REALITY & ROMANCE:
Women of the Black Hills
An Exhibition

From six-shooters to suffrage, Black Hills women made their mark.

As industrialization spread across America in the 1800s, it resulted in more than dim factories that could out-produce family shops and machined objects that were cheaper than hand-made ones. It changed the lives of many women who had never left home. Commercial industries effectively divided American women into new classes.

In one class were those who worked as hard as men in factories and on farms. In the other were middle class women who lost their direct connection to labor. These latter women, along with their wealthy counterparts who had inherited lives of ease, provided the definition of the Victorian woman: constrained by propriety, luxuriant in fashion, and subject to the expectations of men. They cared for children and turned to domestic crafts. They made do with the money their husbands brought home. Regarded as “ladies,” their place was in the home. Their world was essentially an indoor one.

Despite what contemporary observers see as Victorian era limitations on women, many of them directed the freedom they had toward activism. Even before the Civil War, some united together to start temperance societies, aid economically disadvantaged people, and send missionaries overseas or into the American West. More politically-focused groups worked to expand education for women, support women’s property rights, and earn the right to vote. The Civil War only added to the resolve and tenacity of such women, with many taking prominent roles in improving healthcare and in the movement to abolish slavery.

Sponsored By:
TDG Communications, Inc.
South Dakota Humanities Council
Deadwood Historic Preservation Commission