Fifty years ago today, on February 3, 1971, former First Lady and widow of President John F. Kennedy, by then remarried, made her first and only visit back to the White House. After the trauma of her first husband’s assassination… Read More ›
First Ladies 
Jane & Jill, Potential First Ladies: Lots in Common Between the Wives of Joe Biden & Bernie Sanders
Jane or Jill? Before speculation begins about potential vice presidential candidates of the two leading Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, their marital partners Jill and Jane deserve an introduction. They share numerous biographical facts. Both women are… Read More ›
Liz Taylor Meets Jackie Kennedy: Tabloid Fantasy to Chance Encounter & The Only Photos of Them Together, Part II
Just in case Photoplay’s dismissive March 1964 headline about Liz and Dick had suggested the wedding was a dull afterthought, the tab’s April cover made up for it, featuring the couple kissing with the lure of exclusive photos. The affirmation of… Read More ›
Melania Trump v. John Kelly: First Ladies & West Wing Personnel, A Brief History
The news reports which broke yesterday caught even the most assiduous chroniclers of the man occupying the presidency and his wife by surprise. It was the First Lady Melania Trump, regarded as functioning independently from the words and deeds of… Read More ›
Melania Trump’ Hospitalization: What the Public Is Told About a First Lady’s Health
The news breaking on Monday, May 14, 2018 that First Lady Melania Trump was at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for kidney surgery wasn’t learned through leaks to the New York Times, nor revealed by a lawyer on… Read More ›
“Yes, I am a Liberal,” Barbara Bush’s Politics: Gays, Guns & Equal Rights
At a press round table in March of 1989, the new First Lady Barbara Bush declared to the press corps who covered her activities: “Yes, I’m a liberal. I don’t mean that as knocking the Republican Party, because I… Read More ›
Barbara Bush, Early 90s Icon: The Simpsons to The Laptop
With the death of former First Lady Barbara Bush, 92, wife of one Vice President who then became President, mother of another President, recollections, analysis and tributes about her life and legacy have flooded the media on broadcast, print and… Read More ›
Betty Ford’s Centennial: A Vibrant Life in Videos & Hundreds of Pictures
My work as an historian, researcher and author of books on the American First Ladies and the political power and cultural influence they possess overlapped a timeline during which nine women who held that unofficial position were alive and helped… Read More ›
Cat & Bird: When Actress Eartha Kitt Challenged First Lady Johnson on the Vietnam War
The year 1968 was one of the most tumultuous experienced among the American people; enormous social change was underway. Protests, pickets and riots that year marked the start of what emerged as the national Black Power Movement and the Women’s… Read More ›
Melania Trump’s Independence from the President has First Lady Precedence
On civil rights to gun control to women’s rights, Jackie Kennedy, Pat Nixon, Eleanor Roosevelt, Nancy Reagan give context to the recent declaration that Melania Trump is “Independent” from the President Copyrighted, 2017 All media and individuals using this original… Read More ›
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