Decades before women in the U.S. could vote, hold public positions, or choose from a full range of occupations, young women and girls in the Kansas City area were pushing for recognition and rights. Students at Central and Lincoln high schools, Miss Barstow’s School, and the Haskell Institute challenged assumptions about not only gender but also race and class through their contributions to school-sponsored publications. They spoke to current events in an era when young women had limited opportunities to make their voices heard.

Henrietta Rix Wood, an associate teaching professor in the Honors College at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, explores the activities of these young women in a discussion of her book Praising Girls: The Rhetoric of Young Women, 1895-1930.