This #WomensHistoryMonth, I will be honoring some notable women and their contributions, which have helped shape America’s culture and history.
Join me in lifting up their stories.
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Born in Virginia, Virginia Minor was the co-founder and the first president of the Woman's Suffrage Association of Missouri. She was the plaintiff in the SCOTUS case, Minor v. Happersett, where the Court held that the Constitution did not grant women the right to vote.
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Marguerite Higgins was a reporter & war correspondent for the N.Y. Herald Tribune during WWII, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. She advanced the cause of equal opportunity for female war correspondents & was the first woman awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Foreign Correspondence.
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Born in Brooklyn, NY, Shirley Chisholm was the first Black woman in Congress (1968) and the first woman and Black American to seek the nomination for president of the United States from one of the two major political parties (1972).
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Barbara Jordan was an educator, politician, & civil rights leader. She was the first Black woman to serve in the Texas Senate since Reconstruction, the first Black woman elected to Congress from the South, & the first to deliver the keynote address at a national party convention.
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Sandra Day O'Connor was elected to 2 terms in the Arizona state senate. She was a lawyer and a celebrated judge. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan appointed her to the SCOTUS, where she made history as the first female justice to serve on the bench.
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Sally Ride was an American astronaut and physicist. She joined in 1978, and in 1983 became the first American woman and earliest known LGBTQ+ astronaut to go to outer space. She remains the youngest American astronaut to have traveled to space, having done so at 32.
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Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King Jr.'s wife and widow, led the preservation of his legacy. Following his assassination (1968), she founded the MLK Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. She later lobbied for MLK Jr.'s birthday to be recognized as a federal holiday.
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Widely known as the "Angel of the Battlefield," Clara Barton founded the American in 1881 & served as its first president. While visiting Europe, she worked with a relief organization known as the Int Red Cross and lobbied for an American branch when she returned home.
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An abolitionist and women’s rights activist, Sojourner Truth was born enslaved and escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826. She became best known for her “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech on racial inequalities in 1851 at the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention.
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Louisa May Alcott was an American author who wrote the classic novel 'Little Women' and various works under pseudonyms. The success of Little Women created a demand for more books. Over her final years, she published short stories for young people and drawn from her family life.
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Grace Hopper was a computer scientist and Navy rear admiral who played an integral role in creating programs that would allow humans to communicate with computers in terms other than 1s and 0s. This laid the foundation for the development of user-friendly personal computers.
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Maya Angelou was a civil rights activist, poet, and award-winning author known for her acclaimed 1969 memoir, 'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,' which made literary history as the first nonfiction bestseller by a Black woman. She received several honors throughout her career.
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Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani education advocate who, at the age of 17 in 2014, became the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize after surviving an assassination attempt by the Taliban. She survived and has continued to speak out on the importance of education.
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Stricken by an illness at the age of 2, Helen Keller was left blind and deaf. She overcame the adversity to become one of the 20th century's leading humanitarians, as well as co-founder of the . During her life, she received many honors in recognition of her accomplishments.
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On what would have been Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s 88th birthday, I’m thinking of the woman who tirelessly fought in and out of the courtroom so that women coming up long after her would have access to the same opportunities as men.
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Madam C. J. Walker was the first Black woman millionaire in America, thanks to her homemade line of hair care products for Black women. She was inspired to create her hair products after an experience with hair loss, which led to creating the “Walker System” of hair care.
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A Swedish climate youth activist, Greta Thunberg began skipping school on Fridays to protest outside the Swedish Parliament, calling on lawmakers to act on climate change. Thanks to social media, her actions have millions worldwide to organize and protest.
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Redefining the first lady's role, Eleanor Roosevelt advocated for human and women's rights, held press conferences, and penned her own column. After leaving the White House (1945), she became chair of the U.N.'s Human Rights Commission.
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Born enslaved in Maryland, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in the North & became the most famous "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. She risked her life to lead hundreds of slaves from the plantation system to freedom using this elaborate secret network of safe houses.
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Dr. Jane Goodall is known for her years of living among chimpanzees in Tanzania to develop the most trailblazing primate studies to date. She immersed herself in their lives, bypassing rigid procedures to make discoveries about primate behavior that shaped scientific discourse.
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Rosa Parks helped initiate the civil rights movement in 1955; she refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus to a white man and was charged with civil disobedience. That inspired leaders of the local Black community to organize the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
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From escaping persecution in Europe with her family to becoming our nation's first female Secretary of State under President Bill Clinton (1997), Madeleine Albright's story embodies the pursuit of the American Dream and holds the promise that you can do and become anything.
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America's first lady of talk shows, Oprah Winfrey is well-known for surpassing her competition to become the most-watched daytime show host. She leveraged her success with the Oprah Winfrey Show to build her own successful multimedia production company, Harpo Studios.
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In 1961, Harper Lee won a Pulitzer Prize for her first novel, "To Kill a Mockingbird." Her experiences growing up as an outsider in Monroeville, Alabama, inspired the classic novel's basis.
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Tarana Burke is a civil rights activist who was the original founder of the "Me Too" movement, which she started in 2006. It later became a global phenomenon that raised awareness about sexual harassment, abuse, and assault in 2017. She now serves at the as its director.
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Writer, feminist and women's rights activist Betty Friedan wrote 'The Feminine Mystique' (1963) and co-founded the , serving as its first president.
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Jackie Joyner-Kersee is one of the greatest track and field athletes in American history. The first American woman to win an Olympic gold medal in the long jump and the first woman to compile more than 7,000 points in the seven-event heptathlon, she went on to win 3 gold medals.
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Mae C. Jemison is the first Black woman astronaut. In 1992, she flew into space with six other astronauts aboard the Endeavour on mission STS47, becoming the first Black woman in space. In recognition of Jemison's accomplishments, she received several honorary doctorates.
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Marjory Stoneman Douglas was a journalist and environmentalist who helped protect the Florida Everglades. She became known for work in nature conservancy after her book Everglades: River of Grass was published. In 1993, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
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Ella Baker was a leading figure of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s. Following her work for the , she helped found MLK's Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957. Three years later, she launched the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.
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On the last day of #WHM, I want to recognize Anne Frank. Fleeing Nazi persecution of Jews, her family moved to Amsterdam & later went into hiding. During this time, she wrote about her experiences in her diary, later found and published posthumously, becoming a best-seller.
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