WELCOME to our second
WOW2!
A lot of trailblazer birthdays and events in women's history to cover this month, which is also "Women's History Month" in Canada.
And please DO go to the regularly scheduled This Week in the War on Women, which will post shortly after this diary.
There's a lot of "News from the Front" in the War on Women, so don't miss it!
In 2011, in the legal magazine California Lawyer, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said:
“In 1868, when the 39th Congress was debating and ultimately proposing the 14th Amendment, I don't think anybody would have thought that equal protection applied to sex discrimination, or certainly not to sexual orientation. So does that mean that we've gone off in error by applying the 14th Amendment to both?
Yes, yes. Sorry, to tell you that. ... But, you know, if indeed the current society has come to different views, that's fine. You do not need the Constitution to reflect the wishes of the current society. Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn't. Nobody ever thought that that's what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that. If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, hey we have things called legislatures, and they enact things called laws. You don't need a constitution to keep things up-to-date. All you need is a legislature and a ballot box. You don't like the death penalty anymore, that's fine. You want a right to abortion? There's nothing in the Constitution about that. But that doesn't mean you cannot prohibit it. Persuade your fellow citizens it's a good idea and pass a law. That's what democracy is all about. It's not about nine superannuated judges who have been there too long, imposing these demands on society.”
The
14th Amendment's equal protection clause states:
"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
In Canada, the question of whether or not women are persons was unequivocally settled in 1929, but it took the determined efforts of five remarkable women to win a ruling on appeal to their highest court that yes, women ARE persons.
“If politics mean…the effort to secure through legislative action better conditions of life for the people, greater opportunities for our children and other people’s children…then it most assuredly is a woman’s job as much as it is a man’s job.”
— Irene Parbly, one of Canada’s “Famous Five”
Born into a prominent legal family, Emily Murphy became a self-taught legal expert at an early age. When she and her family moved to Alberta in 1903, she began a campaign to ensure the property rights of married women. Largely because of her work, the Alberta legislature passed the Dower Act in 1911, protecting a wife's right to one-third of her husband's property.
In 1916, she and a group of concerned women tried to attend the trial of Edmonton prostitutes arrested under "questionable" circumstances. They were ejected from the court on the grounds that the testimony was "not fit for mixed company." Murphy protested to the provincial Attorney General.
"If the evidence is not fit to be heard in mixed company," she argued, "then... the government.. [must] set up a special court presided over by women, to try other women." To her surprise the Minister agreed, and offered Murphy the post of presiding over such a court. Murphy became the first woman police magistrate in the entire British Empire.
Although the new magistrate was welcomed by some of her colleagues, others challenged her position on the grounds that a woman was not a "person" under the British North America Act of 1867, which set out the powers and responsibilities of the provinces and of the federal government. This federal act used the word "persons" when it referred to more than one person and the word "he" when it referred to one person. Therefore, many argued, the Act was really saying that only a man could be a person, thus preventing women from participating fully in politics or affairs of state.
This argument was used to oppose appointing a woman to the Canadian Senate. Petitions from various women's organizations failed to open the Senate to women.
Emily Murphy took up the cause. She found a section of the Supreme Court Act that allowed any five interested persons the right to petition the government for a ruling on a constitutional point, so she called on four other Alberta reformers to join her in petitioning for a clarification of whether or not women were “persons” as referenced in the act.
Her first choice was her friend, Nellie McClung, a tireless worker for human rights, a suffragist, and a former Member of the Alberta Legislature. Next, there was Louise McKinney, ex-M.L.A. and crusader against the evils of alcohol and cigarettes. The third petitioner was Montréal-born Henrietta Edwards, a vigorous campaigner for women's rights with an unsurpassed knowledge of the laws pertaining to women and children. Irene Parlby, Murphy's fourth choice, had entered politics with a desire to improve the lives of the rural women of Alberta. A Minister without Portfolio in the Alberta Legislature, Parlby's participation signified the support of the Government of Alberta.
For twelve years these five led the fight to have women declared legal "persons" in Canada. They became known as “The Famous Five.”
The Persons Case, as it is called, reached the Supreme Court of Canada in March 1928. "Does the word "person" in Section 24 of the B.N.A. Act include female persons?" After five weeks of debate and argument the Supreme Court of Canada decided that the word "person" did not include women.
But the Famous Five would not let it rest there. They carried the case to the Privy Council in Britain.
On October 18, 1929, Lord Sankey, Lord Chancellor of the Privy Council, announced the decision of the five Lords. The decision stated "that the exclusion of women from all public offices is a relic of days more barbarous than ours. And to those who would ask why the word "person" should include females, the obvious answer is, why should it not?"
Persons Day is now celebrated in Canada every October 18, the anniversary of the Privy Council’s decision, and October is their national Women’s History Month. The Governor General's Awards in Commemoration of the Persons Case are given each October to five women who have made contributions to the improvement of the lives of Canadian women and girls.
OCTOBER: Women Trailblazers and Events in Our History
• October 1, 1921 – Margaret Hillis born, conductor, founder/director of Grammy-winning Chicago Symphony Chorus
• October 1, 1935 – Dame Julie Andrews born, actress/singer, Academy Award for Mary Poppins
• October 2,1895 ¬– Ruth Streeter born, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve WWII colonel
• October 2,1912 ¬– Alice Bourneuf born, economist, contributed to the Marshall Plan for Post-WWII European recovery, taught economics at Boston College (1959-77)
• October 2, 1919– Shirley Clarke born, filmmaker, Academy Award, best feature documentary, Robert Frost: A Lover’s Quarrel with the World
Ruth Muskrat Bronson
• October 3, 1897 – Ruth Muskrat Bronson born, Cherokee activist, author of
Indians are People, Too, worked for Bureau of Indian Affairs student loan program, was a National Congress of American Indians leader. The American Indian Graduate Center awards
Ruth Muskrat Bronson Fellowships to American Indian/Alaska Native graduate students in nursing fields
• October 3, 1904 – Mary McLeod Bethune opens 1st school for African-Americans in Daytona Beach, Florida
• October 4, 1908 – Eleanor Flexner born, author, historian – Century of Struggle: The Women’s Rights Movement in the United States,and Mary Wollstonecraft: A Biography
• October 4, 1976 – Barbara Walters is 1st woman evening news co-anchor (ABC)
• October 4, 1993 – Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 2nd woman U.S. Supreme Court Justice
Maya Lin
• October 5, 1959 – Maya Lin born, artist/architect, Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington D.C., author of
Boundaries
• October 6, 1905 – Helen Wills Moody born, won 8 Wimbledon, and 7 US, tennis titles
• October 6, 1914 – Mary Louise Smith born, 1970s Republican Party committee chair, ERA supporter/pro-choice
• October 6, 1917– Fannie Lou Hamer born, civil rights/voting rights crusader, one of the organizers for 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer
• October 7, 1913 – Elizabeth Janeway born, social analyst, author Man’s World, Women’s Place and Powers of the Weak
• October 7, 1920 – Kathryn Clarenback born, co-founder of NOW, executive director
• October 8, 1881 – Esther Lape born, co-founder League of Women Voters, worked for compulsory health insurance, Truman and Eisenhower supported, but AMA defeated it
• October 8, 1993 – Toni Morrison, becomes 1st African American woman winner Nobel Prize for Literature, Beloved
• October 9, 1823 – Mary Shadd Cary born, educated freed slaves on their rights, 1st black woman editor in North America, “Provincial Freeman” Windsor, Canada
• October 9, 1884 – Helene Deutsch, psychoanalyst, author The Psychology of Women
• October 9, 1892 – Abigail Eliot, co-founder National Association for Nursery Education, which established standards and quality monitoring
• October 10, 1888 – Dorothy Ferebee born, overcame racism and sexism to become MD, a director on depression-era Mississippi Health Project, Howard University Hospital Medical Director
• October 10, 1900 – Helen Hayes born, actress, “First Lady of American Theatre,” multiple Tony Award winner
• October 10, 1983 – Dr. Barbara McClintock, wins Nobel Prize for Medicine, discovery of mobile genetic elements
• October 11, 1884 – Eleanor Roosevelt, civil and women’s rights advocate, world diplomat, First Lady (1933-45), author, Courage in a Dangerous World
• October 11, 1984 – Dr. Kathryn D. Sullivan becomes 1st U.S. woman astronaut to “walk” in space on Challenger flight
• October 12, 1916 – Alice Childress, actor, playwright, A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ But A Sandwich
• October 13, c.1754 – Mary Hays McCauley, “Molly Pitcher,” 1778 Battle of Monmouth, water-carrying heroine of the American Revolution
• October 13, 1897– Edith Sampson, lawyer, 1st black American appointed as United Nations delegate, 1st to be elected U.S. circuit judge
• October 14, 1893 – Lillian Gish born, American film legend, career from the 1912 silent An Unseen Enemy to The Whales of August in 1987, lifetime Academy Award for “superlative artistry and for distinguished contribution to the progress of motion pictures”
• October 15, 1906 – Victoria Spivey born, record producer, songwriter, 1920s blues singer, in all-black cast of 1929 film Hallelujah
• October 15, 1948 – Dr. Frances L. Willoughby becomes 1st woman doctor in regular U.S. Navy
• October 16, 1916 – Margaret Sanger opens 1st U.S. birth control clinic in Brooklyn, NY, and is arrested
• October 16, 1925 – Angela Lansbury born, actress, 80-year-plus career from the 1944 film Gaslight to TV and stage, multiple award winner
Vilma Socorro Martinez
• October 17, 1918 – Rita Hayworth born, movie star, 61 films, best known for
Gilda
• October 17, 1943 – Vilma Socorro Martinez born, lawyer, civil rights activist, 1st female U.S. Ambassador to Argentina, Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) board member
• October 18, 1889 – Fannie Hurst born, author, Imitation of Life, left almost a million dollars each to Brandeis and Washington Universities for creative literature posts
• October c.18, 1890 – Pauline Newman born, Lithuanian-born labor leader, strategist in 1909 when 40,000 NYC women factory workers went on strike, Coalition of Labor Union Women, 1st woman ILGWU organizer
• October 18, 1898 – Lotte Lenya born, Austrian singer-actress, interpreter of Kurt Weill’s music, especially The Threepenny Opera
• October 18, 1917 – Mamie Clark born, African American psychologist, her “dolls study” was used in Brown vs. Board of Education case that overturned segregated schools
• October 18, 1951 – Terry McMillan born, novelist, Waiting to Exhale
• October 18, 1956 – Martina Navratilova born, tennis champion, 9 time Wimbledon singles winner
• October 19, 1891 – Lois Meek Stolz born, 1st president Education of Young Children, urged Works Progress Administration to establish nursery schools
• October 20, 1927 – Dr. Joyce Brothers born, psychologist, TV personality
• October 21, 1895 – Edna Purviance born, actor, starred in Chaplin films, The Tramp
• October 22, 1834 – Abigail Scott Duniway born, Pacific NW suffrage leader, helped win Oregon suffrage in1912, wrote Path Breaking
• October 22, 1919 – Doris Lessing born, British author, The Golden Notebook, Nobel Laureate in 2007
• October 23, 1866 – Ethel Dummer born, gave start-up funds for Chicago’s Juvenile Psychopathic Institute to find the underlying causes of juvenile delinquency
• October 23, 1889 – Frieda Fromm-Reichmann born, pioneer using therapeutic relationships to treat mental illness at Chestnut Lodge in Rockville, Maryland
• October 23, 1906 – Miriam Gideon born, composer, The Hound of Heaven
• October 23, 1906 – Gertrude Ederle born, 1st woman to swim English Channel, 1926
• October 23, 1910 –1st public flight by an American woman pilot: Blanche Stuart Scott
• October 23, 1911 – Martha Roundtree born, creator/1st moderator of “Meet the Press”
• October 24, 1830 – Belva Lockwood born, attorney, 1st woman admitted to practice law before Supreme Court (1879), ran for U.S. President in 1884 and 1888
Letitia Woods Brown
• October 24, 1896 – Marjorie Joyner born, managed over 200 Madam C. J. Walker beauty schools, worked with Eleanor Roosevelt in civil rights struggles
• October 24, 1915 – Letitia Woods Brown born, pioneer African-American history teacher/researcher, primary consultant for Schlesinger Library’s Black Women Oral History Project, co-author
Washington from Banneker to Douglass 1791-1870
• October 24, 1923 – Denise Levertov born, poet, anti-Vietnam war poems, often used themes of destruction by greed, racism, and sexism, later work was more hopeful
• October 24, 1956 – Reverend Margaret Towner becomes 1st woman ordained as Presbyterian minister
• October 25, 1894 – Marjorie Phillips born, artist, introduced modern art to Phillips Gallery as associate director of her husband’s Washington D.C. museum
• October 25, 1912 – Minnie Pearl born, Southern vaudeville circuit performer, joined “The Grand Ole Opry” in 1940 and stayed for 50 years
• October 26, 1911 – Mahalia Jackson born, internationally acclaimed gospel singer, sang at the 1963 March on Washington
• October 26, 1947 – Hillary Rodham Clinton born, Democratic presidential hopeful, U.S. Secretary of State (09-13), Senator from New York (01-09), First Lady (1993-2001)
Maxine Hong Kingston
• October 27, 1908 – Lee Krasner born, artist, Works Progress Federal Art Project exhibits of her paintings and collages, aided art and career of husband Jackson Pollock
• October 27, 1940 – Maxine Hong Kingston born, award-winning author,
The Woman Warrior, autobiographical work about the Chinese-American female experience
• October 28, 1842 – Anna Dickinson born, orator, early champion of rights of women and blacks, supported interracial marriage, attacked double standard of morality
• October 28, 1897 – Edith Head born, Hollywood costume designer, Academy Awards for The Heiress, Delilah, and The Sting
• October 28, 1958 – Mary Roebling named 1st woman director of American Stock Exchange
• October 29, 1908 – Louise Bates Ames born, child psychologist, researched normal steps in development, wrote popular newspaper advice column in 1960s
• October 30, 1864 – Elizabeth Coolidge born, philanthropist, endowed Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s 1st pension fund, established foundation for Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Auditorium at Library of Congress
• October 30, 1896 – Ruth Gordon, actor, Garson Kanin’s co-writer of Hepburn/ Tracy movies (4 Oscar screenplay nominations), made Harold and Maude at age 75
Lutah Riggs
• October 31, 1860 – Juliette Low born, founder, 1st president Girl Scouts of America
• October 31, 1896 – Ethel Waters born, singer, Oscar nominee supporting actress
• October 31, 1896 – Lutah Riggs born, residential architect, first woman in California to be named a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, historic preservationist
• October 31, 1906 – Louise Talma born, composer, 1st American woman to win Sibelius Medal, taught music theory and musicianship at Hunter College for 51 years
https://www.historica-dominion.ca/...
https://www.google.com/...
http://canadianwomen.org/...
http://library.usask.ca/...
http://womenshistory.about.com/...
http://www.swc-cfc.gc.ca/...
http://www.swc-cfc.gc.ca/...
http://www.heroines.ca/...
http://www.etfo.ca/...