Women's History Month

“For most of history, anonymous was a women.” - Virginia Woolf

March is Women’s History Month. Its origins as a national celebration in 1981 when Congress passed Pub. L. 97-28, authorizing the President to proclaim the week beginning March 7, 1982 as “Women’s History Week”. In 1987, after being petitioned by the National Women’s History Project, Congress then passed Pub. L. 100-9, designating the month of March as “Women’s History Month”. 

Anne Carroll Moore was a library pioneer. 

She was born in Limerick, Maine on July 12, 1871. For a young woman of her day, she pursued a somewhat unconventional path. Moore attended the Library School at the Pratt Institute and following her 1896 graduation, she became a children’s librarian of the Pratt Institute Free Library. After ten years at Pratt, she assumed the position of Superintendent of Work with Children in the New York Public Library. Moore wrote to the American Library Association in 1899 to ask for the creation of a Children’s Division. One long year later, she was elected president of the new Children’s Library Section. She went on to receive two honorary degrees: one from the Pratt Institute for distinguished achievement in 1932 and another honorary degree from the University of Maine in 1940. She was a regular columnist for the Horn Book Magazine, which contained criticism of children’s books. She retired from the NYPL in 1941. She was a major influence in library children’s services not only in the U.S., but in Japan, Russia, Sweden, India, and many other countries. She passed away in 1961 and is buried in Limerick, Maine. 

Fun Facts:

1. Wyoming Territory was the first place to grant women the right to vote.
   
2. Claudette Colvin refused to give up her bus seat 9 months before Rosa Parks did.
   
3. Women couldn’t get credit cards on their own until 1974.