Indiana Magazine of History

The Women’s History Network Annual Conference Women’s History Network 33rd Annual Conference  Online via Zoom    Thursday 4 & Friday 5 September 2025 Hidden in Plain Sight: Women in Archives, Libraries, Museums and Personal Collections Reg…

If you love women's history, sign up for the Women's History Network ‪@womenshistnet.bsky.social‬ annual conference. Running over 4-5 Sept, it's free, online, & packed with great panels on activism, archives, the arts and fashion, economic life, sexualities
womenshistorynetwork.org/the-womens-h...

We're currently accepting articles for our 2026 issue, The Regenerative Rust Belt. Send us your articles and write with any questions. Also, please share the CFP far and wide! @katietrostel.bsky.social @valentinolzullo.bsky.social #academicsky #booksky

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of Women's Suffrage in the U.S., record numbers of women march along 5th Avenue in New York City on Aug. 26, 1970. Photo credit: Fred W. McDarrah / Getty Images.

#ResistanceRoots

Today in history, 1970: As many as 20,000 women protest in the Women’s Strike for Equality in New York City, with more throughout the U.S. The event was held on the 50th anniversary of the certification of the 19th Amendment, giving women the constitutional right to vote. /1

Read about John Hurty and the wider scope of eugenics in Indiana in our September 2010 issue. #Indiana #PublicHealth #eugenics #sterilization #Skystorians #IUScholarWorks

The booklet also offered judgment on who should and who should not reproduce: "Those possessing inherited, and hence transmissible physical and mental defects, should never become parents." Under the 1907 state law, across several decades, at least 2,500 people were involuntarily sterilized.

Hurty, for 26 years the secretary of the state Board of Health, reformed public health in Indiana in the early 20th century; he was also an influential proponent of eugenic theory. Among the board's many publications was The Indiana Mothers' Baby Book, which offered tips on baby care.

In 1907, Indiana became the first state to pass a eugenics-based sterilization law, allowing sterilization of the imprisoned and institutionalized who were deemed mentally or morally deficient. One of the most influential proponents of eugenic theory in early 20th-century Indiana was Dr. John Hurty.

Panorama of White River State Park: A Closer Look Exploring several highlights contained within a 1981 panoramic photo taken of Indianapolis from a vantage point in White River State Park.

Perfect weather this week for some time in our local parks, including White River State Park downtown. This post takes a detailed look at a 1981 panoramic photo of the land that what would become @WhiteRiverStPrk.
www.class900indy.com/post/panoram...

In "Indiana's Public Health Pioneer and History's Iron Pen," Burek Pierce examines Hurty's innovations in public health as well as his advocacy for eugenic principles and practices. #IUScholarWorks #PublicHealth #Indiana #eugenics #sterilization #Skystorians

Nearly a decade before the federal 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, Hurty had put into place regulations to improve the quality of food, water, and drugs in the state of Indiana. Read more about Hurty's work in public health in Jennifer Burek Pierce's article in our September 2010 issue.

John N. Hurty was the secretary of the Indiana State Board of Health from 1896 to 1922. He advocated for a scientific approach to public health and became so well-known for a variety of public health reforms that a state medical journal titled him "Indiana's most useful citizen."

Read William G. Eidson's "Confusion, Controversy, and Quarantine" in our December 1990 issue. #IUScholarWorks #vaccines #PublicHealth #Muncie #Indiana #Skystorians

150 Muncie citizens contracted smallpox during the epidemic of 1893; 22 died. Nearly half the population was vaccinated; infected citizens were cared for in two hastily constructed quarantine hospitals. On November 4, 1893, the quarantine was lifted.

Mix one grain of sulphate of zinc and one grain of foxglove (digitalis) in half a teaspoon of water, add four ounces of water, and drink. This "infallible" mixture, according to advertisements in Muncie newspapers in August 1893, would cure smallpox within twelve hours.

A document entitled 'The Women's History Network Autumn Seminar Series' detailing the five seminars which will comprise our upcoming series. The seminars are as follows: A Special Roundtable on 'Lesbian Histories and the Long View' at 4pm BST on 10 September 2025, a paper entitled 'Overlooked Occupiers: Women, Family, and the Home in Occupied Germany and Japan' by Christine De Matos at 10am BST on 24 September 2025, a paper entitled 'Perfection: 400 Years of Women's Quest for Beauty' by Margarette Lincoln at 4pm BST on 1 October 2025, a paper (title TBC) by Merry Wiesner-Hanks at 4pm BST on 15 October 2025, and a special roundtable entitled 'New Approaches to Writing Women's Histories' at 4pm GMT on 5 November 2025.

We are thrilled to share the programme for our upcoming seminar series. Please continue to check our socials and our website over the coming weeks as the links to register for each of the seminars are published. We look forward to seeing you all there!

Where to read The Lily and The Mayflower A recent review of Amelia Bloomer: Journalist, Suffragist, Anti-fashion Icon in the Indiana Magazine of History was very complimentary. The author wanted to read more of Bloomer’s writing, wh…

My biography of Amelia Bloomer just got another nice review, this one from the Indiana Magazine of History @inhistoryeditor.bsky.social The author wished I had given more detail on where to read more of Bloomer's writing. Here you go!

We're glad we could feature a review of your book, Sara. Thanks for the recommendations for more readings!

Ten thousand of the 22,000 citizens in Muncie were eventually vaccinated. 150 people contracted smallpox; 22 died. Read William Eidson's "Confusion, Controversy, and Quarantine" in our December 1990 issue. #IUScholarWorks #epidemics #vaccination #Muncie #smallpox

When the local schools required every child to be vaccinated in order to attend class, the local Anti-Vaccination Society filed a legal complaint. Newspapers were filled with ads for "cures," such as drinking a quart of water in which a spoonful of cream of tartar had been dissolved.

Other local doctors questioned the diagnosis. Many of the infected families, and their neighbors, defied the quarantine, going in and out of each other's houses by the back door to avoid the guards at the front. Some families threw infected bedding into neighbors' yards.

In August 1893, Dr. Frank Jackson, city health officer of Muncie, diagnosed 14 cases of smallpox within one of the city's neighborhoods. The city council quarantined the affected houses, called for a widespread vaccination program, and began building 2 hospitals to house the sick.

National Museum of American History

📢 The OAH has issued a Statement on the White House Review of the Smithsonian. Read the statement: ow.ly/hgLR50WGhfQ

Find out more in "Confusion, Controversy, and Quarantine: The Muncie Smallpox Epidemic of 1893" by William Eidson, in our December 1990 issue, available online through IU ScholarWorks. #vaccines #smallpox #Muncie #ProjectMuse #IUScholarWorks

Skepticism and impatience soon took over, with other local doctors challenging Johnson's diagnosis and affected families defying the quarantine. Muncie residents were slow to take the vaccine--and the disease continued to spread.

What Johnson found was the first case of smallpox to appear in Muncie since an epidemic in 1876. Further investigation found more children and adults in the same neighborhood with similar symptoms. City officials, after consideration, implemented a quarantine around affected homes.

August is National Immunization Awareness Month.

Vaccines have a long history in Indiana. In August 1893, Dr. Frank Johnson, the first public health officer of Muncie, Indiana, was called out to see a child suffering, he was told, from chicken pox.

historian and scholar friends (I forget the hashtag for this lol):

What are some good secondary sources analyzing racial capitalism/industrialization and Native American removal in the 19th century?

please repost! thanks in advance!

Since the 1950s, Summer Language Workshops at Indiana University have provided training in Russian, East European, and Central Asian languages. Generations have come to Bloomington to study Romanian, Polish, Kazakh, etc.

Rubio just cancelled all of them
languageworkshop.indiana.edu/summer-langu...

KKK was *everywhere* in 1920s Indiana. George Dale, the editor of a Muncie newspaper, refused to bow to them. He survived and eventually became mayor.

For more on "the crossroads of America" in this era, see also:
James Madison, _A Lynching in the Heartland_
Timothy Egan, _Fever in the Heartland_

Firings at NARA The jobs of those terminated—and not—tell a story

#SCOOP: the new National Archives' day-to-day leader—who's the head of the private Nixon Foundation—fired a total of 27 employees across the presidential library system, including the deputy director of [checks notes] the Nixon.

Most were in public-facing roles.

#NARA

medium.com/@anthony_cla...