Each March, the Library observes Women’s History Month with a variety of activities, including films, speakers, spoken word, and a suggested reading list or two.

Some of the featured events at the Library include:

• March 4: Dr. Frances Levine discusses women who traveled the Santa Fe Trail. Plaza Branch.
• March 6: Historian Rachel Craddolph explores the contributions of three pioneering Black women who shaped the fight for civil rights and suffrage. Southeast Branch.
• March 16: SALT, a team of five artist educators, presents A Mosaic of Mothers, micro-operas about Midwestern women’s experiences from the late 19^th century to the present. Plaza Branch.
• March 30: Kathy Krause talks about the role of French women in Kansas City’s early development. Central Library.

All Women's History Programming

This year, the National Women’s History Alliance (NWHA) selected the theme “Moving Forward Together! Women Educating & Inspiring Generations.” According to NWHA, the focus is on “the collective strength and influence of women who have dedicated their lives to education, mentorship, and leadership.”

So, we tapped a few Library experts to tell us about some of the Kansas City women who’ve inspired them.

Maria P. Williams

Special Collections Librarian and Archivist Sarah Biegelsen describes activist and film producer Maria P. Williams as “an all-around Renaissance woman."

Born in 1866, shortly after the Civil War, Williams grew up in Versailles, Missouri. Her parents divorced, each remarried, and she had more than 20 siblings. Williams started teaching at the age of 11, but a move to Kansas City and marriage opened a new chapter.

“She started being a publisher and editor of a newspaper called The New Era in 1891,” says Biegelsen, “then she founded her own newspaper called The Women’s Voice of Kansas City, also in the 1890s.”

A member of the Republican Party, Williams got involved in politics, corresponding with elected officials, including presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William McKinley, and advocating for Black rights, women’s rights, and suffrage.

“At that time, the Republican Party was very much the party of Lincoln,” she says, “and the party of, I wouldn't say, integration, but more for freedman and Black rights in the years and decades following the Civil War.”

Williams and her husband, Jesse L. Williams, were also pioneers in the film industry. They founded the Western Film Producing Company and Booking Exchange.

“She is most known today as the first Black woman to produce a movie ever,” Biegelsen says.

This movie was called The Flames of Wrath (1923) and screened in cities in Kansas, Missouri, and Florida. A mystery-drama, the plot focused on an investigation of a murder after a robbery and featured an all-Black cast.

“It is believed to be now lost,” she says. “I read in a secondary source that UCLA (Charles E. Young Research Library) has one frame in their collection, and I’d love to see it.”

Williams also produced another movie, When Adam Ate the Apple, which was filmed in Swope Park. Biegelsen says it’s unclear if it was ever released.

Williams's 1916 book, My Work and Public Sentiment, is in the Library’s collection (if you visit the Missouri Valley Room at the Central Library, you can request a look).

Carrie Westlake Whitney

Special Collections Associate Abbey Briscoe started doing a deep dive into the history of Carrie Westlake Whitney during the Library’s 150^th anniversary celebrations.

Briscoe wrote fan fiction about Whitney, read Kansas City's Public Library: Empowering the Community for 150 Years, and even dressed like Whitney during Library events.

“I thought that this was going to be a couple of days of research,” says Briscoe. “I knew nothing about her, and it just spiraled into this huge thing where I couldn't stop finding things about her, and she was so interesting.”

Whitney, known as the “Mother of the Kansas City Public Library,” served as the Library’s first full-time librarian (today, her title would have been executive director) from 1881 to 1911. During her tenure, she boosted the Library’s holdings from 1,000 volumes to about 100,000 and made it a free service. Whitney also added a children’s area, one of the first public libraries to do so.

She also wrote children’s stories and poetry and published an authoritative account of the city’s history, Kansas City, Missouri: The History and Its People 1898-1908. But she was demoted, and then terminated in 1912 due to infighting and, some would argue, sexism.

Briscoe says Whitney alluded to the circumstances in a 1906 poem called “Calumny.”

“The Library board was hiring assistants without her input, from what I’ve read, and so they were forming cliques,” she says. “And so, she wrote this poem, ‘Calumny,’ and it means slander. It gets the message across in a very descriptive way.”

One aspect of Whitney’s personality that Briscoe appreciates is how she helped people from all over the country with research before the existence of the internet.

“An avid historian herself, she took time to answer letters asking her to assist with genealogy and Missouriana,” Briscoe says. “The overflow of requests was so much that after her termination, her successor, Purd Wright, took a stance against helping anyone outside of Kansas City or the surrounding area.”

She adds, “You know, she always offered knowledge, freely gave it to people who asked for it. She wasn't a gatekeeper, and she helped people with library service.”

To learn more about other Kansas City pioneers, activists, entrepreneurs, artists, and spirited suffragettes, the Missouri Valley Special Collections staff has created two coloring books, 19^th Amendment Centennial and Women Who Made History, which are available for download.

Films and Documentaries

The streaming video service Kanopy lets you enjoy, among other things, works by female filmmakers, watch movies about women who've made headlines, and explore documentaries that highlight contemporary women's issues. Simply create an account with your Library card.

Browse the film collection in Kanopy

American History in Video has the largest and richest collection of videos available online for the study of American history, including archival footage, newsreels, documentaries, interviews, and commercials. You can access it with your Library card.