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WOW2: Early September's Women Trailblazers and Events in Our History - 2019

by officebss for This Week in the War on Women

Community

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

Saturday, Sep. 14, 2019 Saturday, Sep. 14, 2019 at 3:29:13pm PDT

WOW2 is a sister blog to This Week in the War on Women. This edition covers women and events just from September 1 to September 10.

Since I’ve broken the data limit on individual diaries, I’m now splitting WOW2 into three posts. On Saturday, September 21, Mid-September will post, followed by Late September on Saturday, September 28.

This is an on-going, evolving project. So many women have been added to the lists since its beginning in 2015 that even changing the posts from monthly to twice a month, the pages kept getting longer and more unwieldy – an astonishing and wonderful problem to have!

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.

Many thanks to libera nos — not only for volunteering to be the proofreader for WOW2, but for also contributing to the research. So he is now officially Assistant Editor of WOW2. Any remaining mistakes are either mine, or uncaught computer glitches in transferring the data from his emails to DK5.

And I joyfully welcome another contributor to the team — wow2lib, who happens to be married to libera nos, and has used her considerable library science skills to seek out new sources of information, and add more names to WOW 2’s ever-expanding pantheon of Women of Achievement. She will be an occasional contributor, and is WOW2’s Librarian Emeritus.

For the entire previous EARLY SEPTEMBER list as of 2018,

click HERE: www.dailykos.com/...

Otherwise, what you’re seeing on this Early September 2019 page are the
new people and events, or additional information and visuals,
found since last year.

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

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

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}

_________________________________

September 1, 1773 – African-American slave Phillis Wheatley’s Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral is published by act of Parliament in England.

September 1, 1791 – Lydia Huntley Sigourney born, American poet, known as the “Sweet Singer of Hartford.” She published under the pen name Mrs. Sigourney.

September 1, 1815 – Emma Stebbins born, American sculptor and painter; her best-known work “Angel of the Waters” is at Bethesda Terrace in New York’s Central Park.

Angel of the Waters fountain — inset shows front of angel sculpture

September 1, 1836 – Narcissa Whitman and her husband Marcus, Protestant missionaries, arrive in Walla Walla, Washington. She is one of the first English-speaking white women to settle west of the Rockies. In 1837, she gave birth her daughter, Alice Clarissa, the first white American baby born in Oregon Country, but she died in 1839. The Cayuse and the Nez Perce tribes were suspicious of the encroachment of the Americans, and of the mission’s Bible classes. In 1847, a measles epidemic broke out among the native population. With no immunity to the disease, it spread among them quickly. The white population, which had some immunity to measles, had a lower mortality rate. The Indians suspected that Marcus Whitman was only curing white people while letting Indian children die. On November 29, Indians attacked the mission, killing the Whitmans and eleven others. Survivors were taken hostage.

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 WWI only a month after they were married.

‘An Australian Lady’ - 1926 - by Hilda Rix Nicholas

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; she 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; she 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 best-known 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. Whitney’s statues are also on view 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 the judges disqualified her when they discovered ‘A. Whitney’ was a woman, saying it was inappropriate for a woman to sculpt a man’s legs, even when covered by trousers.

Whitney’s Samuel Adams sculpture at Faneuil Hall —
shockingly without his lower limbs hidden!

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 – Bryher born as Annie Winifred Ellerman, 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; Champion 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. Waterhouse was inducted into the Australian Racing Hall of Fame in 2007, and she has been 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 Film/TV producer and director. She founded Ventanarosa, her production company, 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 Maldonado Miracle, for which she won a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Directing of a Children/Youth/ Family Special. She was an executive producer on Ugly Betty (2006-2010). Hayek is a UNICEF spokesperson for maternal and neonatal tetanus vaccinations, and 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 wielded 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.

YouTube Video

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).

September 3, 1971 – Kiran Desai, born in Delhi, Indian novelist educated in England and America; her first novel, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, was published in 1988, and won the Betty Trask Award, given for best new novel. Her 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, best known for her historical novels set in Ancient Greece, including 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, such as 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; she is a member of the European Parliament Intergroup on Western Sahara, and of the EP Intergroup on the Welfare and Conservation of Animals. Ulvskog was Secretary of the Social Democratic Party (2004-2009); Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden (2003-2004); Minister for Culture and Sports (1996-2004); and Member of the Swedish Parliament (1998-2009).

September 4, 1958 – Jacqueline Hewitt born, astrophysicist, who discovered the Einstein rings while appointed to a postdoctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT -1986-1988); she is a full-time professor at MIT since 1989, and the principal investigator for MIT’s Radio Astronomy Group. Since 2002,Hewitt has been the 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.

YouTube Video

September 4, 2012 – In Canada, Pauline Marois becomes the first woman premier of Quebec (2012-2014).

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September 5, 1500 – Fräulein 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 in 1527, 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, which she managed well in difficult circumstances. 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 it 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 in Jever of her rightful heir, Count John VII of Oldenberg, the son of her cousin.

September 5, 1867 – Amy Beach born, first ‘name’ American woman orchestral composer; the Gaelic Symphony, Bal masque, choral works, songs and chamber music

YouTube Video

September 5, 1899 – Helen Creighton born, Canadian author and folklorist; collector of over 4,000 traditional songs and stories, publishing many books on Nova Scotia folk songs and lore; Member of the Order of Canada (1976)

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. She was 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.

Edwards (dark hair) front right in top picture, right above her (short, mostly white hair) more current picture

September 5, 1973 – Rose McGowan born in Italy, American activist against sexual assault and harassment and former actress; she is the author of the memoir Brave, and starred in the 4-part documentary Citizen Rose.

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September 6, 1620 – Isabella Leonarda born, Italian composer. At age 16, she entered the Collegio di Sant'Orsola, an Ursuline convent, where she remained for the rest of her life. Leonarda is known for the numerous compositions that she created while in the convent, making her one of the most productive woman composers of her time.

YouTube Video

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. She founded 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, and 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. Her works have been commissioned by major ensembles, soloists, and orchestras, including the Emerson, Tokyo, and Muir quartets; soloists Evelyn Glennie, Carol Wincenc, David Shifrin, Paul Neubauer, and John Browning; and the orchestras of Chicago, New York, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Nashville, Albany NY, and Washington D.C. Tower is the first composer chosen for a Ford Made in America consortium commission of sixty-five orchestras. Leonard Slatkin and the Nashville Symphony recorded ‘Made in America’ in 2008.

YouTube Video

September 6, 1940 – Elizabeth Murray born, American abstractionist painter, printmaker and feminist, known for her shaped canvas paintings. She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1998, and won a Larry Aldrich Award. In 2006, she became one of only five women artists to have a retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). After her death from lung cancer in 2007, the Elizabeth Murray Oral History of Women in the Visual Arts Project was established to honor her memory. to document the lives of American women in the visual arts, and to continue her efforts to get museums to bring works by women artists out of storage and exhibit them.

September 6, 1941 – Dame Monica Mason born in South Africa, ballet dancer and administrator of the Royal Ballet, Britain’s premiere theatrical dance troupe. Mason entered the Royal Ballet School in 1956, then in 1958, at age 16, she 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. She was promoted from soloist to principal dancer in 1968. She was the rehearsal director for MacMillan’s ballets (1980-1984), then for the whole company (1984-1988), and assistant to the director (1988-2002). Mason was the company’s artistic director (2002-2012) until she retired; 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 Republican 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 the first U.S. woman to legally vote in an election which included choosing representatives to the U.S. Congress. 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 (1558-1603). Known as the Virgin Queen because she never married. Her 44-year reign helped stabilize the country after the 6-year reign of her half-brother Edward VI, and the tumultuous 5-year reign of her half-sister Mary I.

Queen **Elizabeth I,** by Nicholas Hilliard

September 7, 1885 – Elinor Wylie born, American novelist and poet; her first poem to appear in print was “Velvet Shoes,” in Poetry magazine in 1920. This was followed in 1921 by publication of her collection Nets to Catch the Wind, and Black Armor in 1923, the same year her first novel, Jennifer Lorn, appeared. She was poetry editor of Vanity Fair magazine (1923-1925), and a contributing editor of The New Republic (1926-1928). Other works include the novel The Orphan Angel, and Angels and Earthly Creatures, a book of verse. She suffered from high blood pressure in adulthood, and severe migraines. She died of a stroke in 1928 at age 43.

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; know for Garden Island People, Douglas Stewart, and The Woman I Am: Poems.

September 7, 1925 – Bhanumathi Ramakrishna born, multilingual Indian film star, producer, director, scriptwriter, and author; awarded the Padma Bhushan, India’s 3^rd highest civilian award, for her contributions to Indian cinema. She was also known for her philanthropy, as a founding member of the community service organization Altrusa International, and a life member of the Red Cross Society. She founded 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.

Twin-Tools Series Sale Table, 1967 — Mary Bauermeister -

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, and making New Zealand the world’s first self-governing country where women won the right to vote in national elections.

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 – Claire (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. It 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; noted for 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. Her film, Be Like Others, was honored in 2008 with an Amnesty International Film Award and a Teddy Award, given for films with LGBT themes; also noted for 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; know for Wide slumber for lepidopterists, and 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. Stup uses a variety of typing devices to converse and work. She 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.”

**Gertrude Stein, Basket the poodle and Alice B. Toklas**

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 ( – ‘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). Her mother, Edith, was also a feminist and a Labour party member of Parliament

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 the longest-reigning monarch in Great Britain’s history.

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September 10,1758 – Hannah Webster Foster born, American novelist and advocate for women’s education; her best-seller is The Coquette, or a History of Eliza Wharton, a fictionalized version of the true story of Elizabeth Whitman, a young woman who is seduced by an unidentified suitor, and dies after the still-born birth of her illegitimate child.

In her time, this was quite likely, since brides became legal non-entities, mere extensions of their husbands

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.

MarieLaveau1920paintingbyFrankSchneiderbasedlost1835paintingbyGeorgeCatlin.jpg — Marie Laveau — 1920 painting by Frank Schneider, based the lost 1835 painting by George Catlin

September 10, 1852 – Alice Brown Davis born, first woman to be chief of the Seminole Tribe of Oklahoma; postmistress, business owner, Superintendent of the Seminole Nation’s school for girls.

September 10, 1860 – Marianne von Werefkin born, Russian-Swiss painter, salon host, co-founder of artist groups in Munich and Switzerland, known for Expressionism.

September 10, 1870 – Lilian S. Gibbs born, English botanist; educated at Swanley Horticultural College and in botany at the Royal College of Science. She organized botanical expeditions to some of the most remote places on Earth, including South Rhodesia in 1905, then Fiji, New Zealand, Queensland and Tasmania in 1907. In 1910, she became the first woman known to reach the summit of Mount Kinabulu in Borneo, and contributed over 1,000 botanical specimens from that trip to the British Museum. Bambusa gibbsiae (Miss Gibbs's bamboo) is named for her. In 1912, she made a botanical trip to Iceland, and in 1913, to the East Indies and Dutch New Guinea.

September 10,1877 – Katherine S. Dreier born, artist, art patron, social reformer and suffragist; co-founder with Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray of the Société Anonyme, the first major U.S. collection of modern art and sponsor of numerous exhibitions; her estate donated 28 works by important modern artists to the Guggenheim Foundation.

September 10, 1882 – ‘Fola’ Flora Dodge La Follette born, woman’s suffrage and labor activist, quote: “A good husband is not a substitute for the ballot.”

September 10, 1886 – ‘H.D.’ born as Hilda Dolittle, poet, novelist, literary editor for The Egoist journal, feminist and gay rights icon.

September 10, 1890 – Rose Finkelstein Norwood born in Russia, Boston Women’s Trade Union (WTUL) powerful speaker, labor organizer, strike leader, feminist, and vocal opponent of anitsemitism, racism and fascism. In 1912, she became a charter member of the Boston Telephone Operators Union, and was a leader in the six-day strike in 1919 of 8,000 telephone operators that paralyzed telephone service throughout New England. Despite a lack of support from TOU's male union leaders, the predominately female operators won major concessions: their wages were increased, split shifts were abolished, and their right to organize was guaranteed. She also organized laundry workers, garment and jewelry workers, boiler makers, library staffers, teachers, sales clerks, and laundry workers. She served on the NAACP advisory board, was a member of the Boston Women’s Trade Union League, and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF).

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.

**Schiaparelli design and Elsa Schiaparelli**

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. She was a strong advocate for more women entering scientific fields.

Dorothy_Hill_with_horse_Walter_during_a_geological_excursion_c._1929.jpg — Dorothy Hill with her horse, Walter, on geological excursion — circa 1929

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, 1935 – Mary Oliver, prolific American poet and author. She won 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for American Primitive, and her collection, New and Selected Poems, won the 1992 National Book Award for Poetry. Among her many books are Dream Work, House of Light, and Blue Horses

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, which she uses 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 – the requirement that both women must be named characters is sometimes added.

September 10, 1982 – Misty Copeland born, the first African American Principal Ballerina with the American Ballet Theatre. Her mother, Copeland, and her five siblings were living in two rooms in a motel when she began studying ballet at age 13, at a local Boys & Girls Club in California, then was invited to study at Cynthia Bradley’s ballet school on scholarship. Bradley had to pick her up from school because she had no other way to get to class. Within 3 months, she was en pointe. She won a scholarship at age 15, studied at the San Francisco Ballet, auditioned for American Ballet Theatre at age 17, and attended ABT’s 1999 and 2000 Summer programs. She joined the ABT Studio Company in 2001, and became a member of the Corps de ballet in 2001. By 2007, she was a soloist at ABT. Though she has had recurring stress fracture problems, including being sidelined for seven months after surgery in 2014, she has still risen with extraordinary speed from her first dance classes in 1995 to principal ballerina in a major company in 2015.

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 ruled 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 issued an injunction to immediately halt enforcement of the policy. She became Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in 2016.

U.S.FederalJudgeVirginiaPhillips.jpg — **Judge Virginia Phillips**

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Sources

http://www.nwhp.org/events/september/
http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/important-dates-us-womens-history
http://www.historyplace.com/specials/calendar/september.htm
http://www.onthisday.com/day/september/
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
www.sahistory.org.za

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