WOW2 - March's Women Trailblazers and Events in OUR History

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WOW2 is a monthly sister blog to This Week in the War on Women. Here, we learn about and honor women of achievement, including many who’ve been ignored or marginalized in most of the history books, and also mark moments in women’s history. 

This Week in the War on Women will post just a little later, so be sure to go there next and catch up on the latest dispatches from the frontlines — www.dailykos.com/...

March is National Women’s History Month in the United States!

This recognition of the contributions of women to American history began in California with a modest proposal by the Education Task Force of the Sonoma County Commission on the Status of Women.  In 1978, they initiated a “Women’s History Week” celebration. The week of March 8th, International Women’s Day, was chosen. Local activities met with enthusiastic response, and dozens of schools planned special programs. Over one-hundred community women participated by doing special presentations in classrooms throughout the county and the first annual “Real Woman” Essay Contest drew hundreds of entries. The finale for this Women’s History Week was a celebratory parade and program held in the center of downtown Santa Rosa, California.

In 1979, Molly Murphy MacGregor, one of the Sonoma organizers, spoke of their success at the Women’s History Institute at Sarah Lawrence College, chaired by noted historian Gerda Lerner, who had invited national leaders of organizations for women and girls to a conference. When the participants learned about the impact of the Sonoma County’s Women’s History Week celebration, they decided to start similar celebrations within their own organizations, communities, and school districts. They also agreed to support an effort to secure a “National Women’s History Week.”

In February 1980, President Carter issued the first Presidential Proclamation declaring the Week of March 8^th, 1980, as National Women’s History Week. That year, then-Representative Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), and Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), co-sponsored a Congressional Resolution for National Women’s History Week 1981.

This co-sponsorship demonstrated broad political support for honoring the achievements of American women. It also shows how much has changed in Congress in the past 35 years – it’s really hard to imagine bi-partisan support for almost any “women’s issue” these days. 

But lobbying efforts had to be renewed each year, spearheaded by the National Women’s History Project. A permanent designation was needed.

By 1986, 14 states had already declared March as Women’s History Month. This growing state-by-state action added weight when Congress was lobbied to declare the entire month of March 1987 as National Women’s History Month. That year Congress did declare March as National Women’s History Month in perpetuity. A special Presidential Proclamation is issued every year which honors the extraordinary achievements of American women.

March Women Trailblazers and Events in OUR History

• March 1,1864 - Rebecca Leeborn born, first black woman to get a medical degree

• March 1, 1945 –Nancy Woodhull born, editor of USA Today (1975-90), advocated for women in public and private sector leadership positions: “Do something to help another woman every day,” founded “Women, Men and Media,” a research/outreach project with Betty Friedan (1988) 

• March 1, 1978 – Women’s History Week is first observed in Sonoma County, California

• March 1, 1987 – Congress passes a resolution designating March as Women’s History Month

• March 2, 1860 –Susanna M. Salter born, mayor of Argonia, Kansas, first woman elected to political office in the United States 

• March 2, 1887 –Elizabeth Morrissey  born, public school and college educator, concentrated on labor issues including unemployment insurance in American Trade Unions, pressed women’s groups to get involved in social issues

• March 2, 1903 – NYC’s Martha Washington Hotel opens, 1st hotel exclusively for women. 

• March 3, 1893 – Hanya Holm born in Germany, modern dance pioneer, migrated to U.S.in 1931, taught dancing in many states, choreographed ballets, including “Metropolitan Daily” (1938), the 1st ballet televised in the U.S., also choreographed for theatre, movies and opera.

• March 3, 1902 –Isabel Bishop born, artist, after sampling various styles settled on young, generally lower-middle class office workers as subjects, focus of retrospective at Whitney Museum of American Art (1975), honored with Outstanding Achievement in the Arts Award by President Carter (1979)

• March 3, 1913 – The suffrage parade in Washington, D.C. draws thousands of people, organized by a committee headed by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns. The parade was led by Inez Milholland on a white horse.

• March 3, 1943 –Myra Sadker born, studied and researched sex roles in children’s literature, wrote texts to challenge sexism in education of girls because it short-changed their ambitions, co-authored “Sexism in School and Society” (1973)

• March 3, 1962 – Jackie Joyner-Kersee born, one of the world’s greatest female athletes, records in the long jump (1988) and the heptathlon (1986), won 3 gold, 1 silver, and 2 bronze medals in 4 Olympic games

• March 4, 1899 –Elizabeth Wood born, taught English at Vassar (1922-26), became involved in social welfare in FDR’s Public Works Administration where her 1934 plans to create housing that included play areas and racial diversity were undercut when residents were not involved in planning.

• March 4, 1917 – Jeannette Rankin (R-MT) took her seat as the first female member of Congress

• March 4, 1933 –Frances Perkins becomes Secretary of Labor, the first female member of the United States Cabinet.

• March 4, 1934 - Jane van Lawick-Goodall born, ethologist, chimp expert, won the 1974 Walker Prize

• March 5, 1885 –Louise Pearce born, one of the foremost pathologists of the early 20th century, found a cure for trypanosomiasis in 1919, researched African sleeping sickness, awarded the Order of the Crown of Belgium

• March 5, 1922 –“Annie Oakley”(Phoebe Ann Moses) breaks all existing records for women’s trap shooting, hitting 98 out of 100 targets.

• March 5, 1931 – Geraldyn (Jerrie) Cobb born, record-setting aviator, 1st woman to pass qualifying exams for astronaut training (1959) but not allowed to train because of her gender

• March 6, 1863 –Carrie Belle Kearney born, teacher, author, suffragist and temperance reformer, first woman elected to the Mississippi State Senate

• March 6,1882 –Sarah Wambaugh born, American political scientist, one of the world’s leading authorities on plebiscites, adviser to various commissions including the U.N. Plebiscite Commission to Jammu and Kashmir

• March 6, 1886 – First nursing journal, The Nightingale, is published, edited by Sarah Post M.D.

• March 6, 1924 –Sarah Caldwell born, founder-conductor-artistic director of the Opera Company of Boston

• March 6, 1953 –Carolyn Porco born, planetary scientist who did imaging work on the Voyager missions to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, Director of the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for OPerationS (CICLOPS)

• March 7, 1938 – Janet Guthrie born, pioneering woman auto racer, first woman to compete in Indianapolis 500 and Daytona 500, both in 1977

• March 7, 1940 –Hannah Wilke born, artist, focused on works that celebrated female sexual pleasures, and documented ravages of treatment of an aggressive illness while dying of cancer

• March 8, 1894 –Dorothy Ainsworth born, believed that sports are healthy and they develop the values, skills, and character required in a democratic society, chaired U.S. Joint Council on International Affairs in Health, Physical Education and Recreation (1950-57)

• March 8, 1915 –Selma Fraiberg born, pursued groundbreaking studies of infant psychiatry and normal child development, directed the Child Development Project at Wayne State University (1952-58), wrote “The Magic Years” (1959), a classic translated into 10 languages

•  March 8 – International Women’s Day, whose origins trace back to labor protests in the U.S. and Europe to honor and fight for the political rights for working women

• March 8, 2014 –National Catholic Sisters Week established to raise awareness of the contributions of Catholic sisters

• March 9, 1910 –Sue Lee born, labor organizer in San Francisco, led 15-week strike against National Dollar Stores garment factory for better wages and working conditions. Her story featured in Unbound Voices: A Documentary History of Chinese Women in San Francisco.

• March 9, 1928 – Graciela Olivarez born, Chicana activist, 1st woman and 1st Latina graduate from Notre Dame Law School, one of the first two women on the board of Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) — the Graciela Olivarez Award is presented annually by the Notre Dame Hispanic Law Students Association. 

• March 10, 1903 –Clare Booth Luce born, playwright and politician, wrote “The Women” (1936), a scathing portrayal of rich society women, member of Congress (R-CT) (1942-46), criticized international aid and opposed Communism, ambassador to Italy (1953-56), highest diplomatic post held by a woman to that time

• March 11, 1903 –Dorothy Schiff born, first female newspaper publisher in New York (tabloid New York Post), supported FDR, credited with Nelson Rockefeller’s victory as New York Governor, sold the Post for estimated $30 million to the infamous Rupert Murdock in 1976 

• March 11, 1904 – Hilde Bruch born, escaped from Nazi Germany in 1933 to England and then America, pioneer and leading expert in eating disorders, especially anorexia nervosa

• March 11, 1921 –Charlotte Friend born, microbiologist, in 1950s at Sloan-Kettering Institute discovered a link between defective maturation and tumor growth in mice, discoveries that were critical in establishing the role of viruses in some cancers

• March 11, 1993 –Janet Reno confirmed as 1st woman U.S. Attorney General – sworn in on March 12

• March 12, 1903 –Der Wald, a one-act opera written by Dame Ethel Smyth, was performed at the Metropolitan Opera, the only opera by a woman to be performed there. 

• March 12, 1912 – Juliette Gordon Low assembled 18 girls together in Savannah, Georgia, for the first-ever Girl Scout meeting

• March 12, 1918 –Elaine DeKooning born, artist and art critic, her portraits and other art work have gained acclaim after being overshadowed by her husband William

• March 13, 1892 –Janet Flanner born, journalist, wrote a weekly letter for the New Yorker from France under the name “Genet” (Frenchified “Janet”) for 50 years except during the Nazi occupation, was made a knight of the Legion d’Honneur (1948)

• March 13, 1898 – La Meri born, one of the world’s greatest ethnological dancers from 1924 to the 1970s, danced with Anna Pavlova, learned native dances all over the world, lectured, wrote, founded the Ethnologic Dance Theater

• March 13, 1944 –Susan Gerbi born, biochemist, helped devise a method to map the start site of DNA replication, researched the role of hormones in certain cancers

• March 13, 1986 –Susan Butcher won 1st of 3 straight and 4 total Alaskan Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Races

• March 14, 1833 –Lucy Hobbs Taylor born, dentist and women’s rights advocate, first American woman to graduate from dental school

• March 14, 1851 –Anna Caroline Maxwell born, American nurse, served as superintendent for several nursing schools, was involved in nursing in both the Spanish-American War and WWI, awarded the Medaille de l’Hygiene Publique by the French government for her work in WWI, one of the first women buried at Arlington National Cemetery

• March 14, 1887 –Sylvia Beach born, American-born French bookstore owner, founded Shakespeare and Company, first publisher of James Joyce’s Ulysses – www.dailykos.com/…

• March 14, 1902 –Margaret Hickey born, president of National Federation of Business and Professional Women (1944-46), represented the BPW at UN Conference in San Francisco (1945), chaired the Women’s Advisory Committee (1942) and served on and/or chaired many government groups, but never had policy-making opportunity

• March 14, 1921 –Ada Louise Huxtable, author, architecture critic, won 1st Pulitzer Prize for Criticism 

• March 14, 1923 –Diane Arbus born, photographer, known for spare, black-and-white photographs of people who were considered marginal by society, but also did fashion work early in her career and many assignments for various publications

• March 15, 1896 –Marion Cuthbert born, helped found the National Association of College Women to fight discrimination in higher education (1932),wrote pathbreaking dissertation, “Education and Marginality: A Study of the Negro Woman College Graduate” (1942), secretary of the National Board of YWCA and member of NAACP and numerous peace and human rights boards

• March 15, 1933 – Ruth Bader Ginsburg born, staunch courtroom advocate for the fair treatment of women, co-founder Women’s Rights Law Reporter, 1st law journal in U.S. to focus exclusively on women's rights (1970), taught at Columbia Law School (1972-1980), became Columbia’s 1st female tenured professor, worked with the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project on cases involving discriminatory labor laws, appointed 2nd female U.S. Supreme Court Justice (1993)

• March 16,1750 –Caroline Herschel born, German-English astronomer, discoverer of several comets, 1st woman to be paid for her contribution to science, 1st to be awarded a Royal Astronomical Society Gold Medal (1828), and one of the two first women to be named Royal Astronomical Society Honorary Members (1835, with Mary Somerville) 

• March 16, 1822 –Rosa Bonheur born, French painter and sculptor, the most  famous and successful woman artist of her day. Women were often only reluctantly educated as artists, so her success helped to open doors for women artists that followed her.

• March 16, 1900 –Eveline Burns born, economist, technical expert, migrated from England in 1926, helped design social security, served on National Resources Planning Board (1939-43), wrote “The American Social Security System” (1949), the standard text in this field

• March 16, 1943 –Ursula Goodenough born, educator and author, professor of Biology, known for Religious Naturalism and the book Sacred Depths of Nature

• March 17, 1896 –Helen Lynd born, sociologist, studied life in Muncie, Indiana, for 18 months (1924-25) with husband Robert, their book “Middletown” was a best seller tracing decline of community spirit as the town faced industrial growth. She taught at Sarah Lawrence College for almost 40 years

• March 17, 1902 –Alice Greenough born, carried mail at age 15, joined a Wild West show, became a professional rodeo rider in 1921 and earned about $12,000 yearly, toured Australia and Spain as well as the U.S.

• March 17, 1910 – Camp Fire Girls is established as the first interracial, non-sectarian American organization for girls, founded primarily by Luther Gulick and Charlotte Vetter Gulick, and Charlotte Alien Farnsworth

• March 17, 1969 –Golda Meir, whose father moved their family to Milwaukee from the Ukraine when she was 8 years old, becomes the first female Prime Minister of Israel.

• March 18, 1891 –Margaret Culkin Banning born, author and women’s rights advocate 

• March 18, 1922 – The first Bat Mitzvah is held in the United States for Judith Kaplan, daughter of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan.

• March 18, 1964 – Bonnie Blair born, speed skater, one of the most successful Winter Olympians in U.S. history, 5 time gold medalist

• March 19, 1859 –Ellen Gates Starr born, American social reformer, co-founded Hull House with Jane Addams

• March 19, 1881 –Edith Nourse Rogers born, American politician, 1st woman elected to the United States Congress from Massachusetts. In her 35 years in the House of Representatives, advocated for veterans, sponsoring the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944 (AKA the G.I. Bill), the 1942 bill that created the Women’s Army Auxiliary (WAAC), and the 1943 bill that created the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) 

• March 19, 1954 –Jill Abramson born, author, journalist, 1st woman to be executive editor of the New York Times

• March 20, 1852 – Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” is published and becomes the best-selling book of the 19th century

• March 20, 1920 –Pamela Harriman born, devoted herself to Democratic Party politics and fund raising after death of husband Averell, first woman to be named U.S. Ambassador to France (1993) 

• March 21, 1866 – Antonia Maury born, astronomer, one of the “Harvard computers,” a group of skilled women workers who processed astronomical data.  Maury developed a catalog of stellar spectra, and published a spectroscopic analysis of the binary star Beta Lyrae (1933)

• March 21, 1897 –Martha Foley born, created magazine “Story” in 1932 with her husband Whit Burnett, edited an annual, “The Best American Short Stories” (1941-77), which included entries by Eudora Welty, Joyce Carol Oates, John Updike and many other well-known writers

• March 21, 1905 –Phyllis McGinley born, author and poet, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1961

• March 21,1943 – Cornelia Fort born, pilot in the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron,  becomes first American female pilot to die during active duty

• March 21, 1986 – Debi Thomas becomes 1st African American woman winner of the World Figure Skating Championship

• March 22, 1638 –Anne Hutchinson is expelled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for her religious beliefs.

• March 22, 1883 –Jessie Sampter born, American educator, poet and activist, leading educator for Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America, concerned with pacifism, Zionism, social justice and assisting Yemenite Jews, especially women and girls

• March 22, 1899–Ruth Page born, began ballet in 1919, first American to be accepted into the Ballets Russes, first masterpiece as choreographer was “Frankie and Johnny” (1938), combined opera and ballet in a school for young dancers

• March 22, 1972 –Equal Rights Amendment passes a United States Senate vote and is sent to the states for ratification.

•  March 23, 1857 – Fannie Farmer born, author of famous cookbook, “The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook,” which for the first time included specific ingredient measurements that would become standardized cooking practice

• March 23, 1882 –Emmy Noether born, German-Jewish mathematician, made landmark contributions to abstract algebra and theoretical physics. Noether’s Theorem explains connection between symmetry and conservation laws. Completed her dissertation in 1907, but women were excluded from academic positions, so she worked for 7 years without pay at the Mathematical Institute of Erlangen. In 1915, David Hilbert invited her to join the University of Göttingen world-renowned mathematics department, but the philosophical faculty objected, and she spent 4 years lecturing under Hilbert's name. Her habilitation was finally approved in 1919, then the rank of Privatdozent. In 1933, when Nazi government dismissed Jews from university positions, she moved to the U.S. to take a position at Bryn Mawr College, funded by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. She also lectured at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, but said she said she was not welcomed at the "men's university, where nothing female is admitted."

• March 23, 1897 –Margaret Farrar born, joined the New York World newspaper in 1921 with responsibility to get the crossword puzzle mistake-free, also edited Simon & Schuster puzzle books for 60 years, became crossword editor for the New York Times in February 1942

• March 23, 1905 – Joan Crawford born, legendary film star, from 1928’s “Our Dancing Daughters,” to “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” in 1962. She was Pepsi-Cola’s spokesperson and 1st woman appointed to Pepsi-Cola’s board of directors (1959-73), when her husband, board chair Alfred Steele, died.

• March 23, 1908 – Dominique De Menil born, collector of modern art, medieval art and tribal artifacts, escaped Paris with her children and settled in Houston around 1942, strong supporter of civil rights, created Carter-Menil Human Rights Foundation with former President Jimmy Carter

• March 23, 1917 – Virginia Woolf establishes the Hogarth Press with her husband, Leonard Woolf — early publisher of translations of Freud and Russian authors like Dostoyevsky.

• March 23, 1924 – Bette Nesmith Graham born, invented Liquid Paper correction fluid which became an office staple, created two foundations to support women’s businesses and art

• March 24, 1826 – Matilda Joslyn Gage born, suffragist, women’s rights and Native American rights activist, historian, founding member of the National Woman Suffrage Association

• March 24, 1897 –Linda Chase born, principal dancer, danced in American Ballet Theatre roles of Sleeping Beauty and Giselle (1937-38), performed with Anthony Tutor and Agnes De Mille, joined Ballet Theater in 1940 which became the American Ballet Theatre

• March 24, 1912 – Dorothy Height born, served over 40 years as President of the National Council of Negro Women, honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1994) and the Congressional Gold Medal (2004).

• March 25, 1911 – The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City kills 146 garment workers, 123 women and girls. Frances Perkins, who would become the 1st woman appointed to the U.S. Cabinet as Secretary of Labor, was a witness: “People had just begun to jump as we got there. They had been holding on until that time, standing in the windowsills, being crowded by other behind them, the fire pressing closer and closer, the smoke closer and closer. They began to jump. The window was too crowded and they would jump and they hit the sidewalk. Every one of them was killed, everybody who jumped was killed.” Already an advocate for women’s rights and ending child labor, Perkins dedicated herself from that day forward to the enacting of expanded factory investigations, reducing the work week for women to 48 hours and championed minimum wage and unemployment insurance laws. She worked tirelessly to put an end to child labor and to provide safety for women workers.  

• March 25, 1934 – Gloria Steinem born, women’s rights activist and journalist, founding editor of Ms. Magazine, helped found National Women’s Political Caucus, the Women’s Action Alliance, and the Coalition of Labor Union Women

• March 25, 1939 –Toni Cade Bambara born, challenged masculinist assumptions in black radical discourse of the Sixties, wrote short fiction “Gorilla, My Love” (1972) which won the Black Rose Award, and “The Salt Eaters” (1981) winner of the Langston Hughes Society Award

•  March 26, 1926 –Virginia (Toni) Carabillo born, women’s issues activist, National Organization for Women (1968-87), co-authored the “Feminist Chronicles 1953-1993”

• March 26, 1930 – Sandra Day O’Connor born, first woman U.S. Supreme Court Justice (1981)

• March 26, 1940 –Nancy Pelosi born, first woman Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives (2007-09), Democratic California representative from 1987 to present

• March 27, 1897 –Effa Manley born, co-owner and manager with husband Abe of the Negro League baseball team the Brooklyn Eagles (1935-46), supported integration working with the NAACP, worked hard to get Negro League players included in the Baseball Hall of Fame

• March 27, 1922 –Margaret (Meg) Stacey, sociologist, pioneer in study of gendered social divisions, University of Warwick Women’s Studies Department Chair, won Fawcett Prize as co-author of Women, Power And Politics (1981), active in Women in Black, a peace workers' movement.

• March 27, 1924 – Sarah Vaughan born, world renowned jazz singer and pianist known as the “Divine One”

• March 28, 1873 – Anne Douglas Sedgwick born in America, British author, New York Times best-selling author; two of her novels were made into films, Tante and The Little French Girl

• March 28, 1886 –Clara Lemlich born, labor organizer, leader of the Uprising of 20,000, the strike of shirtwaist workers in New York’s garment industry in 1909

• March 29, 1885 –Frances Bolton born, created endowment to build a school of nursing at Western Reserve in 1933 after working with the Visiting Nurse Association and seeing the homes of the desperately poor, helped remove color lines in nursing, as Ohio Congresswoman worked for racial equality and equal pay, but not the ERA

• March 29, 1918 –Pearl Bailey born, jazz and blues singer, sang with Cab Calloway (1945), starred in movies, goodwill ambassador for United Nations (1979)

• March 29, 1928–Joan Kelly born, set up a Master of Arts Program in Women’s History at Sarah Lawrence with Gerda Lerner, advanced feminist scholarship by calling for a “doubled vision” to resolve conflicts inherent in the desire for female inclusion under male dominance

• March 30, 1820 –Anna Sewell born, English author, known for her novel Black Beauty

• March 30,1863 –Mary Calkins born, philosopher and psychologist, first woman president of the American Psychological Association

• March 30, 1864 –Helen Abbot Merrill born, mathematician, professor and textbook author, earned Ph.D. from Yale in 1903 with a thesis "On Solutions of Differential Equations which possess an Oscillation Theorem" – Wellesley Mathematics Department professor/chair (1915-32), executive council and then VP of Mathematical Association of America

• March 30, 1882 –Melanie Klein born in Austria, British psychoanalyst, devised new techniques for working with children

• March 30, 1902 –Brooke Astor born, American author and philanthropist

• March 30, 1940 –Astrud Gilberto born, Brazilian singer-songwriter, samba and bossa nova, the song “The Girl from Ipanema”, inducted into International Latin Music Hall of Fame in 2002

• March 31, 1776 – Abigail Adams writes to her husband John who is helping to frame the Declaration of Independence and cautions: “...remember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.”  

• March 31, 1888 – National Council of Women of the U.S. is organized by Susan B. Anthony, Clara Barton, Julia Ward Howe, and Sojourner Truth, among others, the oldest non-sectarian women’s organization in the U.S.

• March 31, 1889 – Muriel Hazel Wright born, Choctaw Indian, teacher, historian, author, editor of The Chronicles of Oklahoma, quarterly journal of the Oklahoma Historical Society  (1955-73), co-authored 4-volume history of Oklahoma, textbooks of Oklahoma history, and A Guide to the Indian Tribes of Oklahoma (1951).

• March 31, 1950 –Alison McCartney born, pathologist. When she was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer, she worked to establish the 1st support groups in Britain for women cancer patients - profiled in a television documentary 'Alive and Kicking'.

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