Welcome to WOW2!
WOW2 is a twice-monthly sister blog to This Week in the War on Women. This edition covers women and events from April 1 through through April 15.
April is Black Women’s History Month, highlighting the many African American women of distinction whose stories need to be told.
The purpose of WOW2 is to learn about and honor women of achievement, including many who’ve been ignored or marginalized in most of the history books, and to mark moments in women’s history. It also serves as a reference archive of women’s history. There are so many more phenomenal women than I ever dreamed of finding, and all too often their stories are almost unknown, even to feminists and scholars.
These trailblazers have a lot to teach us about persistence in the face of overwhelming odds. I hope you will find reclaiming our past as much of an inspiration as I do.
This Week in the War on Women
just posted, so be sure to go there next and catch up
on the latest dispatches from the frontlines:
Note: All images and audios are below the person or event to which they refer
Early April – Women Trailblazers and Events in OUR History
- April 1, 1776 – 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 d'Aelders, advocate for the rights of women, proposes a comprehensive divorce bill that allows for wife-initiated divorce, because of her concerns about wife beating, saying the lesser physical strength of women requires laws that protect them against their stronger fathers and husbands
- April 1, 1865 – Irene Morales born, Chilean seamstress, soldier, and nurse during the War of the Pacific against Bolivia
- 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, American blues and cabaret singer (1911-1979), who was laso a nurse; made recordings from 1921 into the 1980s, also starred in Showboat with Paul Robeson in London; made a stunning musical comeback on TV, and sang for President Carter
- April 1, 1902 – Maria Polydouri born, Greek poet
- 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. Started a story-time for African-American children. In 1961, she was promoted to Coordinator of Children’s services, the first African-American in an administrative position in the NY public library system
- April 1, 1916 – Sheila May Edmonds born, British mathematician, worked on infinite series, Fournier transforms and Parseval’s theorem; lecturer at Cambridge; chair of the University Faculty Board of Mathematics (1975-1976); Vice-Principal of Newnham College (1960-1981)
- April 1, 1926 – Anne McCaffrey, American-born Irish science fiction and fantasy author, first woman to win Hugo and Nebula Awards; a Grand Master of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America; inductee to Science Fiction Hall of Fame; best-known for her Dragons of Pern series
- 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 1, 1963 – Aprille Ericsson-Jackson born, American aerospace engineer; first African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in engineering at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; won the 1997 Women in Science and Engineering Award for best female engineer in the U.S. government; currently instrument manager for a proposed Mars mission to collect dust from the Martian lower atmosphere
- April 1, 1967 – Nicola Roxon born, Australian Labor Party politician; Attorney General of Australia (2011-2013); Minister for Health and Ageing (2007-2011); Member of Australian Parliament (1998-2013)
- April 1, 1973 – Rachel Maddow born, American television journalist, liberal political commentator and author; since 2008, host of MSNBS nightly news and opinion program, The Rachel Maddow Show, first openly gay host of a primetime U.S. news program
- April 1, 2001 – The Netherlands is the first country to make same-sex marriage legal
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- 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 first women partners in a large Wall Street law firm (1945), first woman 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, it’s just in time for WWII, and she casts the sole vote against America declaring war on Japan, believing someone must say no to war
- April 2, 1931 – 17-year-old Jackie Mitchell, second 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 2, 1945 – Linda Hunt born, American actor; won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her break-through role as Billy Kwan in The Year of Living Dangerously, the first person to win an Oscar for playing a character of the opposite sex
- April 2, 1945 – Anne Waldman born, American poet, performer, scholar and cultural/political activist; recipient of the Poetry Society of America’s 1996 Shelley Memorial Award
- April 2, 1991 – Rita Johnston becomes the first female Premier of a Canadian province, British Columbia, when she succeeds William Vander Zalm after his resignation
- April 2, 2008 – Leader of the British House of Commons Harriet Harman becomes the first Labour woman to answer the Prime Minister’s questions
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- April 3, 1791 – Anne Lister born, British traveler, diarist and mountaineer; first woman to climb Monte Perdido in the Aragonese Pyrenees and Vignemale, the highest peak in the French Pyrenees; often called the “first modern lesbian” because her wealth allowed her to live openly as a couple with another wealthy heiress, Ann Walker, from 1834 until Lister’s death in 1840; her diaries run to four million words, the details of her lesbian relationships from her school days on written in a private code
- April 3, 1807 – Mary Carpenter born, English educational reformer, antislavery activist and feminist, founds a ‘ragged school’ for children of the poor, publishes articles and books on her work that helped in the passage of several education reform acts; first woman whose paper is published by the Statistical Society of London
- April 3, 1817 – Mathilde Franziska Anneke born in Germany, feminist, journalist and newspaper publisher; after emigrating to U.S., became an abolitionist, started a feminist newspaper, and opened a school for girls
- April 3, 1836 – Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford born, American author and poet, began writing to earn money when her parents became ill; noted for gothic romances and detective stories
- April 3, 1870 – Sara Agnes McLaughlin Conboy born, factory worker and labor organizer, first woman U.S. delegate to British Trades Union Congress; a co-organizer of United Textile Workers of America
- April 3, 1876 – Margaret Anglin born in Canada, American stage actress, director, and producer, known for roles in Greek tragedies and Shakespeare, as well as contemporary productions; appeared in over 80 plays between 1894 and 1943
- 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, bequeathing more than $65 million
- April 3, 1912 – Dorothy Eden born in New Zealand, author, moved to London in 1954, wrote 18 novels in historical and suspense genres; An Important Family
- April 3, 1924 – Doris Day born, American singer, actor, and animal rights activist
- April 3, 1934 – Jane Goodall born, 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 to be Prime Minister of Poland
- April 3, 1979 – Jane Byrne becomes the first woman mayor of Chicago
- April 3, 1995 – Vanna Bonta’s ‘quantum fiction’ novel Flight has a World Party Day, so fans really start one – “Pass the food and turn up the music”
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- 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, first 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 Florence Potts patents the ‘Mrs. Potts’ pressing iron, which has a detachable handle so several iron bodies can be heated and rotated
- 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, the first woman elected as mayor and the first 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 “On the Pulse of Morning,” a poem she composed for the occasion at President Bill Clinton’s inauguration, but best known for her poem “Still I Rise”
- April 4, 1931 – Dame Catherine Tizard born; first woman elected as mayor of Auckland City, NZ (1983-1990) and the first woman appointed as Governor-General of New Zealand (1990-1996); the 100th anniversary of New Zealand Women’s Suffrage is celebrated during her term of office; while in office, she ends the practice of New Zealanders bowing to the Governor-General, saying, “No New Zealander should have to bow to another.” Dame Catherine also ended the practice of members of staff ceasing to clean whenever the Governor-General enters the room
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- April 5, 1761 – Sybil Ludington born, at age 16, becomes an American Revolutionary War heroine, when she rides to warn American colonial forces the British approach on April 26, 1777, riding twice the distance of Paul Revere
- 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 E. Alexander born, pediatrician and microbiologist, identified and studied antibiotic resistance caused by random genetic mutations in DNA, developed treatments for Haemophilus influenzae (influenzal meningitis), reducing the mortality rate from nearly 100 percent to under 25 percent; among first scientists to identify antibiotic resistance, which she correctly concluded was caused by random genetic mutations in DNA; first woman president of American Pediatric Society (1964)
- April 5, 1908 – Bette Davis born, legendary film star, won Academy Awards for Dangerous and Jezebel, nominated for eight other performances; first woman president of Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; co-founder of the WWII Hollywood Canteen club for servicemen; sold two million dollars worth of war bonds in two days; 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, 1913 – Ruth Smith Nielson born, Faroese artist who lived some years in Denmark, then returned to the Faroe Islands; her work is fits the transition in art from Impressionism to realism
- April 5, 1922 – American Birth Control League, founded by Margaret Sanger and forerunner of Planned Parenthood, is incorporated in New York
- April 5, 1925 – Janet D. Rowley born, American geneticist who was the first scientist to identify a chromosomal translocation as the cause of leukemia and some other cancers; she advanced in the University of Chicago’s Department of Hematology from research associate in 1963 to full professor by 1977, improving existing methods of staining to make identifying chromosomes easier; her findings of the link between abnormal chromosomes and cancer was met with some initial resistance, but has become immensely influential, leading to over 70 translocations being identified across different cancers; recipient in 1998 of both the Lasker Award and the National Medal of Science, and in 2009, the Presidential Medal of Freedom
- 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, 1938 – Nancy Holt born, American sculptor, installation artist and creator of monumental land art; notable for Sun Tunnels in the Utah desert, Dark Star Park in Rosslyn VA, and Solar Web in Santa Monica CA
- April 5, 1943 – Miet Smet born, Belgian Christian Democratic and Flemish Party (CD&V) politician, founder and first president of its women’s organization, Vrouw en Maatschappij (Woman and Society); appointed a Minister of State in 2002; Member of the European Parliament (1999-2004); Flemish Parliament member since 2004, and the Belgian Parliament (2007-2010); advocate for improving women’s economic position and their participation in policy-making, and opposing violence against women
- April 5, 1944 – Willeke van Ammelrooy born, Dutch actress and director, noted for her performance in the title role of the feminist film, Antonia’s Line, which won the 1996 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
- April 5, 1949 – Judith A. Resnik born, engineer, NASA astronaut, one of six qualified women mission specialists in 1984, second American woman in space, killed in space shuttle Challenger explosion in 1986
- April 5, 1992 – Peace protesters Suada Dilberovic and Olga Sučić are killed on the Vrbanja Bridge in Sarajevo, becoming the first casualties of the Bosnian War; dispute over who fired the shots
- April 5, 2000 – National Day of Hope is designated by U.S. Congress, started by Yvonne Fedderson and Sara O’Meara, co-founders of Childhelp, a non-profit to help end child abuse and neglect
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- April 6, 1787 – Celestina Cordero born, a free black Puerto Rican whose parents taught all the children in their family to read and write; founder of the first school for girls in Puerto Rico (1820), where she taught students regardless of their race or social standing; she also became a public speaker advocating public education for women, and after several years of struggle, the Spanish government acknowledged her as a teacher and accredited her school; while her contributions have been largely overlooked until recently, her brother Raphael is recognized as “The Father of Public Education” in Puerto Rico
- 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, decorative work for fountains and work combining realism with flow of movement; 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 the 20,000
- April 6, 1898 – Jeanne Hébuterne born, French artist, and frequent model for painter Amedeo Modigliani
- April 6, 1917 – Leonora Carrington born in Britain, Mexican Surrealist painter and author; founding member of the Women’s Liberation Movement in Mexico during the 1970s, designing a poster Mujeres conciencia (1973) to bring attention to the movement; received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women’s Caucus for Art in 1986
- April 6, 1936 – Helen Berman born in the Netherlands, Israeli visual artist and textile designer
- April 6, 1949 – Alyson J. Bailes born, British political scientist and diplomat; her varied career in the UK Foreign service was greatly helped by her extensive knowledge of languages, speaking and reading French, Hungarian, German, Mandarin Chinese, Norwegian, Finnish and Swedish, with some understanding of Danish, Icelandic, Faroese and Dutch; UK Ambassador to Finland (2000-2002); after retiring, she took a post at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (2002-2007)
- April 6, 1962 – Iris Häussler born in Germany, Canadian conceptual and installation artist
- April 6, 1998 – Federal researchers in the U.S. announce that daily Tamoxifen pills could cut breast cancer risk among high-risk women
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- April 7, 1141 – Empress Matilda becomes the first female ruler of England, adopting the title ‘Lady of the English’ but her war with Stephen makes her reign short-lived
- April 7, 1803 – Flora Tristan born, French author, socialist and feminist; her works include Peregrinations of a Pariah and The Workers’ Union
- April 7, 1805 – Sacagawea begins helping the Lewis and Clark Expedition as an interpreter
- April 7, 1872 – Marie Equi born, American physician, lesbian, abortion provider, suffragist, labor and anti-war activist; recognized by Theodore Roosevelt and the U.S. Army for her services during the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco; spoke against US involvement in WWI and was imprisoned under the Sedition Act for a three-year term and served a year-and-a-half
- April 7, 1890 – Marjory Stoneman 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, 1889 – Gabriela Mistral born as Lucila Godoy Alcayaga, Chilean poet, diplomat and educator, recipient of 1945 Nobel Prize in Literature
- 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, 1937 – Eleanor Holmes Norton born, member of the U.S. House of Representatives for the District of Columbia since 1991
- April 7, 1944 – Julia Miller Phillips born, film producer, first 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, 1951 – Janis Ian born, American singer-songwriter
- April 7, 1975 – Beverly Sills makes her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in Gioacchino Rossini’s Siege of Corinth
- April 7, 1987 – Opening of the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., the first museum devoted to women artists
- April 7, 2012 – Joyce Banda, leader of the People’s Party, becomes Malawi’s first female President. After the sudden death of President Mutharika on April 5, the government delays notification of both the public and Vice President Banda. The cabinet seeks a court order to block Banda from becoming president, but the military and the public back her, demanding that the Malawian Constitution be followed
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- 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 laws (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. The Albion Fellows Bacon Center, named in her honor, opened in 1981 in Evansville, offering emergency shelter, legal advocacy, and other services to victims of domestic violence
- April 8, 1886 – Mary Ayer Barnes born, American, director of the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers in Industry (1920-1926); after her back was broken in a traffic accident in 1926, she took up writing plays, novels and short-stories; winner of the 1931 Pulitzer Prize for her first novel, Years of Grace
- April 8, 1892 – Mary Pickford born, most successful actress in silent films, won an 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, 1900 – Marie Beuzeville Byles born, Australian conservationist, pacifist, feminist, explorer and non-fiction author; the first practicing solicitor in New South Wales, working on conveyancing, probate and for just settlements for women in divorces; campaigned successfully for the creation of the Bouddi Natural Park in 1935, and served as a trustee on the board which managed the park; after a foot injury curtailed her outdoor activities, she became student of Buddhism, and wrote four books on the subject; she bequeathed her home, Ahimsa, to the National Trust of Australia
- 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
- April 8, 1924 – Atatürk’s Reforms to convert the nation to the Republic of Turkey abolish Sharia courts, and pave the way for Turkish women to achieve voting rights in local elections in 1930, and full suffrage by 1934
- April 8, 1927 – Tilly Armstrong born, popular British author of romance novels, also used pseudonyms Tania Langley and Kate Alexander; as Alexander she wrote historical romances
- April 8, 1938 – Mary W. Gray born, American mathematician, statistician, lawyer;author of works on mathematics, computer science, applied statistics, economic equity, discrimination law, and academic freedom
- April 8, 1939 – Trina Schart Hyman born, American children’s book illustrator; winner of the 1985 Caldecott Medal for her illustrations for Saint George and the Dragon, retold by Margaret Hodges
- 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
- April 8, 1948 – Barbara Scott Young born, Baroness Young of Old Scone, British Labour member of the House of Lords; Chair of the Woodland Trust since 2016; Chair of the Care Quality Commission (2008-2010); Chief Executive of the Environment Agency (2000-2008)
- April 8,1955 – Barbara Kingsolver born, American writer; The Poisonwood Bible, The Bean Trees, Pigs in Heaven
- 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
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- April 9, 1827 – Maria Susanna Cummins born, American author; The Lamplighter
- April 9, 1887 – Florence Price born, classical composer, first 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, 1860 – Emily Hobhouse born, English reformer and social worker; founder of the Distress Fund for South African Women and Children; notable for reports she sent home exposing to the British public the appalling conditions in British-run concentration camps for Boer women and children in South Africa during the Second Boer War
- April 9, 1921 – Mary Jackson born, African American mathematician and aerospace engineer; NASA’s first black woman engineer
- 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, 1928 – Mae West opens in the play she wrote for herself, Diamond Lil, her first Broadway success
- April 9, 1929 – Sharan Rani Backliwal born, Indian classical musician and scholar, known for her expertise on the sarod and her collection of over 300 15th to 19th century musical instruments
- April 9, 1929 – Paule Marshall born as Valenza Pauline Burke, American author and poet; best known for her novel Brown Girl, Brownstones; went with Langston Hughes on a State Department-sponsored world cultural tour in 1965
- 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, 1946 – Sara Parkin born, Scottish politician, originally with the UK Green Party (1976-1992), a savvy policy instigator and frequent spokesperson for the party, but resigned in 1992 over leadership issues within the party; co-founded the Forum for the Future, a sustainable development charity; currently involved with spreading sustainability education and literacy
- April 9, 1948 – Jaya Bhaduri Bachchan born, Indian actress and politician, reelected to her seat in parliament in 2012
- April 9, 1955 – Yamina Benguigui born, French film director and Socialist Party politician of Algerian descent; her father, a leader in the Algerian National Movement, became a political prisoner, but his opposition to her chosen profession led to an estrangement; she is known for films on gender issues in the North African immigrant community in France; Femmes d’Islam, Mémoires d’immigrés, l’héritage maghrébin; elected to the Paris city council representing the 20th arrondissement in 2008, and appointed as Junior Minister for French Nationals Abroad and Relations with La Francophonie (French-speaking countries worldwide) at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2012; appointed as the French President’s representative for the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF)
- April 9, 1955 – Joolz Denby born, British spoken-word artist, poet, novelist and tattoo artist; former punk scene bouncer; she organized Poetry in Motion, a local poetry out loud group, and first gained attention as a touring punk performance poet
- 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
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- 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, first woman cabinet member, Secretary of Labor (1933-1945), key contributor to Social Security Act and Fair Labor Standards Act; oversaw the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Public Works Administrationand its successor the Federal Works Agency, and the labor portion of the National Industrial Recovery Act
- April 10, 1903 – Clare Boothe Luce born, American politician, U.S. Ambassador to Italy and Brazil; U.S. Congresswoman (R-CT 1943-1947); 1983 Presidential Medal of Freedom
- April 10, 1903 – Clare Turlay Newberry, American children’s book author and illustrator; four of her books were named Caldecott Honor Books; Barkis, Marshmallow, April’s Kittens and T-Bone the Babysitter
- 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 (1963-1972), 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, American Chicana activist, labor organizer and civil and women’s 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, 1937 – Bella Akhmadulina born, Russian poet, author and translator; 1994 Pushkin Prize; Casket and Key, Izbrannoye (Selected Verse)
- April 10, 1954 – Anne Lamott born, American novelist, non-fiction writer and progressive political activist/public speaker; Hard Laughter, her first novel was written for her father, writer Kenneth Lamott, after his diagnosis of brain cancer; her non-fiction book, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, inspired the title of Freida Lee Mock’s documentary Bird by Bird with Annie: A Film Portrait of Writer Anne Lamott
- April 10, 1956 – Dame Carol V. Robinson born, British chemist, noted for research in chemical biology; since 2009, Royal Society Research Professor at the Physical and Theoretical Chemistry Laboratory at Oxford; from 2001 to 2009, Professor of Mass Spectrometry at the Department of Chemistry of Cambridge; has worked on protein folding, the three-dimensional structure of proteins, ribosomes, molecular chaperones and membrane proteins; in 2004, honored with both a Royal Society Fellowship and the Rosalind Franklin Award; in 2010, received the Davy Medal “for her ground-breaking and novel use of mass spectrometry for the characterisation of large protein complexes”
- April 10, 1957 – Rosemary Hill born, British historian, author and biographer; best-known for God’s Architect, a biography of Augustus Pugin, which won multiple awards, including the Wolfson History Prize, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize; Stonehenge, and Unicorn: The Poetry of Angela Carter, co-author with Angela Carter
- April 10, 1996 – The National Committee on Pay Equity launches National Equal Pay Day which is set on the day in the year when an American 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 10, 1996 – President Clinton vetoes a bill that would have outlawed a technique used to end pregnancies in their late stages
- April 10, 2001 – Jane Swift sworn in as first female governor of Massachusetts
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- April 11, 1864 – Johanna Elberskirchen born, German feminist author and activist for rights of women, gays and lesbians, and blue-collar workers; publishes books on women’s health and sexuality; her last public appearance is at the 1930 World League for Sexual Reform conference in Vienna; in 1933, the Nazi Party comes to power and her activities end; when she dies in 1943, there is no public record of her funeral
- 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 three people who called a meeting in NYC in response to a race riot in Springfield, Illinois. The attendees issued a summons for a national conference on the civil and political rights of black Americans on the centennial of Lincoln's birthday, February 12, 1909, at which 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 first executive secretary
- April 11, 1881 – The Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary, which becomes Spelman College, is founded in Atlanta, Georgia, as an institute of higher education for African-American women, and received its collegiate charter in 1924
- April 11, 1908 – Jane Bolin born, lawyer and judge, first black woman to graduate from Yale Law School, first to join NYC Bar Association and the NYC Law Department, and first African-American woman 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)
- April 11, 1914 – Dorothy Lewis Bernstein born, American mathematician who worked centered on applied mathematics, statistics, computer programming; she also did research on the Laplace transform; first woman to be elected president of the Mathematics Association of America (1979-1980)
- 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
- April 11, 1925 – Viola Gregg Liuzzo born, American Unitarian Universalist activist and member of the NAACP, who answers the call of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., coming to Selma Alabama after Bloody Sunday in 1965, and marches from Selma to Montgomery, helping with coordination and logistics. Driving back from taking other activists to the Montgomery airport, she is murdered, shot to death by Ku Klux Klansmen firing from a car that pulled alongside, which was also carrying FBI informant Gary Thomas Rowe. He testifies against the shooters, leading to their conviction. Rowe is given a pass by the FBI for actively participating in violence, sometimes even inciting it, against Civil Rights activists from 1961 until 1965, when he goes into the witness protection program. The FBI launches a smear campaign against Liuzzo after her death, falsely claiming she was a Communist Party member, a heroin addict, and had abandoned her children to have sex with black men in the Civil Rights movement, as part of their attempt to discredit Dr. King and the whole Civil Rights Movement
- April 11, 1928 – Ethel S. Kennedy born, American human rights campaigner; after the assassination of her husband, Robert Kennedy, she founded the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, a non-profit dedicated to advancing human rights through litigation, advocacy and education
- April 11, 1938 – Reatha Clark King born, African-American chemist and corporate executive; Executive Director/Board Chair of the General Mills Foundation (1988-2003); Professor of Chemistry at City University of New York (1968-1977); research chemist for the National Bureau of Standards (1962-1967), the first black woman chemist hired by the agency
- April 11, 1941 – Ellen Goodman born, American journalist, syndicated columnist and author; won the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary; co-founder and director of The Conversation Project, which helps people talk to their loved ones about what kind of end-of-life care they want before the time when decisions must be made
- April 11, 1952 – Indira Samarasekera born in Sri Lanka, Canadian Mechanical Engineer; President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Alberta (2005-2015); member since 2016 of the Canadian Independent Advisory Board for Senate Appointments (Canadian Senators are appointed, not elected)
- April 11, 1959 – Ana Maria Polo born in Cuba, American lawyer and arbitrator on Casa Cerrado (Case Closed), broadcast by Telemundo, which became the first Spanish-language program nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award in 2010; a breast cancer survivor, she is a frequent speaker at fundraisers for the cause
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- 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 – Jan Tinbergen born, Dutch economist; works on econometric models; awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize for Economics
- April 12, 1903 – Justine Polier born, first woman in New York Workmen’s Compensation Division; Domestic Relations Court Judge (1935-1973); 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 by the ALA on April’s 3rd Wednesday as National Bookmobile Day
- April 12, 1908 – Ida Pollock born, English author of short stories and romance novels; in a 90-year career writing under ten pseudonyms, she sold millions of books; she was still writing up to the last year of her life, and was 105 years old at her death
- April 12, 1910 – Irma Rapuzzi born, French politician; the daughter of a miner, she entered politics in 1947 as a municipal councilor in Marseille, then was elected Senator of Bouches-du- Rhône (1955-1989), and served on the Finance Committee (1957-1971) and the Law Commission (1977-1980); she lived to be 107 years old
- April 12, 1913 – Keiko Fukuda born in Japan, Japanese-American pioneering martial artist, the highest-ranking female judoka in Judo history, and the last surviving student of Kanō Jigorō, the founder of Judo
- 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 (1961-1964); 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, 1925 – Evelyn Berezin born, American computer designer; noted for designing the first computer-driven word processor, the first computer-controlled system for airline reservations, the first computerized banking system, and a system for range calculations for the U.S Army
- April 12, 1927 – The British Parliament comes out in favor of women’s voting rights
- April 12, 1944 – Lisa Jardine born, British historian; studied both Mathematics and English at university; fluent in eight languages including Ancient Greek and Latin, and wrote on everything from Shakespeare and Francis Bacon to feminist theory and the history of science; Professor of Renaissance Studies at University College, London (1990-2011), also Director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in the Humanities and Director of the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters; Fellow of the Royal Historical Society; Fellow and Honorary Fellow of King’s College and Jesus College, Cambridge; President of the Antiquarian Horological Society; publications include Francis Bacon: Discovery and the Art of Discourse and Still Harping on Daughters: Women and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare; her book Going Dutch: How England Plundered Holland’s Glory, about how Dutch thinkers and scientists influenced England’s intellectual landscape in the 17th century, won 2009 Cundill International Prize in History
- April 12, 1950 – Joyce Banda born, Malawian politician and grassroots women’s rights activist; Minister of Foreign Affairs (2006-2009); first woman Vice-President of Malawi (2009-2012) founder and leader of the People’s Party in 2011; first female President of Malawi (2012-2014), taking over after the sudden death of President Bingu wa Mutharika; she was succeeded by his younger brother Peter Mutharika
- April 12, 1963 – Lydia Cacho born, Mexican investigative journalist, feminist and human rights activist; her 2004 book, Los Demonios del Edén (Demons of Eden), alleging that prominent businessmen in Puebla conspired to protect a pedophilia ring, caused a national scandal. After publication, she was arrested in Cancun by Puebla police and driven back to Puebla, 900 miles away, verbally abused and threatened with rape en route, but later released on bail; in 2006, a tape came to light of telephone conversations from shortly before her arrest between the governor of Puebla, Mario Marin, and businessman Kamel Borge about having Cacho beaten and raped to silence her. She took the case of her arrest all the way to the Supreme Court of Mexico, the first woman to testify before the court, but the justices ruled 6-4 in 2007 that there was no case for Governor Marin to answer. In 2008, she was almost killed a few days before the trial of the central figure in the pedophile ring, Jean Succar Kuri, when the lugnuts on one of her car’s wheels were loosened. Kuri was convicted, and sentenced to 112 years in prison. Cacho also reported in 2006 on hundreds of women missing or murdered in Ciudad Juarez. She is the winner of the Civil Courage Prize, the Wallenberg Medal, and the Olof Palme Prize, and named a 2010 World Press Freedom Hero by the International Press Institute
- 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
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- April 13, 1648 – Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon born, French mystic and author, accused of heresy and imprisoned (1695-1703) for publishing her book, Moyen court et facile de faire oraison (A Short and Very Easy Method of Prayer) which advocated silent prayer, the intellectual stillness of meditation, over vocal prayer, and was placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (the Roman Catholic list of prohibited books, which was finally abolished in 1966 by Pope Paul VI)
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April 13, 1828 – Josephine Butler born, English feminist, social reformer and author; campaigned for women’s suffrage, better education and employment opportunities for women, and against the legal doctrine of coverture, in which a woman’s legal rights and obligations are subsumed by those of her husband, reducing her to his legal appendage – Butler was a key player in the passage of the Married Women’s Property Act 1882; also advocated for an end to sex trafficking of women and children, especially child prostitution, and an end to the Contagious Diseases Acts, which legalized the forced medical examination of prostitutes, but not their clients; founded the International Abolitionist Federation, to fight international sex trafficking and oppose regulations which violated women’s rights
- 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, daughter of an Afro-Caribbean father from the Danish West Indies and a Danish immigrant mother, which alienated her from both the white and black cultures of the U.S. In 1915, Larsen got a nursing degree and worked at the Tuskegee Institute’s hospital, NYC’s Lincoln Hospital, and then for the NY Bureau of Public Health. Her 1919 marriage to Elmer Imes, a pioneering black physicist, ended in divorce. In 1923, she became the first black woman to graduate from the New York Public Library School at Columbia University; considered a Harlem Renaissance author, she published her first novel, Quicksand, in 1928, and Passing in 1929; she also published several short stories, but after her divorce in 1933, she was depressed and stopped writing, disappearing from literary circles. When her ex-husband died in 1942, ending his alimony payments, she returned to nursing
- 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, she was kidnapped and murdered by a former employee
- April 13, 1933 – Ruth Bryan Owen becomes the first 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 (1929-1933)
- April 13, 1940 – Ruby Puryear Hearn born, African-American biophysicist who has worked on development of health improvement programs for at-risk children, maternal and infant care, AIDS prevention, substance abuse and minority medical education; Senior Vice President of the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation (1983-2001), since retiring, acts as Senior Vice President Emerita
- April 13, 1947 – Rae Armantrout born, American poet; winner of the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her collection Versed
- April 13, 1954 – Barbara M. Roche born, British Labour Party Politician; MP for Hornsey and Wood Green (1992-2005); Minister of State for Asylum and Immigration, Home Office (1999-2001); Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (2002-2003)
- April 13, 1957 – Amy Goodman born, American broadcast journalist, syndicated columnist and investigative reporter; host of Democracy Now! since 1996; recipient of the 2004 Thomas Merton Award, and the 2012 Gandhi Peace Award; criminal charges in connection with her television coverage of protests of the Dakota Access pipeline, which showed security personnel using pepper spray and attack dogs, were eventually dismissed
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- 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 14, 1905 – Elizabeth Paisley Huckaby born, American educator; as Vice Principal for Girls at Little Rock Central High School in 1957 when nine black students, six of them girls, were admitted to the school after desegregation, and was responsible for protecting the girls; in 1958, Governor Orval Faubus closed all the public schools to resist desegration, and after a year of paying teachers. who were under contract, to sit in empty schools, three members of the Little Rock School Board declared themselves a majority and fired dozens of teachers and administrators, including Huckaby; but the board members were voted out of office, and those who had been fired were reinstated. Author of Crisis at Central High: Little Rock 1957–58, published after her retirement in 1980, based on the diary she kept during the crisis
- April 14, 1919 – Shamshad Begum born, Indian singer, sang in a number of languages including Hindi, Tamil, and Punjabi
- April 14, 1919 – K. Saraswathy Amma born, Malayalam-language feminist writer from the state of Kerala in India, whose short stories, essays and a novel were radically anti-patriarchy, so she was dismissed at the time as “an incorrigible man-hater” but has since been re-discovered and celebrated by feminist scholars
- April 14, 1924 – Helen W. Warnock born, the Baroness Warnock, English philosopher and author who has written extensively on ethics and existentialism; Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge (1984-1991); chair of a 1974 UK inquiry on special education, which resulted on a radical change to placing learning-disabled children in mainstream school, and giving them additional educational support; President of Listening Books, a charity providing audiobooks to people who have difficulty reading
- April 14, 1926 – Barbara R. Anderson born, Lady Anderson, a New Zealand medical technologist and teacher who first became a published novelist in her sixties
- April 14, 1932 – Loretta Lynn, American singer-songwriter; 7 American Music Awards, 12 Academy of Country Music awards and 4 Grammys
- April 14, 1949 – Dame Deanne Julius born, American- British economist and analyst, formerly for the CIA; founding member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee; current Lady Usher of the Blue Rod of the Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George since 2016
- April 14, 2014 – The Jihadist terrorist group Boko Haram abducts 276 schoolgirls from Chibok, Nigeria; some have since escaped, been rescued, or freed, but the fate of over 100 of the girls remains unknown
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- April 15, 1829 – Mary Harris Thompson born, founder and head physician of Chicago Hospital for Women and Children, one of the first women to practice medicine in Illinois
- April 15, 1892 – Corrie ten Boom born, Dutch watchmaker; after the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands, she and her family began helping Jews escape the Nazi holocaust, starting with their neighbors; betrayed in 1944 by a Dutch informant, the family was arrested and sent to prison, but the six people in hiding at their house were undiscovered, and managed to escape undetected; many of her family members died in prison, but she survived, and wrote the best-selling book The Hiding Place; after the war, she helped set up refugee housing for holocaust survivors, and became a public speaker
- 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, 1895 – Abigaíl Mejía Soliére born, Dominican Republic teacher, pioneering feminist activist and nationalist; co-founder with Delia Weber of the Acción Feminista movement in 1927 to gain educational opportunities for poor Dominican women, campaign for women’s suffrage (achieved in 1942), and work for social issues such as penal reform, and against drug and alcohol abuse and forced prostitution
- April 15, 1896 – May Edward Chinn, first black woman to graduate from Bellevue Hospital Medical College (1926) and the first 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)
- 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, first African American female architect licensed in New York and California, first elected Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and first black woman to form her own architectural firm
- April 15, 1930 – Vigdís Finnbogadóttir born, world’s first democratically elected and longest-serving female president, President of Iceland (1980-1996)
- April 15, 1943 – Pinar Kür born, Turkish author and dramatist; she also teaches at Bilgo University in Istanbul
- April 15, 1943 – Veronica Linklater born, Baroness Linklater of Butterstone; Liberal Democrat member of the House of Lords, advocate for children’s welfare and prison reform
- April 15, 1947 – Linda Bloodworth-Thomason born, American screenwriter and television producer; co-founder of Mozark Productions; notable for creating, writing and producing the hit series Designing Women (1986-1993)
- April 15, 1947 – Cristina Husmark Pehrsson born, Swedish Moderate Party politician, member of the Riksdag (1998-2014); Minister for Social Security and for Nordic Cooperation (2006-2010)
- April 15, 1951 – Heloise born as Ponce Heloise Evans, American newspaper columnist and radio show host; took over “Hints from Heloise” from her mother, Heloise Bowles, in 1977; also contributing editor/columnist for Good Housekeeping, and author of almost a dozen books
- April 15, 1951 – Marsha Ivins born, American aerospace engineer and NASA Astronaut, a veteran of five space shuttle missions
- April 15, 1952 – Avital Ronell born in Czechoslovakia, American philosopher and academic whose work explores a wide range, spanning literary studies, feminist philosophy, psychoanalysis, addiction, ethics and legal issues, trauma, war and technology; a founding editor of the journal Qui Parle
- April 15, 1959 – Emma Thompson born, British actor, author, screenwriter; nominated for five Academy Awards, and won Best Actress for Howard’s End and Best Adapted Screenplay for Sense and Sensibility; human rights and environmental activist
- 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
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