From direct action to court action, women in Oregon used a variety of tactics to protest the state, and the status quo, in the early twentieth century. Women from diverse backgrounds protested as individuals and as members of political and labor organizations, seeking both personal freedom and justice for collective groups. They faced incarceration, harassment, and even physical violence as they worked to demand change. As historian Kimberly Jensen will demonstrate, their stories are important pieces of larger histories of citizenship, civil liberties, and dissent.

Presented by Dr. Kimberly Jensen at the Oregon Historical Society on Sunday, April 14, 2019.

Dr. Kimberly Jensen is Professor of History and Gender Studies at Western Oregon University. She is the author of Mobilizing Minerva: American Women in the First World War (2008) and Oregon's Doctor to the World: Esther Pohl Lovejoy and a Life in Activism (2012). Her article “‘Women’s Positive Patriotic Duty to Participate’: The Practice of Female Citizenship in Oregon and the Expanding Surveillance State during the First World War and its Aftermath” was published in the Oregon Historical Quarterly in Summer 2017. Material from this presentation is part of her current book project on gender, citizenship, and civil liberties in Oregon from 1913–1925.