Welcome to WOW2!
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 has posted, so be sure to go there next and catch up on the latest dispatches from the frontlines: www.dailykos.com/...
If ever we needed inspiration, it’s now. Every day, some Republican in Washington DC or in a state legislature brings out another new bill to roll back the rights
women have been fighting for since colonial times.
And there is a lot of inspiration here. Women and events that show us the struggles in the past were often harder than what we face now, and yet, some women persisted, and their causes prevailed, even though sometimes the torch had to be passed to the next generation before things changed.
These words keep resounding in my ears:
In order to prevail, we must band together, taking Susan B. Anthony’s absolute conviction into our hearts and heads with unwavering resolve.
Not only do we owe it to ourselves, we owe it to these women who brought us this far at such cost.
APRIL’S Women Trailblazers and Events in OUR History
- April 1, 1776 – Marie-Sophie Germain born, French mathematician, physicist, and philosopher. Despite opposition from her parents and society, she taught herself from books in her father's library, and corresponded with famous mathematicians, such as Lagrange, Legendre and Gauss. A pioneer of elasticity theory, she won the grand prize from the Paris Academy of Sciences for her essay on the subject. Her work on Fermat’s Last Theorem was a foundation for mathematicians exploring the subject for hundreds of years after. She was excluded from a career in mathematics because she was a woman, but worked independently throughout her life. The Academy of Sciences established The Sophie Germain Prize in her honor.
- April 1, 1792 – Dutch-born French feminist Etta Palm proposes a comprehensive divorce bill that allows for wife-initiated divorce; this bill relates to her concerns about wife beating, as she sees the lesser physical strength of women requiring laws that protect them against their stronger fathers and husbands
- April 1, 1866 – Sophonisba Breckenridge born, American lawyer, educator, social scientist and social reformer — first woman admitted to the Kentucky bar, first woman to graduate from the University of Chicago law school, and first woman admitted to the Order of the Coif, an honor society for U.S. law school graduates
- April 1, 1877 – Aurelia Henry Reinhardt born, American educator and activist, first woman moderator of the American Unitarian Association, president of Mills College, president of the American Association of University Women
- April 1, 1884 – Florence A. Blanchfield born, U.S. Army Colonel, superintendent of the Army Nursing Corps, first woman commissioned in the regular army, recipient of the Distinguished Service Medal and the Florence Nightingale Medal from International Red Cross
- April 1, 1895 – Alberta Hunter born, blues and cabaret singer (1911-79), made recordings from 1921 into the 1980s, also starred in “Showboat” with Paul Robeson in London; made stunning musical comeback on TV, sang for President Carter
- April 1, 1911 – Augusta Baker born, African-American librarian and storyteller, founded in 1939 the NY Public Library’s collection of non-stereotyped black children’s books and a bibliography that more accurately portrayed African-American history and culture. In 1961, promoted to Coordinator of Children’s services, the first African-American in an administrative position in the NY public library system.
- April 1, 1926 – Anne McCaffrey, American-born Irish science fiction and fantasy author, first woman to win Hugo and Nebula Awards, Grand Master of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, inductee to Science Fiction Hall of Fame
- April 1, 1940 – Wangari Muta Maathai born, Kenyan political and environmental activist, founder of the Green Belt Movement, giving education and a monetary token to rural Kenyan women for planting trees, recipient of 2004 Nobel Peace Prize
- April 2, 1647 – Maria Sibylla Merian born in Germany, naturalist and scientific illustrator who spent years in Amsterdam, and traveled to Surinam in South America to study its flora and fauna; major work, Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium (1705)
- April 2, 1731 – Catharine Macaulay born, English historian and radical political writer; The History of England from the Accession of James I to the Revolution
- April 2, 1863 – The Richmond Bread Riots: Civil War food shortages in Richmond VA cause hundreds of angry women to march to the governor’s office, and then on to the government commissary, where they break in, taking everything they can carry; shops and even a hospital are also looted; a few arrests are made, but authorities pressure newspapers to downplay the story; official records are destroyed in 1865 when the Confederate government flees, leaving much of Richmond burning in their wake
- April 2, 1915 – Soia Mentschikoff born, attorney, worked on Uniform Commercial Code (1941), one of the 1st women partners in a large Wall Street law firm (1945), 1stwoman to teach at Harvard Law School (1947), three years before Harvard accepted female law students. University of Chicago Law School professor (1951), candidate for Supreme Court, Fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1972)
- April 2, 1917 – Jeannette Rankin (R-Montana) begins the first day of her term as the first woman member of U.S. House of Representatives, on the same day that President Woodrow Wilson asks Congress to declare war on Germany; an avowed pacifist, Rankin will be one of the few to vote against declaring war, which costs her re-election — when she is elected again, just in time for WWII, she casts the sole vote against America declaring war on Japan
- April 2, 1931 – 17-year-old Jackie Mitchell, 2nd woman to play baseball in all-male minor leagues, pitches an exhibition game against N.Y. Yankees and strikes out both Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. The next day, the Baseball Commissioner voided her contract, claiming baseball was too strenuous for women. The ban was not overturned until 1992
- April 3, 1991 – Rita Johnston becomes the first female Premier of a Canadian province, British Columbia, when she succeeds William Vander Zalm after his resignation
- April 3, 1817 – Mathilde Franziska Anneke born in Germany, feminist, journalist and newspaper publisher; after emmigrating to U.S., became an abolitionist, started another feminist newspaper, opened a school for girls
- April 3, 1870 – Sara Agnes McLaughlin Conboy born, factory worker and labor organizer, 1st woman US delegate to British Trades Union Congress, a co-organizer of United Textile Workers of America
- April 3, 1898– Katherine Esau born, botanist, emigrated from Germany in 1918, settled in California in 1922, studied viruses in celery, pears and carrots with use of electron microscope until 1991, wrote classic 735-page “Plant Anatomy” (1953)
- April 3, 1899 – Katherine Ordway born, wealthy entrepreneur of St. Paul, Minnesota, established the Goodhill Foundation at age 65, which funneled grants through the Nature Conservancy to save natural land in Minnesota, Kansas, and South Dakota, bequeathed more than $65 million
- April 3, 1934 – Jane Goodall, British primatologist, anthropologist and ethologist, known for her 45-year study on chimpanzees in Tanzania, founder of Jane Goodall Institute
- April 3, 1946 — Hanna Suchocka born, Polish lawyer, politician and diplomat; Polish Ambassador to Malta and the Holy See; first woman Prime Minister of Poland
- April 3, 1979 – Jane Byrne became the 1st woman mayor of Chicago.
- April 4, 1785 – Bettina von Arnim born, German author, illustrator, and composer
- April 4, 1802 – Dorothea Dix born, activist for women’s education, better conditions in jails but best remembered for her successful campaign state-by-state for legislative reform and funding for the treatment and housing of the mentally ill. She was also an advocate for women in nursing who became Superintendent of Nurses for Union military hospitals during the American Civil War, the 1st woman appointed to such a high-level federal position
- April 4, 1868 – Philippa Fawcett born, English mathematician and educator; first woman to make the top score on the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos exams, 13% higher than the second-place man, but she didn’t receive the title of senior wrangler, as only men were then ranked. Women are listed separately without titles, having only been allowed to take the Tripos since 1881, when Charlotte Angas Scott was unofficially ranked eighth. On the 1890 women’s list, Fawcett is described as “above the senior wrangler”
- April 4, 1869 – Mary Colter born, American interior designer and architect, known for the Desert View Watchtower at the Grand Canyon National Park and Hermit’s Rest
- April 4, 1872 – Mary Coffin Ware Dennett born, pacifist, advocate for women’s rights suffrage, birth control, and sex education. Published Birth Control Laws, which reviewed the laws and argued for free dissemination of information. Her essay on sex as a natural and joyful part of life, published originally in Medical Review of Reviews (1918), then widely distributed as a pamphlet, was banned from the mails as obscene in 1922. Dennett was indicted in 1928 for continuing to answer requests for the pamphlet through the mail. Her conviction in 1929 roused a national storm of protest. With the aid of the ACLU, she won a reversal of her conviction in federal Court of Appeals in 1930. She published an account of the case in Who’s Obscene? Also published The Sex Education of Children (1931)
- April 4, 1887 – Susanna Madora Salter elected as mayor of Argonia, Kansas, becoming the 1st woman elected as mayor and the 1st woman elected to any U.S. political office
- April 4, 1914 – Marguerite Duras born, French novelist, screenwriter, playwright and director
- April 4, 1928 – Maya Angelou born, author, poet, civil rights activist, actress, read poem she composed at President Clinton’s inauguration
- April 5, 1825 – Mary Jane Hawes Holmes born, American author of novels and short stories, sold 2 million books in her lifetime, second only to Harriet Beecher Stowe; Tempest and Sunshine; Rose Mather, a Tale of War; Darkness and Daylight
- April 5, 1873 – Nellie Neilson born, American historian, first woman elected a fellow of the Medieval Academy of America (1926), first woman to serve as president of the American Historical Association
- April 5, 1901 – Hattie Alexander born, pediatrician and microbiologist, identified and studied antibiotic resistance caused by random genetic mutations in DNA, first woman elected president of the American Pediatric Society (1964)
- April 5, 1908 – Bette Davis born, legendary film star, won Academy Awards for “Dangerous” (1935) and “Jezebel” (1938), 1st female president of Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, co-founder of the WWII Hollywood Canteen club for servicemen. She once sold two million dollars worth of war bonds in two days, and performed for black regiments as the only white member of an acting troupe formed by Hattie McDaniel, which included Lena Horne and Ethel Waters
- April 5, 1911 – 100,000 to 500,000 people march in New York City to attend the funeral of seven unidentified victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire in late March
- April 5, 1938 – Lourdes Casal born, poet and critic, born in Cuba, American citizen in 1962, organizer and activist, earned a Ph.D. for social work (1975), tried to build bridges for Cubans and other Americans
- April 5, 1949 – Judith Resnik born, engineer, astronaut, 1 of 6 qualified women mission specialists in 1984, 2nd American woman in space, killed in Challenger explosion
- April 5, 2000 – National Day of Hope * is designated by U.S. Congress, started by Childhelp.org co-founders Yvonne Fedderson and Sara O’Meara to end child abuse and neglect
- April 6, 1867 – Kate Campbell Hurd-Mead born in Canada, obstetrician, co-founder of Middlesex County Hospital in Connecticut, president of American Medical Women’s Association, author of A History of Women in Medicine: From the Earliest of Times to the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century
- April 6, 1878 – Abastenia St. Leger Eberle born, American sculptor, best known for her controversial piece The White Slave which represented child prostitution
- April 6, 1882 – Rose Schneiderman born in what is now Poland, Jewish labor union organizer, feminist and suffragist, her statement: “The woman worker needs bread, but she needs roses too” inspired the poem and song “Bread and Roses,” member Women’s Trade Union League, participant in Uprising of 20,000
- April 7, 1805 – Sacagawea begins helping the Lewis and Clark Expedition as an interpreter
- April 7, 1890 – Marjory Douglas born, journalist, suffragist, women’s rights advocate, environmentalist, championed culture of first Americans, author of The Everglades: River of Grass (1947), created “Friends of the Everglades” with a million acres established in 1978 as the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Wilderness Area
- April 7, 1891 – Martha Eliot born, pediatrician, researched and proved the beneficial effects of cod liver oil and sunbaths to prevent rickets while working with the Children’s Bureau, wrote provisions for dependent and crippled children in the 1935 Social Security Act, only woman to sign the constitution of the new World Health Organization in 1947
- April 7, 1915 – Billie Holiday born, jazz singer, began career in Harlem (1931), toured with Count Basie and Artie Shaw, use of heroin and opium led to ten months in Alderson Prison, hailed as “Lady Day,” called the most influential female jazz singer in America
- April 7, 1944 – Julia Miller Phillips born, film producer, 1st woman to win an Academy Award for Best Picture for “The Sting” (1973) as a producer, also produced “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “Taxi Driver”
- April 7, 1987 – Opening of the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., the 1st museum devoted to women artists
- April 8, 1827 — Barbara Bodichon born, British artist, and women’s rights activist, helped found the English Women’s Journal, co-founder of Girton College for women
- April 8, 1865 – Albion Fellows Bacon born, author and social reformer, After years of organizing charitable efforts to improve conditions for the poor, drafted a model state law in 1908. She directed the campaign for the bill, which was passed by the Indiana legislature in 1909, but amendments weakened the bill's effectiveness, so she helped organize the Indiana Housing Association. Within 2 years the association successfully pushed through a bill of statewide application. In 1914, she published Beauty for Ashes, recording her campaign. Also played major role in passing law (1917) for condemning unsafe and unsanitary dwellings. Was head of Indiana Child Welfare Association executive committee, and on Indiana Commission on Child Welfare, advocating for child labor and school attendance laws and a juvenile probation system. Lobbied U.S.Congress for National Housing Standards bill
- April 8, 1892 – Mary Pickford born, most successful actress in silent films, won Academy Award for “Coquette” (1929), created United Artists production company with five others, and helped found the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
- April 8, 1905 – Helen Joseph born in Britain, South African author, social worker and activist, instrumental in the formation of the Federation of South African Women and in the march on August 9, 1956 to protest pass laws; in protesting apartheid, she was arrested and banned on several occasions
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April 8, 1943 – Dorie Cooper, aged seven, goes with her mother to hospital in Britain to visit her uncle, who had lost his right leg to a mine in the war, and is very depressed. Dorie, trying to cheer him up, asked, “Draw a bird for me, please.” Her uncle looked out the window, and saw a robin, and tried to draw it. When Dorie saw his picture, she laughed, telling him he wasn’t a very good artist, but she would hang up the picture in her room anyway. His spirits were lifted by the visit, and so were the spirits of the nearby wounded men who overheard Dorie. So every time she came to visit after that, they held contests to see who could draw the best bird pictures. Soon the ward’s walls were covered in bird drawings. Three years later, Dorie was killed when she was struck by a car. At her funeral, her coffin was filled with bird images made by soldiers, nurses and doctors from the ward she had visited so often. Draw a Bird Day is celebrated in Britain on Dorie’s birthday in memory of a little girl who found such a simple way to bring hope and cheer to wounded men
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April 8,1955 – Barbara Kingsolver born, American writer
- April 8, 2008 – Yi So-yeon becomes the first Korean in space aboard Soyuz TMA-12 with two Russian cosmonauts, carries out scientific experiments during the mission
- April 9, 1827 – Maria Susanna Cummins born, American author; The Lamplighter
- April 9, 1887 – Florence Price born, classical composer, 1st African-American woman recognized as a symphony composer. Her Symphony in E minor won a Wanamaker Foundation Award, and was performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (1933), the first time an American black woman composer’s work was performed by a major symphony orchestra
- April 9, 1923 – U.S. Supreme Court rules in Adkins v Children’s Hospital that the minimum wage law for women and children in the District of Columbia is unconstitutional
- April 9, 1936 – Valerie Solanas born, feminist provocateur, wrote ” SCUM Manifesto” seeking to eliminate all men except those who “do good,” shot artist Andy Warhol in 1968, revised the Manifesto after prison term
- April 9, 1939 – Marian Anderson sings an Easter Sunday concert for more than 75,000 at Lincoln Memorial. The Daughters of the American Revolution owned Constitution Hall, the only venue large enough to accommodate the audience who wanted to hear her sing, and they refused to waive their white-performers-only restriction, so she “sang for the nation,” in a public concert in front of the Lincoln Memorial that began with “My Country ‘Tis of Thee, Sweet Land of Liberty...” Eleanor Roosevelt was so outraged that she resigned from the DAR and told the story in her weekly column, My Day.
- April 9, 1948 – Jaya Bhaduri Bachchan born, Indian actress and politician, reelected to her seat in parliament in 2012
- April 9, 1989 – The March for Women’s Lives, a march initiated by the National Organization for Women, assembles over 500,000 women in the nation’s capital to protest anti-abortion law cases pending in the Supreme Court which threaten reversal of the landmark Roe v Wade decision that legalized abortion
- April 10,1864 – The first female surgeon of the Union Army, unpaid volunteer Dr. Mary Edwards Walker is captured by Confederate troops after crossing enemy lines to treat the wounded and arrested as a spy. She was working with a Confederate doctor performing an amputation at the time. Sent to the notorious Castle Thunder Prison for political prisoners and spies, the feminist and ardent adherent to rational dress for women, refused to wear the clothes provided as “more becoming of her sex” instead of her work clothes, made over from a man’s shirt and trousers (She often replied to criticism, “I don’t wear men’s clothes, I wear my own clothes.”) Walker was released in a prisoner exchange for a Confederate doctor in August, 1864. After the war, Walker was awarded a disability pension for partial muscular atrophy suffered while she was imprisoned by the enemy, and Generals William Tecumseh Sherman and George Henry Thomas recommended her for the Medal of Honor, which originally was not strictly a military honor. On November 11, 1865, President Andrew Johnson signed the bill awarding her the medal, the only woman ever to receive the Medal of Honor. It was stricken from the rolls in 1917, and she was ordered to surrender it, but she wore it until her death in 1919, and President Jimmy Carter restored her medal posthumously in 1977
- April 10, 1880 – Frances Perkins born, 1st woman cabinet member, Secretary of Labor (1933), key contributor to Social Security Act and Fair Labor Standards Act
- April 10, 1903 – Clare Boothe Luce born, American politician, U.S. Ambassador to Italy and Brazil; U.S. Congresswoman (R-CT 1943-47); 1983 Presidential Medal of Freedom
- April 10, 1910 – Margaret Clapp born, American author, scholar and educator, president of Wellesley College (1949-66), won Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1948 for Forgotten First Citizen: John Bigelow, served as U.S. cultural attaché to India (1968)
- April 10, 1926 – Johnnie Tillmon born, director of the National Welfare Rights Organization (1963-72), worked with Gloria Steinem and Aileen Hernandez on “Women, Welfare and Poverty” at the National Women’s Conference in Houston (1977)
- April 10, 1930 – Delores Huerta born, Chicana activist, labor organizer and civil rights activist, co-founder of the United Farm Workers union with César Chávez, recipient of many awards including the Eugene V. Debs Foundation outstanding American Award, Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights and the Presidential Medal of Freedom
- April 10, 1933 – Helen McElhone born, Scottish politician, Member of Parliament for Glasgow’s Queen’s Park; Vice-Chair of Finance Committee for Strathclyde Regional Council; on Scottish Labour Party Candidate Vetting Panel
- April 10, 1996 – President Clinton vetoed a bill that would have outlawed a technique used to end pregnancies in their late stages
- April 10, 2001 – Jane Swift sworn in as 1st female governor of Massachusetts
- April 11, 1864 – Lillie Plummer Bliss born, modern art collector and patron. She bequeathed 150 artworks from her collection as the foundation of the in-house collection of the NYC Museum of Modern Art, including works by Cézanne, Gauguin, Matisse, Picasso and Modigliani, and enough funds to maintain the museum’s collection during its critical first years.
- April 11, 1865 – Mary White Ovington born, suffragist, journalist, socialist and civil rights activist. The daughter of Unitarian abolitionists, she became involved in the campaign for civil rights in 1890 after hearing Frederick Douglass speak. Worked on problems of employment and housing in the NY black community through the Brooklyn Greenpoint Settlement and on the Greenwich House Committee on Social Investigations. She was one of the attendees at a meeting in NYC held in response to a race riot in Springfield, Illinois, which issued a call for a national conference on the civil and political rights of black Americans on the centennial of Lincoln's birthday, February 12, 1909, where the National Negro Committee was formed The committee, at its second conference in 1910, organized a permanent body known as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Ovington was appointed as its 1st executive secretary.
- April 11, 1881 – The Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary, which became Spelman College, is founded in Atlanta, Georgia, as an institute of higher education for African-American women. Received its collegiate charter in 1924
- April 11, 1908 – Jane Bolin born, lawyer and judge, 1st African-American woman to graduate from Yale Law School, 1st to join NYC Bar Association, 1st to join NYC Law Department, and 1st appointed as a judge (1939) in the U.S., on New York's Family Court for four decades
- April 11, 1910 – Annie Dodge Wauneka born, 1st woman elected to Navajo Tribal Council (1951-78), worked on tuberculosis epidemic, and on prevention of trachoma and influenza, campaigned for improved sanitary conditions, clean drinking water, against alcoholism, using both Navajo and Bureau of Indian Affairs ideas; demanded funding for child health programs. First Native American awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom (1963)
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April 11, 1916 – Annie Besant, British activist, Fabian Society member, establishes the Home Rule League in India, campaigning for democracy and British Empire dominion status
- 1996 (day changes each year) – The National Committee on Pay Equity launches National Equal Pay Day which is set on the day in the year when a woman’s pay would finally catch up with a man’s wages from the previous year – in other words, she has to work almost 15 ½ months to earn what he does in 12 months. For a woman of color, the gap is even wider; it will take her until August to earn what a man does
- April 12, 1883 – Imogen Cunningham born, photographer known for portraits, botanical photos, nudes and industrial landscapes. Worked at Mills College after studying in Germany, taught at California School of Fine Arts
- April 12, 1903 – Justine Polier born, daughter of rabbi Stephen Wise, 1st woman in New York Workmen’s Compensation Division, Domestic Relations Court Judge (1935-73), fought against inferior education for black students
- April 12, 1905 – Wanting her library to extend its services county-wide, librarian Mary Lemist Titcomb of the Washington County Free Library in Hagerstown MD first sends boxes of books to general stores and post offices in small towns to create tiny lending libraries, than adds a Library Wagon (the first U.S. ‘bookmobile’) driven by the library’s janitor, Joshua Thomas, to increase outreach in rural areas – celebrated annually on April’s 3rd Wednesday as National Bookmobile Day
- April 12, 1916 – Beverly Cleary born, author primarily of children’s books, recipient of National Book Award for Ramona and Her Mother and 1984 Newbery Medal for Dear Mr. Henshaw, honored as a Library of Congress "Living Legend" (2002)
- April 12, 1917– Marietta Tree, born as Mary Endicott Peabody, militant for civil rights. In 1941 became part of the American delegation assisting British Ministry of Information. A U.S. representative on United Nations Commission on Human Rights (1961-64). . Mother of historian Frances Fitzgerald and fashion model Penelope Tree. Served as a director on boards of PanAm and CBS. Had enduring love affairs with John Huston and Adlai Stevenson.
- April 12, 1927 – The British Parliament comes out in favor of women’s voting rights
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April 12, 2016 – Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality Monument Day – the NWP (National Woman’s Party), founded by Alice Paul, bought the Sewall House in 1929 as their Washington DC headquarters, renaming it ‘Alva Belmont House’ in honor of the NWP’s former president – on this day, U.S. President Barack Obama designates establishment of the house as the Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument, a unit of the National Park System
- April 13, 1854 – Lucy Craft Laney born, educator, founder and principal (for 5 decades) of Haines Normal and Industrial School, the first school in Augusta, Georgia, for black children
- April 13, 1886 – Ethel Leginska, British-born concert pianist, composer, conductor and educator. 1st woman to conduct some of the world’s leading orchestras. Among her compositions are a four-movement orchestral suite Quatre sujets barbaresis, inspired by Paul Gauguin paintings, and the operas The Rose and the Ring and Joan of Arc.
- April 13, 1892 – Clara Mortensen Beyer born, labor lawyer, worked with Frances Perkins and Molly Dewson on the Social Security Act of 1935, campaigned to abolish child labor and to secure minimum wage and maximum hour scales
- April 13, 1893 – Nella Larsen born, nurse, librarian and novelist, associated with the Harlem Renaissance, known for the novels Quicksand and Passing
- April 13, 1902 – Marguerite Henry born, children’s book author, recipient of the 1949 Newbery Medal for King of the Wind: the story of the Godolphin Arabian, but better-known for her series which began with Misty of Chincoteague
- April 13, 1909 – Eudora Welty born, author, photographer, won Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1973) for The Optimist's Daughter. Immediately after the murder of Medgar Evers in 1963, Welty wrote a fictional story in the voice of the then-unknown murderer called Where Is the Voice Coming From? Awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Literature, and the French Legion d’Honneur
- April 13, 1916 – Phyllis Fraser born, actress, journalist, and publisher, wrote The ABC and Counting Book, a children's book, and co-founded Beginner Books, the Random House imprint for young children, with Ted Geisel, AKA Dr. Seuss
- April 13, 1919 – Madalyn Murray O’Hair born, outspoken atheist behind 1962 case where U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that organized Bible reading in public schools was unconstitutional, was founder and president of American Atheists. In 1995 kidnapped and murdered by a former employee.
- April 13, 1933 – Ruth Bryan Owen becomes the 1st woman to represent the U.S. as a foreign minister when she is appointed as envoy to Denmark. She was also Florida’s 1st Congresswoman (1929-33)
- April 14, 1840 – Isabella Stewart Gardner born, American art collector and patron, philanthropist, founder of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston
- April 14, 1866 – Anne Sullivan born. Blinded by trachoma in childhood, she was unable to learn to read or write, and was living in an almshouse in 1880 when she convinced an almshouse inspector to help her enroll in the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston. A series of eye operations partially restored her sight. She graduated from Perkins (1886) as class valedictorian. The following year, she became the teacher of Helen Keller, who was blind, deaf, and unable to speak, and worked and traveled with her the rest of her life.
- April 15, 1829 – Mary Harris Thompson born, founder and head physician of Chicago Hospital for Women and Children, one of 1st women to practice medicine in Illinois
- April 15, 1892 – Corrie ten Boom born, Dutch author and Holocaust survivor, known for her book The Hiding Place describing her family’s attempts to help Jews escape the Nazi Holocaust.
- April 15, 1894 – Bessie Smith born, learned country blues from Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, made 160 recordings, billed as the “Empress of the Blues”
- April 15, 1896 – May Edward Chinn, 1st black woman to graduate from Bellevue Hospital Medical College (1926) and the 1st woman doctor in Harlem (1936-80), worked with George Papanicolaon on the Pap smear to identify cervical cancer, Kuwana Haulsey wrote “Angel of Harlem,” a novel based on her life (2004)
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April 15, 1915 – Elizabeth Catlett born, black American sculptor and illustrator, known for her portraits of sharecroppers
- April 15, 1916 – Helene Hanff born, author and screenwriter, known for her book 84, Charing Cross Road
- April 15, 1928 – Norma Merrick Sklarek born, architect, 1st African American female architect licensed in New York and California, 1st elected Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, 1st to form her own architectural firm
- April 15, 1960 – Ella Baker leads conference at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, resulting in creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, started with an $800 grant from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Attended by 126 students from 58 sit-in centers and other civil rights organizations.
- April 16, 1755 – Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun born, French painter, major 18thcentury woman painter
- April 16, 1890 – Gertrude Chandler Warner born, author, best known for her series Boxcar Children
- April 16, 1912 – Harriet Quimby becomes 1st woman to fly a plane across the English Channel
- April 16, 1921 – Marie Maynard Daly born, African American biochemist, discovered the link between high cholesterol and clogged arteries, first black woman to earn a PhD in chemistry
- April 16, 2002 – U.N. Secretary-General names primatologist Jane Goodall as a United Nations Messenger of Peace.
- April 17, 1811 – Ann Sheppard Mounsey born, British organist and composer
- April 17, 1845 – Isabel Barrows born, stenographer, physician and professor of ophthalmology at Howard University, 1st woman to work as a stenographer for U. S. State Department (for William Seward in 1868), 1st woman to open a private medical practice in Washington D.C.
- April 17, 1851 – Anna Garlin Spencer born, educator, author, lecturer, Unitarian minister, suffragist and peace activist, 1st woman ordained as a minister in Rhode Island
- April 17, 1885 – Karen Blixen, Baroness Karen Christenze von Blixen-Finecke, born, Danish author, wrote in English and Danish, under the pseudonym Isak Dinesen; Out of Africa, Babette’s Feast
- April 17, 1913 – Dorothy Fosdick born, worked as federal official (1942-53) developing the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, advised on national security and wrote speeches for Henry “Scoop” Jackson (1955-83)
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April 17, 1915 – Regina Ghazaryan born, Armenian painter and military pilot during WWII, hid and preserved the works of the poet Yeghishe Charents
- April 17, 1916 – Sirima Bandaranaike born, Sri Lankan politician, served as Prime Minister three times including as PM of Ceylon in 1960, the modern world’s first female head of government
- April 17, 1924 – Althea T L Simmons born, NAACP’s head of Washington DC branch (1979-1990) and chief lobbyist
- April 17, 1928 – Cynthia Ozick born, American author of short stories, novels and essays, won National Book Critics Circle Award (2000) for Quarrel & Quandary
- April 17, 1946 – Clare Francis born, British writer and singlehanded and distance racing sailor, set a women’s transatlantic singlehanded record; first woman skipper in the Whitbread Round the World Race
- April 17, 1964 – Jerrie Mock ends her 22,860 mile trip and becomes the 1st woman to fly solo around the world, taking 29 days with 21 stopovers. Awarded the Louis Blériot Medal from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale for her achievement.
- April 18, 1874 – Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić born, Croatian author; Croatian Tales of Long Ago
- April 18, 1897 – Angna (Anita) Enters born, modern dancer, painter, sculptor, arranged music for her solo performances of characters, created more than 250 dance mimes, performed in the White House (1940)
- April 18, 1889 – Jessie Street born, Australian feminist and human rights activist, initiator of the “Aboriginal” amendment of the Australian Constitution; The Jessie Street National Women’s Library is a unique specialist library dedicated to the preservation of Australian women’s work, words and history, established in 1989, it is named for the lifelong campaigner for women’s rights, the peace movement and the elimination of discrimination against Aboriginal people
- April 18, 1898 – Ruth Bunzel born, anthropologist, with Ruth Benedict studied art and culture of southwest Indian women, learned Zuni language, pottery and sewing to understand and preserve the culture
- April 18, 1905 – Baroness Bertha von Suttner, author of Lay Down Your Arms, Honorary President of Permanent International Peace Bureau, Berne, Switzerland, receives the Nobel Peace Prize and delivers her Nobel address. She is the 1st woman to receive the Peace Prize and 2nd woman to receive a Nobel Prize
- April 18,1909 – Joan d’Arc is beatified by Pope Pius X at Notre Dame de Paris
- April 18, 1915 – Joy Davidman born, American author and poet; Smoke on the Mountain: An Interpretation of the Ten Commandments; her marriage to C.S. Lewis inspired the play and film Shadowlands
- April 18, 1947 – Kathy Acker born, self-published novelist, dealt with sex as the making of power and identity, won Pushcart Prize (1981), rewrote classics “Don Quixote” and “Great Expectations”
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April 19, 1666 – Sarah Kemble Knight born, colonial American teacher and businesswoman, noted for her diary of her journey from Boston to New York City in 1704-05
- April 19, 1831 – Mary Louise Booth born, American author, translator, and editor of Harper’s Bazaar
- April 19, 1891 – Françoise Rosay born, French actress and opera singer, pioneer in French cinema who appeared in over 100 films
- April 19, 1892 – Germaine Tailleferre born, French composer, only female member of a group of composers known as Les Six
- April 19, 1917 – Irene Morgan Kirkaldy born, in 1944 defied bus driver’s order to give up her seat and move to the back, kicked sheriff when arrested, Thurgood Marshall won her case (6-1) on grounds of promoting and protecting national travel, awarded Freedom Medal by President Clinton who said she “took the first step on a journey that would change America forever”
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April 19, 1926 – Rawya Ateya born, Egyptian politician, educator and journalist; first female parliamentarian in the Arab world when she is elected to the National Assembly of Egypt in 1957
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April 19, 1927 – Actress and playwright Mae West is sentenced to 10 days in jail on obscenity charges for her play Sex
- April 19, 1977 – In the House of Representatives, 15 women, led by co-chairs Elizabeth Holtzman (D-NY) and Margaret Heckler (R-MA), form the Congressional Caucus for Women’s Issues
- April 20, 1890 – Carmelita Hinton born, secretary to Jane Addams for 2 years, committed to John Dewey’s education philosophy, environmentalism, internationalism and arts and crafts, founded Putney co-ed boarding school in Vermont (1935)
- April 20, 1895 – Mary Pukul born, descendant of native Hawaiian high priestesses, researched and collected stories and oral histories, became translator at Bishop Museum, wrote songs and gave hula demonstrations in schools in the 1950s
- April 20, 1902 — Scientists Marie and Pierre Curie isolate the radioactive element radium
- April 20, 1908 – In Denmark, women win the right to vote in municipal elections, but can’t vote in national elections until June 1915
- April 20, 1923 – Irene Lieblich born in Poland, Jewish painter, poet and illustrator for the books of Isaac Bashevis Singer, Holocaust survivor
- April 20, 1939 – Billie Holiday records the Civil Rights song “Strange Fruit”, a poem written by Abel Meeropol exposing American racism and lynching of African Americans
- April 20, 1947 – Rita Dionne-Marsolais born, Canadian economist and politician from Quebec
- April 21, 1816 – Charlotte Brontë born, English author and poet, eldest of the 3 Brontë sisters who were authors, known for her novel Jane Eyre
- April 21, 1859 – Belle Case LaFollette born, lawyer, suffragist, women’s rights activist and pacifist, primarily in Wisconsin. She and husband Robert were prominent leaders of Prairie Populist movement of 1890s to 1920s
- April 21, 1879 – Raden Ayu Kartini born, women’s rights activist, Javanese and Indonesian national heroine. In 1903 she opened the 1st Indonesian primary school for girls not based on social status, with a progressive academic curriculum. Her arranged marriage to a man 26 years older who already had 3 wives and 12 children ended in her death from childbirth complications. KARTINI DAY is a National Day on April 21 in Java and Indonesia in her honor
- April 21, 1891 – Georgia Harkness born, theologian, first woman to become a full professor in a United States theological seminary, leader in ecumenical movement and advocate for ordination for women in American Methodism
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April 21, 1930 – Hilda Hilst born, Brazilian author, poet, and playwright
- April 21, 1932 – Elaine May born, American actress, director, and screenwriter, 2-time Academy Award nominee and recipient of the National Medal of Arts
- April 21, 1944 – The French provisional government gives suffrage to women
- April 22, 1766 – Germaine de Staël born, French author,French author, essayist, social commentator and political agitator; a passionate supporter of ‘Liberté, égalité, fraternité’ she quickly became disenchanted with Napoleon, and used her considerable wit to deride him –
He banished her from Paris, and she spent 10 years in exile in Switzerland
- April 22, 1830 – Emily Davies born, English feminist, pioneer in securing university education for women; co-founder and early head of Girton College, Cambridge, the first college in England to educate women
- April 22, 1873 – Ellen Glasgow born, author, wrote about posr-Civil War South, recipient of 1942 Pulitzer Prize for her novel In This Our Life
- April 22, 1891 – Laura Gilpin born, photographer, acclaimed for mastery of platinum printing process in early 1920s, her early work with autochromes of still-life and portraits recorded 35 years of vanishing rural America, elected Associate of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain (1930), wrote “The Enduring Navaho” (1968)
- April 22, 1901 – Vera Maxwell born, sportswear clothing designer whose popular and practical styles starting in 1947 permitted greater freedom of motion, favored by Lillian Gish, Martha Graham and Pat Nixon, subject of 2 retrospective exhibits at the Smithsonian Institution (1970)
- April 22,1904 – Dorothy Alexander born, American ballet dancer, choreographer; founder of the Atlanta Ballet
- April 22, 1909 – Rita Levi-Montalcini born, Italian neurologist and member of the Italian Senate, recipient of 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her work in neurobiology
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April 22, 1912 – Kathleen Ferrier born, English singer, contralto with an international reputation, repertoire including folksongs, ballads and classical works
- April 22, 1943 – Louise Glück born, poet, 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for The Wild Iris, Library of Congress Special Bicentennial Consultant (2000-2002) and Poet Laureate (2003), 2014 National Book Award (Poetry) for Faithful and Virtuous Night — Profile of Glück and her poems here > flowersforsocrates.com/...
- April 23, 1858 – Dame Ethel Smyth born, British composer and women’s suffrage activist, known for her composition of the Women’s Social and Political Union’s anthem The March of the Women
- April 23, 1872 – Charlotte E. Ray became the 1st African-American woman lawyer
- April 23, 1895 – Dame Ngaio Marsh born, New Zealand author and director, known for crime fiction featuring detective Roderick Alleyn
- April 23, 1928 – Shirley Temple Black born, curly-haired child actor, singer and dancer, starred in many films (1932-50), appointed U.S. Ambassador to Ghana (1974) and Czechoslovakia (1988)
- April 24, 1885 – Annie Oakley hired by Nate Salsbury to be a part of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show
- April 24, 1900 – Elizabeth Goudge born, British author, 1946 Carnegie Medal recipient for The Little White Horse
- April 24, 1902 – Jane Kwong Lee born, Chinese activist in revolution of 1911, came to San Francisco on student visa in 1922 to Mills College, became a translator and journalist, worked with the YWCA (1935-44) to find jobs for Chinese women
- April 24, 1934 – Shirley MacLaine born, veteran film and theater actor, Academy, Emmy, Golden Globe and American Film Institute Awards. Autobiographical author, fundraiser and organizer for George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign.
- April 24, 1940 – Sue Grafton born, author of alphabetic detective novel series featuring Kinsey Millhone, from “A is for Alibi” to “X” (2015)
- April 24, 1942 – Barbra Streisand born, singer, actor, director and producer, won two Academy Awards for “Funny Girl” (1968) and one for lyrics (to “Evergreen”) in “A Star is Born,” produced 51 gold albums, 30 platinum records, and 13 multi-platinum albums. Streisand was first woman to write, produce, direct, and star in a major studio film, Yentl (1983)
- April 25, 1900 – Edith Gregor Halpert born in Russia, American art dealer, influential owner of The Downtown Gallery, in NYC’s Greenwich Village, early supporter of Modern Art, showcasing Stuart Davis, Georgia O'Keeffe, Arthur Dove, Jacob Lawrence and many others
- April 25, 1917 – Ella Fitzgerald born, “First Lady of Song,” internationally renowned jazz singer, winner of 13 Grammy Awards, National Medal of Arts, and Presidential Medal of Freedom
- April 25, 1918 – Astrid Varnay born in Sweden, dramatic soprano, one of the leading Wagnerian sopranos of her time with Birgit Nilsson and Martha Modl
- April 25, 1942 – Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson born,activist, prominent member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and only woman to serve as the SNCC executive secretary
- April 25, 2004 – An estimated 1.15 million people participate in March for Women’s Lives on National Mall in Washington D.C. Demonstration for women’s rights, including reproductive rights and safe and legal access to abortion.
- April 26, 1777 – American Revolution heroine Sybil Ludington, 16 years old, rides 40 miles on horseback in the middle of the night to warn the American militia that the British were invading and burning Danbury, Connecticut.
- April 26, 1828 – Martha Finley born, educator and author, known for the Elsie Dinsmore series of books
- April 26, 1875 – Natalie Curtis born, ethnomusicologist, known for transcribing and publishing traditional music of American Indian tribes and African American music
- April 26, 1882 – Jessie Redmon Fauset born, author, poet and editor for the NAACP magazine The Crisis, part of the Harlem Renaissance
- April 26, 1888 – Anita Loos born, novelist, screenwriter, “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” (1925), wrote screenplays for Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Clark Gable and Jean Harlow, wrote memoirs and “Twice Over Lightly” with Helen Hayes (1972)
- April 26, 1889 – Margaret H’Doubler born, dance educator, founder of dance in the American university, started college dance class using John Dewey’s principles at the University of Wisconsin (1917), wrote “Dance: A Creative Art Experience” (1940), the most widely used text in American dance education
- April 26, 1907 – Julia Godman Ruuttila born, union recruiter, activist and journalist, worked for the CIO’s International Woodworkers of America during the eight-and-a-half-month lock-out in 1937, raised community support, protested the Vietnam War, still walked in picket lines at 80 despite asthma, ulcers, arthritis and angina
- April 26, 1933 – Carol Burnett born, actor, comedian, singer, writer with a 50-year career in television, presented many classic sketches and legendary guests. She was the 1st celebrity to appear on Sesame Street, on its 1st episode November 10, 1969. In 2013, awarded Mark Twain Prize for American Humor
- April 26, 1999 – World Denim Day, originally ‘Denim Day L.A.’ launched by Peace Over Violence, a Los Angeles-based group, because of the infamous ‘Denim Defense’ in the case of an 18-year-old Italian girl picked up by her driving instructor, taken to an isolated road, pulled out of the car, where he wrestles her out of one leg of her jeans and forcefully rapes her. Threatening to kill her if she tells anyone, he makes her drive the car to her home. She tells her parents, who support her in pressing charges. The perpetrator is arrested, tried and convicted. But he appeals the case, and the Italian Supreme Court dismisses all charges. Their reasoning: “because the victim wore very, very tight jeans, she had to help him remove them, and by removing the jeans it was no longer rape but consensual sex. …certainly it is impossible to pull them off if the victim is fighting against her attacker with all her force.'' Within hours, the women of the Italian Parliament protest the decision by wearing jeans to work and vowing to continue to wear them until the decision is changed. California Senate and Assembly members also come to work in jeans as the story spreads.
- April 27, 1759 – Mary Wollstonecraft born, English author, philosopher and women’s rights advocate, known for A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), also wrote Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787) and A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
- April 27, 1906 – Alice Dunnigan born, 1st African-American journalist accredited to cover Congress (1947) and the White House, Supreme Court and State Department, documented Klan actions when no “white” newspaper covered them, 1st journalist of color to travel with President Truman on his train (1948) but had to pay her own way, appointed to staff of President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity (1961)
- April 27, 1927 – Coretta Scott King born, civil rights, human rights, and peace activist, a leader in struggle for racial equality and became active in the Women’s and LGBT rights movements. Founded the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change
- April 27, 1927 – Sheila Scott born, British aviator who broke over 100 records during her career, first person to fly over the North Pole in a small aircraft
- April 27, 1992 – Betty Boothroyd becomes the first woman to be elected Speaker of the British House of Commons
- April 28, 1926 – Harper Lee born, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom
- April 28, 1932 – Brownie Ledbetter born, activist. Became politically active in 1957, during Little Rock Integration Crisis, joined Women’s Emergency Committee to Open Our Schools (WEC), then Little Rock Panel of American Women, which organized discussion groups and developed programs to help students and train teachers. National Women’s Political Caucus (Political Action Chair 1973), worked for E.R.A., co-founder with Bella Abzug of Women’s Environment and Development Organization
- April 28, 1993 – First “Take Our Daughters to Work” Day, sponsored by the Ms. Foundation, in 2003 it became “Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work” Day
- April 29, 1429 – Joan of Arc (Jeanne d'Arc) leads a French force that successfully relieves the city of Orleans, under siege by the British since the previous October
- April 29, 1880 – Lillian Bertha Jones Horace born, pioneering educator and writer – Texas’s earliest known African American woman novelist, only other well-known black southern women novelist besides Zora Neale Hurston in early-to-mid twentieth century, one of only two black women nationally to own a publishing company before 1920; Five Generations Hence
- April 29, 1913 – Margaret Owings born, California artist, writer, environmental activist, founder Friends of the Sea Otter (1968), assisted Environmental Defense Fund
- April 30, 1898 – Katherine Amelia Towle born, American Colonel, 2nd director of the U. S.Marine Corps Women’s Reserve, 1st Director of Women Marines
- April 30, 1937 – Women in the Philippines win the right to vote
- April 30, 1939 – Ellen Zwilich born, composer, 1st woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for Music (1983) for Symphony No. 1 "Three Movements for Orchestra." Commissioned by N.Y. Philharmonic to compose large-scale orchestral works: Symbolon (1988), Symphony no.2 “Cello Symphony” (1985), and Symphony no.3 (1992)
- April 30, 1993 —Top-ranked women's tennis player Monica Seles is stabbed in the back by a man who ran onto the court during a match in Hamburg, Germany
- April 30, 1997 — ABC airs the "coming out" episode of the sitcom "Ellen," in which the title character, played by Ellen DeGeneres, admits she is a lesbian
Sources
www.nwhp.org/...
todayinwomenshistory.saintssistersandsluts.com/...