The Feminist and Martial Legacy of Annie Oakley
Guns, talent, and female empowerment
One cannot talk about the Wild West without mentioning the name Annie Oakley. Annie Oakley was a fascinating character. She was a showman, a marksman, and a fierce believer in women’s rights and women’s empowerment. Her trade tool was the gun, which she wielded better than almost anyone alive.
Oakley came to fame when she won a shooting contest against a sharpshooter by the name of Frank E. Butler. Butler was thirteen years Oakley’s senior and would eventually marry her. Oakley’s victory over Butler won her a chance to join his shooting act, which was a part of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.
Oakley believed that women should both own and know how to use firearms for their own protection. She would go on to instruct women in the art of shooting and won many converts to her way of thinking. Some of the women she taught became quite good. So good in fact, that Oakley believed that they could fight alongside the trained men of the US Army.
In 1898, after the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, Annie Oakley sent an astonishing letter to the president at the time, William McKinley. In the letter, Oakley offered to supply 50 soldiers for the war effort. All of them would be women trained in the art of shooting, and each woman would…
