Miriam Thaggert illuminates the stories of African American women as passengers and as workers on the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century railroad. As Jim Crow laws became more prevalent and forced Black Americans to "ride Jim Crow" on the rails, the train compartment became a contested space of leisure and work. Riding Jane Crow examines four instances of Black female railroad travel: the travel narratives of Black female intellectuals such as Anna Julia Cooper and Mary Church Terrell; Black middle-class women who sued to ride in first class "ladies’ cars"; Black women railroad food vendors; and Black maids on Pullman trains. Thaggert argues that the railroad represented a technological advancement that was entwined with African American attempts to secure social progress. Black women's experiences on or near the railroad illustrate how American technological progress has often meant their ejection or displacement; thus, it is the Black woman who most fully measures the success of American freedom and privilege, or "progress," through her travel experiences.

Miriam Thaggert illuminates the stories of African American women as passengers and as workers on the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century railroad. As Jim Crow laws became more prevalent and forced Black Americans to ride Jim Crow on the rails, the train compartment became a contested space of leisure and work. Riding Jane Crow examines four instances of Black female railroad travel: the travel narratives of Black female intellectuals such as Anna Julia Cooper and Mary Church Terrell; Black middle-class women who sued to ride in first class ladies' cars; Black women railroad food vendors; and Black maids on Pullman trains. Thaggert argues that the railroad represented a technological advancement that was entwined with African American attempts to secure social progress. Black women's experiences on or near the railroad illustrate how American technological progress has often meant their ejection or displacement; and thus, it is the Black woman who most fully measures the success of American freedom and privilege, or progress, through her travel experiences.

Euro-African-American activist Pauli Murray was a feminist lawyer, who played pivotal roles in both the modern civil rights and women's movements. Born in 1910 and identified as female, she believed from childhood she was male. Before there was a social movement to support transgender identity, she devised attacks on all arbitrary distinctions, greatly expanding the idea of equality in the process.

Euro-African-American activist Paulli Murray was a feminist lawyer, who played pivotal roles in both the modern civil rights and women's movements. Born in 1910 and identified as female, she believed from childhood she was male. Before there was a social movement to support transgender identity, she devised attacks on all arbitrary distinctions, greatly expanding the idea of equality in the process.

Radical Black feminist refusal through the works of mid-twentieth-century African American women writers Monstrous Work and Radical Satisfaction offers new and insightful readings of African American women’s writings in the 1930s–1950s, illustrating how these writers centered Black women’s satisfaction as radical resistance to the false and incomplete promise of liberal racial integration. Eve Dunbar examines the writings of Ann Petry, Dorothy West, Alice Childress, and Gwendolyn Brooks to show how these women explored self-fulfillment over normative and sanctioned models of national belonging. Paying close attention to literary moments of disruption, miscommunication, or confusion rather than ease, assimilation, or mutual understanding around race and gender, Dunbar tracks these writers’ dissatisfaction with American race relations. She shows how Petry, West, Childress, and Brooks redeploy the idea of monstrous work to offer potential modalities for registering Black women’s capacity to locate satisfaction within the domestic and interpersonal. While racial integration may satisfy the national idea of equality and inclusion, it has not met the long-term needs of Black people’s quest for equity. Dunbar responds, demonstrating how these mid-century women offer new blueprints for Black life by creating narrative models for radical satisfaction: Black women’s completeness, joy, and happiness outside the bounds of normative racial inclusion.

A history of the activism that made public spaces in American cities more accessible to women. From the closing years of the nineteenth century, women received subtle—and not so subtle—messages that they shouldn’t be in public. Or, if they were, that they were not safe. Breaking the Gender Code tells the story of both this danger narrative and the resistance to it. Historian Georgina Hickey investigates challenges to the code of urban gender segregation in the twentieth century, focusing on organized advocacy to make the public spaces of American cities accessible to women. She traces waves of activism from the Progressive Era, with its calls for public restrooms, safe and accessible transportation, and public accommodations, through and beyond second-wave feminism, and its focus on the creation of alternative, women-only spaces and extensive anti-violence efforts. In doing so, Hickey explores how gender segregation intertwined with other systems of social control, as well as how class, race, and sexuality shaped activists' agendas and women's experiences of urban space. Drawing connections between the vulnerability of women in public spaces, real and presumed, and contemporary debates surrounding rape culture, bathroom bills, and domestic violence, Hickey unveils both the strikingly successful and the incomplete initiatives of activists who worked to open up public space to women.

**2022 Will Rogers Medallion Award Silver Winner for Western Non-Fiction** When the last spike was hammered into the steel track of the Transcontinental Railroad on May 10, 1869, at Promontory Point, Utah, Western Union lines sounded the glorious news of the railroad’s completion from New York to San Francisco. For more than five years an estimated four thousand men mostly Irish working west from Omaha and Chinese working east from Sacramento, moved like a vast assembly line toward the end of the track. Editorials in newspapers and magazines praised the accomplishment and some boasted that the work that “was begun, carried on, and completed solely by men.” The August edition of Godey’s Lady’s Book even reported “No woman had laid a rail and no woman had made a survey.” Although the physical task of building the railroad had been achieved by men, women made significant and lasting contributions to the historic operation. However, the female connection with railroading dates as far back as 1838 when women were hired as registered nurses/stewardesses in passenger cars. Those ladies attended to the medical needs of travelers and also acted as hostesses of sorts helping passengers have a comfortable journey. Beyond nursing and service roles, however, women played a larger part in the actual creation of the rail lines than they have been given credit for. Miss E. F. Sawyer became the first female telegraph operator when she was hired by the Burlington Railroad in Montgomery, Illinois, in 1872. Eliza Murfey focused on the mechanics of the railroad, creating devices for improving the way bearings on a rail wheel attached to train cars responded to the axles. Murfey held sixteen patents for her 1870 invention. In 1879, another woman inventor named Mary Elizabeth Walton developed a system that deflected emissions from the smoke stacks on railroad locomotives. She was awarded two patents for her pollution reducing device. Their stories and many more are included in this illustrated volume celebrating women and the railroad.