Topic: Women's History
Claudia Kauffman was the first woman Native American elected to the Washington State Senate. She was raised in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Seattle where her mother, Josephine, championed American ...
A native of Everett, Washington, Carol Kaye (b. 1935) hailed from a musically talented family and went on to become one of Hollywood's so-called "Wrecking Crew" -- a stable of the finest recording-stu...
Phyllis Gutierrez Kenney, a child of migrant workers, served eight terms in the Washington State House of Representatives. Her parents came to America in 1919 from Mexico, and from the age of 5 Kenney...
Alice U. Kerr was elected mayor of Edmonds in December 1924, one of the first women mayors in Washington. She served a single two-year term (1925-1927) occupied with issues of a small, growing city, a...
Marjorie Edwina Pitter King was the first African American woman to serve as a Washington State legislator and was one of the state's earliest African American businesswomen. For nearly 50 years she o...
Priscilla Maunder Kirk (1898-1992), an African American Seattleite, was born on August 9, 1898, in Seattle. In 1919 she moved to Montana with her husband, where she lived until 1929. She also lived in...
During World War I Americans of all ages were asked by the United States government to knit wool socks, sweaters, and other garments to warm American soldiers at home and abroad. Most of this knitting...
On the home front during World War II (1941-1945), knitting to help the war effort and to keep American soldiers warm was a major preoccupation of Americans, particularly women. The November 24, 1941,...
Jeanne Kohl-Welles represented Seattle's 36th District in the Washington State Senate from 1994 to 2015, when she left the legislature after winning election to an open seat on the King County Council...
Dr. Frans Koome was a Renton physician who provided unwillingly pregant women with safe abortions at a time when it was illegal to do so. On Thankgiving eve, 1969, Dr. Koome went several steps further...
Phyllis Hagmoe Lamphere was a longtime prominent Seattle civic leader and, from 1967 to 1978, a member of the Seattle City Council. She was born and raised in Seattle and graduated from Barnard Colleg...
Bertha Knight Landes, elected mayor of Seattle in 1926, became the first woman to lead a major American city. She ran on a platform of "municipal housekeeping," vowing to clean up city government. She...
Frances Payne Larrabee was a prominent and influential Bellingham clubwoman. She was instrumental in the founding of the Bellingham Bay Home for Children, a safe haven for homeless children. She becam...
Dr. Blanche Sellers Lavizzo was the first African American woman pediatrician in the state of Washington. She arrived in Seattle in July 1956 and began her pediatric practice on East Madison Street an...
The League of Women Voters, a non-partisan organization founded in 1920 and concerned with public policy and citizenship issues, grew out of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). U...
In 1908, the Lebanon Home opened in Seattle on 1500 Kilbourne Street, and served as rescue shelter for homeless young women. Over the years it expanded the services it provided and by the early 1920s ...
Seattle-born Rose Louise Hovick had her first brush with fame at age one, winning a healthy baby contest. As Gypsy Rose Lee, she became famous in burlesque as a classy and witty strip tease artist. Sh...
This is a harrowing account of a legal abortion which resulted in complications that received inadequate care. It is written by Janet Creighton and excerpted from the June 1974 issue of From the Groun...
Estella Leopold, daughter of famed conservationist and writer Aldo Leopold (1887-1948), earned her own renown through her pioneering work as a conservationist and scientist. As a conservationist, she ...
Mary Kay Letourneau, at one time a respected elementary school teacher in Burien, became a convicted sex offender whose illicit relationship with a student has repelled and fascinated people around th...
Priscilla Long is a Seattle-based writer, poet, editor, and a longtime independent teacher of writing. She writes science, poetry, history, creative nonfiction, and fiction. She is author of seven boo...
Alice Lord sparked organization of the Seattle Waitresses Union, Local 240 (in 1999, Dining Employees Local #2) in March 1900, and orchestrated the union's successful campaigns to promote pioneering w...
Lou Guzzo (1919-2013), managing editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in the 1970s, sent this memo to Sally Raleigh, editor of the lifestyle section, on March 27, 1972. Guzzo was concerned about th...
The communal Love Israel Family was located in Seattle from 1968 to 1984 and in rural Snohomish County for 20 more years. Its founder and leader was Love Israel, who was born Paul Erdmann in 1940 and ...