women in time

telling herstory! 

[blackhistoryalbum]

CHRISTINE M. DARDEN | HIDDEN FIGURE NO MORE

Dr. Christine M. Darden (born 1942), mathematician and aeronautical engineer, devoted much of her 40-year career at NASA to researching supersonic flight. (photo dated 2/23/1976). Darden was featured in the book, Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race (2016).

[brittsekland]

Women with their cats, 1960s.

[blackhistoryalbum]

BAND OF SISTERS | THE SIX TRIPLE EIGHT ½

The 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion was the only all-African American, all-female U.S. Army unit sent overseas during World War II. Find out more Link  

Black History Album, The Way We Were [Website | Tumblr | Pinterest | Facebook  | Twitter  ]      

[blackhistoryalbum]

A PLACE OF OUR OWN | 1950

A group of young women posing in their swimsuits and sun dresses besides an advertisement for Paradise Park, Florida, one of just a handful of segregated recreational areas in the South exclusively for African Americans [Click image to enlarge]

Photo by Bruce Mozert. By permission of Bruce Mozert. Courtesy of Cynthia Wilson-Graham. Reprinted with permission of the University Press of Florida.

Black History Album, The Way We Were [Website | Tumblr | Pinterest | Facebook  | Twitter  ]

[blondebrainpowered]

Eartha Kitt, from Kodachrome slides, 1954

Photographer: Carl Van Vechten

[joeinct]

Dixie Belles, Central Louisiana, Photo by Theodore Fonville Winans, 1938

[justalurkr]

Truncated text of tweet from MrPitBull, Mar 11, 2026:

She kept finding women in laboratory photographs from the 1800s. Then she read the published papers—and every single woman had vanished. Someone had erased them from history.

Yale University, 1969.

Margaret Rossiter was a graduate student studying the history of science. She was one of very few women in her program.

Every Friday afternoon, students and faculty gathered for beers and informal conversation. One week, Margaret asked a simple question: "Were there ever any women scientists?"

The faculty answered firmly: No.

Someone mentioned Marie Curie. The group dismissed it—her husband Pierre really deserved the credit.

Margaret didn't argue. But she also didn't believe them.

So she started looking.

She found a reference book called "American Men of Science"—essentially a Who's Who of scientific achievement. Despite the title, she was shocked to discover it contained entries about women. Botanists trained at Wellesley. Geologists from Vermont.

There were names. There were credentials. There were careers.

The professors had been wrong.

But Margaret's discovery was just the beginning. Because as she dug deeper into archives across the country, she found something far more disturbing.

Photograph after photograph showed women standing at laboratory benches, working with equipment, listed on research teams.

But when she read the published papers, the award citations, the official histories—those same women had disappeared. Their names were missing. Their contributions erased.

It wasn't random. It was systematic.

Women who designed experiments watched male colleagues publish results without giving them credit. Women whose discoveries were assigned to supervisors. Women listed in acknowledgments instead of as authors. Women passed over for awards that went to male collaborators who contributed far less.

Margaret realized she was witnessing a pattern that stretched across centuries.

Women had always been present in science. The record had simply pushed them aside.

She needed a name for what she was documenting.

In the early 1990s, she found it in the work of Matilda Joslyn Gage—a 19th-century suffragist who had written about this exact phenomenon in 1870.

In 1993, Margaret published a paper formally naming it: The Matilda Effect.

The term captured something that had been hidden in plain sight for generations. Once you knew the term, you saw it everywhere.

Her dissertation became a lifelong mission.

For more than 30 years, Margaret researched and wrote her landmark three-volume series: Women Scientists in America. She examined letters, institutional policies, individual careers. She gathered undeniable evidence that women in science had been consistently under-credited and structurally excluded.

Her work faced resistance. Many dismissed women's history as political rather than academic. Others insisted she was exaggerating.

Margaret didn't argue emotionally. She presented data. Documented cases. Patterns repeated across decades and institutions.

Eventually, the evidence became undeniable.

Her research helped restore recognition to scientists who had been erased:

Rosalind Franklin, whose X-ray work revealed DNA's structure—credit went to Watson and Crick.

Lise Meitner, who explained nuclear fission—omitted from the Nobel Prize.

Nettie Stevens, who discovered sex chromosomes—received little credit.

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, who discovered stars are made of hydrogen—initially dismissed.

And countless others whose names had nearly vanished.

Margaret changed the narrative. Science was no longer just the story of solitary male geniuses. It became a story of collaboration that included women who had been written out.

The Matilda Effect became standard terminology. Scholars used it to examine how credit is assigned, how authors are listed, who receives awards, who gets left out.

[donnabrutta]

The founders of Jane, an underground network in Chicago, US that assisted people in getting abortions. From the left moving right: Martha Scott, Jeanne Galatzer-Levy, Abby Parisers, Sheila Smith and Madeline Schwenk.

Martha Scott was 19 in 1965, when her friend's sister became pregnant and Scott helped her find a doctor to perform an abortion. The group connected individuals seeking abortions with doctors, and later, performed abortions themselves. Their clients were informed they were not doctors, but doing abortions themselves allowed them to keep costs low. They made people aware of the services through signs with slogans like "'Pregnant? Don't Want to Be? Call Jane." The group operated for seven years and performed an estimated 11,000 abortions; no deaths were ever reported.

Quote from Scott: "You're messing around inside somebody else's body. It's not necessarily given that you won't do harm. It wasn't perfect, by any means. But we were dealing with women who really didn't have other options."

Quote from Galatzer-Levy: "I hadn't had so much as a speeding ticket [when I joined]. But abortion really was the front line, it was where women were dying."

In 1972, two women reported Jane because their sister was seeking an abortion, and the women believed it was murder. All seven founders were arrested. Six months later, Roe v. Wade was decided and the charges were dropped. Read more here (link).

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

Happy birthday to Lyudmila Pavlichenko (born July 12, 1916), Soviet sniper in World War II, with 309 confirmed kills.

A true role model for today.

[vintage-every-day]

The first female gardeners employed at London's Kew Gardens. Eleanor Morland, Gertrude Cope and Alice Hutchings. Photographed in 1896.

[uptownlowdown]

two students filling prescriptions in school of pharmacy at howard university in washington d.c. in 1946.

source: essence magazine

[the-future-now-deactivated20170]

Vera Rubin, the woman who discovered the first evidence of dark matter, has died at 88

Vera Rubin, the astrophysicist responsible for confirming the first existence of dark matter, died on Sunday night at the age of 88.

Carnegie Institution president Matthew Scott called Rubin “a national treasure as an accomplished astronomer and a wonderful role model for young scientist.”

Rubin and her colleagues observed galaxies in the 1970s, they learned the motion of stars is a result of a “material that does not emit light and extends beyond the optical galaxy” — also known as dark matter.

Swiss astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky proposed the idea of dark matter in 1933, but Rubin’s groundbreaking work subsequently led to the confirmation of the material.

This finding is what led to the discovery that 90% of the universe is made up of dark matter, a finding some colleagues felt was overlooked and deserving of a Nobel Prize. Read more

follow @the-future-now​

[ourfriendsthejays]

Vera Rubin (1928-2016)

[uptownlowdown]

✸ vintage black beauty is live!

i've been asked where/how to find early-mid 20th century images of black people to reference when drawing/writing/whatever, so i figured i'd link to my own personal resource anyone is welcome to utilize! :)

with over 900 pins and counting, this pinterest board focuses entirely on black style from the 1800s - 1970s. it’s been harder than ever to research historical fashion without running into AI, misinformation, and flat out mislabeling of different eras, so i’ve done my best to represent each period as accurately as i can.

i’ve included sections for non-caricatured art and illustration, print media, music, entertainment, styling tools, and ads. there are also sections for period pieces and more modern takes on vintage style. i did not add the 80s and 90s because there's already a wealth of imagery and information about those decades, but maybe one day :)

*NOTE: i am not a professional archivist or historian! just a black american passionate about my history. as such, this board is heavily centered on black americans and afro-caribbeans, although there are photos from across the diaspora, including africa and the UK.

*additionally: pins on pinterest come from all over and may not always have the correct information, depending on who uploaded it. while i’ve taken great lengths to research undated photos, some categorized pins are educated guesses based on the hair, fashion, or photography style of the photo. uncategorized pins are photos i can’t confidently connect to a specific decade without potentially mislabeling.

with this in mind, this board acts as a handy visual guide, but should be used in addition to your own research. happy researching! 🖤

[the-dye-stained-socialite]

@vintagecandyshop :} <3

[thecryptkeeper]

John H. White, Black beauties with colorful hair grace a float during the annual Bud Billiken Day parade along Dr. Martin L. King Jr. Drive on Chicago's South Side, 1973-4. Photo courtesy of Public Domain Image Archive.

[twixnmix]

Aretha Franklin performing on Soul Train - Aired: November 13, 1976

[thetransfemininereview]

Honestly I might just spend the next few days reading as many books by black trans women as possible. That feels like a high quality use of my time.

Okay this is probably gonna be morning reading, but next up is one of the most historically important black transfemme books, Sharon Davis’s 1985 memoir “A Finer Specimen of Womanhood”

[thetransfemininereview]

This one’s free on Trans Reads, so feel free to read ahead while I catch some zzzs 😴

A Finer Specimen of Womanhood: A Transsexual Speaks Out | Trans Reads

[thetransfemininereview]

to provide courage and offer hope

[thetransfemininereview]

Absolute queen shit. For a transsexual memoir from the 1980s, this is pog.

And hormones gave her nice boobs anyway.

[thetransfemininereview]

Transfeminine body positivity, YES PLEASE

[thetransfemininereview]

And finished 🩷 it’s a short read, perhaps less pressing for the modern transfemme, but what I appreciated most about this book was the core ethos of spiritual guidance beneath the trappings of the transsexual memoir.

[smsomah]

Merina; Madagascar, 1900-1908. Maurice Teissonnière