Guides @ UF: Women's & Gender Studies: Florida Women

Highlighting Florida Women

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Selected Books

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Freedom for Women by Carol Giardina
Call Number: UF LIBRARY WEST General Collection -- HQ1421 .G53 2010
Publication Date: 2010
" In this richly detailed firsthand history of the contemporary Women's Liberation Movement (WLM), scholar-activist [AND GAINESVILLE'S OWN] Carol Giardina argues against the prevalent belief that the movement grew out of frustrations over the male chauvinism experienced by WLM founders active in the Black Freedom Movement and the New Left. Instead, she contends, it was the ideas, resources, and skills that women gained in these movements that were the new and necessary catalysts for forging the WLM in the 1960s. Giardina uses a focused study of the WLM in Florida to tap into the common theory and history shared by a relatively small band of Women's Liberation founders across the country. Drawing on a wealth of interviews, autobiographical essays, organizational records, and published writings, Freedom for Women brings to light information that has been previously ignored in other secondary accounts about the leadership of African American women in the movement. It also explores activists' roots in other movements on the left. Comprehensive, serendipitous, and carefully formulated, Giardina's work is a vivid portrait of the people and events that shaped radical feminism. Carol Giardina, visiting assistant professor of history at Queen's College in New York, is one of the founders of the modern Women's Liberation Movement."
Making Waves by Jack E. Davis; Kari Frederickson (Editor)
Call Number: UF LIBRARY WEST General Collection -- HQ1438.F6M355 2003
Publication Date: 2003
"These essays lift up the lives of outstanding Florida women who helped shape the course of 20th-century Florida."--James B. Crooks, University of North Florida From Ruth Bryan Owen, Florida's first congresswoman, and Mary McLeod Bethune, founder of Bethune-Cookman College, to Betty Mae Tiger Jumper, the first chairwoman of the Seminole Tribe, and Marjory Stoneman Douglas, champion of the Everglades, Making Waves;examines the lives and works of women activists who made a significant impact on Florida in the last century. This collection enriches our understanding of the history of modern Florida and the role women played in it. To a degree greater than any other southern state in the 20th century, Florida experienced dramatic economic, political, social, and environmental challenges, and Florida's women were in the forefront of the great social and political responses to those challenges. These 13 essays describe the contributions made by women in urban renewal, civil liberties, civil rights, child welfare, labor unions, education, environmental protection, rural extension work, and women's liberation. By illuminating the involvement of the state's women in many of these fundamental issues, Making Waves;provides a long-overdue chapter in Florida history. It will also contribute to the advancement of the study of women';s history by examining women's activism in a variety of contexts and illustrating how this activism was often circumscribed by class and racial bias.
Remarkable Women of Sanibel & Captiva by Jeri Magg
Call Number: UF LIBRARY WEST General Collection -- CT3262.F6M34 2016
Publication Date: 2016
In the history of Sanibel and Captiva, countless women bucked the system to make their marks. In the early 1950s and '60s, Sarita Van Vlick and Zee Butler led the fight to preserve the island from unbridled growth and destruction. Helene Gralnick, in the early '80s, opened a small shop that became the foundation for Chico's Inc. And it was city manager Judy Zimomra who put into practice policies that helped Sanibel flourish after the devastation of Hurricane Charley. Author and local historian Jeri Magg compiles the stories and celebrates the achievements of the remarkable women who forever shaped Sanibel and Captiva Islands.
Saving Florida: women's fight for the environment in the twentieth century by Leslie Kemp Poole
Call Number: UF LIBRARY WEST General Collection -- QH76.5.F6P66 2015
Publication Date: 2015
...It celebrates the towering environmental legacy of the three "Marjories": author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, scientist Marjorie Harris Carr, and journalist Marjory Stoneman Douglas. These and many other women led the fight for unprecedented changes in how the Sunshine State reveres its unique natural resources. They set the foundation for this century's environmental agenda, which came to include the idea of sustainable development. As a collective force they forever altered how others saw women's roles in society.
Southern Discomfort by Nancy A. Hewitt
Call Number: UF LIBRARY WEST General Collection -- HQ1439.T36 H487 2001
Publication Date: 2001
Vitally linked to the Caribbean and southern Europe as well as to the Confederacy, the Cigar City of Tampa, Florida, never fit comfortably into the biracial mold of the New South. In Southern Discomfort, highly regarded historian Nancy A. Hewitt explores the interactions among distinct groups of women--native-born white, African American, Cuban and Italian immigrant women--that shaped women's activism in this vibrant, multiethnic city. Southern Discomfort emphasizes the process by which women forged and reformulated their activist identities from Reconstruction through the U.S. declaration of war against Spain in April 1898, the industrywide cigar strike of 1901, and the emergence of progressive reform and labor militancy. This masterful volume also recasts our understanding of southern history by demonstrating how Tampa's triracial networks alternately challenged and reinscribed the South's biracial social and political order.
They Dared to Dream by Doris Weatherford; Florida Commission on the Status of Women Foundation, Inc. (Contribution by)
Call Number: UF LIBRARY WEST General Collection -- HQ1438.F6 W43 2015
Publication Date: 2015
In this extensive portrayal of Florida''s guiding matriarchs, Doris Weatherford highlights the myriad contributions women have made throughout Florida''s history. From the select few who traveled with Ponce de Leon to the state''s first female mayor Marion H. O''Brien, Weatherford sheds light on the roles these pioneering women played in the shaping of the Sunshine State.
The Extraordinary Life of Jane Wood Reno by George Hurchalla
Call Number: UF LIBRARY WEST -- PN4874.R43 H87 2020
Publication Date: 2020
Florida Historical Society Charlton Tebeau Award A fearless writer in the Miami wilderness Journalist, activist, and adventurer, Jane Wood Reno (1913-1992) was one of the most groundbreaking and colorful American women of the twentieth century. Told by her grandson, George Hurchalla, The Extraordinary Life of Jane Wood Reno is an intimate biography of a free thinker who shattered barriers during the explosive early years of Miami. Easily recognizable today as the mother of former attorney general Janet Reno, Jane Wood Reno's own life is less widely known. Born to a Georgia cracker family, Reno scored as a genius on an IQ test at the age of 11, earned a degree in physics during the Depression, worked as a social worker, explored the Everglades, wrestled alligators, helped pioneer scuba diving in Florida, interviewed Amelia Earhart, downed shots with Tennessee Williams, traveled the world, and raised four children. She built her own house by hand, funding the project with her writing. Hurchalla uses letters he unearthed from the family homestead and delves into Miami newspaper archives to portray Reno's sharp intelligence and determination. Reno wrote countless freelance articles under male names for the Miami Daily News until she became so indispensable that the paper was forced to take her on staff and let her publish under her own name. She exposed Miami's black-market baby racket, revealed the abuse of children at the now infamous Dozier School for Boys, and supported the Miccosukee Indians in their historic land claim. Reno's life offers a view of the Roaring Twenties through the 1960s from the perspective of a swamp-stomping woman who rarely lived by the norms of society. Titan of a journalist, champion of the underdog, and self-directed bohemian, Jane Wood Reno was a mighty personality far ahead of her time.

Selected Resources

ARTICLES

Special Issue: Women's Activism in Twentieth-Century Florida: Florida Historical Quarterly. Volume 77 Issue 4. Spring 1999. http://ucf.digital.flvc.org/islandora/object/ucf%3A25532

BOOKS

Aldrich, Corinna B, Ellen B. Anderson, James M. Denham, and Keith L. Huneycutt. Echoes from a Distant Frontier: The Brown Sisters' Correspondence from Antebellum Florida. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2004. Library West: F315. A43 2004

Blackman, Lucy Worthington. Women of Florida. Jacksonville, FL: Southern Historical Pub. Associates, 1940. Library West, F 310 .B58 (2 volumes.)

Burg, Mary Ann, Kevin McCarthy, Phyllis Meek, Constance L. Shehan, Anita Spring, Nina Stoyan-Rosenzweig, and Betty W. Taylor. Women at the University of Florida. Gainesville, Fla. : University of Florida's 150th Anniversary Committee, 2003. UF LIBRARY WEST General LD 1793.W62 2003

Green, Elna C. Looking for the New Deal: Florida Women's Letters During the Great Depression. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2007. Library West: F 316 .L66 2007

Hewitt, Nancy A. Southern Discomfort: Women's Activism in Tampa, Florida, 1880s-1920s. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001. Library West: HQ1439 .T36 H487 2001

Macdonald, Peggy. Marjorie Harris Carr: Defender of Florida's Environment. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2014. Library West: GE56 .C37 M33 2014

Moseley, Julia D, Julia W. Moseley, and Betty P. Crislip. Come to My Sunland: Letters of Julia Daniels Moseley from the Florida Frontier, 1882-1886. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1998. Library West: F319 .L56 M67 1998

Revels, Tracy. J. Grander in Her Daughters: Florida Women During the Civil War. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina, 2004. Library West: E 628 .R485 2004

Who's Who and Why of Successful Florida Women. Winter Park: Currier Davis Publishing, Inc., 1985. Library West, Reference: F 310 .W565

Wright, E. Lynn. More Than Petticoats: Remarkable Florida Women. Guilford, CT: TwoDot, 2001. Library West: CT 3260 .W75 2001.

Collections in Rare Books, Smathers Library: African American Women Writers:

WEB RESOURCES

First Florida Women in Public Office
Florida Women's Heritage Trail
Ruth Alexander
Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, Writer & Conservationist
Zora Neale Hurston - Papers
May Mann Jennings - Papers
Our Town (Gainesville) Women's Issue 2018
Radical Women in Gainesville
Historical exhibit on Gainesville's women's movement.
Redstockings
more...less...
Women of Gainesville hold a prominent place in the history of the Liberation Movement: "Gainesville, Florida, July 1968:

TOWARD A FEMALE LIBERATION MOVEMENT
By Beverly Jones & Judith Brown. The legendary and incendiary "Florida Paper." Marlene Dixon, in the 1970 Handbook of Women's Liberation said, "That started it if anything written started it. That paper just laid it on the line."
Women"s History Month at UF

Resources @ George A. Smathers Libraries Special & Area Studies Collections and IR

Center for Gender, Sexualities, and Women's Studies Research Collection http://ufdc.ufl.edu/wst

Irene Thompson - Papers

Mary Sue Koeppel: - Papers

Mary L. Elmendorf Papers: https://findingaids.uflib.ufl.edu/repositories/2/resources/620

Also see: From Southern Belle to Global Rebel: Memoirs of Anthropologist and Activist Mary Lindsay Elmendorf

UF LIBRARY WEST General Collection -- CT229.E46 2012

Margaret Dreier Robins Papers: http://www.library.ufl.edu/spec/manuscript/guides/Robins.htm

UF Publications and Guides:

Coedikette (1951-1967) http://uf.catalog.fcla.edu/uf.jsp?st=UF021452429&ix=pm&I=0&V=D&pm=1
Florida coed (1968-1970) http://uf.catalog.fcla.edu/uf.jsp?st=UF021452464&ix=pm&I=0&V=D&pm=1
Guide to the Records of the Florida National Organization for Women: http://web.uflib.ufl.edu/spec/pkyonge/FLNOW.htm
Guide to the Records of the Florida Federation of Women's Clubs Scrapbooks: http://www.library.ufl.edu/spec/pkyonge/FFWC.htm
Guide to the Records of the Gainesville Women for Equal Rights (GWER): http://web.uflib.ufl.edu/spec/pkyonge/gwer.htm
Guide to the Records of the League of Women Voters of Florida: http://web.uflib.ufl.edu/spec/pkyonge/lwvf.htm
Guide to the Records of the Melrose Woman's Club: http://www.library.ufl.edu/spec/pkyonge/melroseclub.htm
Guide to the Women Students' Association Scrapbooks: http://web.uflib.ufl.edu/spec/archome/MS76.html
National Women's Conference Interviews: http://web.uflib.ufl.edu/spec/manuscript/guides/abrams.htm