Journalist Norah O’Donnell has penned a new book honoring unsung women in American history.
“We the Women: The Hidden Heroes Who Shaped America” is set for release in February, ahead of the official kick-off of the 250th anniversary of the United States. The book features profiles of American heroines including Mary Katharine Goddard, who printed the first signed Declaration of Independence, and female members of the Forten family, considered the “Black founders” of Philadelphia who were active in the abolition and suffrage movements.
“This was such a passion project,” O’Donnell, a senior correspondent for CBS News, said Wednesday on the network’s morning show. “I love history, but in school I did not learn a lot about women in history.”
O’Donnell said she spent much time researching the book, uncovering little-known women who played major roles in the country’s formation, particularly in the American revolution, the Civil War and World War I and II. “This is a way to sort of uncover those heroes, share them with people, help us all fall in love with history again,” she said.
It was a “treasure hunt” to find the women, she said. “You know, women’s stories were not considered important and so their diaries, their letters were not saved. Luckily, there are – in the past few decades – historians that have focused on women’s history. So, we reached out to them.”
Other women in the book include Katharine Wright, who if she had been a male would have been considered one of the Wright brothers, inventors of early aviation. Another is Emily Warren Roebing, who completed the building of the Brooklyn Bridge when her husband, Washington, was incapacitated.
O’Donnell calls the book a “retelling” of American history through a female lens. She hopes young girls will pick up the book and believe that “anything is possible.”
“It’s not a perfect democracy, and it’s a fight to continue to include more people [and] to enfranchise more people in the voting process,” she said. But “the story of creating a more perfect union, the greatest democracy in the world, has been driven by ‘we the women’ and all people, truly.”
And particularly for those who feel discouraged, the book is inspiring, she said, as it highlights achievements during historically inequitable times. “These women had such grit, such courage at times when they had very few rights,” she said.
