She has taught in a one-room schoolhouse, worked for civil rights and women’s rights, edited textbooks, served as a public relations director, and published widely as a freelance writer over three decades. Now, thanks to her work on Clarina Nichols and the early women’s rights movement, Diane Eickhoff has added more lines to her résumé: award-winning biographer, humanities scholar, captivating performer.

Raised on her family’s farm in Minnesota, Eickhoff has lived in New York City, Chicago, and her current home of Kansas City, where she moved with her husband in 1997.

“Since neither one of us had lived in this part of the country, we began acquainting ourselves with its history and geography. We loved driving through the blue highways of Kansas and Missouri,” Eickhoff recalls. “We were struck by the dramatic tales of the Bosnia-like conflicts over slavery that had once engulfed the area. In recent years Ang Lee filmed Ride with the Devil here, and Russell Banks (Cloudsplitter) and Jane Smiley (The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton) have written riveting historical novels about that time and place. But many other stories remain buried.

“I learned about Clarina Nichols from a museum director, and soon found that serious research on her life had not been done since the 1970s. Several earlier admirers had begun working on biographies, but none of these efforts had come to fruition.

“In 2000, after undergoing successful cancer treatment, I decided to plunge into writing her biography. I’ve worked as an editor in the educational publishing field for years and have been struck by the dearth of quality historical biographies written about women and the scant coverage given to one of the greatest social reform movements in history — the antebellum (pre-Civil War) women’s rights movement.

“The only part of that early struggle for women’s rights that seemed to make it into the history books was the story of women wearing bloomers and later working for suffrage — which is a small part of a much larger story.

“My research began in 1999 when I traveled to Vermont, where Nichols was raised and did her early work; and California, where she kept on working to promote her causes right to the end of her life. In between I spent countless hours at various museums, historical societies, and libraries in Kansas and Missouri.

“The more I researched, the more I realized that her story was not only a powerful regional story. Nichols epitomized the struggle of 19th-century women who would, as their enemies feared, change the world in irrevocable ways. The rise of woman is one of the great stories of history and one about which most people have only a vague understanding.

“That same year, 1999, I wrote a newspaper article about Nichols that earned me an invitation to address the annual convention of the Kansas Women Attorneys Association. They loved her! Then, in a serendipitous turn of events, the Kansas Humanities Council announced that Clarina Nichols had been chosen as one of six historical characters (and the only female) to represent the Bleeding Kansas era in a state-wide Chautauqua commemorating the 150th anniversary of the opening of Kansas Territory.

“I was chosen to play the role, and in June 2004 toured Kansas as Nichols. I discovered that her story appealed to people of all ages and that her story could enthrall audiences. Since then I have appeared before audiences giving my living history presentation as Clarina Nichols and promoting Revolutionary Heart and Frontier Freedom Fighter.”