Bold Women in Nevada History

Book excerpt: Alice Lucretia Smith, a descendent of slaves who became a civil rights activist in Reno, once said, "Let's not throw our lives away. Let's do something constructive. I always feel like I want to climb up a little bit, and maybe I can take someone with me." The eighth installment of Mountain Press's state-by-state series for teen readers, Bold Women in Nevada history reveals what women can accomplish when they dare to be bold. The book-and-bust cycles driven by Nevada's mining industry and the state's liberal stance on divorce at the turn of the century allowed women of various backgrounds to break out of traditional gender roles. Divorces didn't always remarry, and widows took charge of their husband's holdings and became landowners or started prospecting to help pay the bills. Young women not only taught in schools"€"they started their own. From Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, a Paiute who worked as an interpreter, to Mary Fulstone, a rural doctor who traveled through heat, snow, and mud to deliver more than 4,000 babies during her career, to Felice Cohn, who became the fourth female attorney to practice law before the US Supreme Court, the fourteen women featured in this collection broke down barriers of sexism, racism, and political oppression to emerge as heroines of their own time.