As CBS News’ Senior Correspondent, Norah O’Donnell has made a career out of keeping the country updated on what’s going on today. But with her new book, she’s turning her eyes towards the past.
“We the Women: the Hidden Heroes Who Shaped America,” O’Donnell’s newly released book, charts the course of important women in American history from the signing of the Declaration of Independence onward. There are familiar names like Eleanor Roosevelt, but there are also plenty of women you may have never heard of, like Mary Tape, an activist who fought for Chinese-Americans’ access to education, or Belva Lockwood, one of the first women allowed to practice law before the Supreme Court.
O’Donnell will be in Atlanta on March 3 to talk about her book at an event at McElreath Hall at the Atlanta History Center. Ahead of the event, she spoke with Rough Draft Atlanta about her writing process and some of her favorite stories. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
This is coming out and coinciding with the 250th anniversary of the country. When did you first have the idea to write this book, and why was this what you wanted to write?
Norah O’Donnell: It was almost three years ago that the idea for this book was sort of birthed, if you will. You’re right, it was looking forward and thinking about America 250, and what would be these nationwide celebrations for America’s birthday and a celebration of the Declaration of Independence.
I’ve long been asked to write a book about women in history. And certainly, in my journalistic career, I’ve always focused on the accomplishments of women. So this was a way to go back and take a look throughout history and shine a spotlight on some of the hidden heroes in American history who have not gotten, I think, the attention that they deserve.
I think hidden is the key word there. Looking just at the table of contents, I was shocked at how many names I didn’t know. Obviously, there are a few like Eleanor Roosevelt in there, but there were a ton of women I had never heard of. How did you go about deciding which stories to include? What was that process of elimination like?
O’Donnell: Certainly, there are so many women in the last 250 years of American history who deserve recognition. What’s really mind-blowing is that really, the study of women’s history is really only about 30 or 40 years old. Excavating these stories involved much more research and reporting than I had even anticipated myself, and uncovering these stories, because the study of women’s history is actually quite new.
In terms of finding which women to put in this book, I wanted to focus on women whose stories were not known, to focus on women who spent their lives living up to the ideals and the values that are enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and those 13 words that make up probably one of the greatest sentences in human history: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” That sentence, like I just mentioned, is probably the most important of human history, because it kickstarted the American Revolution. Those ideals of equality and freedom were at the heart of the abolitionist movement, and the suffrage movement, and the Civil Rights movement, and the labor movement. I could go on. I really do think every great moral and political struggle in American history has been living up to the ideals that were outlined in the Declaration of Independence, and women were not a footnote in those struggles. They’re at the center of those struggles. I think each of the women in these books are heroes in each of those struggles, as America has tried to live up to those principles outlined in the Declaration of Independence. So I think as you read each of these profiles of these women, you see me tying it back to the Declaration of Independence, and that’s because that’s what they were doing. They were making the case time and time again that our nation was founded on this idea of equality and freedom. Why doesn’t, then, it apply to them?
You mentioned the Declaration, and tying it back to that initial document. But what were some of the other commonalities you found between these women as you researched and wrote this book?
O’Donnell: I think some of the commonalities of these women are they were gutsy, they were brave, they were patriotic. They didn’t take no for an answer. They were warriors for equality. They were iconic in their time periods. They had grit. I think a lot of them also had, for some reason, this strong sense of self and worthiness and confidence in themselves and the ideals that they were fighting for.
Dr Mary Edwards Walker – she’s the second woman ever to make it to medical school. She wants to be a surgeon during the Civil War and becomes the only female surgeon during the Civil War. [She] is captured, held as a prisoner of war. She was also providing key strategic intelligence. In fact, there’s a mention of Atlanta in the book, I just want to share this with you – because Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, she was making trips into Confederate territory to not only look on Union soldiers, but also, reportedly, to do some spying. In 1864, when Union General William Sherman was getting ready to march on Atlanta, it was Mary’s information that provided strategic benefit to the general, and so it was Sherman’s famous capture of Atlanta that damaged the Confederacy and helped President Abraham Lincoln’s re-election campaign. General Sherman reportedly changed his strategy because of the information Mary collected. Like, holy cow! That’s a true story! In addition, she was there at Bull Run. She was there at Fredericksburg, which were some of the earlier and bloodiest battles of the Civil War.
She’s also gathering intelligence that helped win the Civil War. She’s captured as a prisoner of war, comes back and for all that she has done, gets awarded the Medal of Honor in, I believe it was 1965. This is 55 years before women have the right to vote. To this day, she is the only woman in history to ever have received the Medal of Honor. More than 3,500 men have received it. We saw President Trump award one at the State of the Union the other night. She’s the only woman. She got it in 1865.
In researching this book – I know this is probably a difficult question to answer – but do you have a favorite story, or is there something you learned that you genuinely can’t believe you didn’t know beforehand?
O’Donnell: I mean, sadly, there were so many things I didn’t know about women’s history and about American history. I would say that it was embarrassing, but I think I’m probably in the vast majority of people, because we weren’t taught women’s history. We just weren’t.
I guess some of the things that surprised me – there were two things. There’s one woman in this book who’s not really a hidden hero. You mentioned her – Eleanor Roosevelt. But I had to include her, because she is considered pretty much the most powerful female force in America. She was, for half a century. Even as a former first lady, who was the inspiration for Hillary Clinton – and I covered her campaign – I am, again, embarrassed how little I knew about Eleanor Roosevelt. I’ll just give you my quick TikTok – I knew she was a powerful advisor to FDR. She brought women into the White House. What I didn’t realize was, here she is, the fifth cousin of FDR. They get married at an early age. She had six children in 10 years. He cheats on her. She stays with him. Then he gets polio. She nurses him back to health, keeps his political career alive, helps him run for governor and then president of the United States. I mean, talk about turning pain into perseverance. Then they get to the White House and she holds, in that 12 years she was first lady, 350 press conferences.No first lady has done that since. She wrote a column every day for almost 50 years, it appeared in like, 100 newspapers. I mean, talk about prolific.
One story that just gets me every time – and I write this in the book, that it should be an Oscar-winning movie – is that I never knew that during World War II, here she is, this shadow commander in chief, because he’s in a wheelchair. She goes out on a five-week journey to the Pacific islands, visiting 400,000 troops, lost 30 pounds, wore out the soles of her shoes – her secret service nickname was Rover. She’s amazing. An amazing, amazing, amazing person. I just wonder how my own sense of self and power and possibility would have been shaped differently if I had studied Eleanor Roosevelt in school.
You’ve talked so much about what you learned about other women, but how did you learn about yourself throughout the process of writing and researching this book?
O’Donnell: I’m a journalist, and so I ask people a lot of questions. I don’t form a lot of opinions, and I’m a journalist, so I don’t share opinions. That’s not my job. I do a lot of listening. So I don’t think, over my time, that I’ve really developed my own voice. I know that seems like a strange thing to say, but I feel my own voice developing by studying these women. I hope it’s a very powerful voice.