Sitting in her college labor movement class at Walla Walla University, Elisabeth Ritacca did not know what she wanted to major in.
Then, her teacher did something that Ritacca would remember as “deliberate,” “cutting-edge” and “empowering.” He only assigned books about women in the labor movement, beginning Ritacca’s relationship with women’s history. From there, she said she “fell into it.”
She said learning women’s history is vital because of how it has shaped people’s opportunities and how it is taken for granted.
“Man! I hope that we don’t get to the point where we look back to the women’s movement and that was just a temporary thing,” she said about the women’s movement in the 1970s and ‘80s.
Ritacca went on to do her master’s and Ph.D. in women’s history and then teach at Walla Walla University and Solano University before coming to Citrus College.
At Citrus, Ritacca started the first women’s history course with the support of her colleagues.
In an email interview, Bruce Solheim, a fellow Citrus history professor, said Ritacca is a wonderful colleague.
“I am so glad that she accepted the challenge of forming a Women’s History program,” Solheim said. “There is no one better to do so.”
Along with the challenges came the freedom to create a course that reflects her goals. Ritacca said she values teaching stories that she wished she had learned about more in her education.
She said many students feel disconnected from history and society because their voices and stories go unrepresented. She said she wants to help them find a connection to the material.
“It’s kind of like a personal challenge to try to convince them that history is just stories,” Ritacca said. “It’s stories about their ancestors, it’s the stories of policies that affect them today and just how they emerged.”
Her goals are coming to fruition for many students at Citrus, including Breana Reyes.
Reyes said, even over Zoom, she “just felt a connection” in the class she took with Ritacca.
“She was truly passionate about history, and I was completely enthralled in her lectures,” Reyes said in a text interview.
Ritacca said her experiences teaching African American history and being the adviser for Black Student Union and Gay-Straight Alliance created a “cross-pollination effect,” which helped her shape her course more intersectionally.
“It’s made me more aware of how my original iteration of women’s history was far too white,” Ritacca said. “There are groups that I need to focus on more.”
Having taught the class for a few years now, Ritacca said she has reached a point where she can focus on what she wants and needs to say.
She likes to give students primary sources instead of textbooks to give them the experience of being a historian and hearing directly from the women of the time.
Some of the books she recommends students read are “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” by Harriet Jacobs and “Lakota Woman” by Mary Brave Bird, who wrote the book under the name of Mary Crow Dog.
Surrounded by monumental women from history, Ritacca said she is especially inspired by women like Ella Baker and Jo Ann Robinson from the Civil Rights Movement.
Ritacca said they are the ones willing to be unpopular to expand what is possible.
“I just think that that sums up how one person can make a big impact, and how if you are trying to enact change you need a lot of people to do the behind-the-scenes organizational work; that’s not as sexy, but it’s just as important,” she said.
Ritacca has been involved in the community herself, organizing women’s history month events and speaking for organizations like the National Women’s Political Caucus and Women Involved in South Pasadena Political Activism.
To her, these opportunities have come as an inspiration and surprise since she generally does not like public speaking. They have helped her see the women’s clubs she studied in action.
Ritacca’s husband, Gregory Wigmore, is also a fellow historian. She said they help each other out with research and planning.
“To me, it’s like the best possible thing because who else is going to be interested in the conversations I want to have,” she said.
Ritacca said having a young daughter made elements of women’s history more meaningful for her. She said she does not have the patience for inequality anymore and may get angrier.
“I’m just so finished with the sexism and the racism,” Ritacca said.
She said she wonders when her daughter will start noticing the differences in treatment and whether she will have fewer opportunities than if she were a boy.
Ritacca said that the field of education is one of the more diverse fields. Yet, there are certain societal challenges that make her notice the inequalities laced within the history she teaches.
Whether it be taking up more shifts, missing classes due to lack of childcare or just saying yes to more things, she said, “In our society, a lot of times, women kind of pick up extra burdens.”
From home to class, early days to now, women’s history has had an impact on Ritacca’s life. “There is this burden to make sure that you’re being fair and that you’re being accurate,” she said about teaching history.
With that responsibility, Ritacca says she wants her legacy to be “that I taught people things that made them more empathetic and just made them question their own perspective.”
