Daily Kos: History for Kossacks

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Tuesday April 20, 2021 · 12:47 PM PDT

2021/04/20 · 12:47

New Jersey is the only state that has an official “State Demon”, based on an odd legend that involves Benjamin Franklin, a prominent New Jersey family, and Satan.

Jersey_Devil_Philadelphia_Post_1909 — The Jersey Devil, as depicted in 1909 photo from WikiCommons

"Hidden History" is a diary series that explores forgotten and little-known areas of history.

Although New Jersey is a heavily populated state, the northern portion, known as the Pine Barrens, is surprisingly empty, consisting of open stretches of forest.

Rumor has it that this is where the New York Mafia buries its victims (including, in some versions, Jimmy Hoffa). In my younger days I spent time camping and backpacking in the Barrens, and became familiar with one of the many legends that surround this place: the tale of the Jersey Devil.

There are several different versions of the Jersey Devil story, but they all begin with “Mother Leeds”. She was a member of the Leeds family that was prominent in this part of New Jersey and who owned a large amount of land in the Pine Barrens. In the 1710s, Daniel Leeds was a successful printer who was publishing an almanac. He did well—until he upset the local Quaker community by printing astrological horoscopes in his volumes. The devout Quakers considered this to be idol-worship and blasphemy, and they shunned him. Leeds then made the split permanent by converting to Anglicanism and writing articles which denounced the Quakers.

When Daniel Leeds died in1720 his son Titan took over the business, and he did well enough to compete successfully with another almanac, published in Philadelphia by Benjamin Franklin. But Titan continued his father’s practice of printing horoscopes in his books, and Franklin took advantage of this to sarcastically publish his own “astrological calculation” predicting that Leeds would die in October 1733. When Leeds then wrote a letter to Poor Richards pointing out that he was still alive, Franklin mockingly replied that his astrology was correct, that Leeds really did die, and that this letter must be from a ghost who had returned to haunt him.

In 1735, however, the legend goes, Mother Leeds learned that she was pregnant again, with her 13^th child. In some versions, destitute, with a lazy husband, and facing yet another mouth to feed, she impulsively uttered a curse to Heaven, “Let this one be a devil!” In other versions, Mother Leeds was herself a witch who practiced dark arts in the pine woods, and who had summoned Satan himself to pass through the gates of Hell—and fornicated with him to produce a child.

Today, many researchers identify “Mother” Leeds as Deborah, the wife of Japhet Leeds—who, according to his 1736 will, had 12 children. They lived at Leeds Point in the Barrens.

On the night that Mother Leeds’ 13^thchild was born, it was turbulent and stormy: violent lightning rent the air. In the upstairs bedroom, accompanied by midwives and, in some versions, family, lay Mother Reeds. At first, the child looked like an ordinary baby boy. But suddenly, after a lightning strike or, in some versions, after being exposed to the light of the full moon, the child began to transform: with shrieking screams it sprouted cloven feet and hairy legs like a goat, long claws emerged from its fingers, the face was drawn out into a fanged muzzle, the eyes turned glowing red, and a pair of batlike wings sprouted from its back. With its terrible claws the creature tore apart several people in the room, then swiftly climbed up the chimney onto the roof and flapped away into the trackless expanse of the Pine Barrens. And, the legend says, it still lives there today.

The source of the story would seem to be pretty apparent: it is a tall tale made up about a family that nobody seemed to like very much (and it may not be a coincidence that the English coat of arms of the Leeds family bears the figure of a long-tailed bat-winged dragon known as a Wyvern).Although the legend of the Jersey Devil was familiar to every resident of the Pine Barrens (known as “Pineys” or “Pine Rats”), however, it remained little more than a local tale.

At least, until 1909, when there was a sudden outburst of “monster” stories. At first, these told of strange cloven-hoofed footprints that seemed to pass through walls or over rooftops. Then, accounts came of blood-curdling shrieks in the forest, said to sound like a woman screaming, or fingernails on a chalkboard, or sometimes like a rusty gate. Finally, there were descriptions of encounters with bat-winged red-eyed creatures that suddenly appeared and then flapped off into the night. Within weeks, there were hundreds of “monster sightings” from as far away as Maryland. Children stayed home from school, and in Newark even the timber workers would no longer venture into the Pine Barrens.

Old “sightings” now suddenly surfaced: it was reported that US Navy Commodore Stephen Decatur had once shot at the Devil with a cannon while inspecting the Hanover Mill Works, and Joseph Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon, was said to have seen the creature in the early 1800s.

At the Arch Street Museum in Philadelphia, meanwhile, which had been struggling for some time, publicist Norman Jeffries saw an opportunity to bring in some paying crowds. He purchased a young Kangaroo from a traveling circus, glued some fake talons to its paws and attached large batlike wings to its back, then exhibited it as a “captured Jersey Devil”. The exhibit must have been pretty dimly lit for it to fool anybody, but the hoax attracted a lot of visitors to the museum. (It also makes one wonder how much involvement Jeffries might have had with the original newspaper stories which set off the flap in the first place.)

Even today, there are still occasional stories of encounters.

The Pine Barrens are primeval, and they can indeed be a hazardous place for inexperienced or unprepared hikers. There are bears and cougars here (and it may be relevant that one of the many names for the cougar is “mountain screamer”), though the real danger comes from the Barrens itself. The endless pine forest looks the same from any direction, making it easy for a backpacker to get lost—and they are empty enough that you could wander here for days without seeing anyone.

I can still recall one story that I heard, of a traveler from New York City who, while passing through the Pine Barrens in winter, stopped along the road to pee. He was never seen again. The footprints found in the snow near his abandoned car told the story: he had walked a short ways into the woods, peed on a tree, and then apparently, in the dark, he forgot in which direction the road lay. His footprints wandered aimlessly for a time, then went off away from the road, deeper into the woods. His body was never found.

Some whispered that the Devil got him.

NOTE: As some of you already know, all of my diaries here are draft chapters for a number of books I am working on. So I welcome any corrections you may have, whether it's typos or places that are unclear or factual errors. I think of y'all as my pre-publication editors and proofreaders. ;)

WOW2: Mid-April’s Trailblazing Women and Events in Our History - 2021

officebss for This Week in the War on Women

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Saturday April 17, 2021 · 3:30 PM PDT

2021/04/17 · 15:30

March for Womens Lives - 2004 - Feminist Majority Foundation

WOW2 is a thrice-monthly sister blog to This Week in the War on Women. This edition covers women and events from April 11 through April 20.

The WOW2 Late April edition will post on Saturday, April 24.

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.

You will find some women here who are not good role models, but they are good reminders that women are fallible humans. Consider them cautionary tales.

April is Black Women’s History Month in the U.S.

THIS WEEK IN THE WAR ON WOMEN

will post shortly, so be sure to go there next and
catch up on the latest dispatches from the frontlines.

Many thanks to libera nos, intrepid Assistant Editor of WOW2. Any remaining mistakes are either mine, or uncaught computer glitches in transferring the data from his emails to DK5. And thanks to wow2lib, WOW2’s Librarian Emeritus.

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.

**Mid-April’s Trailblazing Women and Events in Our History**

_{Note: All images and audios are below the person or event to which they refer}

_________________________________

April 11, 1644 – Marie Jeanne Baptiste of Savoy-Nemours born, Duchess of Savoy by marriage; she served as regent for her son Victor Amadeus II from 1675 to 1680. She was a supporter of construction projects, artistic organizations, and educational institutions, leaving a considerable architectural legacy in Turin. “Madama Reale” was a patron of composer Alessandro Stradella, and Baroque architect Guarino Guarini.

PortraitofMarieJeanneBaptisteofSavoy-byRobertNanteuil.jpg

April 11, 1749 – Adélaïde Labille-Guiard born, French portrait painter and miniaturist. She was an advocate for women to receive the same opportunities as men to become great painters. Labille-Guiard was one of the first women to become a member of the Royal Academy, and the first woman artist to receive permission to set up a studio for her students at the Louvre. She painted portraits of members of the Royal family, which made her a political suspect during the French Revolution. In 1793, she was ordered to destroy some of her royalist works, including the unfinished commission for the Count of Provence. The exile of the Comte of Provence meant Labille-Guiard had not only lost her last royal patron, but she also did not receive a cent of the agreed-upon 30,000 livres. The Revolution further hurt her career when other Royals emigrated without paying for several portraits they had commissioned her to paint. The pastel portraits of the French princesses Marie Adélaïde, Victoire-Louise, and Élisabeth stayed in Labille-Guiard's possession until she died at age 54 from an illness in April, 1803.

Self-Portrait with Two Pupils — by **Adélaïde Labille-Guiard**

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 attendees at a meeting in NYC held in response to a race riot in Springfield, Illinois, which issued a call for a national conference on the civil and political rights of black Americans on the centennial of Lincoln's birthday, February 12, 1909, where the National Negro Committee was formed. The committee, at its second conference in 1910, organized a permanent body known as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Ovington was appointed as its first executive secretary.

April 11, 1881 – The Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary, which becomes Spelman College, is founded in Atlanta, Georgia, by Harriet E. Giles and Sophia B. Packard as institute of higher learning for Black freedwomen. It was renamed Spelman College when it received its collegiate charter in 1924, and is the oldest private historically black liberal arts college for women in the U.S.

April 11, 1903 – Misuzu Kaneko born, Japanese children’s poet and songwriter; her widowed mother ran a bookstore and insisted on her daughter continuing her education until the age of 17, even though most girls of the time only went to school up to the sixth grade. At the bookstore, Kaneko discovered some magazines for children were soliciting stories and verse, and sent in several of her poems. Five of them were published in 1923. Over the next 5 years, 51 of her poems were published. But her marriage to a clerk in the bookstore was not a happy one. He was unfaithful, contracted venereal disease which he passed on to her, and he forced her to stop writing. When she finally divorced him, Japanese law automatically gave indisputable custody of their daughter to the father. She sank into despair. After writing a letter to her former husband begging him to let her mother raise the girl, she committed suicide just before her 27th birthday in 1930. Ultimately, her mother did raise her daughter. Her work fell into obscurity during WWII. In 1966, Setsuo Yazaki, an aspiring poet, found her poem ‘Big Catch’ in an out-of-print book, and spent the next 16 years trying to track down the poet. In 1982, he finally got in touch with Kaneko’s younger brother, who still had the diaries in which his sister had written her poems. The entire collection was published in a six volume anthology. In 2016, an English-language translation of selected poems, Are You an Echo? The Lost Poetry of Misuzu Kaneko, was published.

April 11, 1905 – Wanting her library to extend its services county-wide, American librarian Mary Lemist Titcomb of the Washington County Free Library in Hagerstown, Maryland, first sends boxes of books to general stores and post offices in small towns to create tiny lending libraries, then adds a Library Wagon (the first U.S. ‘bookmobile’) driven by the library’s janitor, Joshua Thomas, to increase outreach in rural areas.

April 11, 1908 – Jane Bolin born, American lawyer and judge, the first black American woman to graduate from Yale Law School, the first to join the NYC Bar Association and the NYC Law Department, and became the first African-American woman judge in the U.S. when she was appointed to the NYC Domestic Relations Court bench in 1939. For the next 20 years, Bolin was the only black woman judge in the U.S. She was required to retire at age 70 in 1979. She was a legal advisor to the National Council of Negro Women, and served on the boards of the NAACP, the National Urban League, and the Child Welfare League.

April 11, 1910 – Annie Dodge Wauneka born, first woman elected to the Navajo Tribal Council (1951-1978); she worked on the tuberculosis epidemic, used both Navajo and Bureau of Indian Affairs ideas on prevention of trachoma and influenza, and campaigned for improved sanitary conditions, clean drinking water, against alcoholism. She demanded funding for child health programs. She was the first Native American to be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1963).

April 11, 1913 – The pavilion at Nevill Ground, a cricket venue in Kent, England, is burned down by militant suffragettes, who leave behind suffragette literature to claim responsibility. Nevill Ground was chosen as a target because of their no-admittance to women policy.

April 11, 1914 – Dorothy Lewis Bernstein born, American mathematician who worked centered on applied mathematics, statistics, and computer programming; she also did research on the Laplace transform; first woman to be elected president of the Mathematicals Association of America (1979-1980).

April 11, 1914 – Sally Hoyt Spofford born, American ornithologist, conservationist, and writer; noted for her work at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology (1955-1969). After retirement, she and her husband, fellow ornithologist Walter Spofford, moved to Portal, Arizona, where their ranch attracted up to 6,000 bird watchers a year.

April 11, 1916 – Annie Besant, British feminist, activist, and 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 civil rights activist and member of the NAACP, answers the call of Martin Luther King Jr., and goes to Selma, Alabama after Bloody Sunday in 1965, marching 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, 1937 – Jill Gascoine born, British novelist, theatrical and television actress; noted for her novels Addicted, Lilian, and Just Like a Woman. In 2013, she announced at a Beverly Hills fundraiser for Alzheimer’s that she had been diagnosed with the disease. Her husband, actor Alfred Molina, reported in 2016 that she was in a very advanced stage of Alzheimer’s, and was in a specialist care home. She died in 2020 at age 83.

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, 1942 – Hattie Gossett born, African American feminist playwright, poet, and spoken word artist. She was an early contributor to Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, which was founded by Audre Lorde and Barbara Smith in 1980. Gossett has been an editor on several magazines, including True Story and McCalls. In 2007, she published The Immigrant Suite: Hey xenophobe! Who you calling a foreigner?

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.

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.

April 11, 1969 – Cerys Matthews born, Welsh singer-songwriter, author, and broadcaster. She was a founding member of Welsh rock band Catatonia and a leading figure in the "Cool Cymru" movement of the late 1990s. Matthews programmes and hosts a weekly music show on BBC Radio 6 Music, a weekly blues show on BBC Radio 2, and a monthly show on the BBC World Service. She also makes documentaries for television and radio and is a roving reporter for The One Show. She founded 'The Good Life Experience', a festival of culture and the great outdoors in Flintshire in 2014, with Charlie and Caroline Gladstone and is author of Hook, Line and Singer, and children's stories Tales From the Deep and Gelert, A Man's Best Friend.

April 11, 2012 – New polls showed Republican Senator Scott Brown and Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren “running neck-and-neck” in the Massachusetts U.S. Senate race. In one telephone survey, Warren polled at 46 percent and Brown at 45 percent. In November, 2012, Warren would win with 53.7% of the vote, compared to Brown’s 46.2%.

April 11, 2020 – A report in The Observer, the UK’s oldest Sunday newspaper, on the response by world leaders to the coronavirus crisis shows that women are prominent among those leaders with the best records. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of Denmark, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand, and President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan each acted promptly and decisively to limit the pandemic’s effect on their nations. Frederiksen closed Denmark’s borders on March 13, 2020, then closed kindergartens, schools, and universities, and banned gatherings of more than 10 people. Denmark’s death toll as of this date was below 250, and the number of coronavirus patients in Danish hospitals was falling. Her straight-talking speeches and clear instructions to the nation have been widely praised. She posted a clip on Facebook of herself doing the dishes while singing along to 1980s Danish popsters Dodo and the Dodos during the nation’s weekly TV lockdown singalong. Jacinda Ardern had already proved herself an effective and compassionate leader during the Christchurch mosque attacks, and continued her outstanding leadership, putting New Zealand into total lockdown on March 25, speaking with clear, empathetic language in nightly online reports, and urging everyone to “be kind” to one another – a slogan emblazoned on billboards around the country. The island nation had only 4 deaths as of this date. Ing-wen used what her country had learned during the 2003 SARS crisis, and listened to her Vice President, Chen Chien-jen, who is an epidemiologist, so Taiwan began screening travelers from Wuhan in December 2019, and notified the World Health organization of evidence that there was human-to-human transmission of the disease, a warning which WHO did not share with other nations at the time, when it might have been a greater help to global efforts in containing the virus. To this date, Taiwan had recorded fewer than 400 cases, and just 5 deaths.

Standout women leaders in the fight against Covid-19

_________________________________

April 12, 1883 – Imogen Cunningham born, American photographer; famous for botanical photos, nudes, and industrial landscapes.

Judy Dater photo of Imogen Cunningham and Twinka Thiebaud

April 12, 1903 – Justine Wise Polier born, lawyer and jurist; in 1925, she enrolled in Yale Law School, where she eventually became editor of the Yale Law Journal. Polier was the first woman in the New York Workmen’s Compensation Division; first woman Domestic Relations Court Judge (1935-1973); she fought against inferior education for black students; daughter of Rabbi Stephen Wise.

April 12, 1908 – Ida Pollock born, English author of short stories and romance novels, and painter in oils, who was selected for inclusion in a national exhibition in 2004; in a 90 year writing career under ten pseudonyms, she sold millions of books; she was still writing up to the last year of her life, and lived to be 105 years old.

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 for Bouches-du- Rhône (1955-1989), 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, American author, 1981 National Book Award for Children’s Books, for Ramona and Her Mother, and three-time ALA Newbery Medal winner for Ramona and Her Father (1978), Ramona Quimby, Age 8 (1982), and Dear Mr. Henshaw (1984). She died age 104 in March 2021.

April 12, 1917– Marietta Tree, born as Mary Endicott Peabody, militant civil rights activist. In 1941, she was part of the American delegation assisting British Ministry of Information. She was a U.S. representative on the UN Commission on Human Rights (1961-1964). Mother of historian Frances Fitzgerald and fashion model Penelope Tree. Served as a director on boards of Pan-American and CBS. Tree 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; 2015 Computer History Museum Fellow Award honoree.

April 12, 1927 – The British Parliament comes out in favor of women’s voting rights.

April 12, 1933 – Montserrat Caballé born, Spanish bel canto soprano; her “Barcelona” duet with Queen’s Freddie Mercury later becomes the theme song of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.

April 12, 1943 – Sumitra Mahajan born, Indian Bharatiya Janata Party politician; Speaker of the Lok Sabha (lower house of India’s Parliament) since 2014; Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha, for Indore since 1989; first Indian woman to represent the same Lok Sabha constituency on the same party ticket eight times in a row.

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 woman 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 12,1957 – Tama Janowitz born, American novelist and short story writer; noted for Slaves of New York, a short story collection, and Scream: A Memoir of Glamour and Dysfunction.

April 12, 1961 – Magda Szubanski born, Australian actress, comedian, and writer; known for her performances in the Australian TV series Full Frontal (1993-1998), and the 1995 film Babe. She was co-chair of Australian Marriage Equality, became one of the most prominent leaders of the Australian campaign for same-sex marriage. Her 1995 memoir Reckoning, which included the story of her father, who was an assassin in the Polish Underground during WWII, won the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non Fiction and the Australian Book Industry Biography of the Year award.

April 12, 1963 – Lydia Cacho born, Mexican investigative journalist, feminist, and human rights activist; her 2004 book, Los Demonios del Edén (The 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, 1961 – Chi Onwurah born, to an English mother and a Nigerian father, UJ Labour politician. Her family moved from Britain to Nigeria shortly after her birth, but in 1967, when the Biafran War broke out, causing famine, her father joined the Biafran army, and the rest of the family returned to the UK. She graduated from Imperial College London in 1987 with a degree in Electrical Engineering, then worked in hardware and software development, product management, market development, and strategy for companies in the UK, France, the U.S., Nigeria and Denmark while studying for an MBA at Manchester Business School. She was head of Telecoms Technology at the UK Office of Communications (Ofcom), and active in the Anti-Apartheid movement before being elected to Parliament for Newcastle upon Tyne Central in 2010. In February 2014, she spoke in parliamentary debate against gender-specific toys: “Before entering Parliament, I spent two decades as a professional engineer, working across three continents. Regardless of where I was or the size of the company, it was always a predominantly male, or indeed all-male, environment, but it is only when I walk into a toy shop that I feel I am really experiencing gender segregation.” She believes the early limiting of children by gender stereotypes is a serious economic issue, and notes that the proportion of UK women students on engineering degree courses has fallen from 12% to 8% in the thirty years since she was an engineering student herself. In 2020 she was made an Honorary Fellow of the British Science Association.

April 12, 1979 – Claire Danes born, American film, television and stage actress, winner of 4 Golden Globe Awards, 2 Screen Actors Guild Awards, and 3 Primetime Emmys. Known for the TV series My So-Called Life (1994-1995), and the movies Home for the Holidays, Brokedown Palace, The Hours, Shopgirl, and Stardust. Danes is a feminist, and has been critical of female underrepresentation within Hollywood. She supports DonorsChoose.org, a website that allows public school teachers to create project funding requests, and Afghan Hands, which helps Afghani women gain independence, education, and livable wages.

April 12, 2016 – Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality Monument Day – the National Woman’s Party (NWP), founded by Alice Paul, bought the Sewall House in 1929 as their Washington DC headquarters, renaming it the Alva Belmont House in honor of the NWP former president – on this day, U.S. President Barack Obama designates the establishment of the house as the Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument, a unit of the National Park System.

April 12, 2017 – The body of Sheila Abdus-Salaam, the first Muslim woman to serve as a judge in the U.S., was found in the Hudson River, a mile from her Harlem home. Abdus-Salaam was found floating fully clothed near the river’s Manhattan shore. There were no immediate signs of foul play, and sources told the New York Post her death appeared to be a suicide. Abdus-Salaam was a widely respected jurist, and the first African-American woman to serve on New York’s highest court. “She was a conscientious, thoughtful judge who never lost her humility,” said city Corporation Counsel Zachary Carter. “This is an unspeakable tragedy.” By April 18, New York police told reporters that her death was considered “suspicious,” after an autopsy revealed bruises on her neck, but also found water in her lungs, indicating that she was alive when she entered the river. In the end, the Medical Examiner concluded that the death was a suicide.

April 12, 2020 – U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson ruled that Alabama can't ban abortions under its effort to fight the spread of COVID-19, and issued a temporary injunction sought by the state’s women’s healthcare clinics. Alabama issued an order in late March to postpone all elective medical procedures, except in emergencies, as hospitals braced for a surge in patients infected with the coronavirus. Alabama is one of several Republican-led states, including Ohio and Texas, that tried to block abortions during the crisis on the grounds that they are unnecessary medical procedures. Judge Thompson wrote, “Based on the current record, the defendants' efforts to combat COVID-19 do not outweigh the lasting harm imposed by the denial of an individual's right to terminate her pregnancy, by an undue burden or increase in risk on patients imposed by a delayed procedure, or by the cloud of unwarranted prosecution against providers." In May, 2019, Alabama lawmakers had passed HR 314, the so-called ‘Human Life Protection Act,’ which defines all unborn children as persons, and bans abortions, with only an exception for fetuses with a lethal anomaly, or to save the life of the mother, and no exceptions for rape or incest. It classifies the performance of an illegal abortion as a Class A felony equivalent to rape and murder. Doctors found guilty under its provisions could receive sentences ranging from 10 years to life imprisonment. A federal court ordered the Human Life Protection Act to not be enforced while litigation continues into 2021.

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April 13, 1519 – Catherine de’ Medici born, the power behind the throne of her three sons, who each became King of France, Francis II, Charles IX, and Henry III; she is often blamed for the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre of thousands of Huguenot protestants in 1572, and there is no question she was complicit, having espoused hard-line policies against the Huguenots. Her ruthless policies were aimed at keeping the Valois monarchy on the throne no matter what the cost, and her patronage of the arts was an attempt to glorify a monarchy whose prestige was in steep decline. Without Catherine, it is unlikely that her sons would have remained in power.

April 13, 1613 – Pocahontas is kidnapped by Samuel Argall, English adventurer and naval officer, and is held captive to force her father, Algonquian chief Powhatan, to release English captives he is holding. Pocahontas is converted to Christianity during her captivity, and remains with the English. In 1614, at age 17, she marries tobacco planter John Rolfe, age 29.

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).

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, American educator, founder and principal of Haines Normal and Industrial School, the first school for black children in Augusta, GA, beginning with 6 students, but expanding to 234 students by the end of the school’s second year – Laney named the school for Francine Haines, who donated $10,000 for its expansion.

April 13, 1886 – Ethel Leginska, British-born concert pianist, composer, conductor, and educator. First woman to conduct some of the world’s leading orchestras. Among her compositions are a four-movement orchestral suite Quatre sujets barbares, inspired by Paul Gauguin paintings, and the operas The Rose and the Ring and Joan of Arc.

April 13, 1891 – 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, 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, 1900 – Sorcha Boru born as Claire Jones, American potter and ceramic sculptor, mostly known on the West Coast, where many of her works are held by the Oakland Museum and the Everson Museum of Art; she lived to the age of 105.

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, American activist, author, she was behind the 1962 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that organized Bible reading in public schools was unconstitutional. The founder and first president of American Atheists; Why I Am an Atheist.

April 13, 1927 – Rosemary Haughton born, Roman Catholic lay theologian and author; noted for The Passionate God; The Tower That Fell; Song in a Strange Land; Tales from Eternity; and The Re-Creation of Eve.

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 first 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, she acts as Senior Vice President Emerita.

April 13, 1944 – Susan Davis born, American Democratic politician, serving in the U.S. House of Representatives, for the 49^th District (2001- 2003) and since 2003 for the reconfigured 53^rd District; California State Assembly (1994-2001), chair of Committee on Consumer Protection; author of legislation expanding patients’ rights, for state-funded at-home nursing care for seniors, rewards for high-achieving teachers, and funding for after-school programs at public schools, but has a mixed record in the U.S. Congress, voting for expanding government and military rights to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens and others without trial.

April 13, 1945 – Judy Nunn born, Australian author, scriptwriter, and actress. Her novels include The Glitter Game; Centre Stage; Araluen; Beneath the Southern Cross; and Maralinga. She has also written children’s books, and scripts for Australian television and radio programs.

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, 1952 – Gabrielle Gourdeau born, French Canadian writer; contributor to the newspapers La Presse, Le Devoir and Le Soleil, and the cultural magazine Arcade.

April 13, 1954 – Barbara M. Roche born, British Labour Party Politician; Member of Parliament 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 on the protesters, were eventually dismissed.

April 13, 1960 – Lyn Brown born, British Labour politician; Member of Parliament for West Ham since 2005; Newnham London Borough Council member (1988-1992).

April 13, 1969 – Ha Wen born, Chinese television producer and director; she has worked for China Central Television since 1995.

April 13, 1980 – Colleen Clinkenbeard born, American ADR director, line producer, voice actress and script writer at Funimation, which does English language versions of Japanese anime series.

April 13, 1981 – Gemma Doyle born, Scottish Labour Co-operative politician; Member of Parliament for West Dunbartonshire (2010-2015). She is a Trustee of the Foreign Policy Centre, a British think tank founded in 1998, which is pro-European Union.

April 13, 2015 – Behnaz Shafiei, age 26, is among the first women motorcyclists in Iran with official permission to practise on off-road circuits, and she is the only Iranian woman rider to have done professional road racing. She feels welcome in an otherwise all-male motorcycling club, where she practises three times a week: “They offer help when I tow my bike with the car or when I run into a technical problem.” Shafiei and the few other existing female motocross riders can operate in clubs, but are not allowed to enter competitions or ride on official race tracks. The track at Tehran’s magnificent Azadi sport complex is exclusive to men. Aside from this small group, Iranian women are banned from riding a motorbike in public, and are not issued licences, although they are allowed to take part in other sports, from martial arts to car rallies. Shafiei’s story has attracted a great deal of interest in Iran, and she hopes she may be allowed to compete. She said, “I’ve never seen a bad reaction to what I do. People here are fascinated when they see a woman doing such a physically demanding sport. Everyone has something affirmative to say. Women wave hands and say well done, you are brave. There are people who can’t believe a woman can ride a motorbike but they’re generally thrilled and feel very proud.”

April 13, 2020 – In the contest for a seat on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, Jill Karofsky, the liberal candidate, beat incumbent conservative Justice Daniel Kelly by over 90,000 votes, a margin of victory that surprised both Democrats and Republicans in a potentially crucial presidential battleground state.

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April 14, 1331 – Jeanne-Marie de Maille born, French noblewoman who wanted to be a nun, but her grandfather insisted she marry. When her grandfather died in the middle of the wedding ceremony, she persuaded her husband, Baron Robert III, not to consummate the marriage so she could dedicate her virginity to God. He was captured during war with the English, and she raised the ransom by selling all of her possessions, but he fled and returned home before the ransom was paid. Robert died from injuries in a later battle in 1352, leaving Jeanne-Marie destitute because her in-laws deprived her of her widow’s inheritance. She began nursing the poor, and after having a vision of Saint Ivasian, became a member of the Third Order of Saint Francis. When a madwoman threw a stone at her, it injured her back, which never fully healed. She died in 1414 at age 82. In 1871, she was beatified by Pope Pius IX.

April 14, 1819 – Harriet Grannis Arey born, American author, editor and publisher, who used the pen name Mrs. H. E. G. Arey; she was one of the few girls of her era to study in a co-educational environment. She became a contributor to the Daily Herald in Cleveland, Ohio, then after her marriage moved to Wisconsin, where she was the Preceptress and Teacher of English Literature, French, and Drawing at State Normal School in Whitewater. When she returned to Cleveland, she edited a month publication devoted to charitable work, and was co-founder and first president of the Ohio Woman’s State Press Association. Noted for Household Songs and Other Poems.

April 14, 1840 – Isabella Stewart Gardner born, American art collector and patron, philanthropist; the founder of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.

April 14, 1846 – Frances Julia Allis Barnes born, American Quaker temperance advocate and author; she was Secretary (1880-1881) of the Young Women’s Branch of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, and then Superintendent (1891-1895) for the World’s Young WCTU work, which increased membership in the U.S. to 30,000 during her tenure. She was a regular contributor to the Oak and Ivy Leaf, the organ of the National Young Women’s Christian Temperance Union.

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, 1886 – Maggie Laubser born, South African painter; her first exhibition in South Africa, after years of study and working in Europe, was met with harsh criticism, but by the 1940s, her work was earning awards; Laubser became a member of the South African Academy for Arts and Science in 1948.

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, she was responsible for protecting the girls; in 1958, Governor Orval Faubus closed all the public schools to resist desegregation, 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 – K. Saraswathi 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 in her time as “an incorrigible man-hater” but has since been re-discovered and celebrated by feminist scholars.

April 14, 1919 – Shamshad Begum born, Indian singer, sang in a number of languages including Hindi, Tamil, and Punjabi.

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; noted for The House Guest; Proud Garments; and The Swing Around. She died in 2013 at age 86.

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, 1949 – Julie Christie born, British actress and film star; she won the 1964 Academy Award for Best Actress for Darling. She is active in animal rights, environmental protection, and the anti-nuclear power movement, and is also a Patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and of the charity and self-help group Action for ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis, more commonly called chronic fatigue syndrome).

April 14, 1954 – Sue Hill born, English healthcare scientist and specialist in respiratory medicine, PhD in pulmonary pathophysiology, Dame of the British Empire (2018), and Chief Scientific Officer for England since 2002; worked on initiatives for the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), including leading the development of UK National Occupational Standards for healthcare science. She is Vice-President of the British Lung Foundation, and co-founder with Robert Stockley of the biennial COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) international conference.

April 14, 1960 – Tina Rosenberg born, American journalist and non-fiction author; New York Times writer and columnist, and frequent contributor to The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and The New Republic; co-founder with David Bornstein and Courtney Martin of the Solutions Journalism Network in 2013. Her book, The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism, won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction and the 1995 National Book Award for Nonfiction.

April 14, 1981 – Amy Leach born, British theatre director; co-founder of the En Masse theatre company; her productions of The Echo Chamber and The Ignatius Trail won Fringe First Awards at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2003 and 2004.

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.

April 14, 2019 – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Democrat-California) issued a statement after President Trump tweeted an inflammatory video against Representative Ilhan Omar (Democrat-Minnesota) that she had ordered Capitol Police to conduct “a security assessment to safeguard” Omar, her family, and staff. In the edited video, Omar is superimposed over scenes of the September 11 terrorist attacks; Trump added the caption, “We will never forget.” In a speech last month, Omar, one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress, said the Council on American-Islamic Relations was founded “because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.” Conservatives jumped on the remarks, accusing Omar of trivializing the attacks.

April 14, 2020 – Poland’s parliament met to discuss a controversial proposal to tighten the nation’s abortion laws even more. Dozens of women protested in central Warsaw, in cars and on bicycles, honking horns and displaying posters against the proposed legislation. Police used megaphones to warn protesters they risked fines for breaking lockdown regulations. Poland, with a population that is over 92% Roman Catholic, already had some of the strictest abortion laws in Europe. Attempts to tighten the laws further in 2016 were abandoned after mass protests. But during a global pandemic, huge street protests are not a possibility, and women’s rights groups rightly feared the conservative government would take advantage of the situation. “For them, this is the best time to pay the debts they have to ultra-conservative groups,” said Barbara Nowacka, an opposition MP active in the protests in 2016. “We are really afraid that they will use the fact that citizens of Poland are focused on their future and health right now, and not on values, sexual education, women rights.” Nowacka was attacked by having fuel thrown in her face during protests against the new law when it was passed in November 2020. In January 2021, the near-total ban on abortions, even in cases of fetal defects, went into effect, sparking more nation-wide protests in defiance of Poland’s Covid-19 restrictions on gatherings.

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April 15, 1829 – Mary Harris Thompson born, founder and head physician of the Chicago Hospital for Women and Children, one of the first women to practice medicine in Illinois.

April 15, 1841 – Mary Grant Roberts born, Australian zoo owner. She and her husband opened the Beaumaris Zoo in 1895 (it became the Hobart Zoo in the 1920s). Roberts was the first person to successfully breed Tasmanian Tigers, but they became extinct when the last one died in the Hobart Zoo in 1936. She founded the Game Preservation Society and the Anti-Plumage League, and successfully campaigned with the Royal Society of Tasmania to strengthen Tasmania's laws on animal welfare. She died in 1921, leaving the zoo to the trustees of the Royal Society of Tasmania Museum, who passed it to Hobart City Council. The zoo was closed in 1937 because of increasing maintenance costs, and a fall-off in the number of visitors.

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, helped set up refugee housing for holocaust survivors, and became a public speaker.

April 15, 1894 – Bessie Smith born, notable American blues singer; learned country blues from Gertrude “Ma” Rainey; she made 160 recordings, and was dubbed “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 born, first black woman to graduate from Bellevue Hospital Medical College (1926), first African-American woman to intern at Harlem Hospital, and the first woman doctor in Harlem (1936-1977). In 1944, she also began working with George Papanicolaon on the Pap smear to identify cervical cancer (1944-1973). She died at age 84 in 1980. Author Kuwana Haulsey wrote Angel of Harlem, a novel based on her life, published in 2004.

April 15, 1915 – Elizabeth Catlett born, black American sculptor and illustrator; known for her portraits of sharecroppers.

April 15, 1916 – Helene Hanff born, American author and screenwriter; best known for her book 84, Charing Cross Road.

April 15, 1928 – Norma Merrick Sklarek born, American architect, first African American female architect licensed in New York and California, first to be elected Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, first to form her own architectural firm.

April 15, 1930 – Vigdís Finnbogadóttir born, world’s first democratically elected and longest-serving woman president; fourth President of Iceland (1980-1996).

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April 15, 1943 – P1nar 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); produced and directed campaign films for both Bill and Hillary Clinton.

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, who has traveled in Africa as an ambassador for the charity Action Aid, and is chair of the Helen Bamber Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, and a patron of the Refugee Council.

April 15, 1960 – Ella Baker leads a conference at Shaw University in North Carolina where SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee is founded, a principal organization of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.

April 15, 1960 – Susanne Bier born, Danish film director; best known for her feature films Brothers, After the Wedding, In a Better World, and Bird Box, and the British television series, The Night Manager.

April 15, 1961 – Carol W. Greider born, American molecular biologist; Bloomberg Distinguished Professor, Daniel Nathans Professor, and Director of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Johns Hopkins University. Greider discovered the enzyme telomerase in 1984. Awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize, with Elizabeth Blackburn and Jack W. Szostak, for their discovery that telomeres (the caps at the end of each strand of DNA that protect our chromosomes) are protected from progressive shortening through wear by the enzyme telomerase.

April 15, 1961 – Dawn J. Wright born, American geographer and oceanographer, a leading authority in the application of geographic information system (GIS) technology to the field of ocean and coastal science, and played a key role in creating the first GIS data model for the oceans. Wright is Chief Scientist of the Environmental Systems Research Institute (aka Esri); professor of geography and oceanography at Oregon State University since 1995. First African American woman to dive to the ocean floor in the deep submersible ALVIN.

April 15, 1962 – Nawal El Moutawakel born, Moroccan politician and Olympian; Moroccan Minister of Sports (2007-2009); Secretary for Youth and Sport (1997-1998); won the inaugural women’s 400 metres hurdles at the 1984 Summer Olympics, becoming the first Muslim woman born on the continent of Africa to be an Olympic champion, and the first Moroccan to win an Olympic gold medal. Founding member and president of the Moroccan Sport and Development Association since 2002.

April 15, 1969 – Kaisa Roose born, Estonian conductor and pianist; noted for conducting all of the Danish regional orchestras, and orchestras in Sweden, Finland, Italy and Costa Rica.

April 15, 1975 – Sarah Teichmann born, German biophysicist and immunologist; Head of Cellular Genetics at the Wellcome Sanger Institute; visiting research group leader at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI); a Director of Research (equivalent to Professor) in the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, and a Senior Research Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge. Noted for her studies of gene expression, protein complex assembly, patterns in protein interactions and transcriptional regulatory networks. Teichmann has received a number of awards, including the 2010 Colworth Medal from the Biochemical Society, and in 2012, the Francis Crick Medal and Lecture, membership in the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), and the Lister Prize from the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine. In 2015, she won the Michael and Kate Bárány Award, presented by the Biophysical Society, and was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.

April 15, 2018 – Michael Cohen, Donald Trump's personal attorney, used the same Delaware shell company to pay hush money in two separate Republican scandals, according to The Wall Street Journal. Cohen used the company, Essential Consultants, to pay $130,000 to porn star Stormy Daniels for her silence on her alleged affair with Donald Trump more than a decade ago. The Journal reported Cohen also used it to pay a former Playboy model $1.6 million for her silence about her claim that Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy got her pregnant. Trump's lawyers asked a federal judge to let Trump review the seized documents before federal investigators do. Cohen's lawyers are expected to argue that many of the seized documents are covered by attorney-client privilege. In August 2018, Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to eight criminal charges, including two campaign finance charges stemming from his payments of hush money.

April 15, 2020 – After the government in the UK banned weddings in March, 2020, to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus, many couples found themselves in immigration limbo. The wedding of Dr. Dawn Liu and Dr. Angus Holford, both academics at the University of Essex, was supposed to take place on April 6, 2020. Lui is from Singapore, and is on a Tier 2 working visa. Under normal circumstances, she would have had plenty of time after their April wedding to apply for a spouse visa before her Tier 2 visa expired on July 14, 2020. But with the wedding postponed indefinitely, Liu and Holford became one of a number of couples wondering what will happen to their plans. Under existing immigration law, Liu could still apply to switch her tier 2 working visa to a spouse visa, allowing her to remain legally in the UK. However, engaged people cannot work on spouse visas – meaning that Liu would have to quit her job if she wanted to remain in the UK with Holford. Although the government has automatically extended all visas that were set to expire during the lockdown to May 31, this didn’t help Liu. “It’s a circular legal nightmare for us,” says Holford. “The government has been vague in their promises,” says immigration specialist Robin Molyneux of Global Immigration Solutions. “They should look at having a provision for anyone whose visa was expiring by a later date being automatically extended, without fees being payable for people having to renew them.” The fee to apply for an extension is £1,033 (about $1,425 USD). Fortunately, the UK ban on weddings was lifted, effective July 4, 2020, allowing Dawn Lui and Angus Holford to get married in the nick of time.

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April 16, 1693 – Mary Alexander born, American colonial merchant, successful and influential; she married twice and had ten children; her fortune was estimated at 100,000 pounds in 1743.

April 16, 1755 – Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun born, French painter, major 18^th century woman painter; portrait painter to Marie Antoinette.

April 16, 1811 – Wilhelmine Reichard becomes the first German woman to fly a balloon solo. Starting in Berlin, she reached a height of over 5,000 metres (16,000 ft) and landed safely in Genshagen, 33.5 kilometres (20.8 mi) from her starting point. This was not the first solo flight by a woman in Germany; the Frenchwoman Sophie Blanchard had made a flight in September 1810, starting from Frankfurt. Reichard’s third flight in 1811 reached a height of approximately 7,800 metres (25,600 ft). Due to the altitude she lost consciousness and her balloon crash-landed in a forest; badly injured, she was rescued by local farmers.

April 16, 1848 – Kandukuri Veeresalingam Pantulu born, Indian social reformer and author; he campaigned for women’s education, the remarriage of widows, an end to the dowry system, and edited Satihita bodhini, a monthly magazine for women. In spite of opposition which sometimes became violent, he continued his advocacy of education for women, and the right of widows to remarry. Pantulu started a Remarriage Association which served as a match-maker for widows, and started a home for elderly widows.

April 16, 1864 – Rose Talbot Bullard born, American physician and medical school professor. Bullard earned her medical degree at the Women’s Hospital Medical College in Chicago, where she graduated at the top of her class in 1886. Her sister Lula Talbot Ellis was also a physician, and the first woman to graduate from the medical school at the University of Southern California in 1888. She shared a medical practice with Elizabeth Follansbee. In her work with women patients, Bullard advocated outdoor activity, especially bicycling, which she believed came with other benefits for women. “The bicycle has done more for the cause of legitimate dress reform than any other single agent,” she declared in 1895. She taught gynecology at the University of Southern California, and was one of the first officers of the YWCA of Los Angeles, when it formed in 1893. Bullard was the first woman elected as president of the Los Angeles County Medical Association in 1902 (and there wasn’t another woman president of the association until 1992). She was also a fellow of the American College of Surgeons, one of only eight women elected to that status when it was founded in 1912. In her obstetric practice, she was among the first in Southern California to use spinal anesthesia. When the American Medical Association established a Public Health Education Committee in 1909, Bullard was one of the ten physicians appointed to the committee, and the only one from Los Angeles. The Women Physicians Action Committee of the Los Angeles County Medical Association gives an annual Rose Talbot Bullard Award for a woman physician who is a “champion and trailblazer.”

April 16, 1890 – Gertrude Chandler Warner born, author, best known for her series Boxcar Children; she was also an elementary school teacher (1918-1950), and a volunteer for the American Red Cross.

April 16, 1891 – Dorothy Pulis Lathrop born, American illustrator and author of children’s books; illustrated Hitty, Her First Hundred Years, by Rachel Field, which won the 1930 Newbery Medal.

IllustrationforTalesFromtheEnchantedIslesbyDorothyPulisLathrop.jpg — Illustration by Dorothy Pulis Lathrop for ‘Tales From the Enchanted Isles’

April 16, 1893 – Germaine Guèvremont born, Canadian writer, notable figure in Quebec literature; En plein terre, Le Survenant, and Marie-Didace.

April 16, 1912 – Harriet Quimby becomes the first woman to fly an airplane across the English Channel.

April 16, 1921 – Marie Maynard Daly born, American biochemist who was the first African-American woman to receive a Ph.D. in Chemistry (1947). Her postdoctoral research at the Rockefeller Institute included studying the composition and metabolism of components of cell nuclei, determining the base composition of deoxypentose nucleic acids, and calculating the rate of uptake of labeled glycine by components of cell nuclei. Seven years later, she took a university position. She taught biochemistry and researched the metabolism of the arterial wall and its relationship to aging, hypertension, and atherosclerosis. Later, she studied the uptake, synthesis, and distribution of creatine in cell cultures and tissues. She retired in 1986.

April 16, 1933 – Baroness Joan Bakewell born, English television journalist-presenter playwright, author and humanist; President of Birkbeck, University of London; The Centre of the Bed is her autobiography.

April 16, 1935 – Sarah Kirsch born as Ingrid Kirsch, but changed her given name to Sarah in protest against her father’s anti-Semitism; German poet and author.

April 16, 1940 – Margrethe II of Denmark born, Queen of Denmark since 1972; she became the heir presumptive in 1953, when an amendment to the Danish constitution added female succession if there is no male heir; she is the first woman ruler of Denmark since Margrethe 1 (1375-1412).

April 16, 1940 – Joan Snyder born, American abstract narrative painter; in 1971, she founded the Women Artists Series at the Mabel Smith Douglass Library of Rutgers University, the oldest continuous running exhibition space in the U.S. “dedicated to making visible the work of emerging and established contemporary women artists.” In 1987, the series was renamed the Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series.

April 16, 1946 – Margot Adler born, American writer, lecturer and NY correspondent for National Public Radio; noted author of books on Neopaganism: Drawing Down the Moon, and Heretic’s Heart: A Journey Through Spirit and Revolution.

April 16, 1957 – Patricia De Martelaere born in Belgium, Flemish philosopher, academic, novelist and essayist; wrote her first book at age 14, King of the Jungle; her first adult novel was Nachtboek van een slapeloze (Night Book of an Insomniac); in non-fiction, she wrote Het onverwachte antwoord (The Unexpected Answer); De Martelaere died of complications from a brain tumor in 2009.

April 16, 1961 – Linda Ruth Williams born, British Professor of Film Studies in the College of Humanities at the University of Exeter. Her special interests include sexuality and censorship in cinema and literature.

April 16, 1972 – Tracy K. Smith born, American poet; Poet Laureate of the United States (2017-2019); recipient of the 2002 Cave Canem Prize, the 2006 James Laughlin Prize, and the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Life on Mars. Her next collection, Ordinary Light, was shortlisted for a National Book Award. Smith has also contributed to numerous anthologies.

April 16, 2002 – U.N. Secretary-General names primatologist Jane Goodall as a United Nations Messenger of Peace.

April 16, 2014 – The Supreme Court of India recognizes transgender as a “third gender” in a landmark ruling.

April 16, 2016 – The U.S. Army approves requests by 22 soldiers to become the first American women infantry and armor unit officers, 13 in the armor branch, and nine as second lieutenants in the infantry.

April 16, 2018 – New York Times writers Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey and The New Yorker's Ronan Farrow shared the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in recognition of their reporting on allegations of sexual assault and harassment of women by movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. The scandal touched off the larger #MeToo and Time's Up movements. The Washington Post was also honored, for staff coverage of sexual misconduct allegations against then-Senate candidate Roy Moore in Alabama.

Ronan Farrow, Jodi Kantor, and Megan Twohey

April 16, 2020 –UN Women took notice that in Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, New Zealand, Norway, and Taiwan, women leaders acted early and decisively to limit the spread of the coronavirus. Yet in January, 2020, less than 7% of elected heads of state in the world were women – just 10 out of 153 – while men made up 75% of parliamentarians, 73% of managerial decision-makers, and 76% of people in mainstream news media. "We have created a world where women are squeezed into just 25% – one quarter – of the space, both in physical decision-making rooms, and in the stories that we tell about our lives. One quarter is not enough," said UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. Increasing the number of women in positions of power is dependent on some form of proportional representation voting system to elect lawmakers and leaders in tandem with intentional recruitment strategies, to get more women elected, and normalize women in positions of power. Research by the RepresentWomen advocacy group confirms that voting systems have a big impact on the number of women elected to office. As of January, 2021, the U.S. ranked 67^th in the world for the number of women representatives in our lower house, even though the 118 women, out of 435 representatives, reflected a new record high for the U.S. – about 27% of the House. In the U.S. Senate, from January 3, 2021, to January 19, 2021, 26 of its 100 members were women, another record high, but since January 20, 2021, the number is down to 24 women.

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April 17, 1620 – Marguerite Bourgeoys born, French nun, founder of the Congregation of Notre Dame of Montreal in the colony of New France, now part of Québec, Canada. She started a convent there, one of the first uncloistered religious communities in the Catholic Church. She dedicated the rest of her life to educating young girls, the poor, and children of First Nations. She is now the Patron Saint of People Rejected by Religious Orders.

April 17, 1811 – Ann Sheppard Mounsey born, British organist and composer; co-editor of Hymns of Prayer and Praise – with Chants Kyries. She was the organist at St. Vedast Foster Lane for almost 50 years, as well as performing at concerts, and as an accompanist. Noted for Sacred Harmony, a collection of sacred works composed in collaboration with her sister, Elizabeth Mounsey.

April 17, 1845 – Isabel Barrows born, American physician, professor of ophthalmology at Howard University. Earlier, she was the first woman to work as a stenographer for the United States State Department (for William Seward in 1868), and the first woman stenographer for Congress. Barrows was one of the first women to study ophthalmology at the University of Vienna, the first U.S. woman ophthalmologist, and the first woman to open a private medical practice in Washington D.C.

April 17, 1851 – Anna Garlin Spencer born, educator, author, lecturer, Unitarian minister, a leading woman suffragist, advocate for women’s equality, and peace activist. She was the first woman ordained as a minister in Rhode Island. Garlin Spencer was associated with the New York Society for Ethical Culture (1903–1909) and the New York School of Philanthropy (1903–1913). In 1909, she signed on to the call to found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. She was a popular lecturer and wrote on social problems, especially concerning women and family relations. Her writings include Woman's Share in Social Culture (1913), and The Family and Its Members (1922).

April 17, 1885 – Karen Blixen, Baroness Karen Christenze von Blixen-Finecke, born, Danish author, wrote in English and Danish, under the pseudonym Isak Dinesen; Out of Africa, and Babette’s Feast.

April 17, 1913 – Dorothy Fosdick born, worked as federal official (1942-1953) developing the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, advised on national security and wrote speeches for Henry “Scoop” Jackson (1955-1983).

April 17, 1915 – Regina Ghazaryan born, Armenian painter and military pilot during WWII; she hid and preserved the works of the Armenian poet and activist Yeghishe Charents during the regime of Joseph Stalin.

April 17, 1916 – Sirimavo Bandaranaike born, Sri Lankan politician, first non-hereditary woman head of government in modern history when she was elected as Prime Minister of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1960, then served three terms: 1960-1965, 1970-1977 and 1994-2000. In 1975, she created what is now called the Ministry of Women and Child Affairs, and was appointed as the first woman to serve in the Sri Lankan cabinet.

April 17, 1924 – Althea T L Simmons born, NAACP’s head of their Washington DC branch and the group’s chief lobbyist (1979-1990); known for keeping a sharp eye on legislators and policymakers, and her role in shaping a number of civil rights bills. She died in 1990 at age 66.

April 17, 1928 – Cynthia Ozick born, American author of short stories, novels, and essays; she won the National Book Critics Circle Award (2000) for Quarrel & Quandary.

April 17, 1940 – Anja Silja born, German operatic soprano and theatrical director of operas; known for her extensive repertoire and acting ability; she won a Grammy Award in 2004 for her recording of Leoš Janáček’s Jenůfa.

April 17, 1946 – Clare Francis born, British writer and single-handed and distance racing sailor, set a women’s transatlantic single-handed record; she was the first woman skipper in the Whitbread Round the World Race.

April 17, 1947 – Sherrie Levine born, American photographer, painter, conceptual artist, and feminist art critic; her work was showcased in the exhibit Difference: On Representation and Sexuality in 1984.

April 17, 1948 – Alice V. Harden born, American educator and Democratic State Senator in Mississippi (1988-2012); member of the Women’s Political Network, the National Council of Negro Women, and the League of Women Voters; life member of the NAACP; chaired the Southern Legislative Conference’s Education Committee.

April 17, 1954 – The Federation of South African Women is founded, an attempt to organize a broad-based and inter-racial women’s organization. Helen Joseph, Lillian Ngoyi, and Amin Cachalia formed a steering committee. The first conference was attended by 164 delegates representing 230,000 women from all parts of South Africa. Membership was primarily not individual, but consisted of affiliated women’s groups. The Women’s Charter was drafted at the conference, calling for enfranchisement of men and women of all races; equality of opportunity in employment; equal pay for equal work; equal rights in relation to property, marriage and children; and the removal of all laws and customs that denied women equality.

Amin Cachalia, Lillian Ngoyi, and Helen Joseph

April 17, 1957 – Dame Julia Macur born, British judge of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales since 2013: since April 2017, the Senior Presiding Judge for England and Wales.

April 17, 1964 – Jerrie Mock ends her 22,860 mile trip and becomes the first woman to fly solo around the world, taking 29 days with 21 stopovers. Awarded the Louis Blériot Medal from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale for her achievement.

April 17, 1964 – Rachel Notley born, Canadian politician and leader of the Alberta New Democratic Party; since 2015, Premier of Alberta; Member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta for Edmonton-Strathcona since 2008.

April 17, 1973 – Katrin Koov born, Estonian architect, co-founded the architectural bureau KAVAKAVA OÜ; editor of Maja, the Estonian Architectural Review.

April 17, 1975 – Heidi Alexander born, British Labour politician; Deputy Mayor of London for Transport since 2018; Member of Parliament for Lewisham East (2010-2018); Lewisham London Borough Council member (2004-2009).

April 17, 1985 – Rooney Mara born, American film and television actress, and animal rights activist; best known for playing the title role in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, for which she was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role. More recently, she appeared in the films Lion, The Discovery, and A Ghost Story. She is very actively involved with the Uwesa Foundation, which supports empowerment programs for children and families in the Kibera slum of Nairobi in Kenya.

April 17, 2019 – NASA Astronaut and electrical engineer Christina Koch was scheduled to break the record for longest single spaceflight by a woman, NASA announced. Koch, who arrived at the space station in March, 2019, stayed on mission until February 2020. Koch broke the record of former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, who was in space for 288 days in 2017, in December 2019. The 328-day orbit allows researchers to study the effect of long-term spaceflights on the body. In March 2019, Koch and Anne McClain were among NASA's top picks for its first woman-led spacewalk, though the trip was later canceled due to lack of spacesuits in smaller sizes for women.

April 17, 2020 – Princess Basmah bint Saud bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, a member of the Saudi royal family, and an outspoken advocate for human rights and women’s rights, said she is being detained without charge in Riyadh with one of her daughters, and that neither of them was told why, despite repeated pleas to the kingdom’s royal court, and to her uncle King Salman. She said was being held in al-Ha’ir prison, a surprise to relatives who thought she was under house arrest. Princess Basmah and her daughter were detained as they tried to leave Saudi Arabia for Switzerland in March, 2019. She declared then she was in urgent need of medical treatment, but her private jet was not allowed to depart. Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the arrest fitted a pattern of dissenters being ruthlessly silenced by Prince Mohammed, who has methodically consolidated power since ousting his uncle Mohammed bin Nayef nearly three years ago, and giving himself a clear run to the throne. Rothna Begum, senior women’s rights researcher at HRW, said, “Under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s rampant repression of all forms of critics, including people he can extort money out of, the space for dissent has shrunk greatly. This is particularly the case for women, many of whom have been silenced, imprisoned, or are in exile right now . . . We are seeing things that we never saw before in Saudi. There was a time when women of a powerful background could say things about women’s rights and issues that matter . . . this has gone.”

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April 18, 1874 – Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić born, Croatian author; Croatian Tales of Long Ago.

April 18, 1897 – Angna Enters born, modern dancer, painter, sculptor, arranged music for her solo performances of characters, created more than 250 dance mimes, performed in the White House (1940).

April 18, 1889 – Jessie Street born, Australian feminist, peace and human rights activist, initiator of the “Aboriginal” amendment of the Australian Constitution. She was Australia’s only woman delegate to the 1945 United Nations Conference on International Organization, where the United Nations Charter was drawn up, and worked with Eleanor Roosevelt and other women delegates to ensure that gender was included with race and religion as a non-discrimination clause in the UN Charter. The Jessie Street National Women’s Library is a unique specialist library dedicated to the preservation of Australian women’s work, words, and history. Established in 1989, it is named for this lifelong campaigner for women’s rights, the peace movement, and the elimination of discrimination against Aboriginal people.

April 18, 1898 – Ruth Bunzel born, American anthropologist; with Ruth Benedict, she studied the art and culture of southwest Indian women, learned the Zuni language, pottery, and sewing to understand and preserve the culture.

April 18, 1900 – Dame Albertha Isaacs born, Bahamian politician, women’s rights activist, teacher, and tennis player; she worked as an elementary school teacher, then played tennis professionally in the 1930s; Isaacs was a founding member of the Women’s Branch of the Progressive Liberal Party in 1953, and worked on the campaign to get women the right to vote, which was finally won in 1962. In 1958, she was a founder of the Bahamas National Council of Women. In 1962, Isaacs was the second woman in the Bahamas to be appointed to the Senate.

April 18, 1905 – Baroness Bertha von Suttner becomes the first woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, and the second woman to receive any Nobel Prize. She wrote one of the 19th century's most influential books, the anti-war novel Lay Down Your Arms.

April 18, 1909 – Jeanne d’Arc (Joan of Arc) is beatified by Pope Pius X at Notre Dame de Paris. She had been burned at the stake in 1431 as a heretic by the Church after being found guilty in a politically motivated trial, during which she was denied a legal advisor, the clerics were all pro-English and Burgundian, and she was guarded by English soldiers instead of nuns, as was the custom for women prisoners under Inquisitorial guidelines. One reason for her execution was a Biblical clothing law, used against her because she refused to wear women’s clothes, which offered no protection against rape, as her ability to fasten her hosen, boots and tunic together into one piece did. Her resumption of her military garb after an attempted rape was called a repeat offense of heresy. A posthumous retrial was opened in 1452, authorized by Pope Callixtus III at the request of Inquisitor-General Jean Bréhal and Joan's mother Isabelle Romée. The appellate process involved clergy from throughout Europe and observed standard court procedure. A panel of theologians analyzed testimony from 115 witnesses. Bréhal drew up his final summary in June 1456, which described Joan as a martyr and implicated the late Pierre Cauchon with heresy for having convicted an innocent woman in pursuit of a secular vendetta. The nullification trial reversed the conviction in part because the condemnation proceeding had failed to consider the doctrinal exceptions to the Biblical clothing law. The appellate court declared her innocent on July 7, 1456. She was finally canonized in May 16, 1920, 454 years after she was exonerated and called a martyr.

April 18, 1914 – Claire Martin, pen name of French Canadian author Claire Montreuil; noted for her biography, in two volumes, Dans un gant de fer (In an Iron Glove), and La joue droite (The Right Cheek), which won the 1966 Governor General’s Award.

April 18, 1915 – Joy Davidman born, American author and poet; Smoke on the Mountain: An Interpretation of the Ten Commandments; her marriage to C.S. Lewis inspired the play and film Shadowlands.

April 18, 1917 – Dr. Mamie Phipps Clark born, African American psychologist who devised the “Dolls Test” that was key evidence in Brown v. Board of Education, showing that black children from segregated schools were more likely to choose the yellow-haired white doll as “nice” and “good” and the black-haired brown doll as “bad.”

April 18, 1919 – Esther Afua Ocloo born in British Togoland (now Ghana), Ghanaian entrepreneur and pioneer of microlending – giving very small loans to help women start their own businesses. She organized the first “Made in Ghana” goods exhibition in 1958, and was the first president of the Federation of Ghana Industries (1959-1961). In 1964, Ocloo was the first woman appointed as Executive Chair of the National Food and Nutrition Board of Ghana; served as adviser to the Council of Women and Development (1976-1986), on the Economic Advisory Committee of Ghana (1978-1979), and as a member of the Council of State (1979-1981) In 1975, she was an adviser to the First World Conference in Women in Mexico City. She was a founding member and first Chair of the Board of Directors of Women’s World Banking (1979-1985).

April 18, 1923 – Beryl Platt born, Baroness Platt of Writtle, British aeronautical engineer and Conservative politician. During WWII, she worked for the Hawker Aircraft Company, one of only three women in the Experimental Flight Test Department on the testing and production of fighter planes: the Hurricane, the Typhoon and the Tempest V. After the war, she worked for British European Airways investigating air safety, such as charting procedures to ensure safe landings if an engine failed on take-off or over mountains. Her work helped establish standards of investigation and safety procedures. She left the industry when she married, but after her children began at school, she became a member of the parochial church council, then was nominated to fill a sudden vacancy on the Chelmsford Rural District Council in 1956, and was later appointed as Alderman of the Essex County Council (1969-1974). She was created a Life Peer and joined the House of Lords in 1981, and served as chair of the Equal Opportunities Commission in 1983, spearheading a joint initiative with the Engineering Council to create Women into Science and Engineering (WISE), to encourage more girls and women to enter science and engineering careers.

April 18, 1944 – Dorothy Cowser Yancy born, American academic, professor, administrator, and mentor for black women students. She was a civil rights activist during her college years, and an active member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the Student Government Association. She earned an MA at the University of Massachusetts, a PhD in political science at Atlanta University, and completed the Fulbright Program. She taught at the School of Social Sciences at Georgia Institute of Technology, becoming the first African-American to become a tenured full professor there. She left Georgia Tech in 1994 to become the president of Johnson C. Smith University, in Charlotte, North Carolina. She received Outstanding Teacher of the Year from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1985. In 1988, Newsweek on Campus named her one of the six best teachers in the United States. In 2009, Yancy became president of Shaw University in Raleigh NC.

April 18, 1944 – Frances D’Souza born, Baroness D’Souza of Wychwood, British scientist, life peer, and cross bencher. She worked for the Nuffield Institute of Brain Chemistry and Human Nutrition (1973–1977), Oxford Polytechnic (1977–1980), and as an independent research consultant for the United Nations (1985-1988). She was the director of Article 19, a human rights organization (1989-2002). D’Souza was created a Lord Temporal in 2004, and was the Convenor of the Crossbench Peers (2007-2011), then was elected Lord Speaker of the House of Lords (2011-2016).

April 18, 1947 – Kathy Acker born, American experimental novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and sex-positive feminist writer; listening to the stories of women whose lives were completely different from her own during her brief stint as a stripper in the mid-1970s had a profound impact her understanding of gender and power relationships and on her early work. She had several long-term relationships with men and was married twice, but was openly bisexual. In 1979, she won the Pushcart Prize for her short story “New York City in 1979.” She wrote some of her most critically acclaimed works while in living in England in the 1980s, then returned to the U.S. as a visiting professor at several universities and colleges. In 1996, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and lost her faith in conventional medicine after an unsuccessful surgery. In 1997, she died in a Tijuana Mexico alternative cancer treatment clinic.

April 18, 1959 – Susan Faludi born, American journalist, author, and feminist; best known for her 1991 book, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, which warned that women of every generation should not take gains for granted, because progress made will be followed by a negative counter-reaction. Her 1999 book, Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man, argues that many American men, trying to live up to the expectations of masculinity, find themselves unemployed or underpaid, because of market rapid shifts, and global companies driven by increasing profits above all else.

April 18, 1965 – American contralto Marian Anderson ends her 54-city farewell tour with a concert at Carnegie Hall – her first tour stop had been Constitution Hall, where the Daughters of the American Revolution had refused to allow her to sing in 1939 because of her race – she gave a concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial instead, broadcast live on the radio.

April 18, 1972 – Rosa Clemente born, American community organizer, independent journalist, hip hop activist. In 2008, she was the Green Party running mate of the party’s Presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney. Clemente is the founder and president of Know Thyself Productions, which produces community activism tours.

April 18, 1984 – America Ferrera born in Los Angeles to Honduran immigrant parents, actress, producer and author; known for the TV series Ugly Betty and her voice work on the How to Train Your Dragon animated film series; co-producer and co-star with Amy Dubanowski of Superstore (2015-2021). Her book, American Like Me: Reflections on Life Between Cultures, was a bestseller. She has been active in the #MeToo campaign since 2017, and is a founding member of the Time’s Up legal defense fund. She campaigned in 2016 for Hillary Clinton, and for Voto Latino, working to get out the Latino vote, and was the opening speaker at the Women’s March on Washington in 2017.

April 18, 2007 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules 5-4 to uphold a federal ban on the so-called “partial-birth abortion” – a misnomer invented by anti-abortionists, and also miscalled a “late term abortion” – terms rejected by the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

April 18, 2019 – Journalist Lyra McKee, aged 29, was shot to death in Derry during a riot set off during police raids on dissidents attempting to seize munitions before the Easter Rising commemorative parades scheduled for the weekend. Youths threw petrol bombs, setting two vehicles on fire. McKee was standing near an armoured police Land Rover when she was shot in the head during gunfire aimed at the police. Mobile phone footage and police CCTV footage show a masked gunman, believed to be a member of the "New IRA", opening fire with a handgun. McKee was taken by police to Altnagelvin Area Hospital, where she later died. Police blamed dissident republicans for her death. McKee was a Northern Irish journalist who write for several publications about the consequences of ‘The Troubles’ and was an editor for Mediagazer, a news aggregator website. Her funeral on April 24 in Belfast was attended by British Prime Minister Theresa May, Irish President Michael D. Higgins, Taoiseach (Irish equivalent of Prime Minister) Leo Varadkar, Sinn Féin leaders Mary Lou McDonald and Michelle O'Neill, and Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. Members of the National Union of Journalists formed an honor guard. Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, who had visited Derry only a few hours before the events, also condemned the murder.

April 18, 2020 – In the UK, two hotel chains and a hostel, which asked not to be named, say they made the government a written offer at the beginning of April to provide shelter for victims of domestic violence, but the government snubbed their offer. The National Domestic Abuse Helpline has reported a 25% increase in calls, and domestic abuse killings have trebled since the coronavirus lockdown began, with at least 16 suspected deaths compared with an average of five in the same period over the past decade. Jennifer Nadel, co-director of Compassion in Politics, described the government’s response as “foot-dragging at its most unnecessary, irresponsible and lethal.” Domestic Abuse Commissioner Nicole Jacobs and Victims Commissoner Dame Vera Baird wrote to ministers, “We call on you to offer a hotel … free of charge, to women fleeing domestic abuse where they have been unable to access refuge.”

Jennifer Nadel — Nicole Jacobs — Dame Vera Baird

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April 19, 797 – Irene of Athens, Byzantine empress, consort of Leo IV until his death in 780, when she became regent for her nine-year-old son, Constantine VI, until he reached his majority in 790. Constantine then made himself very unpopular by marrying his mistress, and there were several military defeats during his rule as well. In 797, Irene seized power, and had Constantine blinded and imprisoned; the date of his death was not recorded, but he probably died of his injuries soon after being deposed. She is credited with overturning the iconoclastic (elimination of religious icons) rules under her husband. Though Irene took the title of Empress, Constantine was the last Eastern ruler to be acknowledged as Roman Emperor by the West and by the papacy. Pope Leo II proclaimed Charlemagne Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire on Christmas Day, 800, declaring that a woman could not rule, so the throne of the Roman Empire was actually vacant. A revolt in 802 overthrew Irene and exiled her to the island of Lesbos, where she died in 803. She was supplanted on the throne by Nikephoros I.

Irene of Athens -
at the Venice Pala de Oro

April 19, 1666 – Sarah Kemble Knight born, colonial American teacher and businesswoman, noted for her diary of her journey from Boston to New York City in 1704-1705.

April 19, 1806 – Sarah Bagley born, American pioneering labor organizer; advocate for a 10-hour workday for mill workers in Lowell Massachusetts, and expanded her efforts to women’s rights, especially after she discovered when hired as a telegrapher that she was paid one-third less than the man she replaced; also campaigned for the abolition of slavery, prison reform, and health care for the poor.

April 19, 1831 – Mary Louise Booth born, American author, translator, and the first editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar (1867-1889). She held a weekly salon on Saturday evenings in her New York City home, an assembly of notables: authors, singers, actors, musicians, statesmen, travelers, publishers, and journalists. She died at age 57 in 1889.

April 19, 1872 – Alice Salomon born, German pioneer in social work as an academic discipline, and social reformer. In 1900 she joined the Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine (BDF – Federation of German Women’s Associations), and served as deputy chair until 1920. The organization supported destitute, abandoned, or single mothers, and helped prevent their children being neglected. She studied economics at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin (1902-1906), and earned a doctorate in 1908 with a dissertation entitled Die Ursachen der ungleichen Entlohnung von Männer- und Frauenarbeit (roughly translated as Causes of Pay Inequality Between Men and Women). In 1908, she founded a Soziale Frauenschule (Social Women’s School) in Berlin, which was renamed the Alice Salomon Academy in 1932. In May of 1933, Salomon closed the academy to evade an imminent Gestapo raid. She was interrogated by the Gestapo in 1939. Salomon’s Jewish origins, her Christian humanist ideas, and her pacifism were all held against her, but her international reputation may have saved her from a worse fate than being stripped of her citizenship, and her two doctorates, then expelled from Germany. However, it ended her work running a relief committee for Jewish emigrants leaving the country. She went to New York City. In 1944, she became an American citizen, and a year later, she was the honorary President of the International Women’s Federation and the International Association of Schools of Social Work. Salomon died in New York in 1948.

April 19, 1891 – Françoise Rosay born, French actress and opera singer, pioneer in French cinema who appeared in over 100 films.

April 19, 1892 – Germaine Tailleferre born, French composer, only woman member of a group of composers known as Les Six.

April 19, 1893 – Jessie Stephen born, British suffragette, labour activist and local councilor. At age 15, she became a domestic worker, and soon formed the Scottish Federation of Domestic Workers. At age 16, she joined the Women’s Social and Political Union, and on her weekly half-day off, she would go around Glasgow placing incendiary devices in postal pillar boxes. Wearing her maid’s uniform made her virtually invisible, and she wasn’t caught. She joined the Independent Labour Party, and was elected Labour borough councilor for Bermondsey in 1922. When she moved to Bristol in the 1930s, she joined the National Union of Clerks, made public speeches, gave advice on birth control, and was elected to the Bristol City Council. In 1952, she became the first woman president of the Bristol Trades Council.

April 19, 1894 – Elizabeth Dilling born, ardent Nazi sympathizer, virulent anti-communist and anti-Semitist; in the 1930s, she visited Germany several times, and began attending Nazi Party meetings. The German government paid some of the expenses for her trips to party meetings. In 1932, she co-founded the Paul Reveres, an anti-communist organization, which died out after she had a dispute with her co-founder and left the group. In 1934, she published the infamous Red Network—A Who’s Who and Handbook of Radicalism for Patriots, a catalog of over 1,300 “suspected” communists and their sympathizers, which included Albert Einstein and Chiang Kai-shek, and over 460 organizations described as “Communist, Radical Pacifist, Anarchist, Socialist, I.W.W. controlled” (I.W.W. = International Workers of the World, a socialist labor union). Though she provided no proof of her allegations, copies of her book were bought by the FBI, the Pinkerton Detective Agency, the New York Police Department, and the Chicago Police Department. Dilling publicly accused University of Chicago President Robert Maynard Hutchins, educational reformer John Dewey, social reformer and activist Jane Addams, and Idaho Republican Senator William Borah of being communist sympathizers in 1935, and called on her audience “to kill every communist.” During the 1936 Presidential campaign, she called the New Deal “FDR’s Jew Deal.” In 1939, she testified before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee. She was a leader of the so-called “Mothers’ Movement,” an isolationist campaign to pressure Congress to refrain from helping the Allies, which opposed the Lend-Lease program. Dilling was among 28 isolationists charged with sedition in 1942, but the charges were dropped in 1946. She was a frequent speaker at meetings of America First, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), and the American Legion. She died at age 72 in 1966.

April 19, 1917 – Irene Morgan Kirkaldy born; in 1944, she defied a driver on an interstate bus, who ordered her to give up her seat and move to the back. She kicked the sheriff who arrested her. In 1946, Thurgood Marshall, her NAACP legal counsel, won Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia, in a 6-1 landmark decision, which ruled the Virginia law was unconstitutional because the federal Commerce Clause protected interstate travel. In 2001, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Clinton, who said she “took the first step on a journey that would change America forever.”

April 19, 1921 – Anna Lee Aldred born, first American woman to receive a jockey’s license, in 1939 at age 18, after officials at the Agua Caliente Racetrack in Mexico couldn’t find any rules that barred women jockeys; she won many races at state and county fairs, but after six years, she had grown too tall for a jockey, so she switched to trick riding in rodeos; inducted into the Cowgirl Hall of Fame in 1983.

April 19, 1926 – Rawya Ateya born, Egyptian politician, educator, and journalist; first woman parliamentarian in the Arab world when she is elected to the National Assembly of Egypt in 1957; she became involved in protests as a teenager, and was injured in 1939 during an anti-British protest. Her extensive studies and university degrees in education, psychology, journalism, and Islamic studies were unusual for an Egyptian girl of that time. She was a teacher for over ten years. In 1956, she became the first woman to be commissioned as an officer in the Liberation Army, as a captain in the women’s commando unit, but also helped train thousands of women in first aid and nursing. During the 1973 October War, she was chair of the Society of Families of Martyrs and Soldiers. Voting rights and eligibility for elected office were extended to Egyptian women by President Gamal Abdel Nasser through the adoption of the 1956 Constitution. The first elections under the new constitution were held on July 3, 1957. There were only 16 women in a field of more than 2,000 candidates. Opinion polls conducted at the time showed that 70% of Egyptian men were opposed to the idea of women taking seats in Parliament, but she received 110,807 votes in her constituency, and was elected from Cairo in the second round. She described the strong prejudice she faced: "I was met with resentment for being a woman. Yet I talked to them and reminded them of the prophet's wives and families until they changed their opinions." She took her seat in the National Assembly on July 14, 1957. Amina Shukri was the only other woman elected, but her victory was not announced until July 22. Ateya was a champion of women's rights, and campaigned for a two-month maternity leave with full salary. She also presented a law to abolish polygamy, which had some support in urban districts like Cairo and Alexandria, but was strongly opposed in rural districts and did not pass. She lost her bid for re-election in 1959. Ateya then served on the board of the Red Crescent, and other NGOs. She was elected to the People’s Assembly in 1984 under the banner of the National Democratic Party.

April 19, 1927 – Actress and playwright Mae West is sentenced to 10 days in jail on obscenity charges for her play Sex.

April 19, 1943 – Margo MacDonald born, Scottish Independent politician (formerly Scottish National Party), broadcaster and teacher; Member of Parliament for Glasgow Govan (1973-1974); Depute Leader of the Scottish National Party (1974-1979); Member of the Scottish Parliament for Lothian (1999-2014). She left the Scottish National Party in 1982, protesting the party’s proscription of the 79 Group, the socialist faction within the party of which she was a leading member. She died in 2014, 17 years after she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease.

April 19, 1946 – Duygu Asena born, Turkish journalist, editor, best-selling author, and women’s rights activist. Her degree from Istanbul University was in Pedagogy, and she taught for two years, but began contributing to the large Turkish newspaper Hürriyet in 1972, then worked as a copywriter for an advertising agency (1976-1978). She became editor-in-chief of a magazine publishing house in 1978, where she developed several women’s magazines, including Kadınca (1978-1998), the first popular feminist magazine in the Republic of Turkey, and a significant media outlet for the Turkish feminist movement. She was a frequent contributor, writing about marriage, inequality, and violence against women. Her first book, Kadının Adı Yok (The Woman Has No Name), published in 1987, was a sharp critique of the oppression of Turkish women and marriage without love. It became a top seller, but was banned in 1998 by the Turkish government, which declared it obscene, dangerous for children and undermining marriage. After two years of lawsuits, the ban was lifted. Her second book, Aslında Aşk da Yok (Actually, There is Also No Love) was another bestseller in Turkey, and was translated into several other languages. All the rest of her books were bestsellers, including Kahramanlar Hep Erkek (Heroes Are Always Men); and her last book, Paramparça (Torn In Pieces). She died in 2006, after two years battling brain cancer.

April 19, 1950 – Dame Julia Cleverdon born, British charity executive; Chief Executive of Business in the Community (1992-2008), one of the Prince’s Charities of Charles, Prince of Wales, after being Director of the Education and Inner City Division of The Industrial Society (renamed the Work Foundation in 2002), a nonprofit which provides advice, consultancy and research to business organizations and government on the quality of working life and future of work issues.

April 19, 1953 – Ruby Wax born, American comedian, actress, author, and mental health campaigner who has lived in England since the 1970s. Noted for starring as a comic interviewer in The Full Wax (1991-1994) and Ruby Wax Meets . . . (1994-1998), and as script editor for the BBC hit series Absolutely Fabulous (1992-2012). Her memoir, How Do You Want Me?, was a Sunday Times best-seller. She has appeared in several British Comic Relief productions, which raise millions of pounds for charitable causes.

April 19, 1956 – Dame Anne Glover born, Scottish molecular biologist and academic; Chief Scientific Adviser to the President of the European Commission (2012- 2014), the first ever appointed to the position from Scotland, she expanded the position’s role, becoming an influential voice for the importance of science policy based on evidence.

April 19, 1959 – Jane Campbell born, Baroness Campbell of Surbiton, life peer and crossbencher in the House of Lords, and disability reform campaigner; Commissioner of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC – 2006–2008), and Chair of the Disability Committee which lead on the EHRC Disability Programme. She was born with spinal muscular atrophy, and must use an electrically powered wheelchair to move around, a computer on which she types with one finger, a ventilator to help her breathe at night, and a rotation of caregivers to assist her. She attended a segregated school for disabled children, with little focus on academic achievement, leaving the school at age 16 with no qualifications, and poor reading and writing skills. She enrolled at Hereward College, a special college for disabled students where there was an academic environment, and earned six O-levels (ordinary competency in subject) and three A-levels (advanced, pre-university level in subject) within three years, and went on to Hatfield Polytechnic, and then got an MA at the University of Sussex with a dissertation on Syliva Pankhurst. In 1996, she co-founded and was director of the National Centre for Independent Living (NCIL) for the organization’s first six years, which a was leading pioneer in independent living, civil rights, peer counseling and equal opportunities for the disabled. She also wrote Disability Politics in 1996. In 2002, she was appointed by the Minister for Social Care to Chair the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE).

April 19, 1964 – “Kim” Kimberly Weaver born, American astrophysics astronomer and expert in x-ray astronomy; Weaver has worked on several projects for NASA, and is frequently seen on television answering questions about astronomy. Author of The Violent Universe: Joyrides Through the X-Ray Cosmos. She has been honored with several awards, including the 2009 Robert H. Goddard Exceptional Achievement Award in Outreach.

April 19,1968 – Ashley Judd born, American actress and political activist; best known for her performances in the films Kiss the Girls, Double Jeopardy, De-Lovely and the Divergent series, and in the television series Missing. In 2010, she earned a one-year mid-career master’s degree in public administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She is an active supporter of the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund and the Animal Legal Defense Fund, a Global Ambassador for YouthAIDS, and made trips to the Democratic Republic of the Congo for the Enough Project, campaigning to end genocide and crimes against humanity, visiting hospitalized victims of sexual violence and camps for displaced persons. Judd has campaigned extensively for Democratic candidates in local and national races, including Barack Obama. She took part in the 2017 Women’s March, reading “Nasty Woman” a poem by Nina Donovan.

April 19, 1969 – Susan (Zsuzsa) Polgár born in Hungary, American chess Grandmaster, coach, writer, and head of the Susan Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence (SPICE) at Webster University. She was the head coach for the 2011 and 2012 National Championship college chess teams at Texas Tech University and the 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 National Championship teams at Webster University. In the July 1984 FIDE Rating List, at age 15 she was the top-ranked woman player in the world, and remained in the top three for the next 23 years, and was the Women’s World Champion (1996-1999). Polgár was the first woman to break the gender barrier by qualifying for the 1986 Men’s World Chess Championship.

April 19, 1977 – In the U.S. House of Representatives, 15 women, led by co-chairs Elizabeth Holtzman (Democrat-New York) and Margaret Heckler (Republican-Massachusetts), form the bipartisan Congressional Caucus for Women’s Issues.

April 19, 1978 – Amanda Sage born, American painter who has studied and worked in Vienna and Los Angeles; co-founder of the Academy of Visionary Art in Vienna, and the Colorado Alliance for Visionary Art.

April 19, 2018 – Senator Tammy Duckworth (Democrat – Illinois) made history when she brought her newborn daughter, Maile Pearl Bowlsbey, to the Senate floor for a vote. Duckworth gave birth to Maile, her second child, on April 9. On April 17, the Senate voted unanimously to reverse a long-standing rule, and allow babies into the Senate chamber. The move allowed Duckworth to bring the baby to Capitol Hill, where Duckworth cast a vote against the confirmation of Jim Bridenstine for NASA administrator. Leaving the chamber after her vote, Duckworth told reporters that it felt "amazing" to have her baby daughter with her on the floor. "It's about time," she said.

April 19, 2019 – In Ireland, two men were arrested in connection with the murder of journalist Lyra McKee in Derry, Northern Ireland. McKee, 29, had been shot and killed amid a riot in Derry as she watched Irish nationalist youths clash with police during a riot. Police believe the suspects in the murder are linked to the dissident republican group the New Irish Republican Army, an offshoot of the Irish Republican Army which remains opposed to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and the fragile ceasefire in Northern Ireland. McKee's murder follows the explosion of a large car bomb in Derry in January, 2019, which was also blamed on the New IRA. Northern Ireland's political leaders — nationalists and unionists alike — urged calm following the violence a riot originally set off during police raids on dissidents (see April 18, 2019).

April 19, 2020 – Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs of Sint Maarten gave a video address to her Carribbean country: “Simply. Stop. Moving. If you do not have the type of bread you like in your house, eat crackers. If you do not have bread, eat cereal, eat oats, sardines.” She advised citizens to prepare as if a Hurricane was on the way, but not to hoard toilet paper. Her no-nonsense approach to the pandemic brought the little-known Jacobs international media attention. Like several other women world leaders, she took decisive action early, and delivered clear messages. Her calm but determined presence has kept her people focused on what must and can be done.

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April 20, 1544 – Renata of Lorraine born; there were several marriages proposed for her, but none of them came to fruition, until Renata married her cousin William, in 1568, when she was 23 years old, and he was 20. The two preferred to live simply, and Renata spent much of her time caring for the sick, the poor, and religious pilgrims. After William became William V, the Duke of Bavaria, in 1579, she became involved with Herzogspitalkirche (Duke’s hospital-church), now a Catholic church in Munich. Renata gave birth to 10 children, but their first child died at birth, and three of the other children died in childhood. Renata died at age 58 in 1602.

April 20, 1826 – Dinah M. Craik born, English novelist and poet; The Ogilivies; John Halifax, Gentleman; A Life for a Life.

April 20, 1890 – Carmelita Hinton born, secretary to Jane Addams for 2 years; committed to John Dewey’s education philosophy, environmentalism, internationalism and arts and crafts; founds Putney co-ed boarding school in Vermont (1935).

April 20, 1895 – Mary Pukui born, descendant of native Hawaiian high priestesses, researched and collected stories and oral histories, became translator at Bishop Museum, wrote songs and gave hula demonstrations in schools in the 1950s.

April 20, 1902 — Scientists Marie and Pierre Curie isolate the radioactive element radium.

April 20, 1908 – In Denmark, women win the right to vote in municipal elections, but can’t vote in national elections until June 1915.

April 20, 1920 – Frances R. Ames born, South African neurologist, psychiatrist and human rights activist; the first woman to receive a Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Cape Town in 1964; studied the effects of cannabis, and became a proponent of the therapeutic benefits of cannabis, particularly for people with multiple sclerosis (MS); most notable for leading a medical ethics inquiry into the 1977 death of Steven Biko, who was severely beaten in police custody, but the doctor who examined him said there was no evidence of injury. After examination by two other doctors, he was transported 740 miles (1190 km) to Pretoria’s prison hospital, unattended by medical personnel, and died there of a massive brain hemorrhage. The official investigations afterwards resulted in no charges against the police or the doctors involved, so Ames, with five academics, raised funds to fight an eight-year battle against the medical establishment, risking her career and personal safety, all the way to the South African Supreme Court, where she finally won the case in 1985.

April 20, 1923 – Irene Lieblich born in Poland, Jewish painter, poet. and illustrator for the books of Isaac Bashevis Singer, Holocaust survivor.

April 20, 1939 – Billie Holiday records the Civil Rights song “Strange Fruit” with words from a poem written by Abel Meeropol exposing racism and the lynching of black Americans.

April 20, 1947 – Rita Dionne-Marsolais born, French Canadian economist and Parti Québécois politician; Member of the National Assembly of Quebec for Rosemont (1994-2008).

April 20, 1952 – Louka Katseli born, Greek economist and KOISY (Social Agreement Party) politician and president of her party (2012-2015); Minister for Labour and Social Security (2010-2011); during the Greek economic crisis, she was Minister for the Economy, Competitiveness and Shipping (2009-2010); then served as president of the Greek Banks Union (2015-2016).

April 20, 1956 – Beatrice Ask born, Swedish Moderate Party politician; Alderman of the House since 2018; Member of the Swedish Riksdag (Parliament) for Stockholm Municipality since 1988; Minister for Justice (2006-2014); Minister for Schools (1991-1994).

April 20, 1959 – Cheryl Carolus born, South African political activist and civil servant; active member of the South African Students’ Organisation (SASO), and one of the founding members of the United Democratic Front (UDF) in 1983. Carolus served as the General Secretary of the Federation of South African Women (Fedsaw) from 1987. She was arrested several times and often harassed for her political beliefs. In 1990, she played a crucial role during the Groote Schuur negotiations, as a member of the African National Congress (ANC) delegation that met with the Apartheid government. In 1991, she was elected to the ANC’s Executive Committee. She became South Africa’s High Commissioner in London in 1998. She was the chief executive officer of South Africa Tourism (2001-2004). Currently a member of the Executive Committee of the International Crisis Group, and Executive Chair of Peotrona Group Holdings.

April 20, 1963 – Rachel Whiteread born, English artist primarily known for her sculptures; in 1993, she became the first woman to win the Turner Prize for best artist under 50 of the year. The same year, she also awarded the K Foundation Award for Worst Artist. She was one of the Young British Artists exhibited at the Royal Academy’s 1997 Sensation exhibition.

April 20, 1970 – Sarantuya born, known professionally as Saraa, Mongolian mezzo-soprano, recognized as the queen of Mongolian pop music, and the highest-selling Mongolian singer; she began her career singing with the band Mungun Harandaa (Silver Pencil).

April 20, 2008 – Danica Patrick wins the Indy Japan 300 becoming the first woman driver in history to win an Indy car race.

April 20, 2018 – Alejandra Pablos, immigrant rights and reproductive-rights activist with Mijente, was freed from the for-profit Eloy Detention Center, where she was detained for more than 40 days after she reported to a routine ICE check-in on March 7, 2018. Advocates say she was detained in retaliation for her activism, particularly for protesting outside the Homeland Security Department office in Virginia earlier this year. Alejandra Pablos, speaking in a Facebook video after being released, said: “I come out with so much like more intel, more stories inside, more ideas, more dreams of like how we’re going to get our women back. If we can’t destroy these walls, we’ve got to steal them back. The fight just has begun . . . Stay with me. We’ve got to ask [Arizona] Governor Ducey to do the right thing and to pardon me, to let me stay here without fear. I’m tired of feeling scared. I’m tired of being persecuted for just defending my life and defending everybody else.” In December 2018, an immigration judge in Arizona stripped Pablos of her green card, and ordered her deportation. Her lawyers filed an appeal, and she was granted bond and returned home while it is pending.

April 20, 2020 – Research at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg in Germany indicates that high levels of air pollution may be “one of the most important contributors” to deaths from Covid-19. The analysis shows that of the coronavirus deaths across 66 administrative regions in Italy, Spain, France, and Germany, 78% of them occurred in just five regions, and these were the most polluted regions. A separate study in the U.S. also found higher coronavirus death rates in areas of the country with higher levels of fine particle pollution. Jenny Bates, a British clean air campaigner at Friends of the Earth, expressed concern: “This new study is worrying. We know NO₂ is a toxic gas that inflames the lining of the lungs and reduces immunity to lung infections, so it may not be surprising that people . . . in areas with high levels of NO₂ could be more susceptible to coronavirus. This is all the more reason to keep traffic and pollution levels down as much as possible now and get out of this terrible situation with a view to fewer but cleaner vehicles on the road.”

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Sources

http://www.nwhp.org/events/april/
http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/important-dates-us-womens-history
http://www.historyplace.com/specials/calendar/april .htm
http://www.onthisday.com/day/april /
Women Trailblazers of California: Pioneers to the Present, © 2012 by Gloria G. Harris and Hannah S. Cohen — The History Press
todayinsci.com
A Book of Days for the Literary Year, edited by Neal T. Jones
The Music-Lover’s Birthday Book, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Thanks to WineRev — www.dailykos.com/…
The Guardian newspaper — Top Stories and International sections

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A brief introduction to Scandinavian Americans

A Citizen

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday April 15, 2021 · 10:17 AM PDT

2021/04/15 · 10:17

Who are these people? Where did they come from? Where did they go?

Organized immigration from Scandinavia is generally considered to have begun with the arrival of the Restauration, a ship from Norway in 1825. The Restauration carried 52 people, may of whom were Norwegian Quakers. The ship was well over capacity, and the ship was impounded and the captain arrested. John Quincy Adams pardoned the caption. These immigrants settled in New York, but many subsequent Scandinavian immigrants bypassed New York entirely, and went directly to the north Central US.

You can see this in maps of where their descendants live today. Right now, I’m going to focus on the Norwegians, Swedes and Finns. Many European immigrants first came to New York and moved across the country over decades. Scandinavian immigrants tended to come directly from the old country to settle in the upper Midwest. Many didn’t even come to American ports, coming in through Canadian ports.

Minnesota has the largest number of people of Scandinavian descent, #1 in Norwegians and Swedes and a close #2 in Finns. By percentage, North Dakota is #1 in Norwegians, with 30% of North Dakotans claiming Norwegian ancestry to Minnesota’s 16.5%. Minnesota is #1 in Swedes by percentage as well, with 9.9% to North Dakota’s 5.0%. I don’t have the percentages available offhand, but Michigan is #1 in percentage of Finns, and Minnesota #2. The Upper Peninsula of Michigan has a lot of Finns. I remember people in the UP pronouncing Marquette as “market”, because as I was told, the stress was on the first syllable in Finnish. I’m not saying that everyone in the UP pronounced it that way, just that, at least decades ago, some did.

In and around Minnesota, we don’t call it a casserole, it’s a hot dish. It’s not “Duck Duck Goose”, it’s “Duck Duck Gray Duck”, from the Swedish “Anka Anka Grå Anka”. WCCO - Why do Minnesotans say "Duck Duck Gray Duck"? Star Tribune - Why is a casserole called hot dish in Minnesota?

And you’ve all heard about the lutefisk. If you haven’t, it’s cod that’s been dried and preserved with lye. It’s rehydrated and rinsed before cooking. And it tastes as bad as it sounds. But some people love it because it tastes like Christmas. Amazing what people will do for tradition. Now, people can get fish all year long, but lutefisk still remains a Christmas tradition for some. I remember a t-shirt that said “You don’t have to enjoy the taste to enjoy lutefisk.” That’s what tradition does for you. I’m just glad it was never part of my family’s tradition.

And we do have foods that aren’t Lovecraftian nightmares. There’s lefse, a potato flatbread that’s great with butter and brown sugar. It looks like a tortilla, but it wouldn’t hold up in a burrito. Then there’s rosettes, a thin crispy cookie. You dip the rosette iron in a thin batter and then into hot oil. And there’s krumkake (literally, “curved cake”), a waffle cookie that’s rolled up. The pasty’s origins are in Cornwall, not Finland, but it’s so popular in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, that a lot of people think it is Finnish.

Danish Americans are one Scandinavian group which are not primarily in the upper Midwest. California has the most, followed by Utah. Apparently, there was significant migration of Danish Mormons in the middle of the 19th century. DANISH IMMIGRATION AND LIFE IN UTAH Minnesota is #3 in Danes.

675px-Swedish_Americans_2000_Census.svg.png — .Map of where Swedish Americans live

Black Kos, Tuesday's Chile: A Review of "The Three Mothers"

Black Kos for Black Kos community

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday April 13, 2021 · 2:06 PM PDT

2021/04/13 · 14:06

Mothers of the Movement

A Review by Chitown Kev

The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation

by Anna Malaika Tubbs.

Flatiron Books, 272 pp., $28.99

Anna Malaika Tubbs admits, in the Introduction to The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation, that her book’s overall theme is not only about the substantial biographies of the mothers of the three Black civil rights activists, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin, but also about honoring “Black motherhood as a whole” celebrating “knowledge passed from generation to generation through the bodies and teachings of black women.” At that point, one might be resigned to relegate the text as another book of Black feminist history and theory (texts which certainly need to read!) that is superficially propped up by the barest of biographical sketches of the mothers of three icons of the Black Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s. Instead, The Three Mothers really is a substantial tribute to the lives of Alberta King, Louise Little, and Berdis Baldwin, as well.

Sequentially and topically arranged according to the lifespans of the three women specifically and of black women in certain social contexts, what becomes evident early in The Three Mothers is the specificity with which Berdis Baldwin, Louise Little, and Alberta King bequeathed very distinct legacies to their children, including their eventually famous sons, that are easily recognizable. For example, I have read, I would guess, about 98-99% of the work that James Baldwin published in his lifetime and I never would have guessed that Berdis Baldwin was a poet and writer in her own right. Ms. Tubbs describes Mrs. Baldwin’s early life in a h istoric Black church in Deal Island, Maryland with Mrs. Baldwin “developing a love of writing and poetry” and performing “her pieces in front of her family members.” My own assumption, based on multiple close readings of James Baldwin’s work and a couple of James Baldwin biographies, was that while Berdis Baldwin was a necessary rock and emotional support for Baldwin while Baldwin’s stepfather and some of his teachers (mostly white teachers but also including the Harlem Renaissance poet Countee Cullen) were the primary contributors to Baldwin’s love of reading and writing and his distinctive use of language that eventually blossomed into Baldwin becoming one of the great writers of the 20th century. Berdis Baldwin certainly was more of a literary muse to and for her son than previously thought.

Alberta King and Louise Little, the mothers of Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, respectively, also bequeathed very specific legacies to their children, generally, and their famous sons specifically. Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church was where Alberta King’s father, Adam Daniel Williams, became head pastor in 1894. Alberta’s parents, Adam and Jennie Celeste, supplied her with a fairly comfortable background, economically, where Alberta “had access to resources, education, and a budding congregation.” Martin Luther King, Sr. (originally named Michael, just as his son was originally named) did not have the resources or the education of his future wife (in fact, he was considered to be “illiterate” for a time) and Alberta’s parents, in fact, prioritized her career over marriage (even after Alberta and Martin, Sr. were engaged, Alberta is quoted as telling her future husband, that, “You’re not an educated man, King, not yet. You’ve got work to do and you’ve got to get started.”). In other words, the pulpit of Ebenezer Baptist Church was, if anything, a specific legacy handed down to Dr. King by his mother and her parents. Prior to reading The Three Mothers, I would have never seen it that way.

While it was known that Louise Little was an active part of the Garveyite movement along with her husband, Earl (Louise and Earl met at a UNIA meeting in Montreal) Mrs. Little, thanks in part to her multilingual background as a native Grenada, “developed a love of words” to such an extent that she not only spoke five languages (according to her granddaughter) but was able to pass on to her son, Malcolm, a love of language that long pre-dated his prison term (an impression that The Autobiography of Malcolm X sorta makes).

Because of the dearth of actual documented sources of the lives of the three women, Ms. Tubbs supplements the social contexts in which the three women were born and raised and lived with the biographical details and then attempts to imagine them in those social contexts. So that, for example, it’s easy to imagine why Berdis Baldwin may have wanted to move to New York City and Harlem in the early 1920’s or how, based on her Grenadian ancestry, Louise Little developed a love of language and an attraction to Garvey-ism. At times in The Three Mothers, theory and social context does not altogether meld with biography and results in relatively short stretches of feeling as if one were reading a sociology text as opposed to a set of biographies. However, such detail is also necessary to demonstrate both how similar the experiences of Alberta King, Louise Little, and Berdis Baldwin were (and are) to black women as a whole and also how different and unique their experiences were and are (Black communities and Black people have always been very diverse!).

Ultimately, Ms. Tubbs project in writing The Three Mothers is risky and, at times, a bit messy, but is successful in both documenting and imagining the lives of these three specific Black women and Black womanhood as a whole.

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NEWS ROUND UP BY DOPPER0189, BLACK KOS MANAGING EDITOR

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Since reparations for slavery isn’t on the horizon,how about just returning stolen things? KTLA: Black descendants of Bruce’s Beach owner could get Manhattan Beach land back under proposed state law

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Los Angeles County plans to return prime beachfront property to descendants of a Black couple who built a seaside resort for African Americans but suffered racist harassment and were stripped of it by local city leaders a century ago, a county official said Friday.

“It is the county’s intention to return this property,” Janice Hahn, a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, told a news conference at what was known as Bruce’s Beach in the city of Manhattan Beach.

The decision in Los Angeles County, the nation’s most populous, comes at a time of national reckoning on race and discussions at the local, state and federal levels over reparations.

It comes after multiple property transfers over the decades. Today, a county lifeguard training headquarters building sits on the property along some of the most coveted coastline in Southern California.

The property encompasses two parcels purchased in 1912 by Willa and Charles Bruce, who built the first West Coast resort for Black people at a time when segregation barred them from many beaches. They built a lodge, café, dance hall and dressing tents with bathing suits for rent. Initially it was known as Bruce’s Lodge.

“Bruce’s Beach became a place where Black families traveled from far and wide to be able to enjoy the simple pleasure of a day at the beach,” Hahn said.

It did not last long.

The Bruces and their customers were harassed by white neighbors and the Ku Klux Klan attempted to burn it down. The Manhattan Beach City Council finally used eminent domain to take the land away from the Bruces in the 1920s, purportedly for use as a park.

“The Bruces had their California dream stolen from them,” Hahn said. “And this was an injustice inflicted not just upon Willa and Charles Bruce but generations of their descendants who almost certainly would have been millionaires if they had been able to keep this property and their successful business.”

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Social media’s view of the 99-year-old man’s death is much different. Vox: The British media narrative of Prince Philip’s death is about Meghan Markle

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Ordinarily, the death of a 99-year-old man wouldn’t raise much suspicion. But because Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, isn’t your typical long-lived man, his death on April 9 provides a window into the recent woes of the British royal family — and the media’s fixation on its contentious relationship with Meghan Markle.

Prince Philip was hospitalized for a full month in February, reportedly for treatment of a preexisting heart condition. As he was nearing his 100th birthday, his death is hardly a surprise. According to the royal family’s official statement, His Highness “passed away peacefully this morning at Windsor Castle.”

It didn’t take long, however, for anticipation to spread throughout social media that the press would find a more disruptive cause for Prince Philip’s death than illness or old age. Amid the many memes that began circulating online once the news broke, a prominent theme emerged: British media placing the blame on Meghan Markle.

Markle has spent the last year mired in controversy, first for formally resigning her royal duties along with her husband Prince Harry and second for a March 7 interview with Oprah Winfrey in which the couple spoke out against the family’s treatment of her. Among the most shocking revelations to come out of that interview were the couple’s statements that the family had professed “concerns” over the color of their unborn child’s skin, had refused to provide the couple with a security detail in violation of protocol, and had refused to help Markle seek treatment after she became suicidal — in part due to a barrage of racist harassment from the press.

It’s no secret that the British media, particularly tabloid journalism, has lost little love for Markle since she became the latest member of the royal family. From the moment she began dating Prince Harry in 2016, Markle has faced racist and sexist backlash, criticizing everything from her perceived unlikability to her “exotic DNA.”

And in the aftermath of the Oprah interview, Piers Morgan, in particular, has led the charge of many British journalists in accusing Markle of, essentially, lying about everything — pushing an unsubstantiated idea of “fakery” that led to him walking off and ultimately quitting his news show Good Morning Britain. Hence the nearly immediate assumption that the British press would find a way to shift the focus off Prince Philip and onto Markle.

Sometimes the predictions that a narrative around “Meghan and Harry’s Oprah interview contributing to Prince Philip’s untimely death” were uncanny in how they bore out.

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National Emergency Management Organisation warned residents to leave and said ash plume had reached 20,000ft The Guardian: St Vincent rocked by explosive eruptions at La Soufrière volcano

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The Caribbean island of St Vincent has been rocked by a string of explosive eruptions at La Soufrière volcano, which spewed clouds of ash miles into the air a day and forced thousands to flee for safety.

A map showing the location of the La Soufrière volcano on St Vincent, an island in the Caribbean.

The country’s National Emergency Management Organisation (Nemo) confirmed on Twitter that the 4,049-foot volcano had erupted on Friday morning and warned residents to leave the surrounding areas.

Pictures shared on social media showed towering plumes of gas and volcanic matter billowing into the sky above the volcano, and heavy ash fall was reported in the surrounding areas.

“The majesty that is La Soufrière is awake in all her terrifying glory,” tweeted Heidi Badenock, a lawyer on the island.

Nemo said that the ash plume from the first eruption reached 20,000ft and was drifting eastwards into the Atlantic Ocean.

Two more explosive eruptions on Friday afternoon spewed more clouds of ash and dust into the air.

The eruption occurred a day after a red alert was declared. Photograph: UWI Seismic Research Centre

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19 million Brazilians have gone hungry during the pandemic, new study finds, as food insecurity is also on the rise. AL JAZEERA: “Tragic combination”: Millions go hungry amid Brazil COVID crisis

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Ana Maria Nogueira adds one bacon-flavoured seasoning cube to the pot of rice simmering on the stove.

In the wooden shack that she and her husband, Eraldo, who is disabled, call home in Jardim Keralux, a poor neighbourhood in Sao Paulo’s sprawling eastern zone, the coronavirus that has killed more than 351,000 Brazilians seems like a faraway problem.

The couple has more pressing priorities. “This year, we’re going hungry,” Ana, 56, told Al Jazeera.

As Brazil’s COVID-19 crisis gets worse by the week with record-high death tolls, packed hospitals and climbing caseloads, another crisis is unfolding: hunger and food insecurity.

Ana and Eraldo are two of 19 million Brazilians to have gone hungry during the pandemic, according to a new study, while nearly 117 million – more than half the population – live with some level of food insecurity.

…………..

Brazil was taken off of the United Nation’s world hunger map in 2014 after years of concerted effort to reduce hunger through successful social programmes and public policies.

The country’s then-President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who now appears to be making a political comeback, famously said at his 2003 swearing-in ceremony that, “as long as there is a Brazilian brother or sister going hungry we will have reason to be ashamed”.

But in 2015, recession and political crisis struck. Austerity measures were introduced and unemployment soared. Three years later, before presidential elections that far-right populist firebrand Jair Bolsonaro would go on to win, extreme poverty and hunger were already raising alarms.

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WELCOME TO THE TUESDAY PORCH.

IF YOU ARE NEW TO THE BLACK KOS COMMUNITY, GRAB A SEAT, SOME CYBER EATS, RELAX, AND INTRODUCE YOURSELF.

Hidden History: The Russian Woodpecker (No, It's Not a Bird)

Lenny Flank for History for Kossacks

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday April 13, 2021 · 1:00 PM PDT

2021/04/13 · 13:00

Towards the end of the Cold War, the Soviet Union deployed a ballistic-missile early-warning radar that was so powerful it interfered with television and radio broadcasts across most of the world. It was dubbed "The Russian Woodpecker".

"Hidden History" is a diary series that explores forgotten and little-known areas of history.

Woodpecker_array — Duga-1 array photo from Wiki Commons

At the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the USSR knew that it was being outclassed in the nuclear arms race. The United States was ringed by radar stations that gave early warning of ICBM launches or approaching bombers from Soviet territory. The newer of these were "over the horizon" radars that could follow the curvature of the earth and detect objects thousands of miles away. The Russians, by contrast, were far behind in electronics technology. Although the Soviets had developed early-warning radar systems of their own, these were all "line of sight" that could only detect an approaching missile or bomber when it popped up above the horizon, which gave very little warning time.

The USSR therefore diverted a huge R&D effort into developing an over-the-horizon radar system of their own, and, hampered by their lack of high-tech know-how, this could only be done through sheer brute force. The research went on for almost a decade.

Then in July 1976, radio receivers all over the world began picking up something strange: at seemingly random times, there was an extraordinarily powerful radio transmission being broadcast that consisted of a sharp tapping noise, ten times a second, on radio frequencies that usually ranged from 10Mhz to 30Mhz. During the seven minutes or so that it was typically heard, the signal was strong enough to interfere with shortwave radio transmissions, commercial radio broadcasts, CB radio, and even television stations, and at times it was estimated to have a strength of at least 10 megawatts. Within a short while, amateur radio operators triangulated the signal and determined that it was coming from inside the Soviet Union, somewhere in the Ukraine. The repetitive tapping noise became known as "The Russian Woodpecker".

The signal also caught the attention of NATO, which managed to trace the Woodpecker signal more definitely to a radio transmitter in the Black Sea port city of Mykolaiv. This was a massive steel antenna array, over 600 feet wide and 250 feet tall. The Soviets called it "Duga"; NATO gave it the designation "STEELYARD". Not long after, the Duga Array (which was apparently a test prototype) was replaced by an even larger one, built near the Ukrainian city of Chernobyl and over 2,000 feet wide, which the Russians called "Duga-1". This was intended to be operational, and consisted of two separate facilities with the transmitter antenna located at Chernobyl and the receiver at the town of Liubech, about 30 miles away.

There was all sorts of wild speculation about what the massive transmitter's purpose was supposed to be. Some suspected it was intended to jam American radio signals in case of war; others thought it might be a means of communicating with submerged Soviet submarines. The more fanciful conspiracy theories assumed it was a device for manipulating the weather, or maybe for broadcasting radio mind-control waves. NATO intelligence analysts, however, quickly concluded that it was an over-the-horizon early-warning radar system which made up for the crude state of Russian electronics by simply blasting out as much radio energy as they possibly could. This conclusion was confirmed when a second Duga system appeared in Siberia, near Komsomolsk-on-Amur, which was also aimed at the United States and which covered a gap that Duga-1 was not able to see. The arrays would be able to detect ICBMs from the USA as well as submarine-launched missiles from the Pacific, and give the Soviets enough warning time to organize a response.

Whenever the radars were operating, their powerful signal caused interference in much of the world, leading to numerous complaints from civilian operators. International groups appealed to the Soviet Government to reduce the interference, but Moscow simply denied everything and continued its periodic broadcasts (even though the Woodpecker signal was also interfering with its own radio stations). Commercial radio and TV manufacturers began adding special electronic components to their receivers called "Woodpecker Blankers" which tried to filter out the annoying signal.

Despite all the complaints, the Duga system continued to operate off and on until the early 1980s, when the Soviets had at last developed satellites with the ability to reliably detect missile launches over the USA. The Woodpecker signal became sporadic and finally halted entirely in December 1989 with the end of the Cold War. The installation at Komsomolsk-on-Amur was dismantled. The array near Chernobyl was already abandoned after the nuclear reactor accident in April 1986, when it was engulfed by the radioactive Exclusion Zone. Today, there are tour companies that take visitors to see the wrecked nuclear power plant and the huge Duga-1 radar array nearby.

NOTE: As some of you already know, all of my diaries here are draft chapters for a number of books I am working on. So I welcome any corrections you may have, whether it's typos or places that are unclear or factual errors. I think of y'all as my pre-publication editors and proofreaders. ;)

Remembering Paul Robeson Advocate for Racial Justice, World Peace Incomparable Bass-Baritone

Bill Berkowitz

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday April 13, 2021 · 11:43 AM PDT

2021/04/13 · 11:43

Persecuted by the U.S. government for his political activism and internationalism, Robeson was a legendary athlete, scholar, actor and singer, who fought tirelessly for civil and human rights.

To borrow from Walt Whitman’s 1855 poem, Paul Robeson contained multitudes. Before Jackie Robinson, Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Harry Belafonte, Muhammad Ali, LeBron James, Colin Kaepernick, Megan Rapinoe, Billie Jean King, there was Paul Robeson. Robeson believed it was his duty, as a famous person, to speak out against injustice and for peace. One of America’s earliest and greatest athletes of color (along with the boxer Jack Johnson, and Jim Thorpe), Robeson was harshly punished when he spoke out against racism, and in support of world peace.

According to several accounts, Robeson believed that the struggle against fascism during the Spanish Civil War was a turning point in his life and transformed him into a political activist. Prior to the Second World War he was living in London and was included in the Sonderfahndungsliste G.B as a target for arrest in the event Germany occupied Britain. Shortly after World War began, he moved back to the U.S. At that point with an uptick in his political activism, he became a target of the FBI.

In 1949, as the Cold War against the Soviet Union was beginning to heat up, Robeson travelled to France and gave a speech about the living conditions of black people in the U.S., and his hopes for avoiding World War III. His remarks were misquoted, and members of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), and some in the press labeled him anti-American. One HUAC member called him “the Kremlin’s voice of America.” As the Smithsonian Magazine’s Gilbert King wrote in September 2011, “Not even the leading black spokesmen of the day, whose causes Robeson had championed at great personal cost, felt safe enough to stand by the man dubbed as the ‘Black Stalin’ during the Red Scare of the late 1940s and ’50s.”

The U.S. government revoked his passport and dozens of planned concerts across the country were cancelled.

Robeson was born on April 9, 1898, in Princeton, New Jersey, the son of a runaway slave, William Drew Robeson. In 1915, he was one of the first three African Americans to be admitted to Rutgers University. He became an All-American football player -- winning numerous letters in other sports as well -- was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and served as his class valedictorian. He played professional football in the American Professional Football League; with Hammond in 1920, Akron in 1921, and Milwaukee in 1922. (More on his athletic career can be found at Rutgers: https://vault.si.com/vault/1972/03/27/paul-robeson-remaking-a-fallen-hero and https://footballfoundation.org/hof_search.aspx?hof=1339).

As Smithsonian Magazine’s Gilbert King pointed out. Robeson “worked his way through Columbia Law School while playing professional football. Although he had a brief stint at a New York law firm after graduating, Robeson’s voice brought him public acclaim. Soon he was starring on Broadway, as well as on the greatest stages around the world, in plays such as Shakespeare’s Othello and the Gershwin brothers’ Porgy and Bess. His resonant bass-baritone voice made him a recording star as well, and by the 1930s, he became a box office sensation in the film Show Boat with his stirring rendition of “Ol Man River” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEQEeNhtosg).

King described the controversy in 1949 that led to Robeson being persecuted by the U.S. government (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-paul-robeson-said-77742433/):

Robeson traveled to France to attend the Soviet Union-sponsored Paris Peace Conference. After singing “Joe Hill,” the famous ballad about a Swedish-born union activist falsely accused and convicted of murder and executed in Utah in 1915, Robeson [spoke] … about the lives of black people in the United States. Robeson’s main point was that World War III was not inevitable, as many Americans did not want war with the Soviet Union.

Before he took the stage, however, his speech had somehow already been transcribed and dispatched back to the United States by the Associated Press. By the following day, editorialists and politicians had branded Robeson a communist traitor for insinuating that black Americans would not fight in a war against the Soviet Union. Historians would later discover that Robeson had been misquoted, but the damage had been almost instantly done. (My bold). And because he was out of the country, the singer was unaware of the firestorm brewing back home over the speech. It was the beginning of the end for Robeson, who would soon be declared “the Kremlin’s voice of America” by a witness at hearings by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). …Robeson’s passport was soon revoked, and 85 of his planned concerts in the United States were canceled. Some in the press were calling for his execution.

Robeson was one of America’s original renaissance men: scholar, athlete, stage and screen star, singer, civil and human rights activist, newspaper publisher, and a man respected worldwide by liberation movements and freedom fighters combatting imperialism and colonialism. He sang songs promoting world peace and human rights in 25 languages, including Russian, Chinese and several African languages. There is no clear evidence that Robeson was ever a member of the Communist Party, although he unabashedly associated himself with communist causes from Africa to the Soviet Union.

There hasn’t, to my knowledge, been a biopic about Robeson, and you rarely hear his name mentioned when the names of social activist athletes are invoked. While it is important to recognize the contributions to civil rights and social activism made by Russell, Jim Brown, Ali, Jabbar, Kaepernick, and many more athletes currently active, Robeson’s name has been wiped from history. Interestingly, on a recent edition of ESPN’s “Highly Questionable,” panelist Domonique Foxworth did mention Robeson’s name.

Robeson was always available for workers struggling for their rights. In 1942, he sang to workers at the racially integrated Moore shipyards in Oakland (http://picturethis.museumca.org/pictures/entertainer-paul-robeson-sings-laborers-working-racially-integrated-moore-shipyards-oakland). In a 1997 San Francisco Chronicle story, classical pianist William Duncan Allen told of accompanying Robeson at several concerts in the Bay Area in 1957 (https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Paul-Robeson-s-Fans-Plan-to-Restore-the-Artist-s-2823426.php).

In the first quarter of 1971, “Freedomways: A Quarterly Review of the Freedom Movement,” published a Special Issue devoted to Robeson. Among the contributors were Shirley Graham Du Bois, author, composer, lecturer, and teacher and widow of Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois; Alice Childress, author, playwright and actress; Lena Horne, Black singer and actress; Dick Gregory, athlete, comedian, and civil rights activist; Nikki Giovanni, poet; and Gwendolyn Brooks, one of America’s greatest poets.

In an Editorial titled “Paul Robeson: The Great Forerunner,” Freedomways editors wrote:

As the racist military adventure in Southeast Asia spreads and the casualties mount once again pushing the world dangerously close to a nuclear third world war, we are reminded that it was Paul Robeson, as an internationally recognized champion of world peace among the nations, whose voice was raised to “bring the troops home from Korea” two decades ago. As out Movement gathers strength to turn back Nixon-Agnew repression, we are reminded that Robeson was an early target of McCarthyism and a symbol of the fight back spirit, the right to hold “controversial” opinions, during the Eisenhower-Nixon years.”

Paul Robeson died in Philadelphia on January 23, 1976. He had performed in eleven movies, including his most famous role in Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones. Between 1925 and 1961, Robeson recorded and released some 276 distinct songs, many in foreign languages. After his passport was revoked, Robeson did manage to perform at least two telephone concerts; one in London and one in Wales, however, during the height of the Cold War, it was difficult to hear Robeson sing on commercial radio in the U.S., buy his music or see his films. His passport was ultimately restored, as a result of the 1958 United States Supreme Court decision Kent v. Dulles, and he embarked on a world tour in 1959. In 1963, after several serious bouts with his health, he returned to the U.S., where he lived the remainder of his life in seclusion.

According to Wikipedia, since his death, Robeson has received many awards: His efforts to end Apartheid in South Africa were posthumously rewarded in 1978 by the United Nations General Assembly. Paul Robeson: Tribute to an Artistwon an Academy Award for best short documentary in 1980. In 1995, he was named to the College Football Hall of Fame. In the centenary of his birth, which was commemorated around the world, he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award, as well as a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Robeson is also a member of the American Theater Hall of Fame.

Unable to appear at a Carnegie Hall 75^thbirthday tribute, Robeson sent a message that said: "Though I have not been able to be active for several years, I want you to know that I am the same Paul, dedicated as ever to the worldwide cause of humanity for freedom, peace and brotherhood.”

Indians 101: American Indian art 100 years ago, 1921

Ojibwa for Native American Netroots

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday April 13, 2021 · 10:01 AM PDT

2021/04/13 · 10:01

A century ago, in 1921, museums, art collectors, tourists, home decorators, and art dealers were discovering something they called “Indian art.” The concept of a discrete category called American Indian Art is a European concept. Traditionally American Indians had improved the aesthetics of the things they made, but they did not conceptualize art as something separate from function.

Origins of English: Riot, sedition, and other words

Ojibwa for Cranky Grammarians

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday April 12, 2021 · 7:33 AM PDT

2021/04/12 · 07:33

Recent events in the United States have been labeled with words such as riot and sedition. Here’s some etymology (i.e., word histories) relating to some of these terms.

Ancient Ireland: Round stone towers

Ojibwa for History for Kossacks

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday April 11, 2021 · 8:30 AM PDT

2021/04/11 · 08:30

One of the distinctive characteristics of the Irish monasteries is the round stone tower, an architectural feature unique to Ireland. The round stone towers are a dramatic architectural innovation of the early middle ages. The towers are surmounted by conical stone caps. The top chamber usually has four to six windows. The doorways were usually raised well off the ground, accessible only by an external staircase or ladder. They are a pronounced batter, that is, the diameter decreases as the structure rises. The round stone towers were built over a period of about 300 years with the earliest being constructed about 950 and the last in 1238.

America's Authoritarian Leader Complex, White Supremacy, and Patriarchal Religion

psychusa

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday April 10, 2021 · 8:40 AM PDT

2021/04/10 · 08:40

160831-religious-right-backing-Trump-tease-Recovered_xikt0y.jpg — Trump as a religious leader??? Impossible you say?

America has long used religion to tie its citizens to the concept of accepting and following god-like male authoritarian leaders. The teachings have little do with Christianity as it was originally intended, some two thousand years ago. Whether or not you accept the existence of Jesus has a factual reality, the image created represented a movement of resistance to the established order in Judea/Palestine by the poor and downtrodden, of which Jesus legends obscures that he was one of the poor himself, one much like the movement headed by Gandhi in India in modern times.

NEW YORK, NY - JULY 24: Anti Gay marriage protesters from the Westboro Baptist Church attend the first day of legal same-sex marriage in New York State on July 24, 2011 in New York City. (Photo by Bennett Raglin/WireImage) — It’s fair to say that white supremacy historically has found a home in many Christian churches.

Long ago in our history, many Christian Churches in the South and even some in the North also tied their congregations firmly to the concept of slavery, black interiority, white supremacy,, and removal/genocidal action against native peoples. The historical prevalence of white supremacy is beyond dispute, it largely continued unabated after the Civil War in a different form and was perfected by the introduction of segregation laws, political apartheid, and outright terrorism. Northern States ignored this for decades to their shame. The plague of white supremacy often took the form of denial in the Churches in the South after the War, and was often not spoken about directly at the services. It often took the alternative form of cross burnings by the terrorist KKK, which could make speeches you wouldn’t want to make at Church.

Before I go any further, let me say that there are thousands of different more or less independent Christian congregations, so please be aware that I can only generalize about these trends in the white churches. I am of course not speaking to what may have been preached in the black Christian Churches which developed post Civil War. Nor am I referring to what was always taught in the Northern Christian churches, which often to various degrees became anti-slavery, but most still held views that blacks were inferior to whites by birth. A few denominations later condemned segregation, but many others remained silent.

Speaking of more recent experiences in 16 years of Catholic school and going to church in the 1950s and 60s, I cannot recall more than a handful of sermons or lectures on the topic of racism until it could no longer be ignored after years of struggle during the Civil Rights movement. When a handicapped student sang a Bob Dylan song “Blowing in the Wind” at a H.S. pre-graduation ceremony, the students were both shocked and silent. I never realized until much later how much courage it took for him to do that. Or what may have happened to the brothers who decided to permit it. The high school I went to emphasized in their literature that they turned out students headed for Wall Street and the Stock Exchange, losing close to 30 former students on 9/11.

Authoritarian Leaders as Religious Figures

What became Trumpism mimics the belief in an all powerful male god that controls our destiny. One that we must follow without question. The world view among most Americans is still shaped by this strong religious/patriarchal tendency. The historical dominance of racist and white supremacist philosophy long ago merged with such religious beliefs. Which made Trump eligible to be ordained as such a savior, despite his woeful moral and criminal character. This in turn related to the development of Trump as an authoritarian god-like figure and white supremacist leader who could do no wrong. Who, as he bragged, “could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and they’d still support me.” Because he had assumed an almost God like identity before the many followers, how could he commit sin or be wrong? Trump assumed all the characteristic biases of his followers, many of which he suffered from himself. He promised to restore America to its former “greatness”, which to supporters meant when white privilege and white supremacy had a stronger hold on the country, and blacks were back in their submissive place. He was the ultimate “Great White Hope”. All of a sudden, white supremacy had an advocate who was the most powerful man in the world. His power in many ways was accepted as if he were a an infallible religious leader. Only his rank incompetence kept him from a second term. That and the fact that he repelled more votes than he attracted.

As much as ancient Christian religion once attempted to agitate for a higher degree of human character and decency, it devolved into the patriarchal and authoritarian worship of God-like male figures after Roman emperor Constantine’s adoption and cooptation of Christianity as the state religion and fostering of the Council of Nicea. The link between the reoccurring of fascist movements and the transfer of those powers to mortal male figures is what gives the authoritarian fascist leader so much importance in the lives of the masses, and makes the leaders so dangerous. Trumpism is actually based on a form of fascism embraced by many of the masses in the form of white supremacy and privilege. It need not have a majority of people in our country to prevail, as this element in much more prevalent to support or tolerate high levels of social force and violence in politics.

The cycle and tendency for the world to produce such leaders represents the beliefs and practices prevalent among the masses under the influence of patriarchy. There are times and conditions under which these beliefs hold sway, and other times when they seem to decline in favor of our “better angels”. All patriarchal religions, not just Christianity, can harbor these patriarchal and fascist tendencies.

I cannot emphasize enough the connection between Trump’s acquired powers and the irrational patriarchal orientation and beliefs of his supporters. Fascism is only possible when this phenom is activated among enough of the masses themselves. Our irrational religious tendencies combine with patriarchal tendencies to promote fascism. Our rational, logical side is a natural check on fascism.

Mike Lindell, aka pillow man on the left.

As an example of the irrationality of fascism, you only have to speak to an ardent Trump supporter, who has acquired a totally different world view from a progressive minded individual. You will disagree on everything and even basic facts you thought indisputable. The fascist political forces, under Republican leadership, had been counting on another Trump victory, and were truly shocked by the outcome of the election. While they have won over a large segment of white voters, this last November showed that without a dismantling of the right to vote for non-whites they will always tend to lose a National election. So they are now all in on fascism and dictatorship as an only means to power.

Why Fascist Propaganda Often Works

While many religious beliefs are profoundly irrational and have no basis in facts or science, they set the stage in the masses for unscrupulous fascist leaders to be believed. Blind trust of the male leader/father figure under the guise of “faith” is a major component of religious belief, since much of its dogma can not be proven in a rational or real world sense. Blind trust is also a key component of fascist ideology, under which white supremacy is a prime example of something proven false by both history and science, but is believed as truth by many. It must be admitted that the Nazis and Hitler dreamt up aryanism, a form of white supremacy for Germans where they believed they were the master race, after studying U.S. history.

Natalie Wood as Susan and Edmund Gwenn as Kris Kringle (Santa Claus).

Another example of how we all are vulnerable to irrational blind faith occurs in what was intended to be a perfectly normal “family movie”, and not something deliberately nefarious with a hidden agenda. Watch the original movie “Miracle on 34th Street”, most of us over 50 are likely familiar with that or the more recent remake in 1994. Kris Kringle is a sweet old man with a beard who claims to be the real god like figure Santa Claus, as well as a father and grandfather figure to a a six year old Natalie Wood, know in the film as Susan Walker. She at first does not believe in him.

If We’re Not Careful, We All Can Get Conned

Her single mom, played by Maureen O’Hara, is a business woman at Macys that hired Kris to play Santa Claus. She has raised her daughter not to believe in that kind of fantasy and make believe. To make a long story short, Kris is declared “Santa Claus” at a competency trial by the U.S. Post Office and arranges for everyone in his circle of friends to receive xmas gifts and in particular leads the single mom to stumble on a house her kid dreams of having while driving with her boy friend. Mom then marries the boyfriend lawyer, give up her job, and they all live happily ever after, and Kris is shown to maybe be the real Santa, at least to six year old Susan. It sounds like a crazy example, but truth be told it’s a favorite of this atheist. Proof of how easy it would be for someone with no decency or principles to harness our irrational sides. This can happen on the left as well as on the right when authoritarian male leaders are followed and obeyed blindly. Two of the worst that come to mind are Stalin and Pol Pot. Trump and white supremacy, the primary source of American fascism today, remain waiting in the wings for their next opportunity to take over. He has driven the Republican Party completely mad, and they must not be allowed to ever gain control of the government again.

Black Kos, Week In Review - The Woman Who Invented The Sanitary Pad

Black Kos for Black Kos community

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday April 09, 2021 · 2:01 PM PDT

2021/04/09 · 14:01

Commentary: Black Scientists, Explorers, and Inventors
By dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor

The Sanitary Pad was developed by a black woman named Mary Beatrice Davidson Kenner of Monroe, NC (May 17, 1912 – January 13, 2006). However due to racial discrimination her patent for the sanitary belt was prevented for thirty years, and then stolen. Kenner eventually received five patents, which includes a carrier attachment for invalid walker and the bathroom tissue holder.

Kenner came from a family of inventors. The young Kenner had an active, inventive mind that would often keep her up at night. Her father, whom she credited for her initial interest in discovery, patented a clothing press which would fit in suitcases, though he ultimately made no money on the invention. Her father also patented a window washer for trains and invented a stretcher with wheels for ambulances. Her grandfather invented a light signal for trains, though this invention was stolen from him by a white man. Her sister, invented and commercially sold board games.

Kenner graduated from high school in 1931. She attended Howard University, although she was unable to finish due to financial difficulties. Women at the time were kept out of scientific establishments or academic institutions, but this did not prevent women from continued to put their efforts toward their accomplishments. Kenner and her family moved to Washington D.C. when she was young and here is where she stayed to keep updating on her opportunities to have her ideas patented at the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Until sanitary pads were created, women used all kinds of reusable fabrics to absorb menstrual flows. In 1956, she was finally able to save up enough money to get her first patent on it. However, the company that first showed interest in her invention, the Sonn-Nap-Pack Company, rejected it after they discovered that she was African American. Kenner never made any money off of the sanitary belt, because her patent expired and became public domain, allowing it to be manufactured freely.

Marry Kenner is quoted as saying, "one day I was contacted by a company that expressed an interest in marketing my idea. I was jubilant," she said in an interview. "I saw houses, cars, and everything about to come to my way." A representative made their way to Washington to speak with Kenner and she continues to explain that they had rejected her by saying, "Sorry to say, when they found out I was black, their interest dropped. The representative went back to New York and informed me the company was no longer interested.

Between 1956 and 1987 she received five total patents for her household and personal item creations. She shared the patent on the toilet tissue holder with her sister, Mildred Davidson.

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NEWS ROUND UP BY DOPPER0189, BLACK KOS MANAGING EDITOR

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Black advocates are taking the climate movement into their own hands. VOX: The urgency of the Black climate agenda

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For a long time, the face of the climate movement was white. But with growing public awareness of climate change came the recognition that its impacts are disproportionately experienced by Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color.

The problem, according to many Black climate advocates, is that awareness is not enough.

Tamara Toles O’Laughlin is one of the best-known advocates for what she calls the “Black climate agenda”: a movement that seeks to correct the failures of the climate movement to include Black people and that wants to see racial justice at the center of climate policy conversations.

A lifelong environmental activist, Toles O’Laughlin is the former director of the North American region of 350.org, an international environmental organization founded in 2007 that uses a grassroots approach to build support for ending fossil fuels.

The Black climate agenda is about more than just representation. It’s about equity and righting the wrongs that have been done in the past to make a just future possible. In her vision, the agenda should include policies like climate reparations that address the disproportionate impact climate change has had on Black communities, as well as Indigenous people and other communities of color.

There are some initial signs that the righting of wrongs is already starting to happen, at least in the US.

Through the American Rescue Plan, the Biden-Harris administration allocated $5 billion to help Black farmers who have long suffered from racially discriminatory agricultural policies. Biden’s American Jobs Plan, meanwhile, aims to address “longstanding and persistent racial injustice,” including by allocating 40 percent of the benefits from investments in climate and clean energy infrastructure to “disadvantaged communities.”

Southern Freedom Fighters! Black Belt Citizens Fighting for Health and Justice march for independence from environmental racism on July 4 weekend, flanked by Southern Movement Alliance Summer Organizing Intensive participants, Uniontown, Alabama. #SouthernPeoplesPower Photo

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Even when you don’t “fit the description”. LA Times: LAPD video shows Black man arrested at his home during search for white suspect

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Newly released video from a Los Angeles police officer’s body camera shows two officers grappling with and arresting a Black man outside his Hollywood home as they responded to reports of a domestic violence incident in which the suspect was the white boyfriend of a neighbor.

A federal magistrate ordered the public disclosure of the video Friday as part of a lawsuit alleging racial profiling and civil rights violations brought by music producer Antone Austin, known as Tone Stackz, who was arrested in May 2019 despite not being the suspect in a domestic violence call. Austin and his girlfriend Michelle Michlewicz were taken into custody for resisting arrest.

The Los Angeles city attorney’s office had said in a court filing that it did not want the Los Angeles Police Department video released publicly because it would “be contrary to LAPD policy and may have a chilling effect on future LAPD investigations.” However, U.S. Magistrate Jacqueline Chooljian agreed with an attorney for the producer and his girlfriend that the 11-minute video should be released.

The video footage shows the two being physically detained by officers as they proclaim Austin’s innocence. But it begins with an unusual admission that the officers weren’t sure Austin was the man cited in the domestic violence call.

As their patrol car makes a U-turn after passing Austin, one officer asks the other, “This dude?”

“Probably,” says the partner on the May 24, 2019, recording. The officers were responding to a 911 call made by Austin’s neighbor about her ex-boyfriend, who was white; no description of the suspect is given in the call.

The officers see Austin as he was taking out the trash in front of his Fountain Avenue apartment; he smiles at the officers as they approach. The officers tell him to turn around. He asks why, and the officer snaps back, “Because I told you to.” Austin informs the officer he lives there, and the officer says, “OK, man, I don’t know who I am looking for.”

The officer asks Austin, “What is your problem?” As Austin attempts to turn back toward them, they become physical, grappling with him and placing his arms behind his back. Austin begins to yell “Help” repeatedly.

“You’re looking for the people upstairs,” Austin protests as the officers attempt to handcuff him behind his back.

Hey fam, I have an update on a story.

Remember the Black man who was bringing in his trash can when the #LAPD kidnapped him after a white woman called 911 on her white boyfriend?

Today a judge removed the protective order on the video the LAPD didn’t want you to see. pic.twitter.com/03oKCQDb3P
— Jasmyne Cannick (@Jasmyne) April 3, 2021

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In the Derek Chauvin trial, the defense’s attempt to blame George Floyd’s death on drug use relies on retrograde and racist myths. VOX: The claim that drugs killed George Floyd relies on a racist trope

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My emotions teeter between exasperation and outrage each day I read the trial recap of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who is charged with killing George Floyd.

I’m not naïve. I know how these killer cop trials go. The defense drags the deceased victim’s reputation through the mud — “he was a big Black man prone to violence” or “he was under the influence of a drug” — to create a smoke screen, to generate empathy for the cop. From Michael Brown to Philando Castile, too many judges and juries have fallen victim to this tired ploy — the “drug-crazed Negro” script —when a white police officer kills a Black person.

True to form, Mr. Chauvin’s lawyers have tried to deflect blame from his brutal act onto the drugs found in Mr. Floyd’s body at the time of his death. “The evidence will show that Mr. Floyd died of a cardiac arrhythmia that occurred as a result of hypertension, his coronary disease, ingestion of methamphetamine and fentanyl, and the adrenaline flowing through his body,” defense attorney Eric Nelson told the jury. In other words, Mr. Floyd might still be alive today had he not taken drugs. Shame on us if we buy this bogus defense this time.

I’m a neuropsychopharmacologist who researches drug addiction. My work has focused on the unjust and unscientific stigmas surrounding drug use and the criminalization of drugs around the globe. The defense’s attempt to paint Mr. Floyd as a crazed drug addict relies on retrograde myths about the impact of drugs on our bodies and minds.

While it’s true Mr. Floyd had small amounts of methamphetamine and THC, the primary psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, in his blood — 19 and 2.9 nanograms per milliliter, respectively — those numbers strongly suggest he hadn’t used them in at least several hours, maybe a day.

Also, Mr. Floyd’s methamphetamine levels were far below those I have found, in my laboratory research on dozens of participants, necessary to induce significantly elevated cardiovascular activity: greater than 25 nanograms per milliliter. The amount of methamphetamine (and THC) found in Mr. Floyd’s blood was too low for it to have had any meaningful effect on him.

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Leaders holed up inside Mogadishu’s high-security international airport have failed to agree a plan, risking further unrest. The Guardian: Inside Somalia’s impasse: election talks collapse amid mistrust and blame

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For nearly a month, men from the militias of at least two of Somalia’s five federal member states have been stationed inside Mogadishu’s high-security international airport compound as their leaders attend a circuit of meetings to end the electoral impasse.

The huge complex bristles with barbed wire and armed men in and out of uniforms. In the car park of one of the compound’s hotels, a four-wheel pickup truck mounted with a large gun idles. A handful of young men have built a makeshift camp around the car.

While a Somali national army exists, presidents from some of the federal member states (FMS) do not trust it will protect them, nor do they entirely trust the African Union troops who have secured the airport complex for over a decade.

Last weekend, for the first time in more than a month, all five state presidents, the president of the federal government, and the governor of Benadir, the capital metropolis, agreed to meet.

The aim was to set an agenda for talks about the national election. The politicians were talking about what they would talk about later.

Even after a venue was agreed, the meeting was fraught. Various international actors are said to back different factions, so no one feels safe in the same place. Some politicians think they are at risk of having their food poisoned.

On Wednesday, talks collapsed.

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Talon’s procedural reforms have hollowed out fair elections and are a master class in entrenching autocracy. Foreign Policy: Benin’s King of Cotton Makes Its Democracy a Sham

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When Patrice Talon, the “king of cotton,” was elected president of Benin in 2016, few predicted that the country’s democracy would be on the verge of collapse just five years later. Benin had been considered one of West Africa’s strongest democracies, and Talon had run on a pledge to serve just one term. Yet on April 11, not only will Talon be on the ballot for a second stint in office, but his only opponents will be two weak candidates essentially handpicked by his coalition.

Whether Talon ever intended to respect his one-term promise is unclear, but there is little doubt that over the course of his presidency he has rapidly concentrated power. One political rival after another has faced prosecution, while a carefully executed series of procedural reforms has shut opposition parties out of the vote. Although some aspects of the April 11 election remain uncertain—including the turnout rate, the risk of violence, and whether the government will shut down the internet—the result is not. Talon is all but certain to win, punctuating Benin’s slide into autocracy and bringing three decades of democratic success to an end.

The country transitioned to democracy in 1991, helping spark a wave of democratization across the African continent. Although its political system was far from perfect when Talon—who is among the richest people in Francophone Africa today—took office in 2016, the country was rightfully seen as a regional leader. “Beninese people took legitimate pride in it,” Theodule Nouatchi, a law professor at the University of Abomey-Calavi, told me. “That perception does not seem to be there today.”

Benin’s autocratic turn is an alarming example of a broader trend of democratic backsliding in West Africa, where leaders in Guinea and Ivory Coast recently changed their constitutions to enable a third term and Senegal’s president has become increasingly repressive. But the country is also a test case for how the international community treats superficially democratic elections.

On the surface, Talon has an ambitious vision for Benin. He has had some economic successes and has sought to market himself as a fiscally responsible businessman modernizing a corrupt and inefficient state.

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WELCOME TO THE FRIDAY’S PORCH

IF YOU ARE NEW TO THE BLACK KOS COMMUNITY, GRAB A SEAT, SOME CYBER EATS, RELAX, AND INTRODUCE YOURSELF.

The 1918 Torture, Lynching, and Mutilation of Nineteen-Year-Old Mary Turner by a White Georgia Mob

Bill Berkowitz

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday April 09, 2021 · 9:50 AM PDT

2021/04/09 · 09:50

Review of Elegy for Mary Turner: An Illustrated Account of a Lynching, Rachel Marie-Crane Williams, (Verso, March 2021)

In 2010, the Mary Turner Project, Lowndes/Valdosta Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Valdosta State University’s Women and Gender Studies Program, erected a monument by the side of the road, near the site of Mary Turner’s lynching in May 1918. The plaque read: “

Near this location … Mary Turner, 8 months pregnant at the time, was lynched. Mary was kidnapped and brought to this place for objecting to the lynching of her husband Hayes on May 19. After being brutally killed Mary’s body was buried near here in a makeshift grave marked only by a whiskey bottle with a cigar inserted in the bottleneck. Mary and Hayes’ murders were part of a larger lynching rampage that unfolded that week in May of 1918. Other victims include Will Head, Will Thompson, Julius Jones, Eugene Rice, Chime Riley, and Simon Schuman, along with two other unidentified victims. No one was ever formally charged in any of these crimes.”

Since the memorial’s dedication, it has been shot up and vandalized. In 2020, the Mary Turner Project replaced the memorial with a narrow steel cross, meant to withstand bullets, trucks, and vandals.

History told truthfully, wrote Miguel de Cervantes, the 16th century Spanish novelist, dramatist and poet, is “the rival of time, the depository of great actions, the witness of what is past, the example and instruction of the present, the monitor of the future." But what is historical truth and through what lens do we understand history? While the work of the New York Times’ 1619 Project--developed by Nikole Hannah-Jones and others – is not without controversy, it explores slavery and the expression of its American white supremacist evolution into the 20th century through a new lens. Using essays, stories, and podcast voices, the 1619 Project brings alive the horrors of slavery as well as the resilience of African Americans even as the institutions of slavery continued to be codified into laws, policies and racist practices.

Rachel Marie-Crane Williams new graphic narrative, Elegy for Mary Turner: An Illustrated Account of a Lynching, (Verso, March 2021) brings America’s brutal history of 20th century lynching alive through Mary Turner. Williams’ new book uses the popular and accessible genre of the graphic narrative to tell the story of Mary Turner. Such stories are essential to capture the truth of a time that we can never forget.

On May 19, 1918, Mary Turner, a twenty-one-year-old pregnant black woman was tortured, lynched, burned and mutilated by a mob of white Georgians. Hundreds then watched while Turner’s baby was cut from her body and stomped to death.

[Read the complete story @ www.smirkingchimp.com/...

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