New Jersey television interview program from 1965 to 1968. In 1972, the state Democratic committee convinced Meyner to enter the race as the new Democratic nominee in the heavily Republican district, which she lost. Two years later in 1974, her GOP opponent was compromised by revelations that he kept a woman who did not work in his office on his congressional payroll. This, coupled with the backlash resulting from the Watergate investigation, gave Meyner the edge and she won.

Congresswoman Helen Meyner, https://meynercenter.lafayette.edu

During her two terms in the House, Meyner served on the Foreign Affairs Committee, criticizing the nuclear arms race and opposing attempts by nonaligned nations to suspend or expel Israel from the United Nations. She condemned the 1975 U.N. resolution that equated Zionism with racism; however, she argued against using the incident as a pretext for U.S. withdrawal from the world organization. She also worked with her Garden State colleagues to save her district’s Picatinny Arsenal from closure; soon after, it was designated as the headquarters for the Army’s Armament Research and Development Command. Meyner actively promoted women’s rights and their increased involvement in politics. She developed a reputation as an even–tempered, thoughtful, and effective legislator, somewhat overshadowed by her New Jersey colleague, Millicent Fenwick. Meyner lost her seat in the 1978 election to James Courter by fewer than 6,000 votes, After leaving Congress, Meyner returned to Princeton, New Jersey, where she again worked for the state rehabilitation commission. She also served on the boards of several major corporations, where she developed a reputation for pushing women’s equality in corporate management. After her husband’s death in 1990, she moved to Captiva Island, Florida. She died in 1997.

For additional information about Helen Meyner, see Helen Stevenson Meyner - New Jersey Women's History

Margaret "Marge" Roukema: Margaret Scafati was born in 1929 in Newark to a first generation Italian-American family. Her father was an auto mechanic. A graduate of Montclair State College, she was a teacher in the Ridgewood Public Schools. She began her political career on the Ridgewood Board of Education in 1970 after the death of her 17-year-old son to leukemia. After working for former Gov. Tom Kean's campaign, she won  a seat in the House in 1980. After redistricting, Roukema's district was renumbered as the 5th District and became significantly more Republican than its predecessor. She was handily reelected in 1982 and nine more times after that with almost no opposition.

Congresswoman Marge Roukema, Collection of the U.S. House of Representatives

She focused on family issues and welfare reform.  She deviated from her party on issues such as gun control and abortion. Roukema helped push through the Family and Medical Leave Act, which was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1993.

Roukema’s committee assignments led her into legislative work on behalf of job training in the private sector, child support, welfare reform, and family leave policy. Her biggest legislative achievement was the enactment of the Family and Medical Leave Act which was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1993. It required large companies to extend unpaid leave time to new parents, disabled workers, and those caring for chronically ill relatives. Roukema secured the key compromise which helped pass the bill, an exemption for small businesses. She rose to be the longest-serving woman in the House, dean of the New Jersey congressional delegation and the most senior Republican on what would become the House Financial Services Committee, though was passed over for the panel chairmanship by House leadership. Roukema died in 2014.

For additional Information on Marge Roukema, see Margaret Roukema - New Jersey Women's History

Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman: Bonnie Watson Coleman was born in 1945 in Trenton. She received a BA from Edison College. In 1974, she established the first Office of Civil Rights, Contract Compliance and Affirmative Action, in the New Jersey Department of Transportation and remained the Director of that office for six years. In 1980, Watson Coleman joined the Department of Community Affairs, where she held a number of positions including, Assistant Commissioner, responsible for Aging, Community Resources, Public Guardian and and as its chair from 1991 to 1993. Watson Coleman was a member of the Ewing Township Planning Board from 1996 to 1997. She was a member of The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey Board of Trustees from 1981 to 1998 and was its chair from 1990 to 1991. She served in the New Jersey General Assembly from 1998 to 2015 for the 15th Legislative District.^[2] She is the first black woman in Congress from New Jersey.  In 2016, Coleman joined two other female members of Congress to found the Congressional Caucus on Black Women and Girls.

Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman, Collection of U.S. House of Representatives

For additional information on Bonnis Watson Coleman, see, Bonnie Watson Coleman and Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman - YouTube

Governor Christie Todd Whitman: Christine Todd Whitman was born in New York in 1946 into a distinguished political family. She spent most of her childhood at the family farm in Oldwick, New Jersey. Graduating from Wheaton College in 1968, she worked on Nelson Rockefeller’s presidential campaign. Subsequently she worked for Donald Rumsfeld at the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity and for the Republican National Committee. In 1974, she married John Whitman, the scion of another prominent political family. They had two children.  In 1982 she was elected freeholder in Somerset County where she served for two terms, the last as freeholder director.  She resigned in 1988 to accept an appointment to Governor Kean’s cabinet as Chair of the Board of Public Utilities. She left in 1990 to run for the U.S. Senate challenging popular Democratic incumbent Bill Bradley and came within 3 points of defeating him. 

Christine Todd Whitman was elected in November 1993 as the 50th Governor of the State of New Jersey, and its first woman governor, defeating incumbent Governor James J. Florio by a 1% margin. During her campaign, Whitman pledged to cut the state income tax by 30% over three years. She accomplished this by reducing the size of state government, refinancing the state’s pension fund and reducing the state’s scheduled pension payments. She was able to balance the state budget without deep spending cuts, but this led to future shortfalls in the state’s pension payments.

Environmental protection and preservation of open space were high priorities including a constitutional amendment, approved by the voters in 1998, which preserved open space, farmland and historic sites. The Garden State Preservation Trust was created to approve and finance the acquisition of 300,000 acres out of the 1 million acres deemed worthy of preservation.  Her other environmental initiatives included the clean-up and development of contaminated areas, stricter auto emission policies and environmentally sensitive transportation efforts.

Whitman was a moderate with regard to social issues. She vetoed a ban on “partial birth” abortions in 1997, but signed legislation in 1999 requiring parental notification for teens seeking abortions. She also supported reform of the juvenile justice system and created a welfare reform plan which included a work requirement.  Governor Whitman resigned in 2001 to become Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in President George W. Bush’s administration until 2003. After leaving office, she established a consulting firm that specializes in energy and environmental issues and serves on a number of non-profit organizations.

Christie Todd Whitman, former Governor of New Jersey, as EPA Administrator

For additional information on Christie Todd Whitman, see Governor Christine Todd Whitman Biography

Kim Guadagno: Kim McFadden was born in Iowa in 1959. She moved to Monmouth Beach in New Jersey in 1991 after she married Michael Guadagno. Her husband is a judge of the New Jersey Superior Court, Appellate Division. He was appointed to the bench in 2005 and elevated to the Appellate Division in 2012. The Guadagnos have three sons. Kim Guadagno is a former Assistant United States Attorney and also served as Assistant New Jersey Attorney General 1994-2001. In 2007 she was elected sheriff of Monmouth County, the first woman to serve in that post.

Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, 2009-2017

On July 20, 2009, Republican gubernatorial nominee Christopher J. "Chris" Christie announced that Guadagno was his choice as running mate, in the first New Jersey election to include voting for a lieutenant governor. The Christie-Guadagno team won elections in 2009 and 2013. As the Lieutenant Governor, Guadagno is technically the second most powerful person in New Jersey’s state government after Governor Chris Christie. While Governor Christie was campaigning to be president in 2016, Guadagno found herself as acting governor more and more often.  She won the Republican nomination for governor in 2017, but lost her bid to Phil Murphy, with Sheila Oliver as Lt. Governor.

Sheila Oliver: Sheila Oliver was born in 1952 in Newark, where she graduated from Weequahic High School in 1970. She graduated from Lincoln University in 1974 in Sociology and was awarded an M.S. from Columbia University in Planning and Administration in 1976.

Lt. Governor Sheila Oliver, 2018-2023

Oliver served on the Board of Education of the East Orange School District from 1994 to 2000, and was chosen by her peers to serve as its Vice President 1998-99 and President 1999-2000. She served on the Essex County Board of Chosen Freeholders  for one term from 1996 to 1999, but was defeated for a second term on the board in the June 1999 Democratic primary election. Oliver was one of the founders of the Newark Coalition for Low Income Housing, an organization that successfully sued the Newark Housing Authority and the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development in federal court to block the demolition of all publicly subsidized low income housing in Newark, as there was no plan in place for the construction of replacement housing for low-income Newark residents.

Oliver was a member of the New Jersey State Assembly from 2004 until she ran for lieutenant governor in 2018.  She was elected unanimously by Assembly Democrats in 2009 to become the Speaker of the Assembly, the second woman to serve as Speaker in New Jersey history, the first being Marion West Higgins, who served in 1965, and the second African American to hold this post, the first being S. Howard Woodson, who first held the post in 1974. Nationwide, she became the second African American woman to lead a state legislature after Karen Bass of California.

In July 2017, Phil Murphy, the Democratic Party nominee for governor, selected Oliver as his running mate for Lieutenant Governor of New Jersey in the November 2017 election. The Murphy/Oliver ticket won the general election. Oliver was sworn in as Lieutenant Governor on January 16, 2018.

Critical thinking activity for New Jersey Women in Politics: What similarities do you see in the histories of those New Jersey who have won office?

9. New Jersey Women and the Courts

Marie Garibaldi: Marie L. Garibaldi was born in Jersey City in 1934. An only child, she lived most of her life in Hudson County, N.J. The Garibaldis raised their daughter with a strong belief in equal opportunity for women and encouraged her to pursue a nontraditional career path. She graduated from Connecticut College in 1956 and intended to follow in her grandfather's footsteps and attend business school, but learned first-hand that women weren't accepted. Instead, she enrolled in Columbia Law School, graduating in 1959, and earning a master of laws degree in tax law from New York University School of Law in 1963. She was a member of the New Jersey, New York, and District of Columbia Bars and the first woman to serve as president of the New Jersey State Bar Association.

Marie Garibaldi

Justice Garibaldi began her legal career with the New York Regional Counsel in the Internal Revenue Service.  She briefly worked at the Riker, Danzig law firm, and within three years was made a partner. While at Riker, Danzig, Garibaldi also served as a municipal court judge in Weehawken from 1973 to 1975, writing the majority opinion in several cases affecting women. Justice Garibaldi was introduced to Republican Thomas H. Kean by a Riker, Danzig partner, and served as co-chair of his gubernatorial campaign. Once elected, Governor Kean nominated Justice Garibaldi to the New Jersey Supreme Court. In 1982, she became the first woman appointed to the New Jersey Supreme Court, and served as associate justice of New Jersey's highest court until she retired in 2000. Justice Garibaldi authored more than 225 opinions while on the Supreme Court, and was known for her advocacy of complementary dispute resolution or mediation. Garibaldi died in 2016.

For additional information, see Honorable Marie L. Garibaldi - New Jersey Women's History

Deborah Poritz: Deborah Tobias was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1936, and raised there. She received her B.A. from Brooklyn College in 1958 and, as a Woodrow Wilson fellow, studied English and American literature at Columbia University, and then pursued graduate studies at Brandeis University from 1959 to 1962. For three years, she taught composition and literature at Ursinus College outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. But when her husband, Alan Poritz, a mathematician, got a job in Princeton, New Jersey, she decided to go to law school. She received her law degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1977, shortly after turning forty.

Poritz initially joined the office of the New Jersey Attorney General as a deputy attorney general in the Division of Law in the Environmental Protection Section. From 1986 to 1989 she served as assistant attorney general and director of the Division of Law, supervising more than three hundred state attorneys. From 1989 to the beginning of 1990, she served as the principal advisor to Governor Thomas

H. Kean on legal and policy matters. When Governor Kean left office in 1990, she joined the Princeton law firm of Jamieson, Moore, Peskin & Spicer, where she was a partner. She left in 1994 to become the first woman to serve as New Jersey Attorney General.  In July 1996 she was sworn in as the first woman chief justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court. She served in that position until she reached the compulsory retirement age of seventy in 2006.

Deborah T. Poritz, form NJ Courts

For additional information, see Deborah T. Poritz | Jewish Women's Archive

Assessment

• Have students analyze all of the New Jersey women and explain how women have contributed to the improvement of society.
• Have each student select the one woman who he or she believes has contributed most to the improvement of society and write a short essay and/or provide a short oral presentation.
• Have students write or orally report on how the role of women has changed over time.
• Teachers may want to use Handout 3—Closing Activity.

Extension

The homes of many of New Jersey’s celebrated women have been maintained as historic sites and may be visited for additional understanding. Take a field trip to one or more of the following:

• The New Jersey Women’s Heritage Trail will lead you to the historic places that tell the collective story of a few of these famous women, and many of the more private women, who contributed to the agricultural, industrial, labor and domestic history of the state. Although women have always comprised over half of the state’s population, the tales of women’s contributions to New Jersey history often have been omitted from our telling of history. The Heritage Trail brings to life the vital role of women in New Jersey’s past and present. Go to nj women's heritage trail - Historic Sites
• The Goodwin Sisters House at 47 Market Street in Salem, NJ, was the first site in New Jersey accepted into the National Park Service’s National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Program. It is privately owned by a direct descendent of the Goodwin family and not regularly open to the public. However, the house is a site on the New Jersey Women’s Heritage Trail. For additional information see, Abigail Goodwin, Quaker Abolitionist | Salem County Cultural & Heritage Commission
• Whitesbog includes the village and the surrounding 3,000 acres of cranberry bogs, blueberry fields, reservoirs, sugar sand roads and Pine Barren’s forests. It is listed on both the National and State Registers of Historic Sites. Whitesbog Village’s grounds are open from dawn to dusk, 365 days a year, as part of the Brendan T. Byrne State Forest. The Village buildings are only opened for scheduled events, pre-arranged tours and by special request. For additional information, see Whitesbog Preservation Trust
• Paulsdale, located at 128 Hooton Rd., Mt. Laurel, NJ, is the home of Alice Paul. The house has been restored to the condition when Paul lived there and serves as a historic house museum and a home for the Alice Paul Institute. Paulsdale is open every second Saturday of each month for a tour. For additional information, see Alice Paul Center for Gender Justice
• The Botto House is now the American Labor Museum, located at 83 Norwood St, Haledon, NJ. Its mission is to advance public understanding of the history of work, workers and the labor movement throughout the world, with special attention to the ethnicity and immigrant experience of American workers. For additional information, see American Labor Museum

 

Handout 1: TIMELINE OF NEW JERSEY WOMEN

 

Handout 2:

Name:_______________________________________Period:_______

NJ Woman name:

Years lived:

NJ location:

Family:

Career:

Contributions to the improvement of society:

 

 

 

What did you find the most interesting, unusual, or amazing about this woman?

 

 

 

Why would you consider this woman courageous?

 

 

 

 

Handout 3:  Closing activity on NJ Women

Name__________________________________________________ Period_____________

Write a paragraph about each of the following questions:

How have New Jersey women contributed to the improvement of society?

 

 

 

How have individual women or groups taken actions to promote the dignity and rights of people?

 

 

 

How have attitudes about women changed?

 

 

 

Explain ways in which war had changed the roles of women.