1347: Catherine of Siena mystic, patron saint of Italy, born.
1586: British citizen Margaret Clitherow executed for harboring priests; she was canonized in 1970.
1830: Maggie Newton Van Cott, first woman licensed to preach in the Methodist Episcopal Church in the US, born.
1911: The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire killed 146 immigrant women workers, the youngest just 14.
1914: Aline Saarinen, critic of art & architecture in the US, author & television journalist, born.
1925: Flannery O’Connor, US author & essaying who often wrote in the Southern Gothic style, born.
1934: Gloria Steinem, US feminist leader, writer, & organizer, co-founder of Ms. Magazine, The Ms. Foundation, The Women’s Media Center and many more, born.
1967: Debi Thomas, 1st African-American to hold US National titles in ladies’ singles figure skating, Olympic bronze medalist, born.
1971: Sheryl Swoopes, US basketball player, 1st player to be signed w/ WNBA, 3 time Olympic gold medal winner, born.
1833: Lucy Hobbs Taylor, dentist, women’s rights advocate; 1st woman in US to be granted a dentistry degree, born.
1868: Emily Murphy, Canadian feminist, one of the Famous Five in the Persons Case, which legally declared women people under Canadian law, born.
1875: Isadore Gilbert Mudge, known as the foremost US reference librarian of her time, author & archivist, born.
1877: Edna Woolman Chase, editor in chief of Vogue magazine who began her career working in Vogue’s mail room, born.
1887: Sylvia Woodbridge Beach, US Parisian publisher, published Joyce’s Ulysses when it was outlawed as obscene, born.
1899: Ada Kramm, Norwegian stage & film actress & producer whose career spanned more than 6 decades, born.
1904: Doris Eaton Travis, US actress, dance instructor & owner of 20 dance schools, last surviving Ziegfeld girl, born.
1921: Ada Louise Huxtable, winner of 1st ever Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, 1st architecture critic for The New York Times, born.
1923: Diane Arbus, US photographer most widely known for photos of people society considered “abnormal,” born.
1841: Ina Coolbirth, US poet, & librarian, 1st California Poet Laureate & 1st poet laureate of any US state, born.
1845: Hallie Quinn Brown, US civil rights & suffrage activist, led effort to preserve Frederick Douglass’ home, born.
1867: Lillian D. Wald, US nurse, founder of the Henry Street Settlement, involved w/ founding of NAACP, born.
1876: Anna Hyatt Huntington, US sculptor & art patron who gifted Collis P. Huntington State Park to CT, born.
1903: Clare Booth Luce, 1st US woman appointed to a major ambassadorial post abroad, author of ‘The Women,’ born.
1913: Harriet Tubman, underground railroad conductor, abolitionist & soldier, dies & is buried w/ full military honors.
1914: UK suffragist Mary Richardson slashes w/ an axe Rokeby’s Venus of Velasquez painting in the National Gallery.
1947: Kim Campbell, the 1st & to date only woman to serve as Prime Minister of Canada, born.
1907: Indiana enacts the 1st US law allowing sterilization on eugenic grounds. Disabled people & women of color were targeted.
1926: Bertha Landes is elected mayor of Seattle, becoming the 1st female mayor of a major US city.
1928: Graciela Olivarez, Chicana activist; 1st woman & Latina law graduate from Notre Dame Law School, born.
1936: Glenda Jackson, British Member of Parliament who has also won 2 ‘Best Actress’ Academy Awards, born.
1959: Ruth Mosko Handler unveiled the Barbie Doll at the International American Toy Fair in New York.
1967: Svetlana Alliluyeva, daughter of Joseph Stalin, defects to the West. http://ht.ly/4aOUy
1976: West Point Military Academy accepts its first female cadets. Today, women make of 15% of cadets at the school.
1979: Following a court ruling, Bowie Kuhn instructs Major League Baseball teams to allow women reporters in locker rooms.
1990: Dr Antonia Novello, a Puerto Rican physician, sworn-in as the 1st female & the 1st Latino US Surgeon General.
1702: England’s Queen Anne ascended the throne upon the death of King William III.
1824: Emily Elizabeth Parsons, US Civil War nurse & founder of the Mount Auburn Hospital in MA, born.
1828: Catherine Lorillard Wolfe, US philanthropist & art collector who established Wolfe Fund for NY’s Met Museum, born.
1856: Mary Wright Plummer, pioneering US librarian, 2nd female president of the American Library Association, born.
1884: Susan B. Anthony addresses U.S. House Judiciary Committee arguing for an amendment granting women the right to vote.
1886: Alice Throckmorton McLean, organizer who established & oversaw the American Women’s Voluntary Services during WWII, born.
1910: Baroness Raymonde de Laroche of Paris becomes the world’s 1st licensed female pilot.
1911: International Women’s Day is launched in Copenhagen, Denmark, by Clara Zetkin, leader of the Women’s Office for the Social Democratic Party in Germany.
1923: Lydia Rapoport, US social worker, theorist of preventative case work & contributor to the crisis theory, born.
1945: Phyliss M Daley sworn in as navy ensign, the first black nurse to achieve that office.
1971: Dorothy Fields is inducted into the US Songwriters Hall of Fame, the only woman of in the 1st group of inductees.
As part of RWHP’s US Women’s History Month mission, we’ll be featuring a photo and profile of an individual radical woman of history each day of the month.
Jessie de la Cruz (née Lopez) grew up in a migrant farmer family that followed the seasonal crops of California.
She married Arnold de la Cruz in 1938 and began her own family, continuing to follow the crops, and continuing the harsh environment as a migrant worker and a mother, which meant working in the fields and at home. Her husband began attending union meetings in the ’60s, but it wasn’t until César Chavez came to their house that de la Cruz began going to meetings herself. She joined the union in 1965 and became an organizer two years later. She was the first woman farmworker to organize for the UFW in the Fresno area. She organized house meetings, registered farmers for the union and for the vote.
One of her first successes was protesting against the short-handle hoe, which required workers to bend over at the waist for the entire day, causing bad backaches later in life. She also ran a union hiring hall, picketed, boycotted Safeway and the Border Patrol, continued to work in the fields, and was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1972.
Credit: Bitch Magazine
1870: Wyoming allows women on juries; the right was later taken away until the 1950s, when women were again admitted to serve.
1875: Mary Norton, 6th woman in the US Congress, 1st from an Eastern state (NJ), & the 1st Democrat, born. http://bit.ly/AiobzP
1893: Lorena Hickok, pioneering US journalist, confidante of Eleanor Roosevelt, author of books on the Roosevelts, born.
1908: Anna Magnini, Italian actress most known for her Oscar winning portrayal of a Sicilian widow in The Rose Tattoo, born.
1938: Janet Guthrie, pioneering woman auto racer; first woman to compete in Indianapolis 500 (1977) & Daytona 500 (1977), born. #wmnhist
1996: 3 U.S. servicemen convicted in rape of a 12-year-old Okinawa girl & sentenced by Japanese court to up to 7 yrs in prison.
2010: Kathryn Bigelow became 1st woman to win an Academy Award for best director, for her Iraq War thriller “The Hurt Locker.”
As part of RWHP’s US Women’s History Month mission, we’ll be featuring a photo and profile of an individual radical woman of history each day of the month.
Daisy Gatson Bates was a well known activists for civil rights in the African American community by the time the U.S. Supreme Court passed Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas officially declaring segregated schools unconstitutional. She and her husband were very active in the NAACP and ran a newspaper, The Arkansas State Press, that primarily focused on civil rights issues in the black community.
She was actively involved in the NAACP and was named president of the Arkansas Conference of Branches, the umbrella organization for the NAACP in Arkansas in 1952. Bates became a key player in the Aaron v. Cooper case in which African American children sued the Little Rock School District for not allowing them to attend then all white schools. This case would set the stage for the eventual desegregation of Central High School.
During the Central High crisis, Bates was a mentor to the Little Rock Nine. Bates became known as the principal spokesperson and leader for the movement to desegregate Central and became a state and nationally recognized advocate for civil rights. She and her husband, L.C. Bates, the Little Rock Nine, and their families endured threats and harassment during the school year. She continued her efforts despite the intimidation tactics. She was recognized by Associated Press in 1957 as the Woman of the Year in Education and she served on the national board of the NAACP in periodically through 1970.
Credit: Institute on Race and Ethnicity
1791: Anna Claypoole Peale, US painter, specializing in portrait miniatures and still lifes, born.
1882: Sarah Wambaugh, US political scientist who became recognised as the world’s leading authority on plebiscites, born.
1924: Sarah Caldwell, founder, conductor, & artistic director of the Opera Company of Boston, born.
1937: Valentina Tereshkova, Soviet cosmonaut, 1st woman to fly in space & 1st civilian to fly in space, born.
1980: Marguerite Yourcenar becomes the 1st woman elected to Academie Francoise, the pre-eminent French on French language.
As part of RWHP’s US Women’s History Month mission, we’ll be featuring a photo and profile of an individual radical woman of history each day of the month.
Acclaimed novelist, poet, and essayist Leslie Marmon Silko is known for her lyric treatment of Native American subjects. Born in 1948 to the photographer Lee Marmon and his wife Mary Virginia Leslie, Marmon Silko is of Laguna Pueblo, Mexican and Anglo-American heritage. Her mixed ancestry has influenced her work in myriad ways. Growing up on the edge of the Laguna Pueblo reservation, Marmon Silko’s earliest experiences were positioned between cultures. Remarking in an interview with Alan Velie “I am of mixed-breed ancestry, but what I know is Laguna,” Marmon Silko has deepened her affiliation to her tribe through her books, which draw on Laguna myths and story-telling traditions. In 1974 she published a volume of poetry called Laguna Woman. Marmon Silko has also acknowledged the influence of her own family’s storytelling on her method and vision.Her works primarily focus on the alienation of Native Americans in a white society and on the importance of native traditions and community in helping them cope with modern life. She has been noted as a major contributor to the Native American literary and artistic renaissance, which began in the late 1960s.
