Welcome to WOW2!
WOW2 is a twice-monthly sister blog to This Week in the War on Women. This edition covers women and events from September 1 through September 15.
This is an on-going, evolving project. So many women have been added to the lists over the past three years that even changing the posts from monthly to twice a month, the pages keep getting longer and more unwieldy – an astonishing and wonderful problem to have! So as of August,, the format has changed again.
For the entire previous EARLY SEPTEMBER list as of 2017, click HERE: www.dailykos.com/...
Otherwise, what you’re seeing on this Early September 2018 page are only the NEW people and events, or additional information, found since last year.
The purpose of WOW2 is to learn about and honor women of achievement, including many who’ve been ignored or marginalized in most of the history books, and to mark moments in women’s history. It also serves as a reference archive of women’s history. There are so many more phenomenal women than I ever dreamed of finding, and all too often their stories are almost unknown, even to feminists and scholars.
These trailblazers have a lot to teach us about persistence in the face of overwhelming odds. I hope you will find reclaiming our past as much of an inspiration as I do.
This Week in the War on Women is up, so be sure to go there next and catch up on the latest dispatches from the frontlines: www.dailykos.com/...
Early September’s Women Trailblazers and Events in Our History
Note: All images and audios are below the person or event to which they refer
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- September 1, 1836 – Narcissa Whitman, a missionary, one of the first English-speaking white women to settle west of the Rockies, arrives in Walla Walla, Washington, with her husband
- September 1, 1884 – Hilda Rix Nicholas born, Australian post-impressionist landscape and portrait artist who traveled in North Africa before WWI; her husband was killed in the war only a month after they were married
- September 1, 1906 – Eleanor Burford Hibbet born, prolific and popular English author under several pen names, but mainly Jean Plaidy for fiction about European royalty, such as her Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots series; Victoria Holt for gothic romances, Bride of Pendorric and The Secret Woman; and Ellen Burford for romance novels, Castles in Spain and Heart’s Afire
- September 1, 1910 – Peggy van Praagh born in England, ballet dancer; Australian Ballet founder
- September 1, 1925 – Arvonne Fraser born, American women’s rights advocate and political campaigner; U.S. Ambassador to the UN Commission on the Status of Women (1993-1994); fellow at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs (1982-1994); Director of the Office of Women in Development at the U.S. Agency for International Development (1977-1981); member of U.S. delegations to the first two UN World Conferences on Women in Mexico City (1975) and Copenhagen (1980); Fraser ran her husband’s successful political campaigns for the Minnesota state Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives between 1954 and 1976; led the Carter-Mondale presidential campaign in the upper Midwest in 1976
- September 1,1939 – Lily Tomlin born, American comedian, writer, producer and feminist/LGBT advocate; noted for her keen observational comedy, won a Tony Award for Best Lead Actress in a Play for her 1985 one-woman show The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe; she also has a Grammy, and a total of six Emmys for writing, producing, and voiceover
- September 1, 1942 – Carolyn Cherry born, as C. J. Cherryh she became a notable American speculative fiction writer, using the pen name C.J. Cherryh because at the beginning of her career the field was so dominated by men, and her editor thought that Cherry sounded too much like a romance writer’s name. Won Hugo Awards for Best Novel for Downbelow Station and Cyteen, and Best Short Story for “Cassandra,” and the 2016 Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America
- September 1, 1970 – Padma Lakshmi born in India, American author, actress, TV host-producer, and advocate for women’s healthcare; noted for her cookbook Easy Exotic and her memoir Love, Loss and What We Ate; suffered from endometriosis from early adolescence, but it went undiagnosed or misdiagnosed until she was in her mid-thirties, so she became a co-founder of The Endometriosis Foundation of America to educate, raise awareness, fund research and advocate for legislation. The foundation was instrumental in the opening in 2009 of The MIT Center for Gynepathology Research
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- September 2, 44 BC – Pharaoh Cleopatra VII of Egypt declares her son with Julius Caesar to be her co-ruler as Ptolemy XV Caesarion
- September 2, 1821 – Anne Whitney born, American sculptor, poet, abolitionist and women’s rights advocate; her statue of Samuel Adams is at Faneuil Hall in Boston and a copy is in the National Statuary Hall Collection at the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C.. Other statues are at the Smithsonian Institute, Harvard University and the Boston Public Library; in 1875, her model for a statue of Charles Sumner won a blind competition, but she was disqualified when the judges discovered she was a woman – the judges thought it was inappropriate for a woman to sculpt a man’s legs, even when covered by trousers
- September 2, 1838 – Lili‘uokalani born, the first queen regnant and last sovereign monarch of the Kingdom of Hawai‘i; song composer, “Aloha ‘Oe” is her best known song. She ascended to the throne after her brother’s death, in 1891, but was overthrown January 17, 1893, by American planters with the help of U.S. Marines, officially on the islands to “protect American interests.” She was forced to abdicate in 1895, then held under house arrest at ‘Iolani Palace after an unsuccessful uprising attempted to restore her reign, until the U.S. annexed the short-lived Republic of Hawai‘i. She lived the rest of her life as a private citizen. Author of Hawaiʻi’s Story by Hawaiʻi’s Queen
- September 2, 1894 – Annie Winifred Ellerman born, used pseudonym Bryher, British author, poet and editor, who provided financial support to a number of other authors
- September 2, 1919 – Marge Champion born as Marjorie Belcher, dancer, most notably teamed with her husband Gower Champion in many MGM musicals, and choreographer; hired at age 17 by Walt Disney Studios as a dance model for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs; animators copied her movements to make Snow White’s movement more natural-looking; she also modeled for the Blue Fairy in Pinocchio and the lead Dancing Hippo in Fantasia
- September 2, 1929 – Dame Beulah Bewley born; British public health physician, specializing in pediatrics and preventative medicine, and later undertaking a Master of Science degree in social medicine in the 1960s, the only woman in her class at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine; served on the Royal Society of Medicine’s section on Epidemiology and Public Health, and worked in departments at King’s College Hospital Medical School, St. Thomas’s Hospital Medical School, and on the Faculty of Public Health Medicine of the Royal College of Physicians of the UK; president of the Medical Women’s Federation on the General Medical Council (1986-1987); made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2000, for her services to public health and her leading role in promoting equal opportunities for women in the field of medicine
- September 2, 1946 – Mary Brick Goudie born to Irish immigrants, Baroness Goudie of Roundwood, British Labour politician; member of the House of Lords since 1998; board member of Vital Voices, involved with promoting gender equity with both the G8 and G20; in 1971, she was the youngest woman elected to the Brent London Borough Council, where she worked on the Campaign for a Housing Aid Centre, and helped found a housing association; European director of public affairs for the World Wide Fund for Nature (1990-1995); appointed a life peer in 1998
- September 2, 1949 – Moira Stuart born, the first African-Caribbean woman newsreader to appear on British television, working for the BBC since 1981, beginning as a production assistant; currently the newsreader on The Chris Evans Breakfast Show on BBC Radio 2, and host of a weekly radio music show featuring “timeless classics”
- September 2, 1954 – ‘Gai’ Waterhouse born as Gabriel Marie Smith; Australian horse trainer, granted an Australian Jockey Club license in 1992, and trained her first Group One (G1) winner the same year; she has since trained 132 G1 winners and won 7 Sydney trainers’ premierships; when Fiorente won the 2013 Melbourne Cup, she became the first Australian woman and the second woman to train a winner of that race; inducted into the Australian Racing Hall of Fame in 2007, and is designated as an Australian National Living Treasure
- September 2, 1958 – Lynne Kosky born, Australian Labor politician, Minister for Public Transport (2006-2010) in the government of state of Victoria, and member of the Victoria Legislative Assembly for Altona (1996-2010); resigned due to poor health, and died in 2014 of toxic shock syndrome contracted after breast cancer surgery
- September 2, 1960 – Kristin Halvorsen born, Norwegian Socialist Left politician; Minister of Education and Research (2009-2013); the first woman to serve as the Norwegian Minister of Finance (2005-2009); Leader of the Socialist Left Party (1997-2012)
- September 2, 1966 – Salma Hayek born in Mexico, Mexican and American film actress, and a film and TV producer and director; founded her production company, Ventanarosa in 2000; her first project as a producer was the 1999 film, El Coronel No Tiene Quien Le Escriba (No One Writes to the Colonel), which was Mexico’s official submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award but was not among the nominees — it was also entered in the 1999 Cannes Film Festival; she co-produced 2002’s Frida, and was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for her performance of the title role; in 2003, she produced and directed The Maldonando Miracle, for which she won a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Directing of a Children/Youth/Family Special; was an executive producer on Ugly Betty (2006-2010); UNICEF spokesperson for maternal and neonatal tetanus vaccinations, partnered with Pampers, which donated vaccine for every pack of their diapers sold
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- September 3, 1499 – Diane de Poitiers, French noblewoman and courtier, as the mistress of King Henry II of France, she wields much influence and power at the French Court
- September 3, 1938 – Liliane Ackermann born, French microbiologist, Jewish community pioneer, author and lecturer; her family found refuge in a small town near Grenoble during WWII; she studied on her own to learn the Talmud, and earned her first Ph.D., in microbiology, in 1974 at the Université Louis Pasteur of Strasbourg, and Ph.D. in Humanities at the Université de Strasbourg in 1999. She taught at the elementary and secondary levels from 1956 to 2007, but also taught Jewish education for adults, and gave lectures on biochemistry and microbiology (1975-1996) at Université Louis Pasteur. In 1972, she and her husband Henri took charge of Yeshurun, a national Jewish youth movement which met year-round, but also had summer camps. She also started counseling and teaching classes for the handicapped, the elderly, and women without the financial means to continue their education
- September 3, 1938 – Sarah Bradford born, Vicountess Bangor, English travel writer and biographer, noted for several biographies of members of the Borgia family, and British royals, as well as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
- September 3, 1938 – Caryl Churchill born, British playwright known for dramatizing abuses of power, and exploring sexual politics and feminist themes; Owners, Cloud Nine, Top Girls (she won a 1983 Obie Award for Playwriting for the Off-Broadway production), Softcops, Serious Money, The Skriker and A Number
- September 3, 1947 – Susan Milan born, English musician, soloist, composer, and academic; Professor of the flute at the Royal College of Music; founder of the British Isles Music Festival at the Charterhouse School for outstanding young musicians
- September 3, 1948 – Lyudmila Karachkina born, Russian astronomer, did research on astrometry and photometry of minor planets; credited with discovery of 130 minor planets and asteroids
- September 3, 1968 – Grace Poe-Llamanzares baptized (adopted as an infant), Filipina Independent senator, educator, and philanthropist; Senator of the Philippines since 2013; Chair of the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (2010-2012)
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September 3, 1971 – Kiran Desai, born in Delhi, Indian novelist educated in England and America; her first novel, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard (1988), won the Betty Trask Award, given for best new novel; The Inheritance of Loss, won the 2006 Man Book Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award
September 3, 1981 – International Day for the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women - The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), an international treaty adopted by the United Nations General Assembly, goes into force. 189 states have ratified, but several countries signed subject to certain declarations, reservations, and objections. The U. S. has signed, but has not ratified the treaty. The Holy See, Iran, Somalia, Sudan and Tonga are not signatories to CEDAW
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- September 4, 1905 – Mary Renault born in South Africa, English author, noted for novels set in Ancient Greece; The King Must Die, The Bull from the Sea, The Mask of Apollo, The Last of the Wine, and The Praise Singer
- September 4, 1924 – Joan Aiken born, English author of supernatural fiction and books for children; The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Night Fall, and The Whispering Mountain
- September 4, 1935 – Simone de Beauvoir becomes a subscriber to the lending library of Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare & Company English-language bookstore in Paris, and begins reading books by American authors like John Dos Passos, Djuna Barnes and William Faulkner, which she recommends to friends. This helps establish their reputations in Europe even before they are accepted in America
- September 4, 1951 – Marita Ulvskog born, Swedish politician, current member of the European Parliament from Sweden since 2009; member of the European Parliament Intergroup on Western Sahara, and of the EP Intergroup on the Welfare and Conservation of Animals; Secretary of the Social Democratic Party (2004-2009); Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden (2003-2004); Minister for Culture and Sports (1996-2004); Member of the Swedish Parliament (1998-2009)
- September 4, 1958 – Jacqueline Hewitt born, astrophysicist, discoverer of Einstein rings while appointed to a postdoctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT -1986-1988); full-time professor at MIT since 1989, and principal investigator for MIT’s Radio Astronomy Group; since 2002, Director of the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research
- September 4, 1962 – Ulla Pedersen Tørnæs born, Danish Liberal Party politician; Minister for Development Cooperation since 2016
- September 4, 1995 – The UN’s Fourth World Conference on Women opens in Beijing, with over 4,750 delegates representing 181 countries
- September 4, 2012 – In Canada, Pauline Marois becomes the first woman premier of Quebec (2012-2014)
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- September 5, 1500 – Maria of Jever born, the last ruler of the Lordship of Jever from the Wiemken family after her brother suddenly died at age 18. She had received a minimal education, only what was necessary to make her marriageable. Count Edzard I of East Frisia was negotiating a marriage contract for her to marry one of his sons, but his sons jumped the gun and occupied Jever Castle, mistreating the prospective bride. East Frisian Landdrost Boing of Oldersum came to her rescue, and drove the invaders out of Jeverland. She might have married Boing, but he was killed during a siege of Wittmund. Maria never married, and had to learn to play politics. She made a deal with Emperor Charles V to take possession of Jeverland and then return it to her as a fief. This ended the imperial immediacy of Jeverland, which had been independent since 1417, but protected Jeverland from its encroaching neighbors. She gave Jever City charter rights, and enlarged her territory by having new polders and locks built. Commerce flourished. When she died, her death was kept secret to prevent those nasty Counts of East Frisia from trying to grab power before the arrival of her rightful heir, Count John VII of Oldenberg, the son of her cousin
- September 5, 1902 – Jean Dalrymple born, American theatre producer, manager, playwright and publicist; she and future Hollywood screenwriter Dan Jarrett began their careers together on the vaudeville circuit, and co-wrote sketches. For one of them, “The Woman Pays,” they hired a handsome young Englishman with no acting experience who was working at Coney Island as a stilt-walker, thus giving Archibald Leach his first acting job (he became much better known later as Cary Grant.) When vaudeville started dying out, she switched to writing shorts for talking pictures, and also wrote her first play, Salt Water. Dalrymple was instrumental in the founding of the New York City Center, served on its board, and produced many plays there, including revivals of Our Town, Porgy and Bess, Othello (starring Paul Robeson and Jose Ferrer), A Streetcar Named Desire (with Uta Hagen and Anthony Quinn), Pal Joey (with Bob Fosse and Viveca Lindfors), and King Lear (with Orson Welles)
- September 5, 1908 – Cecilia Seghizzi born, Italian composer, noted for her choral works, and as a violinist
- September 5, 1938 – Doreen Massey born, Baroness Massey of Darwen; Labour Member of the House of Lords since 1999, and secretary of the All Party Parliamentary Humanist Group; Director of the Family Planning Association (1989-1994)
- September 5, 1940 – Valerie Howarth born, Baroness Howarth of Breckland since 2001, British politician and crossbencher member of the House of Lords, secretary of the All Parliamentary Children’s Group; Chair of Cafcass (Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service) since 2008; she worked for several years as a Chief Officer in different social services departments
- September 5,1943 – Dulce Quintans-Saguisag born, Filipina politician; Secretary of Social Welfare and Development (2000-2001); Secretary-General of the Gymnastics Association of the Philippines; campaigned for Corazon Aquino during the 1985-1986 presidential campaign; she was a breast cancer survivor who made her story public in 1997; killed in an automobile accident in 2007
- September 5,1945 – Eva Bergman born, Swedish film, TV and stage director; noted for work at Sweden’s national theatre, the Royal Dramatic Theatre (called Dramaten for short)
- September 5,1946 – Kyongae Chang born, South Korean astrophysicist; known for work on gravitational lensing, including the Chang-Refsdal lens
- September 5,1948 – Benita Ferrero-Waldner born, Austrian diplomat and politician; European Commissioner for Trade and European Neighborhood Policy (2009-2010); European Commissioner for External Relations and European Neighborhood Policy (2001-2009); Austrian Minister of Foreign Affairs (2000-2004)
- September 5,1950 – Cathy Guisewite born, American cartoonist, creator of the long-running comic strip Cathy, syndicated at the height of its popularity in the mid-1990s to almost 1400 newspapers. The final Cathy strip appeared on Sunday, October 3, 2010, after Guise had announced its retirement
- September 5,1962 – Tracy Edwards born, British sailor and author; skipper in 1989 of the first all-female crew in the Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race aboard the Maiden, which finished second in its class; first woman to be honoured with the Yachtsman of the Year Trophy; co-author of Maiden, and author of Living Every Second
September 5, 1973 – Rose McGowan born in Italy, American activist against sexual assault and harassment and former actress; author of Brave, a memoir, and starred in the 4-part documentary Citizen Rose
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- September 6, 1620 – Isabella Leonarda born, Italian composer
- September 6, 1795 – Frances ‘Fanny’ Wright born in Scotland, British-American writer and activist for women’s rights, birth control, sexual freedom, public education, equality between the sexes and races, and the abolition of slavery; founder of Nashoba, a utopian community in Tennessee, which was a failed attempt at gradual manumission of slaves
- September 6,1829 – Marie Zakrzewska born in Poland, pioneering woman physician in America; founded the New England Hospital for Women and Children, which gave women medical students the clinical experience they were denied at male-run hospitals, and had the first general training program for nurses in the U.S.; also the first hospital in Boston to offer gynecological and obstetrical care. She campaigned with other women’s activists to raise $50,000 for a women’s medical training program, which Harvard turned down, but Johns Hopkins accepted, opening its doors to female students for the first time
- September 6, 1860 – Jane Addams born, the remarkable American pioneer in social work and the settlement house movement, philosopher, public administrator, author, a leading suffragist and peace activist; co-founder with Ellen Gates of the famous Hull House in Chicago, and a founding member of the ACLU; first American woman honored with the Nobel Peace Prize, in 1931; noted for her essays and articles, especially “Utilization of Women in City Government,” and for her book, A New Conscience and Ancient Evil, about sex trafficking, as well as her autobiographical volumes, Twenty Years at Hull-House (1910) and The Second Twenty Years at Hull-House (1930)
- September 6, 1921 – Carmen Laforet born, influential Existentialist Spanish author; Nada, La mujer nueva, Un matrimonio
- September 6, 1935 – Isabelle Collin Dufresne born in France – French-American artist and author; a student of Salvador Dali, but best known as Ultra Violet from Andy Warhol’s movies; author of L’Ultratique, published in 1988 to detail her ideas about art
- September 6, 1938 – Joan Tower born, American composer, conductor and pianist
- September 6,1940 – Elizabeth Murray born, American painter
- September 6,1941 – Dame Monica Mason born in South Africa, ballet dancer and administrator of the Royal Ballet, Britain’s premiere theatrical dance troupe; entered the Royal Ballet School in 1956; in 1958, at age 16, became the youngest member of the Royal Ballet corps du ballet, and inaugurated the solo role of the Chosen Maiden in Kenneth MacMillan’s version of The Rite of Spring; promoted from soloist to principal dancer in 1968; rehearsal director for MacMillan’s ballets in 1980, then for the whole company in 1984; assistant to the director in 1988; and the company’s artistic director in 2002; retired in 2012; elevated to Dame Commander of the British Empire in 2008
- September 6, 1944 – Donna Haraway born, noted American scholar in science and technology studies and ecofeminism; taught Women’s Studies and History of Science at Johns Hopkins University; among her published works are the essays, “Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the 1980s” and “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective” and her books, Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, and Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science
- September 6, 1946 – Shirley M. Malcom born, American zoologist and ecologist, academic and administrator; current head of Education and Human Resources Programs at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS); AAAS head of the Office of Opportunities in Science (1979); program manager for the Minority Institutions Science Improvement Program (MISIP) at the National Science Foundation (1977-1979), which provided federal funding to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) for improved equipment, facilities and higher salaries for faculty
- September 6, 1957 – Michaëlle Jean born in Haiti, came to Canada in 1968 as a refugee; media journalist and public servant; Secretary-General of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie since 2015, and also serves as the Special Envoy for Haiti for the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization; Governor-General of Canada (2005-2010), sworn in as a member of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada in 2012; Journalist and broadcaster for Radio-Canada and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC – 1988-2005); coordinated a study on spousal abuse while assisting victims of domestic violence at a women’s shelter (1979-1987)
- September 6, 1962 – Elizabeth Vargas born, American television journalist; lead investigative reporter/documentary anchor for the A&E network since May, 2018; anchor on ABC’s newsmagazine 20/20 (2006-2018), the first national evening news anchor of mixed Puerto Rican/Irish-American descent; third woman anchor on network evening news after Connie Chung and Barbara Walters; won a 1999 Emmy award for her coverage of the Elián González story; author of Between Breaths: A Memoir of Panic and Addiction
- September 6,1964 – Rosie Perez born, American stage, film and television performer, activist for Puerto Rican rights, talk show host, and author of Handbook for an Unpredictable Life: How I Survived Sister Renata and My Crazy Mother, and Still Came Out Smiling…
- September 6, 1970 – Emily Maitlis born, British journalist, documentary-maker, and newsreader for the BBC on several programs since 2001; business reporter and documentary-maker for NBC Asia (1994-2001); she was stalked for over a decade by someone she knew at university, who was sentenced to four months in prison after admitting he was harassing her in 2002, but released because of time he already spent on remand, and a restraining order was imposed. In 2016, he was sentenced to 3 years in prison for breach of the no-contact restraining order by sending letters to her and to her mother
- September 6, 2003 – Mamohato Bereng Seeiso, the Queen Mother of Lesotho, died while at a Catholic retreat; she served as Regent Head of the State of Lesotho from June to December in 1970, from March to November in 1990, and January to February in 1996, and worked to improve education for Lesotho’s children, founding Hlolomela Bana (“Take Care of Children”) in the 1980s for children who lost their parents or were living with disabilities
- September 6, 2005 – The California Legislature becomes the first legislative body in the nation to approve same-sex marriages, but Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoes it
- September 6, 2008 – U.S. Congress designates September 6 as Louisa Ann Swain Day (House Concurrent Resolution 378) In 1870, Louisa Ann Swain, aged 69, of Laramie, Wyoming, became first U.S. woman to legally vote. She arose early, put on her apron, shawl and bonnet, and walked downtown with a tin pail in order to purchase yeast from a merchant. She was walking by the polling place, and decided she would vote while she was there. The polling place had not yet officially opened, but election officials asked her to come in and cast her ballot. She was described by a Laramie newspaper as “a gentle white-haired housewife, Quakerish in appearance.”
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- September 7, 1533 – Elizabeth born, daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn; after the death of her half-sister Queen Mary I, she will become Queen Elizabeth I of England and Ireland
- September 7,1865 – Elinor Wylie born, American novelist and poet
- September 7, 1903 – Dorothy Marie Donnelly born, American poet, essayist and informal salon host with her husband Walter at their home, visited by intellectuals, scholars, and authors, including Senator Philip Hart, mystery writer Henry Branson who lived next door, Renaissance scholar Leo Kirschbaum, art historian Richard Ettinghausen, and poet Robert Hayden; Donnelly published six volumes of poetry and prose
- September 7, 1923 – Nancy Keesing born, Australian Jewish author of fiction, nonfiction and poetry; Garden Island People, The Woman I Am: Poems, Douglas Stewart
- September 7, 1925 – Bhanumathi Ramakrishna born, multilingual Indian film star, producer, director, scriptwriter, and author; awarded the Padma Bhushan, India’s 3rd highest civilian award, for her contributions to Indian cinema; also known for her philanthropy, founding member of the community service organization Altrusa International, life member of the Red Cross Society, and founder of a school bearing her name in Tamil Nadu which provides free education for the poor
- September 7, 1934 – Mary Bauermeister born, German painter, art installation creator and garden designer, influenced by Pop Art and Nouveau Réalisme
- September 7, 1960 – On the 100th Birthday of Anna Mary Robertson Moses, NY Governor Rockefeller proclaimed the first ‘Grandma Moses Day’ to honor the American folk artist, who began painting in her 70s
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- September 8, 1893 – New Zealand’s Legislative Council passes the Electoral Act, then the governor consents on September 19, giving all New Zealand women the right to vote
- September 8, 1919 – Maria Lassnig born, Austrian artist known for self-portraits and her theory of Body Awareness; associated with the Hundsgruppe (Dog Pack), a group of abstract expression/action painters, but in the 1960s she moved away from abstracts to concentrate on the human body; first woman artist to win the Grand Austrian State Prize in 1988; also honored with the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art in 2005
- September 8, 1924 – Marie-Claire Kirkland born, Quebec lawyer, politician and judge. As the first woman elected to the Legislative Assembly of Quebec, for the Jacques-Cartier district (1961-1966), she immediately caused a stir by refusing to wear a hat (standard attire for women in public at the time) in the assembly, because none of the men did, and in 1964 she was responsible for the passage of Bill 16, which gave married women the right to handle their own financial matters, and approve medical care for their children, without a husband’s co-signature. She was next elected to represent the Marguerite-Bourgeoys district (1966-1973). Kirkland was the first woman cabinet minister (without portfolio – 1962-1964), then appointed as Minister of Transport and Communications (1964-1966). She spearheaded the passage of the Cultural Property Act, a cornerstone of heritage conservation, and of Bill 63, which created the Council on the Status of Women in 1973, then left the legislature to become the first woman judge in the Quebec Provincial Court (1973-1991). Made a Member of the Order of Canada in 1992
- September 8, 1924 – Grace Metalious born, American author known for her runaway best-seller, Peyton Place, which critics deplored, but was an international sensation; her other three novels sold well, but never came close to the success of Peyton Place; she died at the age of 39, from cirrhosis of the liver after years of alcohol abuse, with less than $50,000 in the bank, and $200,000 in debts, having spent lavishly, given thousands of dollars to hangers-on, and victimized by an agent who embezzled large sums
- September 8, 1927 – Marguerite Straus Frank born in France, American-French mathematician; in 1956, she was one of the first women to earn a PhD in mathematics at Harvard; pioneer in convex optimization theory and mathematical programming; her early work involved transportation theory and Lie algebras; co-creator of the Frank-Wolfe algorithm, an iterative optimization method for general constrained non-linear problems
- September 8, 1937 – Edna Adan Ismail born, Somali hospital founder-administrator, and public servant; one of the first Somali women to study nursing and midwifery in Britain, and become a qualified nurse-midwife, and was the first woman in her country to be a licensed driver. Worked as World Health Organization Regional Technical Officer for Mother and Child Health (1987-1991), and WHO’s representative in Djibouti (1991-1997.) She built and runs the Edna Adan Maternity Hospital, the first of its kind in Somali, opened in 2002, which is also a teaching hospital for nurses and midwives. Ismail is an outspoken opponent of female genital mutilation, also member and past president of the Organization for Victims of Torture. She was the only woman minister in the government when she served as Minister of Family Welfare and Social Development (2002-2003), and as Foreign Minister of Somaliland (2003-2006)
- September 8, 1947 – Ann Beattie born, American novelist and short story writer; Chilly Scenes of Winter, Love Always, The Doctor’s House, Where You’ll Find Me and Other Stories, The Accomplished Guest; honored with the PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in the short story form
- September 8, 1947 – Marianne Wiggins born, American novelist; she won the 1989 Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for John Dollar, and Evidence of Things Unseen was a finalist for a 2004 Pulitzer Prize, and won the 2004 Commonwealth Club Gold Medal
- September 8, 1955 – Terry Tempest Williams born, American author, conservationist; activist for wilderness preservation, women’s health and against nuclear testing. Noted as author of Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place; An Unspoken Hunger; Desert Quartet; Leap; Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert; The Open Space of Democracy; and Finding Beauty in a Broken World
- September 8, 1967 – Kimberly Peirce born, American film director and screenwriter; Boys Don’t Cry (1999), Stop-Loss (2008) and the remake of Carrie (2013)
- September 8, 1974 – Tanaz Eshaghian born, Iranian-American documentary filmmaker; her first documentary, I Call Myself Persian, won the 2002 Woodstock Festival Best Short Documentary Film; and Be Like Others, was honored in 2008 with an Amnesty International Film Award and Teddy Award, given for films with LGBT themes; From Babylon to Beverly Hills: The Exodus of Iran’s Jews, Love Iranian-American Style, and Love Crimes of Kabul
- September 8,1978 – Angela Rawlings born, Canadian-Icelandic poet, editor and interdisciplinary artist; Wide slumber for lepidopterists, The Great Canadian
- September 8,1983 – Kate Beaton born, Canadian cartoonist, creator of the comic strip Hark! A Vagrant, a history-themed strip begun in 2007 while she was working for the Maritime Museum of British Columbia
- September 8,1983 – Sarah Stup born, American author, poet and essayist, who writes about autism; she has limited motor skills and does not speak; uses a variety of typing devices to converse and work; has published Are Your Eyes Listening?, and two children’s books, Paul and His Beast, and Do-si-Do with Autism
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- September 9, 1834 – A mob attacks Prudence Crandall’s school for black women in Canterbury, Connecticut. She had already been arrested for breaking a local law against teaching “colored persons,’ and this attack forces her to close the school
- September 9, 1878 – Adelaide Crapsey born, American poet developer of the cinquain, a five-line poetic form inspired by Japanese poetry forms; she died of tubercular meningitis at age 36
- September 9, 1910 – Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas take up lifetime residence together. American writer and literary critic Edmund Wilson will comment in a letter to John Dos Passos that their relationship is “The most perfect example of human symbiosis I have ever seen.”
- September 9,1923 – Rosita Sokou born, Greek author, playwright, translator, and one of the first women journalists in Greece
- September 9,1926 – Louise Abeita Chewiwi (E-Yeh-Shure – ‘Blue Corn’) Isleta Pueblo writer, poet and educator; her book of poems, I am a Pueblo Indian Girl, was published when she was 13 years old
- September 9,1927 – Tatyana Zaslavskaya born, Russian economic sociologist, a theoretician of perestroika, and specialist in agriculture’s impact on economy and the sociology of the countryside; member of the Russian Academy of Sciences
- September 9, 1931 – Shirley Summerskill born, British Labour politician; Member of Parliament for Halifax (1964-1983); Under-Secretary of State for Home Affairs (1974-1979)
- September 9, 1960 – Kimberly Willis Holt born, American children’s author; her book, When Zachary Beaver Came to Town, won a 1999 U.S. National Book Award
- September 9,1969 – Natasha Stott Despoja born, Australian Democrats politician; Senator for South Australia (1995-2008), at age 26, she became the youngest woman to sit in the Parliament of Australia; Deputy Leader of the Democrats (1997-2001); Leader of the Australian Democrats (2001-2002); she didn’t stand for reelection to Parliament because of emergency surgery for an ectopic pregnancy and her frustration dealing with her party’s old guard (the party was formally deregistered in 2016 for not having sufficient members.) Despoja was later appointed as Ambassador of Australia for Women and Girls (2013-2016)
- September 9,1972 – Natasha Kaplinsky born, English newsreader for Sky News (2000-2002), and BBC News (2002-2007); currently working for ITV as a newsreader and programme presenter
- September 9, 2015 – Queen Elizabeth II becomes longest-reigning monarch in Great Britain’s history
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- September 10, 1793 – Harriet Arbuthnot born, English diarist, social observer and Tory party political hostess; maintained a long intimate relationship and correspondence with the Duke of Wellington, and recorded details of their conversations in her diaries, which are now a key source for historians of the Regency and late Napoleonic eras, and for biographers of the Duke of Wellington. Her diaries were published in 1950 as The Journal of Mrs. Arbuthnot
- September 10,1801 – Marie Laveau the elder born, Voodoo Queen of New Orleans, a free woman of color, with African, Native American and French in her ancestry
- September 10, 1890 – Elsa Schiaparelli born, Italian fashion designer, one of the most prominent designers between the World Wars, along with her biggest rival, Coco Chanel
- September 10, 1907 – Dorothy Hill born, Australian geologist and palaeontologist; first woman professor at an Australian university, and first woman president of the Australian Academy of Science; she graduated in 1928 from the University of Queensland, with a First Class Honours degree in Geology, and the University’s Gold Medal for Outstanding Merit, then got her Masters of Science in 1930. Since Australian universities didn’t begin awarding Ph.Ds until 1948, she went to Cambridge University in Great Britain. She as a Fellow of Newnham College and the Sedgwick Museum, and was supported by a series for fellowships and scholarships which enabled her to continue at Cambridge until 1936. Notable for her studies of the limestone coral faunas of Australia, using them to outline wide-ranging stratigraphy, and of the first core drills of the Great Barrier Reef. After WWII, she served as the secretary of the Great Barrier Reef Committee, raising money and arranging for building materials for the Heron Island Research Station. She was editor of The Journal of the Geological Society of Australia (1958-1964), and became the first woman President of the Professorial Board of the University of Queensland (1971- 1972); author of over 100 research papers, and the comprehensive Bibliography and Index of Australian Paleozoic Coral. Strong advocate for more women entering scientific fields
- September 10,1926 – Beryl Cook born, self-taught British painter, OBE, noted for paintings of people enjoying themselves
- September 10,1931 – Isabel Colegate born, British literary agent and author, noted for her 1980 novel, The Shooting Party, adapted as a 1985 motion picture of the same name
- September 10,1946 – Michèle Alliot-Marie born, French lawyer and politician, Member of the European Parliament for France since 2014; French Minister of Foreign and European Affairs (2010-2011); French Minister of Justice (2009-2010); Minster of the Interior (2007-2009); Minister of Defense (2002-2007); Member of the National Assembly for Pyrénées-Atlantiques (1978-2004)
- September 10,1960 – Alison Bechdel born, American cartoonist; known for the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, her graphic memoir Fun Home, and the Bechdel-Wallace Test, used to call attention to gender inequality, and evaluate the portrayal of women in fiction and films by determining if at least two women talk to each other about something other than men – requiring that both women must be named characters is sometimes added
- September 10, 1996 – Walmart bans Sheryl Crow’s second album because of this lyric: “Watch out sister/Watch out brother/Watch our children as they kill each other/with a gun they bought at the Wal-Mart discount stores” in the song “Love is A Good Thing”
- September 10, 2010 – U.S. Federal Judge Virginia Phillips rules that the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy for gays and lesbians in the U.S. military is unconstitutional, and “infringes the fundamental rights of United States service members . . .” She issues an injunction to immediately halt enforcement of the policy
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- September 11, 1541 — Much of Santiago, Chile, is destroyed by indigenous warriors, led by the cacique (leader) Michimalonco, but Inés de Suárez rallies a counter-attack, drives the attackers off, then decapitates one of the captive caciques herself
- September 11,1941 – Minnijean Brown-Trickey born, American civil rights activist, one of the ‘Little Rock Nine’ who desegregated Central High School in 1957; she was suspended for six day in December 1957 for dropping her tray in the cafeteria and splashing food on two white boys when other students were harassing her by pushing chairs in front of her in the aisle; in February 1958, two girls threw a purse filled with combination locks at her, and when she called them “white trash” she was immediately expelled. She went to Canada in the 1980s and 1990s to get degrees in social work, and became involved in First Nations activism while there. President Clinton appointed her as Deputy Assistant of the Department of the Interior for Workforce Diversity (1999-2001); among many honors, she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, and the Wolf Award
- September 11, 1950 – Anne Dell born, Australian biochemist; Professor of Carbohydrate Biochemistry at Imperial College London; noted for studies of glycomics and carbohydrate structures that modify proteins, which open up possible applications to learning how pathogens such as HIV are able to evade termination by the immune system, and has led to the development of higher sensitivity mass spectroscopy techniques which have allowed for the better studying of the structure of carbohydrates. Dell was awarded the 1986 Tate and Lyle Medal by the Royal Society of Chemistry, and been appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2009
- September 11,1953 – Jani Allan born in London, South African journalist, columnist and broadcaster; noted as one of South Africa’s most widely-read columnists in the 1980’s and 1990’s, working both in South Africa and in London, and had a radio show on Cape Talk Radio (1996-2000); was a speech writer for Mangosuthu Buthelezi (2000-2001)
- September 11,1955 – Sharon Lamb born, American psychologist and professor in the Department of Counseling and School Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston’s, College of Education and Human Development; as a fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA), she was one of the authors of the APA’s report on the sexualization of young girls; co-author with Lyn Mikel of Packaging girlhood: rescuing our daughters from marketers’ schemes, and Packaging boyhood: saving our sons from superheroes, slackers, and other media stereotypes
- September 11, 1961 – Samina Raja born, Pakistani Urdu poet, writer, editor, translator and broadcaster; published 12 collections of poetry between 1973 and 1995, and had also been a literary magazine editor. She died in 2012 after a long struggle with cancer
- September 11, 1970 – Taraji P. Henson born, American actress, known for her co-starring role as Detective Jocelyn Carter on CBS drama Person of Interest, and her portrayal of Katherine Johnson in the 2016 film Hidden Figures. Supporter of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and the NOH8 Campaign, which advocates for the LGBT community, Henson has appeared in print ads for PETA and a Public Service Announcement for NOH8
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- September 12,1739 – Mary Bosanquet Fletcher born, Methodist preacher and philanthropist, who convinced John Wesley (leading figure in the founding of Methodism) to allow women to preach publicly. She and preacher Sarah Crosby were the most popular women preachers of their day, and Mary Bosanquet Fletcher was honored by Methodists as “Mother in Israel.” She was co-founder of The Cedars, an orphanage for girls, in the East London area of Leytonstone, where they were taught manners, reading, writing, nursing and domestic skills, under strict discipline, as well as receiving intensive religious instruction. Rising costs and concerns about poor air quality caused her to move to the orphanage to Cross Hall, in Morley, West Yorkshire, thinking to save costs as the staff grew their food, but their lack of farming experience made this venture less successful than she hoped. She closed Cross Hall (after finding places for the orphans) in 1782 because she got married. She and her husband then worked together running a school. She began preaching more like the male preachers, by quoting biblical texts, and continued to preach and lead classes up to a few months before her death
- September 12,1846 – Elizabeth Barrett elopes with Robert Browning
- September 12,1902 – Marya Zaturenska born in Ukraine, American author and lyric poet who won the 1938 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her book, Cold Morning Sky; she came to the U.S. with her family when she was 8 years old; as a teenager, she worked in a clothing factory during the day while attending high school classes at night, and won scholarships to attend college; published eight volumes of poetry, edited six poetry anthologies, and published A History of American Poetry, 1900-1940
- September 12,1922 – The Episcopal Church removes the word “obey” from the bride’s wedding vows
- September 12,1928 – Muriel “Mickie” Siebert born, the first woman to own a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, joining the 1, 365 male members of the exchange in 1967 (in 1870, sisters Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin were the first women to open a Wall Street brokerage firm.) Siebert was also head of one of the first women’s banks. She was appointed by New York Governor Carey as Superintendent of Banks for New York State (1977-1980); co-author of Changing the Rules: Adventures of a Wall Street Maverick
- September 12,1950 – Marguerite Blais born, French Canadian Quebec Liberal politician, journalist, and media host: Member of the Quebec National Assembly for Saint-Henri–Sainte-Anne (2007-2015); president of Conseil de la famille et de l’enfance (2003-2007); director general of the Fondation du maire de Montréal pour la jeunesse; advocate for the deaf community and persons with hearing disabilities
- September 12,1953 – Nan Goldin born, American photographer noted for portraiture, and her visual autobiographical documentary slideshow and photobook, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency
- September 12,1953 – Fiona Mactaggart born, British Labour politician, teacher, feminist and activist; Appointed in 2018 as Chair of Agenda, an alliance for women and girls at risk. Member of Parliament for Slough (1997-2017); primary school teacher (1987-1992); General Secretary of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (1982-1987); Vice President and National Secretary of the National Union of Students (1978-1981)
- September 12,1973 – Tarana Burke born, African-American civil rights activist who started the ‘Me Too’ movement in 2006 which was the inspiration for #MeToo after the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse scandal launched dozens of revelations of cases of sexual abuse and harassment; Senior Director at Girls for Gender Equity; one of “the silence breakers” named collectively by TIME Magazine as its 2017 ‘Person’ of the Year
- September 12,1973 – Kara David born, Filipina journalist and television host; news anchor of News to Go at GMA News TV, and host-writer for the i-Witness documentary series; founder and president of the Project Malasakit foundation, which aids people in remote communities and sends poor children to school; in 2010, she became the second person from the Philippines to win a Peabody Award, for her documentary Ambulansyang de Paa (Ambulance on Foot)
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- September 13, 1886 – Amelie ‘Melli’ Beese born, early German aviator and sculptor; she had to leave Germany to study sculpting at the Royal Academy in Stockholm because German art schools did not admit female students; returning home, she studied mathematics, ship building and aeronautical engineering, and with difficulty found some aviators who would instruct a woman in flying; she became the first woman pilot in Germany to participate in a flight display on her birthday, September 13, 1911. She opened a flying school the following year, designed and patented a collapsible aircraft, and worked with her future husband, Charles Boutard on a flying boat design. But when they married in 1913, she became a French citizen, and they were arrested during WWI as “undesirable aliens, Charles was interned, and their goods were confiscated. After the war, they filed suit to recover their property, but the case dragged on, and German hyper-inflation greatly decreased its value. The marriage deteriorated, and they separated. In 1925, she crashed the aeroplane she was flying when she reapplied for her pilot’s license. Three days before Christmas that year, she shot herself
- September 13, 1917 – Carol Kendall, American author and folk tale collector who retold them for children; her book The Gammage Cup was a 1960 Newbery Honor Book
- September 13,1920 – Else Holmelund Minarik born, American children’s author noted for her Little Bear series
- September 13,1931 – Marjorie Jackson-Nelson born, Australian politician and sprinter who won two Olympic Gold Medals, and held six world records; in 2001, she became the Governor of South Australia, serving until 2007; among her many honors, Member of the Order of the British Empire (1953), and Companion of the Order of Australia (2001)
- September 13,1938 – Judith Martin born, better know as etiquette author ‘Miss Manners’
- September 13,1943 – Mildred DeLois Taylor born, African-American author known for books on the struggles of Black families in the Deep South; Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and The Road to Memphis
- September 13,1951 – Anna Devlin born, Irish author, playwright and screenwriter; noted forOurselves Alone, After Easter, and The Forgotten
- September 13,1956 – Anne Geddes, born in Australia, Photographer noted for baby photography shooting infants in fruits and flowers; founder of the Geddes Philanthropic Trust, to raise awareness of child abuse and neglect
- September 13,1957 – Dame Eleanor Warwick King, British judge of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales since 2008
- September 13,1957 – Tatyana Mitkova born, Russian broadcast journalist who refused to read the official Soviet Union version of the military response to the 1991 uprising in Lithuania; won 1991 International Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists
- September 13,1995 – Beverley Palesa Ditsie addresses the UN at the Beijing Women’s Conference about the importance of including lesbian rights in discussions about the empowerment and uplifting of women. Ditsie was the first person and first openly lesbian woman to address the issue of protecting the rights of LGBT people at a UN conference. Ditsie was born in Soweto in 1971 during the height of Apartheid, and was an anti-Apartheid and LGBT rights activist, one of the founding members of GLOW, South Africa’s first multiracial political lesbian and gay rights group. During drafting of South Africa’s constitution, she was at the forefront arguing for protecting people from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. South Africa became the first nation in the world to include such a protection in its constitution
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- September 14, 1854 – Julia Magruder born, American novelist; several of her stories were serialized in the Ladies Home Journal; recipient of an award from the Académie Française
- September 14, 1857 – Julia Barlow Platt born, American embryologist, activist and politician; after graduating from the University of Vermont in 1887, she did research at the Harvard Annex, founded in 1879, which was the only access for women to Harvard at the time; she was one of several women challenging the university’s anti-coeducational policies. Platt had to get her doctorate at the University of Freiburg in Germany. Her work demonstrating that neural crest cells formed the jaw cartilage and tooth dentine in Necturus maculosus (mudpuppy embryos), was not believed by her contemporaries because it ran counter to their belief that only mesoderm could form bones and cartilage. Her hypothesis of the neural crest origin of the cranial skeleton gained acceptance only some 50 years later when confirmed by Sven Hörstadius and Sven Sellman. Frustrated because she was unable to secure a university position, she became a civic activist in California, working to create two small marine protected areas, which became crucial to the recovery of Monterey Bay, and the rescue of sea otters from near-extinction. In 1931, she was elected as the first woman mayor of Pacific Grove California
- September 14, 1902 – Alice Tully born, American operatic soprano, music promoter and philanthropist; on boards of the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera and the Juilliard School; awarded the Handel Medallion
- September 14, 1914 – Mae Boren Axton born, American songwriter, best known as co-writer with Tommy Durden of “Heartbreak Hotel”
- September 14, 1930 – Romola Constantino born, Australian pianist who gave the first solo piano recital at the Sydney Opera House in 1973; also worked as a music critic for the Sydney Morning Herald, and was a senior lecturer at the University of Sydney; appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1978
- September 14,1941 – Joan Trumpauer Mulholland born, American civil rights activist, a white woman from Virginia whose activism as a student at Duke University was regarded as some form of mental illness, and she was taken for testing after her first arrest. She dropped out of Duke, and was one of the Freedom Riders on the Illinois Central train from New Orleans to Jackson, Mississippi, where they were arrested. They were incarcerated at Parchman Penitentiary, a prison with a reputation for violence, and the disappearance of several inmates. She and the other women were strip-searched and given vaginal exams. They were housed for two months on death row, in a segregated cell with 17 women and 3 feet of floor space per prisoner. She refused to pay bail and served more than her two month sentence because each day in prison took $3 off her fine of $200. She became the first white student at Tougaloo College in Jackson, and several attempts were made by local authorities to close down the school, but its charter predated the Jim Crow laws. She was one of the activists in the May 28, 1963 Woolworth lunch counter sit-in, where they were beaten and smeared with condiments. She was called a “white nigger” and dragged out of the store by her hair
- September 14, 1955 – Geraldine Brooks born, Australian American journalist and novelist. Her 2005 novel March won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; her work as a foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal inspired her first book, the non-fiction Nine Parts of Desire
- September 14, 1962 – Bonnie Jo Campbell born, American novelist and short story writer; Once Upon a River and Mothers, Tell Your Daughters
- September 14, 1965 – Emily Bell born, British journalist and academic; Professor of Professional Practice at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism: worked for The Guardian and The Observer
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- September 15, 1857 – Anna Winlock born, American astronomer, and one of “the Harvard computers” who made her era’s most complete catalogue of stars near the north and south poles, and contributed substantial work to the Astronomishcen Gesellschaft. Also remembered for calculations and studies on asteroids 433 Eros and 475 Oclio
- September 15, 1877 – Yente Serdatzky born in the Russian Empire Koveno Governorate (now Lithuania), Jewish-American Yiddish-language author of short stories, sketches and one-act plays
- September 15, 1918 – Margot Loyola born, folk singer, musician and musical ethnographer and anthropologist, who published numerous books on folk music and customs of Chile and other South American countries
- September 15, 1936 – Sara J. Henderson born, Australian cattle station owner and author, noted for her autobiography From Strength to Strength published in 1993
- September 15,1940 – Anne Moody born as Essie Mae Moody, American author and civil rights worker, known for her acclaimed autobiography Coming of Age in Mississippi which won the Brotherhood Award from the National Council of Christians and Jews and the Best Book of the Year Award from the National Library Association
- September 15,1947 – Diane E. Levin born, American professor of education, author, and authority on media effects on children; noted for Teaching young children in violent times: building a peaceable classroom and So sexy so soon: the new sexualized childhood, and what parents can do to protect their kids
- September 15,1961 – Helen Margetts born, British political scientist specializing in digital era governance and politics; Oxford Internet Institute Director, and Professor of Internet and Society at the University of Oxford
- September 15,1975 – Martina Krupičková born, Czech post-impressionist painter
- September 15,1977 – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie born, Nigerian Author of novels, short stories and nonfiction; her work includes the novels Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun, and Americanah, her short story collection The Thing Around Your Neck, and the book-length essay We Should All Be Feminists; awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant in 2008
September 15,1995 – Closing Day of the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing