Women's History

In honor of Rosa Parks’ 100th birthday and our Day of Courage celebration earlier this year, the education team at The Henry Ford has developed a special educational activity book for children that focuses on social innovation and the way the civil r

Pineapple cultivation in Hawaii confirms global movement of plants and people. Then next time you pick up a can of Hawaiian pineapple, consider the global movement of plants — and the histories of the people that contributed to it.

In the mid-1980s, the multi-hyphenate artist and filmmaker Lillian Schwartz began to promote the computer as a tool capable of solving age-old mysteries in art history, architecture, and archeology.

A new exhibition in Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation’s Collections Gallery – Handmade: The Crafting of America – opens to the public on March 21, 2026. This exhibit features stories from the rich 250 years of craft in America. As March is Women’s History Month, here are some highlights of the contributions of women in craft in our collections and in the exhibition.

In 1972, Lillian Schwartz sat down with a bundle of pipe cleaners. She tested their flexibility, twisting them into loose loops and serpentine figures. Lillian was an artist, and often used unconventional materials in her work--but these pipe cleaner

What do the Andrews Sisters’s 1938 hit song, “Ti-Pi-Tin,” and Dinah Washington’s Grammy-winning 1959 recording of “What a Difference a Day Makes” have in common? Both songs were written by Maria Grever, a female Mexican composer.

Through determination and resourcefulness, Mary Judge stood out from the other “hucksters” at Detroit’s Central Market in the latter half of the 19th century. Poor, single, and an immigrant, Judge managed to make a living – and a name for herself.

In June 1878, Eadweard Muybridge was hard at work. At the Palo Alto Stock Farm in Stanford, California, the photographer positioned twelve cameras along the side of a racetrack

Marian Morash, the cook who inspired us to eat our vegetables, was a regular on The Victory Garden. Learn more about her and her husband's legacy here.

Learn how the women's suffrage movement turned to cars as a strategy for garnering broader support for their cause. Before long, the automobile had become both a symbol of freedom for American women and an important tool in the fight for suffrage.