Welcome to WOW2!
WOW2 is a monthly sister blog to This Week in the War on Women. Here, we learn about and honor women of achievement, including many who’ve been ignored or marginalized in most of the history books, and also mark moments and great events in women’s history.
This Week in the War on Women will post a little later, so be sure to go there next and catch up on the latest dispatches from the frontlines: www.dailykos.com/...
Last spring, I thought this year would never end — then I blinked, and found myself shivering in December, bracing with dread for a new year which promises to be yet another escalation of this endless War on Women. I think we are all still shell-shocked, but trying to rally. We need inspiration, so here’s a month’s worth of stories about the women whose shoulders we are standing on.
There are some actual women warriors on this list: Deborah Sampson, who disguised herself as a man, and fought in the American Revolution; Hannah Duston, who turned the tables on her captors to escape; I also count nurses Edith Cavell and Annie Fox as warriors because Cavell was executed by the enemy for helping WWI prisoners of war to escape, while Fox rushed to save lives during the attack on Pearl Harbor, and was decorated for valor.
Our war is far more bloody than the reports ever show. Women are beaten, raped and murdered every hour of every day of every year. But many of our battles are also fought in classrooms, courtrooms and the halls of government — women have fought battles even on mountains, or in theatres — or on a bus in Montgomery.
One of our strongest weapons has been the pen, and more recently, the keyboard, but we have also raised our voices in protest and in song.
So this month’s WOW2 is dedicated to our Fallen, and to all those who have raised us up.
December Women Trailblazers and Events in OUR History:
- December 1, 1893 – Dorothy Detzer born, worked at Hull House investigating child labor infringements, national secretary of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (1924-46), known as the “Lady Lobbyist” in Congress, respected for research and integrity – no personal favors, private dinners or backroom deals
- December 1, 1919 – Lady Astor becomes the first female Member of Parliament to take her seat in the U.K. House of Commons
- December 1, 1847 – Christine Ladd-Franklin born, mathematician, logician and psychologist, Color and Color Theories
- December 1, 1955 – Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a bus to a white person; her arrest sparks the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a landmark in the modern US civil rights movement
- December 2, 1886 – Josephine Roche born, first female police officer in Denver (1912); gained control of her late father’s Colorado coal mine operation (1927) and invited United Mine Workers to organize workers and negotiate contracts; appointed to supervise Public Health Service as part of FDR’s administration, made recommendations for Social Security and advocated for universal health coverage (1935)
- December 2, 1911 – Harriet Fleischl Pilpel born, lawyer, women’s rights activist, on both Kennedy and Johnson Commissions on Status of Women, chaired Planned Parenthood Law Panel International, 1st vice chairwoman of ACLU’s National Advisory Council. In 1961, she argued on behalf of Planned Parenthood in Poe v. Ullman, asking the Supreme Court to reverse a Connecticut law criminalizing birth control. She wrote Planned Parenthood's amicus curiae brief for that case as well as that for 1965's Griswold v. Connecticut. Pilpel was convinced that the right to privacy upheld in Griswold could be extended to a woman's right to abortion. She put abortion on the ACLU Biennial Conference agenda in 1964 (the board did not take up the issue until 1967.) Pilpel wrote Planned Parenthood’s amicus brief for Roe v. Wade, strategizing with Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee
- December 2, 1923 – Maria Callas born, operatic soprano, “La Divina,” famous for bel canto voice, won acclaim for dramatic interpretation of wide range of roles
- December 2, 1988 – Benazir Bhutto is sworn in as Prime Minister of Pakistan
- December 3, 1838 – Octavia Hill born, British social reformer, advocate for the working poor, especially for improving housing and saving open green spaces for recreation
- December 3, 1842 – Phoebe Hearst born, feminist and suffragist, philanthropist who funded teacher training and kindergarten buildings
- December 3, 1842 – Ellen Swallow Richards born, 1st woman graduate from MIT (1873), creator of the fields of ecology and home economics, co-founder of Association of Collegiate Alumnae, now called American Association of University Women
- December 3, 1895 – Anna Freud born, Austrian-English psychoanalyst
- December 3, 1895 – Te Ate born, interpreter of Cherokee, Chickasawa, Creek, Choctaw tribes in theatrical performances which entertained and educated. Inspired Eleanor Roosevelt and visiting British royalty
- December 3, 1910 – Freda du Faur becomes the first woman to scale Aoraki (Mount Cook) in New Zealand
- December 4, 1865 – Edith Cavell born, British nurse, executed by the Germans for helping Allied soldiers escape over enemy lines during WWI
- December 4, 1922 – Lucille Atcherson becomes 1st woman US Diplomatic Consular Officer at Bern legation in Switzerland, then later served in Panama. A woman suffragist, and WWI volunteer who helped wounded Americans and French civilian war survivors, for which she was honored with Medaille de la Reconnaissance Francaise
- December 4, 1829 – In the face of fierce local opposition, British Governor-General Lord William Bentinck issues a regulation declaring that anyone who abets suttee in Bengal is guilty of culpable homicide (widow burning herself to death on her husband's funeral pyre) — the rest of British India follows his lead
- December 4, 1961 – The female contraceptive 'pill' becomes available on the National Health Service in Britain
- December 4, 1978 – Dianne Feinstein becomes San Francisco's 1st female and first Jewish mayor, appointed after the assassinations of Mayor Moscone and Councilman Milk
- December 5, 1822 – Elizabeth Cabot Agassiz born, academic, co-founded Radcliffe College
- December 5, 1830 – Christina Rossetti born, British poet
- December 5, 1890 – Mildred Olmsted born, woman suffragist and birth control advocate, civil rights and peace activist, promoter of nonviolent protest, 1st executive director of WILPF, on boards of SANE and ACLU
- December 5, 1934 – Joan Didion born, novelist and essayist, Play It as It Lays
- December 5, 1935 – Mary McLeod Bethune founds National Council of Negro Women
- December 6, 1815 – Jane Swisshelm born, suffragist, newspaper publisher and journalist, wrote for women’s rights, and against slavery, capital punishment and legal inequities, nursed wounded Union soldiers during the Civil War, was a close friend of Mary Todd Lincoln. Fired from her government job for publishing criticism of President Andrew Johnson
- December 6, 1887 – Lynn Fontanne born, actor, usually starred on stage with husband Alfred Lunt, played 160 parts, many created by playwrights especially for them
- December 6, 1888 – Libbie Hyman born, zoologist and author, known for her six-volume treatise, The Invertebrates
- December 6, 1908 – Gertrud “Trudy” Späth-Schweizer, first woman to hold elective office in Switzerland
- December 6, 1927 – Patsy Mink born, 1st Japanese-American Congresswoman (D-HI), wrote Women’s Educational Equity Act, played key role in enactment of Title IX, renamed posthumously the “Patsy Takemoto Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act”
- December 6, 1989 – Montreal Massacre: Marc Lépine, an anti-feminist gunman, murdered 14 women at the École Polytechnique in Montreal, now marked in Canada as National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women, informally known as White Ribbon Day
- December 6, 1967 – Helen Greiner born, co-founder of iRobot and CEO of CyPhyWorks, Trustee of Boston Museum of Science, on Worcester Polytechnic Institute Computer Science Advisory Board, and a Director of National Defense Industrial Association
- December 7, 1801 – Abigail Hopper Gibbons born, abolitionist, teacher and social welfare activist
- December 7, 1873 – Willa Cather born, author, Pulitzer Prize for her novel One of Ours
- December 7, 1915 – Leigh Brackett born, scifi author and Hollywood screenwriter, The Hounds of Skaith
- December 7, 1941 – Annie Fox, chief nurse in the Army Nurse Corps at Hickam Field during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, becomes 1st woman awarded the Purple Heart for combat. At that time, no requirement for Purple Heart recipient to be injured, but requirements changed after Pearl Harbor and her Purple Heart was later replaced by a Bronze Star because she wasn’t wounded in the attack
- December 7, 1941 – Melba Pattillo Beals born, journalist and member of the Little Rock Nine, the black students who integrated Little Rock Central HS in 1957
- December 8, 1660 – A woman (probably Margaret Hughes, but possibly Anne Marshall) appears on an English public stage for the first time, in the role of Desdemona in a production of Shakespeare’s play Othello — the first recorded British professional performance of a woman’s role by a woman instead of a man in drag
This one made me mad enough to write a poem about it:
To the Disputed Woman Who First
Graced the English Stage as Desdemona
- December 8, 1660 – A woman– likely Margaret Hughes, but possibly Anne Marshall – appears on an English public stage for the first time, in the role of Desdemona in a production of Shakespeare’s play Othello
. . .
How careless men are with our histories!
How easily one pretty face confused for another.
Perhaps they were so beguiled
. . .
By a glimpse of feminine ankle,
Or the sighs raising your womanly bosom,
They never noticed your face at all.
. . .
Even now, the first thing ‘historians’ tell us
Is whose mistress you probably were.
- December 8, 1869 – Jessie Belle Rittenhouse born, American literary critic and poet
- December 8, 1922 – Jean Ritchie born, American folk music singer and songwriter, also a song collector, with her husband spending 18 months on a Fulbright scholarship tracing the links between American folk songs and the traditional music of Britain and Ireland
- December 8, 1919 – Julia Robinson born, mathematician, worked on resolution of Hilbert’s Tenth Problem and Gödel's first Incompleteness Theorem, 1st woman president of American Mathematical Society, awarded MacArthur Foundation grant, 1st woman mathematician elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- December 8, 1925 – Carmen Martín Gaite born, Spanish author and screenwriter, El cuarto de atrás
- December 9, 1745 – Maddalena Laura Sirmen born, Italian violinist and composer
- December 9, 1779 – Tabitha Babbit born, Shaker toolmaker and inventor designed an improved spinning wheel head, and refined the circular saw
- December 9, 1897 – Marguerite Durand founds the feminist daily newspaper, La Fronde, in Paris
- December 9, 1906 – Esther Peterson born, head of Kennedy administration Commission on the Status of Women, fought for improvements in working women’s conditions, awarded Medal of Freedom by President Carter in 1981
- December 9, 1906 – Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper born, major pioneer in computer science, invented the compiler and co-invented COBOL, computer programming languages, developed computer testing standards
- December 10, 1815 – Ada Byron Lovelace born, English mathematician
- December 10, 1830 – Emily Dickinson born, America’s best-known woman poet, Hope is the thing with feathers
- December 10, 1869 – Wyoming is the first territory to give women the right to vote
- December 10, 1902 – Women are given the right to vote in Tasmania
- December 10, 1909 – Selma Lagerlöf becomes the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, Gösta Berling's Saga
- December 10, 1925 – Carolyn Kizer born, poet and women’s activist
- December 10, 1931 – Jane Addams is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
- December 10, 1938 – Pearl S. Buck wins Nobel Prize for Literature, The Good Earth
- December 11, 1892 – Harriet Adams born, AKA “Carolyn Keene,” author/syndicator of Nancy Drew series, worked with ghost writers on Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys and other popular juvenile series. Ran Stratemeyer Syndicate, founded by her father, for 52 years
- December 11, 1904 – ‘Marge’ Margorie Henderson Buell born, American cartoonist, creator of Little Lulu comic strip
- December 11, 1922 – Pauline Jewett born, Canadian Member of Parliament, first woman president of Canadian co-educational university, Director of the Institute of Canadian Studies, social justice and womens rights advocate
- December 11, 1922 – Grace Paley born, author, poet and activist, The Little Disturbances of Man
- December 11, 1922 – Big Mama Thornton born, singer-songwriter
- December 11, 1977 – Mairead Corrigan and Betty Williams, leaders of 'Peace People' (pro-peaceful resolution of 'the Troubles' in Northern Ireland) receive Nobel Peace Prize
- December 12, 1474 – Isabella crowns herself queen of Castile & Aragon
- December 12, 1873 – Lola Ridge born, anarchist poet, editor, feminist
- December 12, 1928 – Helen Frankenthaler born, modern artist
- December 12, 1940 – Dionne Warwick, Grammy Hall of Fame R&B singer (I Say a Little Prayer), UN Global Ambassador
- December 12, 1952 – Cathy Rigby born, gymnast, 1st American woman to win a medal at World Gymnastics Championships (1970), silver for balance beam
- December 13, 1830 – Mathilde Fibiger born, Danish feminist, and novelist, Clara Raphael, Tolv Breve (Clara Raphael, Twelve Letters)
- December 13, 1903 – Ella Baker born, organizer, (1940s) field secretary for NAACP to build grassroots campaigns and develop local leaders, (1957-60) Executive Director of Southern Christian Leadership Conference, worked with Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. “You didn't see me on television, you didn't see news stories about me. The kind of role that I tried to play was to pick up pieces or put together pieces out of which I hoped organization might come. My theory is, strong people don't need strong leaders.”
- December 13, 1993 – Susan A. Maxman becomes 1st woman president of American Institute of Architects in its 135 year history
- December 14, 1640 – Aphra Behn born, English playwright and author
- December 14, 1897 – Margaret Chase Smith born, 1st woman elected to both houses of Congress (R-ME), served 8 years in House of Representatives and 24 in Senate. 1st to challenge Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist crusade in the Senate with her “Declaration of Conscience” on June 1, 1950, which concluded: “It is high time that we stopped thinking politically as Republicans and Democrats about elections and started thinking patriotically as Americans about national security based on individual freedom. It is high time that we all stopped being tools and victims of totalitarian techniques – techniques that, if continued here unchecked, will surely end what we have come to cherish as the American way of life.”
- December 14, 1916 – Shirley Jackson born, author, The Lottery
- December 14, 1946 – Patty Duke, actor, Academy Award winner, president of the Screen Actors Guild, and mental health advocate
- December 14, 1955 – Jill Pipher born, president of Association of Women in Mathematics (AWM, 2011-13), 1st director of Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics (ICERM, 2011-), Elisha Benjamin Andrews Professor of Mathematics at Brown University
- December 14, 1961 – President’s Commission on the Status of Women is established to examine and eliminate discrimination against women
- December 14, 1985 – Wilma Mankiller becomes the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma’s principle chief – 1st woman leader in modern history of a major Native American tribe
- December 15, 1815 – Jane Austen’s Emma is published
- December 15, 1896 – Betty Smith born, author and playwright, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
- December 15, 1913 – Muriel Rukeyser is born, poet, social justice and feminist activist
- December 15, 1942 – Kathleen Blanco born, first woman elected Governor of Louisiana
- December 16, 1775 – Jane Austen born, English author, one of the most widely read authors in English literature – Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility
- December 16, 1844 – Fanny Garrison Villard born, suffragist, philanthropist, helped feed and clothe newly freed slaves, as well as funding schools for their education, during Reconstruction, president (1898-1922) of NY Diet Kitchen Association, which provided the more nutritional food that doctors associated with the program would “prescribe” as cures for sick slum dwellers, was one of NAACP’s founders, an American Woman Suffrage Association member, worked with Women’s Peace Party, and helped found Barnard College, and the Harvard Annex (which became Radcliffe College)
- December 16, 1901 – Margaret Mead born, renowned cultural anthropologist, lecturer, author: Coming of Age in Samoa, Male and Female: A Study of the Sexes in a Changing World
- December 16, 1901 – The Tale of Peter Rabbit, by Beatrix Potter, is published
- December 17, 1706 – Émilie du Châtelet born, French mathematician, physicist and author, translator-commentator on Newton’s Principia Mathematica
- December 17, 1760 – Deborah Sampson Gannett born, American woman who disguised herself as a man in order to fight in the American Revolution as Robert Shurtlieff. During her first battle, she was wounded with a cut to her head and two musket balls in her thigh. At the field hospital, a doctor attended the cut, but she left before they could remove the musket balls. Afraid of discovery, she removed one of the balls herself with a pen knife and left the other one in because it was too deep
- December 17, 1853 – Harriet Taylor Upton born, converted to suffrage movement in 1890 by Susan B. Anthony, treasurer of National American Woman Suffrage Association, testified in Congress, managed suffrage campaigns and ratification drive in Ohio, 1st woman vice chair of Republican National Committee (1920)
- December 17, 1900 – Dame Mary Cartwright born, British mathematician known for her work with dynamical systems and chaos, first woman to receive the Sylvester Medal, to serve on the Council of the Royal Society, and to be President of the London Mathematical Society
- December 17, 1993 – Judith Rodin becomes 1st woman president of an Ivy League institution, the University of Pennsylvania
- December 18, 1814 – Josephine White Griffing born, American abolitionist and women’s rights advocate
- December 18, 1924 – Cicely Tyson born, actor, Golden Globe winner for Sounder (1972), Emmy winner for The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1974)
- December 18, 1950 – Gillian Armstrong born, Australian film director, My Brilliant Career, received the Dorothy Arzner Directors Award from Women in Film
- December 19, 1865 – Minnie Maddern Fiske born, ‘Mrs. Fiske’ a leading American actress who spearheaded the fight against the Theatrical Syndicate which controlled booking of all U.S. top theatrical attractions from 1896 to 1910, and introduced American audiences to Henrik Ibsen’s plays, beginning with Nora in A Doll’s House
- December 19, 1906 – Esther Peterson born, American consumer and women’s advocate, Special Assistant to the President for Consumer Affairs, Director of the Office of Consumer Affairs
- December 19, 1916 – Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann born, German political scientist; The Spiral of Silence: Public Opinion – Our Social Skin, an explanation of how perceived public opinion can influence individual opinions or actions
- December 19, 1836 – Maria Louise Sanford born, American educator, professor of history at Swarthmore College from 1871 to 1880, one of the first women professors in the country
- December 19, 1919 – Sally Ann Lilienthal born, founder of Ploughshares in 1981, raised fifty million dollars in grants to promote peace, reduce and ultimately eliminate nuclear weapons
- December 20, 1898 – Irene Dunne born, actor-singer, nominated five times for Academy Awards, Kennedy Center Honors, Lifetime Achievement (1985)
- December 20, 1924 – Judy LaMarsh born, Canadian politician, author, and broadcaster; second woman federal Cabinet Minister; A Very Political Lady
- December 20, 1954 – Sandra Cisneros born, Latina American author, The House on Mango Street, MacArthur Foundation Fellowship
- December 20, 2007 – Queen Elizabeth II becomes oldest ever U.K. monarch surpassing Queen Victoria, who lived 81 years, 7 months and 29 days
- December 21, 1860 – Henrietta Szold born, American immigrant to Palestine, founder of Hadassah, co-founder of Ihud, helped run Youth Aliyah and organization that rescued Jewish children from Nazi Europe
- December 21, 1919 – American anarchist and labor activist Emma Goldman is deported to Russia
- December 21, 1937 – Jane Fonda born, actor, author and political activist
- December 21, 1959 – Florence Griffith Joyner (“Flo-Jo”) born, Olympic track and field champion, won 3 gold medals and 1 silver at 1988 Summer games, dubbed “World’s Fastest Woman” ·
- December 22, 1853 – Teresa Carreño born, Venezuelan singer, composer, and pianist
- December 22, 1912 – Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson born, First Lady (1963-69), National Chair of Head Start, led national “Beautification” efforts involving environmentalism, conservation, and anti-pollution
- December 23, 1657 – Hannah Duston, taken captive by Native Americans who freed herself by scalping and taking hostage her captors
- December 23, 1860 – Harriet Monroe born, American editor, scholar, literary critic and poet, founding publisher and editor of Poetry magazine
- December 23, 1867 – Sarah “Madam C. J.” Walker born, entrepreneur and philanthropist, 1st African American woman self-made millionaire, revolutionized African-American hair care and cosmetics industry
- December 23, 1912 – Anna Jane Harrison born, chemistry professor (Mount Holyoke College 1945-89), research on ultraviolet spectroscopy, increased public understanding of science and technology, 1st president of American Chemical Society (1987)
- December 24, 1869 – Henriette Roland Holst born, Dutch poet non-fiction writer and socialist-activist for workers’ rights
- December 24, 1903 – Ava Helen Pauling born, activist for women’s rights, racial equality and international peace
- December 24, 1904 – Mary Bingham born, Bingham newspaper empire matriarch, philanthropist and civic leader, died suddenly in Louisville KY, on April 18, 1995, at age 90, while delivering a speech at a fundraising dinner in her honor to support the Louisville Free Public Library
- December 24, 1951 – Marsha Gomez born, artist and activist, used pottery and sculpture from her Choctaw ancestry to teach and further demand rights for indigenous women of many cultures, achieved NGO (non-governmental organization consultant) status for indigenous women in the United Nations, co-founder, Foundation for a Compassionate Society
- December 25, 1806 – Martha Coffin Wright born, women’s rights pioneer and abolitionist, part of the Underground Railroad, called 1st Woman’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls in 1848 with her sister Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Stanton and others, president of women’s conventions in 1855 in Cincinnati, Saratoga, and Albany, founder of the American Equal Rights Association (1866), continued working for equal suffrage during Civil War
- December 25, 1821 – Clara Barton born, "the angel of the battlefield" who nursed wounded soldiers during Civil War, then helped to reunite missing soldiers and their families or resolve what happened to MIAs, later lectured to crowds about her war experiences, founder and 1st president of American Red Cross (1881-1904)
- December 25, 1865 – Evangeline Booth born, English-American, first woman Salvation Army General; after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, she led a mass meeting in New York’s Union Square, raising over $12,000 for Salvation Army relief work amongst the victims of the disaster
- December 25, 1935 – Jeanne Hopkins Lucas born, politician, first black woman elected to the North Carolina State Senate
- December 26, 1780 – Mary Fairfax Somerville born, Scottish polymath and author, On the Magnetizing Power of the More Refrangible Solar Rays – “I was annoyed that my turn for reading was so much disapproved of, and thought it unjust that women should have been given a desire for knowledge if it were wrong to acquire it.”
- December 26, 1862 – The USS Red Rover is commissioned by the U.S. Navy as a hospital ship and takes aboard Sisters of the Order of the Holy Cross, the first women to serve as nurses aboard a navy ship
- December 26, 1898 – Marie and Pierre Curie, studying the elements radium and polonium, announce the isolation of radium
- December 26, 1954 – Susan Butcher born, sled dog racer, 4-time winner of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race
- December 27, 1821 – Lady Jane Wilde born, Irish poet, essayist, and women’s rights advocate, supporter of the nationalist movement writing under the pseudonym Speranza, collected folktales, Oscar Wilde’s mother
- December 27, 1845 – Ether anesthetic is used for childbirth for the first time by Dr. Crawford Long in Jefferson, Georgia
- December 27, 1927 – Anne Armstrong born, diplomat and politician, first woman Counselor to the President, first woman United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient
- December 27, 1935 – Regina Jonas receives her semicha and is ordained as a rabbi, becoming the first woman to officially serve in that role
- December 27, 1901 – Marlene Dietrich born, legendary actor-singer, early opponent of Nazism, financed escape of several Jewish friends before WWII. In 1937, Hitler’s agents offered her an almost blank check to return home to star in movies of her choice – she angrily rejected the offer, and her films were banned in Germany. She became an American citizen in 1939. During World War II, she made anti-Nazi broadcasts in German, took part in war-bond drives and tirelessly entertained half a million Allied troops and war prisoners across North Africa and Western Europe.
- December 27, 1930 – Meg Greenfield born, named editorial editor at “Washington Post” in 1979 after winning a Pulitzer Prize, penned commentaries on civil rights, integration, nuclear arms and the military establishment
- December 28, 1816 – Elizabeth Packard born, advocate for women’s rights, especially those wrongly accused and incarcerated for being “insane”
- December 28, 1894 – Burnita Shelton Matthews born. During World War I, she moved to Washington, DC, took the civil service exam, and worked at the Veterans Administration. She enrolled in night school of at National University Law School (now George Washington University Law School). She earned her degree and passed the District of Columbia bar in 1920. As a young law student in DC staged a silent vigil after learning she could carry a banner outside White House but would be arrested for not having a permit if she spoke. Worked as counsel for National Woman’s Party, Truman appointed her a Federal District Court Judge (1949), first woman appointed to serve as U.S. district court judge
- December 28, 1918 – Constance Markievicz, while detained in Holloway prison, became the first woman to be elected MP to the British House of Commons. She did not take her seat, however, and with other members of Sinn Féin, formed the first Dáil Éireann
- December 28, 1967 – Muriel Siebert becomes the first woman to own a seat on the N.Y. Stock Exchange
- December 29, 1937 – Thea Bowman born, 1st black Catholic nun to join Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, instrumental in 1987 publication of Catholic hymnal, Lead Me, Guide Me: The African American Catholic Hymnal, teacher, speaker on racial inequality
- December 29, 1843 – ‘Carmen Sylvia’ born Princess Elizabeth of Wied, became Queen consort of Romania, author as Carmen Sylvia of poetry, prose aphorisms, plays, novels and short stories, English translation available: The Bard of the Dimbovitza – Secretly pro-Democracy (from her diary): “I must sympathize with the Social Democrats, especially in view of the inaction and corruption of the nobles. These "little people" after all, want only what nature confers: equality. The Republican form of government is the only rational one. I can never understand the foolish people, the fact that they continue to tolerate us.”
- December 30, 1841 – Agnes Irwin, American educator, first dean of Radcliffe College
- December 30, 1912 – Margaret Wade born, won semi-professional basketball state and regional championships, as HS coach set a lifetime record of 453 wins, 89 losses and 6 ties, inspired Wade Trophy (1978) awarded annually to best collegiate women’s team
- December 30 1929 – Dame Rosalinde Hurley born, British microbiologist, medical researcher, ethicist and barrister
- December 30, 1939 – Glenda Adams born, Australian author and playwright, Dancing on Coral, The Monkey Trap
- December 31, 1834 – Mary Jane Safford Blake born, educator and nurse for the Union Army during the American Civil War. She later graduated from medical school and worked as a practicing physician
- December 31, 1878 – ‘Elizabeth Arden’ – Canadian businesswoman Florence Nightingale Graham born, founded Elizabeth Arden, Inc
- December 31, 1900 – Selma Burke born, sculptor, part of Black Renaissance under Augusta Savage, created artwork for “Roosevelt dime,” established Selma Burke Art Center (1970s)
- December 31, 1930 – Odetta Holmes born, known simply as Odetta, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, actress, civil and human rights activist, “The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement”
SOURCES AND FURTHER READING: