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- September 12, 1590 – María de Zayas y Sotomayor born, Spanish author during Spain’s Golden Age, regarded as a pioneer of literary feminism; Desengaños Amorosos (Disenchantments of Love), Novelas Amorosas y ejemplares (Amorous and Exemplary Novels).
- 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 learned 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 could grow 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 eloped with Robert Browning.
- September 12, 1853 – Celestia Parrish born, American educator and pioneering woman in psychology; overcame English-born psychologist E. B. Tichener’s prejudice against women to attend his class and get him to correspond with her so she could better teach her students – later he submitted some of her papers to the America Journal of Psychology, after she founded the first psychology lab in the southern U.S. at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Lynchburg, VA; after teaching at the Georgia State Normal School, she became Georgia State Supervisor of Public Schools (1911-1918).
- September 12, 1859 – Florence Kelley born, social and political reformer, campaigned for a minimum wage, 8-hour workdays and against child labor and sweatshops.
- September 12, 1894 – Dorothy M. Wrinch born, English mathematician and biochemical theorist; she read mathematics at Girton College, Cambridge, and became a research student there in 1917. She was one of the founding members of the Biotheoretical Gathering in the 1930s, an inter-disciplinary group that was studying how proteins work. Wrinch was known for her work attempting to deduce protein structure using mathematical principles; her initial theory turned out to be wrong, but her experimental work with Irving Langmuir led to the principle of the Hydrophobic Effect being the driving force for protein folding.
- September 12, 1897 – Irène Joliot-Curie born, French physicist, co-recipient with Frédéric Joliot-Curie of the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of new radioactive elements and artificial radioactivity. From 1946, she was the director of the Radium Institute in Paris, founded by her mother, Nobel laureate Marie Curie. She died of leukemia at age 58 because of her exposure to radiation.
- 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, 1916 – Adelina and August Van Buren finish the first successful transcontinental motorcycle tour by two women, after leaving New York City on July 5, 1916. Local police arrested them numerous times, not for speeding but for wearing men's clothes. In Colorado, they became the first women to reach the 14,109-foot summit of Pikes Peak by any motor vehicle. They got lost in the desert 100 miles west of Salt Lake City, but were saved by a prospector after their water ran out. Despite succeeding in their trek, the sisters' applications to be military dispatch riders during WWI were rejected. Reports in the leading motorcycling magazine of the day praised the bike but not the sisters, describing their journey as a "vacation.” One newspaper accused the sisters of using the national preparedness issue as an excellent excuse to escape their roles as housewives.
- September 12, 1917 – Han Suyin born as Rosalie Matilda Kuanghu Chou in China, Eurasian physician and author who wrote novels in English and French set in East and Southeast Asia, as well as seven memoirs which began with her family’s life from 1885, and her life from birth through 1991. She also wrote historical studies of China, and the Chinese Communist Revolution. Suyin is best known for her novel, A Many-Splendoured Thing.
- 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; Burke is 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. She is the 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).
- September 12, 1974 – Caroline Aigle born, French aviator; the first woman fighter pilot in the French Air Force. In 1999, she was the first woman to receive the fighter pilot wings, and was assigned to the Mirage 2000-5 in the escadron 2/2 "Côte-d'Or" in 2000, then promoted to the rank of Commandant (similar to Major in the U.S Air Force) in 2005. She was among the top candidates in 2007 under consideration to become an astronaut for the European Space Agency, but was diagnosed with cancer and died a month later, at the age of 32. She was posthumously award the Médaille de l'Aéronautique (Aeronautics Medal).
- September 12, 1981 – Jennifer Hudson born, African American singer and actress, known for her film debut in Dreamgirls, which won the 2007 Best Supporting Actress Oscar. In 2008, her mother, brother and nephew were killed by her sister’s estranged husband. The Hudson family started The Hudson-King Foundation for Families of Slain Victims, and she co-founded with her sister the Julian D. King Gift Foundation, named for her nephew, which provides Christmas presents and school supplies to families in need in the Chicago area.
- September 12, 1992 – Dr. Mae Carol Jemison becomes the first African-American woman in space, as the payload specialist aboard the space shuttle Endeavor. Also onboard are Mission Specialist N. Jan Davis and Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Mark C. Lee, the first married couple to fly together in space, and Mamoru Mohri, who was the first Japanese person in space.
- September 12, 2002 – Police Woman’s Day is launched to honor members of the International Association of Women Police (IAWP).
- September 12, 2019 – After the third Democratic Presidential Debate, women’s rights activists and several candidates for the Democratic nomination criticized the continued lack of questions about the threat to abortion rights, the gender pay gap, and two-paycheck family issues like paid parental leave and affordable childcare. California Senator Kamala Harris said, “. . . yet again, women’s access to reproductive health care is under full attack” and “should have been brought up last night – it wasn’t.” Former Texas Representative Beto O’Rourke also noted the absence, as well as Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Christina Reynolds of EMILY’s List, which is dedicated to electing Democratic women candidates who support abortion rights, said “We have moved beyond the point when it’s enough for a candidate to say they are pro-choice. Women deserve to hear from presidential candidates the specific ways in which they will protect Roe v. Wade and our rights. There are real differences in both the records and plans for these candidates and it’s time we discuss it more directly.” Overall, 57% of American say abortion should be legal at least in most cases, while 42% want abortion banned in all or most cases, according to an AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll in May 2019. Among Democrats, about 75% think abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
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- September 13, 1775 – Laura Secord born, Canadian heroine of the War of 1812, who walked 20 miles out of American-occupied territory to warn British troops of an impending attack.
- September 13, 1819 – Lucy Goode Brooks born as a slave in Virginia, American charity organizer. The daughter of the slave Judith Goode and an unnamed white man, she could read and write. When she met Albert Royal Brooks, the slave of a different owner, she taught him to write so they could write passes that would enable them to see each other. When her master died in 1838, she became the property of another man, who allowed her to marry Albert, and live with him. Albert ran a livery stable for is owner, and was permitted to keep his additional earnings so he could buy his freedom. When Lucy’s second owner died in 1858, his heirs wanted to sell her and her children to different masters, but the merchant who bought most of her children allowed them to live with her as long as they showed up every day for work. Lucy’s daughter was sold away to Tennessee. The Brookes worked hard to earn their freedom, and the freedom of their three youngest boys, but the oldest three boys were not freed until the end of the Civil War. The loss of her daughter and an infant son sold away earlier made Lucy Brooks decide to help children separated from their parents. With the support of her Ladies Sewing Circle for Charitable Work and a Quaker congregation, she founded the Friends’ Asylum for Colored Orphans, which opened its doors in 1867. It has become the Friends Association for Children, which currently provides childcare and family support services for low-income families. Lucy Brooks died in 1900, at age 82.
- September 13, 1819 – Clara Schumann born, German composer (‘Three Romances for Violin & Piano’), and one of the most distinguished pianists of the Romantic era; she gave the first public performances of several works by Johannes Brahms.
- September 13, 1830 – Baroness Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach born, Austrian novelist, highly regarded German-language author of the 19th century; Božena; Das Gemeindekind.
- September 13, 1844 – Ann Webb Young born, one of LDS President Brigham Young’s many wives, who filed for divorce on grounds of cruelty, neglect, and abandonment; she was excommunicated from the LDS Church in 1874; her divorce was final in 1875. She went on the lecture circuit, advocating against polygamy and Mormonism; Webb testified before Congress during the debates before passage of the Poland (anti-polygamy enforcement) Act. Author of Wife No. 19, or The Story of a Life in Bondage.
- September 13, 1844 – Anna Lea Merritt born, American painter; known for portraits, landscapes, and religious scenes; worked primarily in England as a professional artist.
- September 13, 1865 – Maud Charlesworth born in England, known as Maud Ballington Booth; Salvation Army leader and co-founder of the Volunteers of America.
- September 13, 1888 – ‘Melli’ Amelie 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 born, American historian and author of folk tale stories for children; her book The Gammage Cup was a 1960 Newbery Honor Book.
- September 13, 1919 – Mary Midgley born, British philosopher, advocate for science, ethics and animal rights, author of many books, including her autobiography The Owl of Minerva.
- September 13, 1920 – Else Holmelund Minarik born in Denmark, American children’s author noted for her Little Bear series.
- September 13, 1922 – Caroline Duby Glassman born, American attorney and the first woman to serve as an Associate Justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court (1983-1997).
- September 13, 1931 – Marjorie Jackson-Nelson born, Australian 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, 1933 – Elizabeth McCombs becomes the first woman member of the New Zealand Parliament; a member of the Labour Party, she represented Lyttelton (1933-1935).
- September 13, 1938 – Judith Martin born, aka Miss Manners, American etiquette expert, journalist, and author of over a dozen ‘Miss Manners’ books, beginning with Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior.
- September 13, 1943 – Mildred DeLois Taylor born, African-American author known for books on the struggles of Black families in the Deep South; known for Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and The Road to Memphis.
- September 13, 1944 – Carol Barnes born, British television newsreader and broadcaster; she began her media career as a sub-editor at Time Out Magazine, then moved to Independent Radio News, and as a reporter for BBC Radio 4. She then worked for ITN (1975-2004), as a reporter, then as a presenter on Channel 4 Daily, and News at Ten. In 2008, she suffered a massive stroke that left her in a coma, and died four days later.
- September 13, 1948 – Margaret Chase Smith elected as a U.S. Senator, the first woman to serve in both houses of Congress. She was a moderate Republican with a streak of independence, the first woman elected to either House from the state of Maine. She served in the House of Representatives (1940-1949) and as U.S. Senator (1949-1973). Chase Smith was the first member of Congress to go on record criticizing McCarthy’s witch-hunting tactics in her 1950 speech, "Declaration of Conscience." In 1964, she became the first woman placed in nomination for the presidency at a major party’s convention, placing fifth in the first balloting. Chase Smith is still the current record-holder as the longest-serving Republican woman in the U.S. Senate.
- September 13, 1951 – Anne Devlin born, Irish author, playwright, and screenwriter; noted for Ourselves Alone, After Easter, and The Forgotten.
- September 13, 1956 – Anna Geddes, born in Australia, photographer noted for baby photography shooting infants in arrangements of fruits and flowers; she is the founder of the Geddes Philanthropic Trust, which raises awareness of child abuse and neglect.
- September 13, 1957 – Dame Eleanor Warwick King born, 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, 1965 – Annie Duke born, American professional poker player and author, dubbed the “Duchess of Poker.” She holds a World Series of Poker gold bracelet from 2004, and was the leading women’s money winner until Vanessa Selbst took that title in 2013. Duke has written instructional books on poker, and an autobiography, How I Raised, Folded, Bluffed, Flirted, Cursed, and Won Millions at the World Series of Poker. She is the co-founder with actor Don Cheadle of the non-profit Ante Up for Africa which benefits charities working in African nations, and frequently hosts and plays in poker tournaments for charity.
- September 13, 1983 – Molly Crabapple born as Jennifer Caban, American artist and writer; author of Drawing Blood, and co-author with Marwan Hisham of Brothers of the Gun. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, and The New Yorker. Some of her art is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art. Crabapple’s animated short A Message from the Future with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was nominated for an Emmy award for Outstanding News Analysis: Editorial and Opinion.
- September 13, 1995 – Beverley Palesa Ditsie addressed 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 and political lesbian and gay rights group. During the 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 sexual orientation protection in its constitution.
- September 13, 2019 – In Kenya, a 14-year-old schoolgirl committed suicide after a teacher allegedly shamed her, calling her “dirty” because her clothes were stained after her period started during class, and she was then expelled from class. Her mother said it was her first period, and she did not have a sanitary pad. Access to menstrual products is a huge problem across sub-Saharan Africa, where an inability to afford sanitary products prompts many girls to avoid school during their periods. A 2014 UNESCO report estimated that one in 10 girls miss school during menstruation, which means they miss out on 20% of their schooling each year. A 2017 law requires Kenya’s government to distribute free sanitary pads to all schoolgirls, but poor implementation of the law and lack of funding have hampered distribution, and is now the subject of a parliamentary investigation. Kenya’s women MPs “laid siege” to the education ministry to protest about the girl’s death and discuss the programme. MP Esther Passaris wrote on Twitter: “We had a candid discussion about sanitary towels, the little girl who died, and the investigation that is ensuing,” she added. “We need to make it so that girls aren’t ashamed of their periods, and I don’t think we’ve won that battle yet.”
- September 13, 2020 – Ann Francke, Chartered Management Institute (CMI) chief executive, warned that the government’s plan to push the British back into the office risks a return to “white middle-aged males” making the important decisions, while women and people from ethnic minorities are excluded at home. “The risk is when we go back into the office, the people that go back will be the senior leaders. And we know that those senior leaders are largely white men,” said Francke. “That will reinforce the kind of exclusionary, lack of diverse culture at the top of organisations. I think that would be a very dangerous step backwards.” Recent polling revealed that two in five mothers do not have the childcare they need to return to the office as some nurseries, childminders and wraparound care remains unavailable, while research shows that women are more likely to do the extra childcare. CMI’s most recent survey of managers carried out in August 2020 found that 74% of managers cited the risk of contracting coronavirus as employees’ most common concern, while a previous survey found that 91% of managers said “blended working” – a mixture of remote and office working – motivated them, while 85% said it made them more productive, and 77% said it made them more satisfied. Nearly half of the managers (42%) believe a lack of childcare caused by the pandemic will have negative impacts for female employees, while only 20% believe it will be a problem for men.
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- September 14, 1401 – Maria of Castile born, Queen of Aragon; though her health was delicate (she may have had epilepsy), she survived smallpox, but was left with permanent scars. She was betrothed at age seven to Alfonso V of Aragon, and they were married when she was 14, but her menstrual cycle did not begin until she was 16, so the consummation of the marriage was delayed, and she bore no children. The marriage was not a happy one, especially after she learned that her husband’s mistress had given birth to a son. Maria acted as regent twice, from 1420 to 1423, and then from 1432 to until her husband’s death in 1458, while Alfonso was off pursuing his claim to the throne of Naples, which he would later secure for his illegitimate son. Maria was left as de facto ruler to deal with frequent family squabbles between her brothers-in-law, and conflicts with burghers and peasants. When Alfonso lost the naval Battle of Ponza in 1435, he was captured, and Maria organized the funds to pay his ransom. Alfonso died in June 1458, but was quickly followed by Maria in September 1458.
- September 14, 1728 – Mercy Otis Warren born, American Revolution political writer and propagandist. In 1805, she published one of first histories of the American Revolution, a three-volume History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution. In the eighteenth century, history, politics, and war were considered the province of men. Few men and fewer women had the education or training to write about these subjects. Warren was an exception. Although she had no formal education, she studied with the Reverend Jonathan Russell while he tutored her brothers Joseph and James in preparation for Harvard College. She married James Warren in 1754, and gave birth to five sons. Her husband was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, and later he became speaker of the House and President of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress. The Warrens became increasingly involved in the conflict between the American colonies and the British Government. Their Plymouth home was often a meeting place for local politics, and for revolutionaries, including the Sons of Liberty. Mercy Warren was drawn to political activism, and she hosted protest meetings in her home. She regularly corresponded with Abigail Adams, John Adams and Martha Washington. With the assistance of her friend Samuel Adams, these meetings laid the foundation for the Committees of Correspondence. She later wrote "no single step contributed so much to cement the union of the colonies." Mercy became a strong political voice with views on liberty, republican government, and independence for the American colonies. She wrote, "Every domestic enjoyment depends on the unimpaired possession of civil and religious liberty." Mercy's husband James encouraged her to write, fondly referring to her as the "scribbler" and she became his chief correspondent and sounding board. During the years before the American Revolution, Warren published poems and plays that attacked royal authority in Massachusetts and urged colonists to resist British infringements on colonial rights and liberties. James Warren served as paymaster to George Washington's army for a time during the war. At the height of the debate over the United States Constitution in 1788, Mercy Warren issued a pamphlet, Observations on the new Constitution, and on the Federal and State Conventions, using the pseudonym "A Columbian Patriot," that opposed ratification of the document, and advocated for the inclusion of a Bill of Rights. Observations was long thought to be the work of other writers, most notably Elbridge Gerry. It was not until her descendant, Charles Warren, found a reference to it in a 1787 letter to British historian Catharine Macaulay that Warren was credited as the author. In 1790, she published a collection of poems and plays under her own name, highly unusual for a woman at the time. When she published her three-volume History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution, not only was it the first history of the American Revolution written by a woman, and an eye-witness to the events, but also a person who played a part in them.
- September 14, 1816 – Mary Hall Barrett born, American book editor and letter writer; as a teenager, she began teaching Sunday school at a Universalist church; her parents, a brother and a sister all died of consumption (tuberculosis), and she nursed them devotedly, injuring her own health. She married John Greenleaf Adams in 1839, and edited the Sabbath-School Annual for three years, influencing well-known Universalist authors to contribute to the annual, before her health declined to the point where she was unable to continue. She died in 1860. The Memoir of Mrs. Mary H. Adams was published after her death.
- September 14, 1830 – Emily Edson Briggs born, first woman White House correspondent, during Lincoln’s administration; first president of Women’s National Press Association (1882).
- September 14, 1843 – Lola Rodríguez de Tió born, Puerto Rican poet, abolitionist, and women's rights activist. After her marriage in 1863 to Bonocio Tió Segarra, she became a writer and book importer, and published her first book of poetry, Mis Cantos (My Songs). She and her husband were banished twice for their political activities and writings advocating Puerto Rican independence from Spain. They lived in Venezuela and New York before settling in Cuba. In 1901, she was a co-founder and member of the Cuban Academy of Arts and Letters, and also served as an inspector of schools. Their home was a gathering place for Cuban intellectuals and politicians, and Puerto Rican exiles. She died in Havana at the age of 81, leaving a legacy of books and patriotic poetry, including new revolutionary lyrics for the song "La Boriqueña." In 2014, she was one of 12 Puerto Rican women honored with plaques in La Plaza en Honor a la Mujer Puertorriqueña (Plaza in Honor of Puerto Rican Women) in San Juan.
- 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 – Alice Stone Blackwell born, suffragist, journalist, socialist, and human rights activist; daughter of suffragist Lucy Stone (who had pioneered keeping her maiden name after marriage), and Henry Blackwell, abolitionist and advocate for women’s equality and suffrage. Alice worked for the Woman’s Journal, started by her parents, became an editor, and assumed sole editing responsibilities after her mother’s death in 1893. In 1890, she helped reconcile the American Woman Suffrage Association and National Woman Suffrage Association, two competing organizations in the women's suffrage movement, so they merged into the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), and she served as NAWSA’s recording secretary (1890-1908). Beginning in the 1890s, she became a supporter of the Armenian refugee community, and translated works by Armenian poets, published as Armenian Poetry, in two volumes. Stone Blackwell was president of both the New England and Massachusetts Woman Suffrage associations, and honorary president of the Massachusetts League of Women Voters. Late in life she went blind, but lived to age 92, dying in 1950.
- September 14, 1857 – Julia Barlow Platt born, American embryologist 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, and 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 major contribution to science, 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 the 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 political activist in California, an advocate for maintaining beach access for the public, and for a marine protected area, which became crucial to the recovery of the sea otter. In 1931, she was elected as the mayor of Pacific Grove, California.
- September 14, 1879 – Margaret Sanger born, American birth control activist, sex educator, and nurse; popularized the term “birth control,” and opened the first birth control clinic in the U.S. Sanger also established organizations that have evolved into the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
- September 14, 1882 – Winnifred Mason Huck born, investigative journalist exposing abuses in the prison system; also a politician, third woman to be elected to the US Congress (R-IL 1922-1923) in a special election to finish her father’s term after his sudden death.
- September 14, 1897 – Margaret Rudkin born, founder of Pepperidge Farm Foods in 1937, known for its ‘Distinctive Cookies’ and crackers, which became a subsidiary of the Campbell Soup Company in 1961. She had begun baking because her son suffered from asthma and food allergies, and his doctor recommended her baked goods to his other patients.
- September 14, 1902 – Alice Tully born, American operatic soprano, music promoter and philanthropist; on the boards for the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera, and the Juilliard School; Tully was a recipient of the Handel Medallion.
- September 14, 1914 – Mae Boren Axton born, American songwriter, best known as co-writer with Tommy Durden of “Heartbreak Hotel.” Singer and songwriter Hoyt Axton was her son.
- September 14, 1917 – Joyce Chen born, chef, author and teacher, emigrated to U.S. from China, and opened an authentic North Chinese cuisine restaurant; author of the Joyce Chen Cook Book, and host of TV’s “Joyce Chen Cooks.”
- September 14, 1921 – Constance Baker Motley born, American lawyer, judge, politician, and civil rights activist. She was the first woman attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. She wrote the original complaint in Brown v. Board of Education. She was the first African American woman to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court, the first African American woman to be appointed as a federal court judge, and recipient of the Presidential Citizens Medal, and the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP.
- September 14, 1930 – Romola Constantino born, Australian pianist; gave the first solo piano recital at the Sydney Opera House in 1973; she also worked as a music critic for the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, and was a senior lecturer at the University of Sydney; appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1978.
- September 14, 1934 – Sarah Kofman born, French philosopher, author and educator, wrote books on Nietzsche and Freud.
- September 14, 1934 – Kate Millet born, American author, artist, feminist, and activist, best known for her book Sexual Politics; advocate for women’s rights and mental health reform.
- 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, 1964 – Helen Keller, Dr. Lena Edwards, Lynn Fontanne, Dr. Helen Taussig, and Leontyne Price receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
- September 14, 1965 – Emily Bell born, British journalist and academic; Professor of Professional Practice at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism who previously worked for The Guardian and The Observer.
- September 14, 1975 – Elizabeth Ann Seton canonized, 1st American-born saint, founded 1st U.S. Order of Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph.
- September 14, 1981 – Katie Lee born, American cookbook author, food critic and novelist; known for her cookbook, The Comfort Table, and her novel, Groundswell.
- September 14, 2016 – Russian Hackers stole World Anti-Doping Agency files, targeting U.S. women athletes by posting their confidential information, including tennis stars Serena and Venus Williams, basketball player Elena Delle Donne, and gymnastics Olympian Simone Biles. Biles, who won four gold medals in Rio, tested positive for substances normally banned but had exemptions allowing her to use them to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Biles said ADHD is "nothing to be ashamed of" and that she "always followed the rules."
- September 14, 2019 – Max Stier, a former Yale University classmate of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, reportedly notified senators and the FBI during the justice's confirmation process last year about a previously unreported sexual misconduct allegation involving the justice when he was a student at Yale. Stier reportedly said he saw Kavanaugh, a freshman at the time, at a drunken dorm party with his pants down when his friends then pushed his penis into a female student's hands. It is unclear if Stier knew the female student, or if she has verified the incident as described. The FBI reportedly did not investigate the allegation, and Stier has declined to speak about it publicly, but The New York Times reports it corroborated the story with two officials who have communicated with Stier. Kavanaugh faced multiple accusations of sexual misconduct during his confirmation process, most notably in testimony by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, professor of psychology. Her testimony cost her dearly, since Blasey Ford has been unable assume teaching since coming forward with her allegations of sexual assault against Kavanaugh. She has also received a number of death threats, and has continued to be harassed and threatened, so that she and her family have been forced to moved four times, and to hire private security for protection.
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- September 15, 1505 – Mary of Austria born, Queen consort of Hungary and Bohemia as the wife of King Louis II (1515-1526) until his death. He died while retreating after the disastrous Battle of Mohács in which nearly the entire Hungarian army was killed by the much larger army of Suleiman I of the Ottoman Empire. Queen Mary governed Hungary as regent for her brother, Ferdinand I, from 1526 to 1527, and then was appointed by her brother, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, as Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands (1531-1555). She strived unsuccessfully for peace in the Netherlands, but Charles disregarded the problems she described in letters to him, and often ignored her warnings of trouble. She was forced to wage war against France in 1537, and to deal with the Revolt of Ghent between 1538 and 1540. Mary's appointment as Governor of the Netherlands was renewed in 1540, after the revolt in Ghent had been subdued. When Charles decided to abdicate as emperor in 1555, and leave the government of the Netherlands to his son Philip, Mary announced her resignation. Both Charles and Philip urged her to remain, but she refused, and her resignation was finally accepted. She retired to Turnhout (now part of Belgium) for a year, then moved to Castile to be near her recently widowed sister Eleanor. But Eleanor died in 1558, and Mary was considering resuming governorship of the Netherlands when Charles died in September the same year, and the news caused her to have two severe heart attacks. Mary died in October 1558. In her will, she asked that her heart-shaped medallion, once worn by her husband, be melted down and the gold distributed to the poor.
- September 15, 1853 – Antoinette Brown Blackwell ordained by the Congregational Church, the first U.S. woman ordained as a mainstream Protestant minister. She would leave the Congregational Church over issues of doctrine in 1857, but became a Unitarian in 1878, and was then recognized as a Unitarian minister.
- 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. She worked at Harvard from 1875 until her death in 1904. The ‘Harvard Computers’ worked seven hours a day, six days a week, for 25¢ or 30¢ an hour, and the amount wasn't raised for decades.
- September 15, 1868 – Lida Shaw King born, American classical scholar; professor of classical literature and archaeology at Vassar (1894-1897); dean of the Women’s College at Brown University (1905-1922); published in the American Journal of Archaeology.
- September 15, 1877 – Yente Serdatzky born in the Russian Empire Koveno Governorate (now Lithuania); Jewish-American author writing in the Yiddish language, noted for short stories, sketches and one-act plays.
- September 15, 1890 – Agatha Christie born, international best-selling British mystery novelist and playwright, known for Witness for the Prosecution, The Mousetrap, and creator of Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot.
- September 15, 1890 – Sonja Branting-Westerståhl born, Swedish lawyer and politician; one of the first women lawyers in Sweden, specializing in matrimonial law, after working in the Stockholm city legal aid office. She was very active in the 1930s in raising awareness of the dangers of Nazism and totalitarianism. Branting-Westerståhl was a social democrat, and served in the lower house of the Riksdag in 1948. She was also on the executive board of the Social Democrat Women’s Organisation (1936-1952).
- September 15, 1909 – Betty Neels born, member of the British Territorial Army Nursing Service during WWII, serving in France (1939-1942); beginning in 1969, she became a successful writer of over 13 romance novels until her death at age 91 in 2001.
- September 15, 1915 – Fawn M. Brodie born, American biographer and historian; noted for psychobiography; Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History and No Man Knows My History, a biography of Joseph Smith.
- September 15, 1917 – Hilde Güden born, Austrian soprano noted for her performances in operas by Mozart and Richard Strauss, particularly Susanna in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro).
- 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, 1919 – Heda Margolius Kovály born, Czech writer and translator; she is noted for her memoir Under a Cruel Star – A Life in Prague 1941-1968.
- September 15, 1922 – Mary Soames born as Mary Spencer-Churchill; British author who wrote biographies of members of the Churchill family, and a memoir about her years growing up as the youngest child of Winston and Clementine Churchill.
- September 15, 1929 – Eva Burrows born, Australian Salvation Army officer; at 56, she became the organization’s youngest commander, the 13th General of the Salvation Army.
- September 15, 1936 – Sara J. Henderson born, Australian cattle station owner and author, noted for her 1993 autobiography From Strength to Strength.
- September 15, 1940 – Anne Moody born as Essie Mae, 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, 1942 – Ksenia Milicevic born in Bosnia-Herzegovina, French painter, architect and town planner. She has lived and worked in Argentina, Spain and Mexico, before settling in France. In 2012, she originated the International Children’s Painting Biennial, and started the Art Resilience movement in 2014.
- September 15, 1945 – Jessye Norman born, dramatic soprano, noted for performing Wagnerian repertoire.
- September 15, 1947 – Diane E. Levin born, American professor of education, author, an authority on how media effects young 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, 1955 – Betty Robbins, first woman cantor officially appointed by a congregation, leads Rosh Hashanah services at Temple Avodah in Oceanside New Jersey.
- September 15, 1955 – Željka Antunović born, Croatian centre-left Social Democratic politician and consultant; leader of the opposition as acting president of the Social Democratic Party between April and June 2007; first Croatian woman to serve as Minister of Defence (2002- 2003); member of the Croatian Parliament (1995-1999, and 2003-2013). Antunović founded a consulting company upon her retirement from politics.
- September 15, 1961 – Helen Margetts born, British political scientist specializing in e-government, digital era governance, and politics; Director of the Oxford Internet Institute, and Professor of Internet and Society at the University of Oxford.
- September 15, 1963 – Four black girls are killed when the African American 16th Street Baptist Church is bombed in Birmingham, Alabama.
- September 15, 1975 – Martina Krupičková born, Czech post-impressionist painter, primarily known for oil on canvas works.
- 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, 1992 – Frances Cannon born, Australian queer author and multidisciplinary artist, working primarily with watercolour, gouache and ink.
- September 15, 2019 – According to a Philadelphia Inquirer poll, over 66% of respondents said the Supreme Court should not overturn Roe v. Wade, while 33% said Roe v. Wade should be overturned. Anti-choice advocates insisted for years that the abortion restrictions they were pushing through Republican-dominated state legislatures were to protect patients. In 2016, the Supreme Court analyzed these claims in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt. The verdict? The justices recognized the patient-safety claims for these restrictions were bogus and ruled them unconstitutional. The Hellerstedt loss was a big blow to anti-choicers because it exposed their strategy as based on fraud. Forty-six years after Roe, sophisticated global public health data underscores the fact that criminalizing abortion doesn’t end abortion, it only ends safe, legal abortion for women who can’t afford travel to where it is legal. Currently, approximately 68,000 women die of unsafe abortions annually, making it one of the leading causes of global maternal mortality (13%). But since the 2016 U.S. election, there are at least 20 cases specifically designed to overturn Roe are wending their way through the federal courts toward the conservative-dominated Supreme Court.
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- September 16, 1295 – Elizabeth de Clare, Lady of Clare born, heiress to the lordships of Clare in Suffolk, England, and Usk in Wales. She married three times, and bore three children, one to each husband. Her last husband, Sir Roger, Lord D’Amory of Ireland, was reckless and violent, and was embroiled in the Despenser War. Her brother-in-law, Hugh Despenser, began to take over lordships in south Wales, in a land grab, often by foul means. He was especially interested in the estates of his sisters-in-law and their husbands, but the Marcher lords of south Wales rose up against him, and he was banished by the King Edward II in August of 1321. But Edward recalled Despenser in October, and the war began. Elizabeth’s husband was captured at Tutbury Castle, then Elizabeth and her children were captured at Usk Castle in January, 1322, and imprisoned at Barking Abbey, a nunnery on the outskirts of London. Sir Roger died of his wounds two months later. Elizabeth was forced by the king to exchange her lordship of Usk with Despenser’s less-valuable lordship of Gower, but the rebellion of Queen Isabella forced the king to flee with Despenser, and Elizabeth regained her lordship over Usk when Despenser was executed. She never remarried, and styled herself Lady of Clare after her principal estate in Suffolk. She built a London house in 1352, and exerted considerable influence in society as one of the richest women in England. But she was also known for her alms giving and patronage of religious houses. Her most important and lasting contribution was Clare College, Cambridge. Though founded by Richard de Badew in 1326, he gave over his rights as patron to Elizabeth in 1346. She made further grants to sustain and expand the college, and it became known as Clare Hall. She died in 1360, leaving extensive bequests. Her will and the records of her household expenses are invaluable sources of information on how the nobles of the period lived.
- September 16, 1672 – Anne Dudley Bradstreet, the first woman to be recognized as an accomplished colonial American poet, dies in Andover, Massachusetts. Commemorated as Anne Dudley Bradstreet Day.
- September 16, 1846 – Anna Kingsford born, one of the first English women to obtain a medical degree, but the only medical student to graduate without ever dissecting a single animal; anti-vivisectionist, women’s rights and vegetarian campaigner. She is the founder of the Food Reform Society, and author of The Perfect Way in Diet.
- September 16, 1861 – Miriam Benjamin born a free African American; graduated from Howard University law school and specialized in patent law; she was the second black woman inventor to receive a U.S. patent, for the Gong and Signal chair, used by hotel guests to signal a waiter or attendant that they wanted service; the system was later adopted by the U.S. House of Representatives to signal pages, and was a precursor of the signaling system used by passengers on airplanes to attract a flight attendant’s attention; her two brothers also held patents for inventions.
- September 16, 1880 – Clara Ayres born, American nurse who joined the U.S. Army Corps during WWI; she and Helen Burnett Wood were the first two nurses to be killed in military service during the war, by accident on May 17, 1917, aboard the USS Mongolia heading for Europe, hit by shell fragments when one of the ship’s guns exploded during a drill.
- September 16, 1885 – Karen Horney born in Germany, American psychoanalyst; the first known woman to present a paper regarding feminine psychiatry; fourteen papers she wrote between 1922 and 1937 were amalgamated into her ground-breaking book, Feminine Psychology. She differed from Freud, suggesting that environmental and social conditions played a more determining role in the creation of an individual’s personality than biological drives, and these are the chief cause of neuroses and personality disorders. Her view of human beings allowed more scope for development and rational adaptation than Freudian determinism.
- September 16, 1887 – Nadia Boulanger born, French composer, mentor to Aaron Copland, Philip Glass and Quincy Jones among others.
- September 16, 1902 – Maude Eyston Sumner born, South African painter, she moved to Paris in 1926, and became part of the Ateliers d'Art Sacré (Studios of Sacred Art) movement.
- September 16, 1912 – Edith Anrep born, Swedish lawyer and feminist; President of the International Alliance of Women (1970-1973). Member of the Fredrika Bremer Förbundet, Sweden’s oldest women’s rights organization, which is part of the International Alliance of Women, and has general consultative status with the UN. The FBF was founded in 1884, and named in honor of Swedish novelist Fredrika Bremer, whose novel Hertha sparked the legislation emancipating unmarried Swedish women from the wardship of their male relatives.
- September 16, 1916 – Marie Vieux-Chauvet born, Haitian novelist, poet and playwright; she sometimes published under Marie Vieux; best known for her novels, Fille d'Haïti (Daughter of Haiti), La Danse sur le Volcan (Dance on the Volcano), Fonds des Nègres and for her trilogy, which was the posthumous winner of the 1986 Prix Deschamps: Amour, Colère, Folie (Love, Anger, Madness).
- September 16, 1920 – Sheila Quinn born, British nurse; Fellow of the Royal College of Nursing, and its president (1982-1986); Executive Director of the International Council of Nurses (ICN – 1967-1970) and an ICN representative to the International Labour Organisation; consultant to the World Health Organisation (WHO). Chief Nursing Officer (CNO) to the Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust, Regional Nursing Officer (RNO) for the Wessex Regional Health Authority, and Chief Nursing Advisor for the British Red Cross. Made Dame Commander (DBE). In 1993, the ICN awarded her the Christiane Reimann Prize, for her outstanding contribution to the nursing profession. Dame Sheila has contributed significantly to the Problem Solving for Better Health (PSBH) program at the Dreyfus Health Foundation (DHF – 1995-2016).
- September 16, 1921 – Ursula M. Franklin born in Germany, Canadian metallurgist, research physicist, author, and educator who taught at the University of Toronto for more than 40 years. Author of The Real World of Technology.
- September 16, 1927 – Sadako Ogata born, Japanese diplomat, UN High Commissioner for Refugees (1991-2001); President of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA, 2003-2012); honored with the 2002 Fulbright Prize for International Understanding.
- September 16, 1928 – Patricia Wald born, American judge; U.S. representative to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (1999-2002); Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (1986-1991); Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (1979-1999). She was born in very modest circumstances, and worked as a teenager during summers in brass mills in her home state of Connecticut. Her involvement with union work and the labor movement fired her ambition to go to law school and help working class people. She was class valedictorian when she graduated from high school, and an affluent woman in her hometown gave her a scholarship to the Connecticut College for Women (now Connecticut College). When she graduated Phi Beta Kappa, she received a national fellowship from the Pepsi-Cola Company allowed her to go to Yale Law School, earning her law degree with only eleven other women in 1951, out of a class of 200. She worked as a waitress and a researcher to pay the rest of her expenses at Yale. She still found time to be a student editor on the Yale Law Journal, one of only two women editors. After graduation, she clerked for Judge Jerome Frank of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit for a year. Then briefly entered private practice before leaving to raise her five children for the next six years. She then began taking on part-time consulting and research jobs, and was editorial assistant for Frederick M. Rowe (1959-1962). In 1963, she spent a year as a member of the National Conference on Bail and Criminal Justice, then worked for the National Conference on Law & Poverty in its Office of Economic Opportunity. In 1964, she was co-author of Bail in the United States, which was influential in the reform of the nation’s bail system. She was appointed by Lyndon Johnson to the President’s Commission on Crime in the District of Columbia (1965-1966), then consulted for the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement & Administration of Criminal Justice in 1967, and joined the U.S. Department of Justice as an attorney in the Office of Criminal Justice. She then worked for Neighborhood Legal Services in Washington, D.C (19687-1970), and also consulted for the National Advisory Committee on Civil Disorder and the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence. Wald worked at the Center for Law and Social Policy as an attorney (1971-1972), then switched to an attorney at the Mental Health Law Project (1973-1977). She went back to the Department of Justice (1977-1979), and was Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs during the Carter Administration before being nominated by Carter to the DC Circuit.
- September 16, 1942 – Susan L. Graham born, American computer scientist; Pehong Chen Distinguished Professor in Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley; research projects include Harmonia, a language-based framework for interactive software development, and Titanium, a Java-based parallel programming language, compiler and runtime system. Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, and of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, which awarded her the ICCC John von Neumann Medal in 2009.
- September 16, 1948 – Julia Donaldson born, English author, playwright, songwriter, and performer, best known for rhyming stories for children, including The Gruffalo, Room on the Broom and Stick Man.
- September 16, 1953 – Nancy Huston born, French Canadian novelist, essayist, and translator, who translates her own work from French into English. Awarded the 1982 Prix Contrepoint for Les variations Goldberg (The Goldberg Variations).
- September 16, 1955 – Zhang Haidi born, Chinese writer, translator, inspirational speaker, and chair of China Administration of Sports for Persons with Disabilities (CASPD), the national Paralympics committee of China. A paraplegic since age five, after undergoing six major operations to have six of her spinal plates removed between 1960 and 1976 to eliminate pathological problems in blood vessels which threatened the dura mater of her spine. She was unable to attend school, and taught herself at home, including learning English, Japanese, German, and Esperanto. In 1993, Jilin University awarded her a master’s degree in philosophy. She is the author of Beautiful English, written in both Chinese and English, and a novel called A Dream in Wheelchair.
- September 16, 1956 – Maggie Atkinson born, English educator and civil servant; Children’s Commissioner for England (2010-2013).
- September 16, 1957 – Clara Furse born, Dutch-British financial executive, first woman Chief Executive of the London Stock Exchange (2001-2009).
- September 16, 1961 – Annamária Szalai born, Hungarian journalist and politician; President of the National Media and Infocommunications Authority (2010-2013); member of the National Radio and Television Commission (2004-2009); Member of the National Assembly (1998-2004).
- September 16, 1964 – Mary Coustas born, Greek-Australian comedian and writer; performs stand-up as “Effie.” She won the Logie Award for Most Ppopular Comedy Personality in 1993. Author of Effie's Guide to Being Up Yourself, and All I know: a memoir of love, loss and life, published in 2013.
- September 16, 1971 – Amy Poehler born, American comedian, actress, director, producer and writer; Saturday Night Live, Parks and Recreation, Comedy Central; executive producer of Broad City and Difficult People; creator of The UCB Show.
- September 16, 2019 – Sarah Thomas, American long-distance swimmer, set a new record, swimming the English Channel four times continuously in 54 hours and 10 minutes, just a year after she completed treatment for breast cancer. The straight distance would have been 84 miles, but strong currents pushed her off-course, lengthening the distance she swam to over 130 miles.
- September 16, 2019 – A study published in JAMA Internal Medicine based on federal data estimates that the first sexual intercourse experience of one in 16 American women was the result of physical force or coercion. The average age of these victims was 15.6 years old, while the average age of the men who forced these encounters was 27 years old. “This is an issue that needs to be urgently addressed because every week, thousands of women are experiencing rape as a sexual initiation,” said study coauthor Laura Hawks, a physician and research fellow at Harvard Medical School and the Cambridge Health Alliance. “When we talk about sexual violence, what we’re really talking about is power imbalance between women and men. We’re learning more and more how insidious that inequality is in our society.” Hawks and her fellow researchers, affiliated with the Cambridge Health Alliance, Harvard, and Hunter College, based their study on data from more than 13,300 women between the ages of 18 and 44. The data, which included personal interviews, came from the 2011-2017 National Survey of Family Growth, a nationally representative survey conducted by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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- September 17, 1382 – Mary of Anjou, eleven-year-old daughter of Louis the Great, King of Hungary and Poland, crowned as “King” of Hungary, seven days after her father’s death. But having a female on the throne was unpopular with Hungarian noblemen, who wanted her distant cousin, Charles III of Naples, instead. Charles landed Dalmatia in September 1385, while Sigismund of Luxembourg invaded Upper Hungary, and forced Mary’s mother, Dowager Queen Elizabeth, acting as regent, to give Mary in marriage to him in October. But when Charles entered the capital, Buda, Mary had to renounce the throne, and Charles was crowned king at the end of December. However, he was murdered at the instigation of Mary’s mother in February 1386. Mary was restored to the throne, but the murdered king's supporters captured her and her mother in July. Elizabeth was murdered in January 1387, but Mary was released in June 1387. Mary officially remained the co-ruler with Sigismund, who had meanwhile been crowned king, but her influence on the government was minimal. In 1395, she went into premature labor after her horse threw her while hunting. She died at age 23, along with her new-born son.
- September 17, 1802 – Mercy Jackson born, American physician; a pioneer in U.S. women's acceptance in the field of medicine. She graduated at age 17 from a private school in her hometown of Hardwick, Massachusetts, and accepted a winter teaching position in Plainfield, over fifty miles west of her hometown — a daring decision for a young woman in 1819. She was married in 1823, but her first husband died in 1829, and two of her three children had died of illnesses by 1832. She and her second husband, Daniel Jackson, had eight children, but half of them died in infancy or early childhood. Her husband’s cousin married Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the Jacksons became well acquainted with the Transcendentalists of Concord. She began to study on her own the new system of homeopathic medicine, and then tried treating her family and friends, with good results. Word of her success spread, and patients began to come from the surrounding towns to consult with her. But no treatment worked on her second husband, who died of cancer in 1852. Mercy Jackson, inspired by Elizabeth Blackwell (the first woman to earn a degree in conventional medicine in 1849), enrolled at Boston’s New England Female Medicine College and graduated in 1860, at the age of 58. She became friends with Harriet K. Hunt when Hunt was refused admission to Harvard because she was a woman, and they were both increasingly involved in the struggle for women’s rights. Jackson’s medical practice also grew, bolstered by her higher success rate, and the many women who preferred to be seen by a woman doctor, especially when pregnant. In 1871, Jackson was the first woman admitted to the American Institute of Homeopathy. She wrote articles about better medical treatments for women in homeopathic journals, and in favor of women’s rights in Lucy Stone’s feminist weekly Woman’s Journal. In 1875, the 73-year-old Jackson traveled from New England to northern Michigan by train, speaking for women’s rights. She died in December 1877 at age 75.
- September 17, 1849 – Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery with her brothers, but they insist on returning because of their families; Tubman soon escapes again, this time on her own. She would become the most successful ‘Underground Railroad conductor’ and make 19 trips back to the South to lead over 300 slaves to freedom. During the American Civil War, she served as a scout and spy for the Union Army. Tubman later became an activist in the women's suffrage movement, and when the National Federation of Afro-American Women was founded in 1896, Harriet Tubman was the keynote speaker at its first meeting.
- September 17, 1866 – Mary Burnett Talbert born, African-American orator, suffragist and reformer; worked to develop black women leaders and women’s clubs, early advocate of women of all colors working together for women’s rights.
- September 17, 1867 – Vera Popova born, one of the first Russian women chemists, and the first Russian woman author of a chemistry textbook; Popova was also the first woman to die in a laboratory explosion in 1896, while attempting to synthesize methylidynephosphane, which was not successfully synthesized until 1961 (methylidynephosphane is prone to spontaneous combustion at room temperature).
- September 17, 1900 – Lena Frances Edwards born, African American physician; after graduating from Howard University Medical School in 1924, she married fellow medical school graduate Keith Madison, and they moved to Jersey City NJ, where she became a speaker on public health and advocate for natural childbirth, serving the European immigrant community. In 1931, she joined the staff of Margaret Hague Hospital, but her race and gender prevented her from being admitted to residency in obstetrics and gynecology until 1945. In 1954, she returned to Howard University Medical School to teach obstetrics, and became the medical adviser to the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, and chair of the Maternal Welfare Committee of the Washington DC Urban League. Edwards helped found Our Lady of Guadeloupe Maternity Clinic in Hereford Texas in 1960 to serve Mexican migrant worker families. After a heart attack in 1965, she returned to Washington, where she worked for federal agencies until she retired in 1970. She died at age 86 in 1986.
- September 17, 1900 – Martha Ostenso born, Norwegian American novelist and screenwriter; her family emigrated from Norway to Canada, then moved to the American Midwest; Ostenso briefly attended the University of Manitoba, then left for New York City. She worked for a time as a social worker, but was involved in literary circles, and her first and best-known novel, Wild Geese, was published in 1925, and became a best-seller. In 1931, she became an American citizen. She wrote numerous short stories, moved to Hollywood to write screenplays, and in all published 15 novels.
- September 17, 1900 – “Hettie” Hedwig Weitzel Ross born in New Zealand, Australian teacher and political activist; she was a leader of the Australian Militant Woman’s Group, and edited several political publications, including Young Communist. Ross was an advocate for the children of the poor, and argued for the centrality of education in raising them out of poverty. She was active with the Federated Seaman’s Union of New Zealand while still at Wellington’s Girls’ College, and co-founded the Communist Party of New Zealand with the union’s leader, Fintan Patrick Walsh. In 1921, she was arrested for selling a copy of an Australian publication, the Communist, to an undercover policeman. A Labour Party Member of Parliament, Peter Fraser, who would later become New Zealand’s Prime Minister (1940-1949), took her case. Four years earlier, he had been convicted of the same offense, and served twelve months jail time. He strongly believed that Ross, who he described as a "young girl on the threshold of womanhood," was a victim of unfair police officiousness, but Ross was convicted of selling seditious literature, then expelled from Wellington Teachers' College where she was studying for a degree in Education. When her widowed mother and two siblings emigrated to the U.S. in 1921, she had difficulty getting a passport to follow them, so in 1922, she moved to Australia, where her communist views were more openly acceptable. She married Hector Ross in 1923, then earned a diploma in Education from the University of Sydney in 1926. She and Herbert divorced, childless, in 1931, and she taught in Sydney schools until her retirement in 1956.
- September 17, 1907 – Elizabeth Enright born, American children’s book author and illustrator, short story writer for adults and literary critic; her book Thimble Summer won the 1939 Newbery Medal, and Gone-Away Lake was a runner-up for the 1958 Newbery Medal. She was also a multiple O. Henry Award winner for her short stories.
- September 17, 1916 – Mary Stewart, born Mary Florence Rainbow, British novelist and poet, pioneer in the romantic mystery genre; her Merlin series has elements of both historical and fantasy fiction.
- September 17, 1918 – Lea Gottlieb born in Hungary, Israeli fashion designer and co-founder of the Gottex Company; she and her husband immigrated to Israel in 1949, and opened a raincoat factory near Tel Aviv with money borrowed from family and friends. After months and months of no rain in Israel, she sold her wedding ring to buy fabric, and with a borrowed sewing machine started designing and making high-fashion beachwear and bathing suits, founding Gottex in 1956 – the company’s name is a combination of Gottlieb and textile, and it became the leading exporter of fashion swimwear to the U.S.
- September 17, 1944 – Jean Ellen Taylor born, American mathematician, currently professor emerita at Rutgers University. After undergraduate studies at Mount Holyoke College, she earned a M.Sc. in Chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley, but then switched to mathematics, transferring to the University of Warwick to earn a second M.Sc. in Mathematics. She completed her doctorate at Princeton in 1972. Taylor is known for her work on the mathematics of soap bubbles and of the growth of crystals. In 1976 she published the first proof of Plateau's laws, a description of the shapes formed by soap bubble clusters that had been formulated without proof in the 19th century by Joseph Plateau. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association for Women in Mathematics, the American Mathematical Society and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.
- September 17, 1947 – Tessa Jowell born, Baroness Jowell, British Labour politician; Lord Temporal member of the House of Lords (2015-2018); Minister for the Cabinet Office (2009-2010); Paymaster General (2007-2010); Minister for the Olympics (2005-2010); Minister for Women (2005-2006); Member of Parliament for Dulwich and West Norwood (1992-2015).
- September 17, 1947 – Gail Carson Levine born, American young adult author, her first published book, Ella Enchanted, was a 1998 Newbery Honor Book; she worked for 27 years for New York state as a welfare administrator, helping people find jobs, but took a class in writing in 1987, and wrote manuscripts that were all rejected until 1996, when Ella Enchanted was accepted for publication. Her next novel, Dave at Night, was inspired by her father, who had grown up in an orphanage.
- September 17, 1953 – Tamasin Day-Lewis born, English television chef, food critic, and author of cookbooks and food-related books.
- September 17, 1953 – Rita Rudner born, American comedian and humor book author; co-author with her husband of the several screenplays, including the script for the film Peter’s Friends; she holds the record for the longest-running solo comedy show in Las Vegas.
- September 17, 1968 – Cheryl Strayed born, American novelist, essayist, and memoirist; noted for her 2012 memoir, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail.
- September 17, 1978 – Sheeri Cabral born, database administrator and architect; a MySQL community contributor, and the first Oracle ACE Director for MySQL. Cabral was the keynote presenter for the 2009 MySQL User Conference & Expo, “How to be a Community Superhero,” and a three-time winner of the MySQL Community Award.
- September 17, 1980 – Shabana Mahmood born in Birmingham, England, of Pakistani heritage; British Labour politician and barrister, a graduate of Lincoln College, Oxford. Mahmood is the current Member of Parliament for Birmingham Ladywood, since 2010, one of the three first women Muslim MPs in Britain. Mahmood was a member of the new House International Trade Select Committee (2016-2019), and is currently a member of Labour’s National Policy Forum.
- September 17, 2019 – Barbara Van Rooyan has been a crusader against Opioids since the death of her 24-year-old son Patrick in 2004, who took a single OxyContin pill after drinking a couple of beers, then suffered respiratory failure in his sleep because he turned out to be opioid intolerant. In 2007, three executives of Purdue Pharma pleaded guilty to federal charges related to their misbranding and marketing of OxyContin. Purdue paid fines totaling $634 million, but the executives served no time, and the company was allowed to continue aggressively marketing its product. In 2005, sales of OxyContin reached $2 billion. By 2017, nearly 68% of the more than 70,000 recorded deaths caused by overdoses involved opioids. Van Rooyan said, “I never really thought a whole lot about evil before this all happened. But to see this kind of malevolence or disregard for human life — I don’t know what else to call it but evil.” Van Rooyan sees the outcome of a recent court case in Virginia as a small step toward justice. A tentative mass settlement of over 2,000 lawsuits against Purdue would include $3 billion from the Sackler family, which owns the company. The family’s estimated worth is $13 billion, and most of it is from the sale of OxyContin. Purdue Pharma has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and the Sacklers would relinquish ownership. But in a cruel irony, if the settlement does go through, much of the payout would be financed by profits from the continued sale of OxyContin, under a new company that would be formed following the Chapter 11 bankruptcy. However, several states which already have suits against Purdue are expected to contest the deal. For Barbara Van Rooyan, at least “The lid is off, and all this stuff is bubbling out.” She added, “Do I want the records to be public? Do I want these people to have their business shut down? Yes, I do. But more than vindictiveness, I want that money of theirs to go to treatment and rehab. If that happens, something good can come out of it.”
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- September 18, 1344 – Marie of France born, daughter of King John II of France and Bonne of Bohemia; she had her own extensive library, and read poetry, romances, history and theology. At age 20, she married Robert I, Duke of Bar, and gave birth to 11 children, who all lived into adulthood, although three of her sons were killed in battle. Marie lived to the age of 60.
- September 18, 1587 – Francesca Caccini born, Italian composer, singer, lutenist, poet and teacher, known by the nickname “La Cecchina”, one of the most well-known and influential female European composers between Hildegard of Bingen and the 19th century. Her work, La liberazione di Ruggiero, is considered the first opera by a woman composer.
- September 18, 1858 – Kate Booth Clibborn born, English Salvation Army officer, daughter of William and Catherine, dubbed "la Maréchale"; she, with a few sister missionaries, brought the Salvation Army to France and Switzerland, meeting fierce opposition in both countries. At the beginning of her mission in France, she often came back from preaching on the streets bruised and bleeding, and had to pin on her bonnet strings instead of sewing them because men came up behind her and tried to use them to choke her.
- September 18, 1888 – Toni Wolff born, Swiss psychologist. She worked closely with Carl Jung, and was his sounding board for many of his theories, but it meant she published little of her own ideas, her best-known work being an essay on four “types” or aspects of the feminine psyche: the Amazon, the Mother, the Hetaira, and the Medial (medium). Wolff acted as the senior editor for Jung’s papers, and taught the training seminars for analytical candidates at the C. G. Jung Institute.
- September 18, 1889 – Doris Blackburn born, Australian activist, social reformer, and Member of Australian Parliament for Bourke (1946-1949), the first woman elected to the Australian House of Representatives as an independent. She was an advocate for Aboriginal rights, and co-founded the Aborigines Advancement League and the Federal Council for Aboriginal Advancement. Blackburn later served as president of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.
- September 18, 1891 – Harriet Maxwell Converse, a white American author and folklorist, is named as a chief of the Six Nations Tribe at Towanda Reservation in New York, in honor of her untiring efforts on their behalf to gain U.S. citizenship and other benefits.
- September 18, 1905 – Agnes de Mille, influential American dancer and choreographer; best known for the ballet Rodeo, and for her choreography of the musical Oklahoma!, in which she integrated the dancing into the storyline, advancing the plot and illuminating the characters’ feelings instead of being separate “set pieces.”
- September 18, 1912 – María De la Cruz born, Chilean women’s suffrage activist, publisher-editor of the magazine Luz y sombra (Light and Shadows), radio journalist and political commentator; founder of the Feminine Party of Chile; first woman elected to the Chilean Senate (1953), but she was accused of smuggling watches from Argentina, indicted and stripped of her position, even though nothing was ever proved against her, and the accusations are now seen as purely politically motivated to remove her from the Senate.
- September 18, 1917 – June Foray born, American voice actress best known as the voice of Rocky the Flying Squirrel, in a remarkable career that began in radio and spanned 80 years; Natasha of Boris and Natasha, Nell Fenwick, Lucifer the Cat from Disney’s Cinderella, and Nagaina the Cobra in Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, are among the dozens of characters she gave a voice. In the 1960s, Foray was a pioneering and passionate advocate for the preservation and promotion of animation, credited with establishment of the Annie Awards, and a prime mover behind creation of the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Famed animator Chuck Jones said, "June Foray is not the female Mel Blanc. Mel Blanc was the male June Foray."
- September 18, 1919 – Dutch women win the right to vote.
- September 18, 1923 – Bertha Wilson born in Scotland, Canadian jurist and the first woman Puisne (not a senior or chief justice of a court) Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada (1982-1991); first woman appointed to the Court of Appeal for Toronto (1975-1982); first woman associate, then partner at Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt (1958-1975), where she created the first in-firm research department in Canada.
- September 18, 1925 – Dorothy Wedderburn born, British academic administrator, applied economist, sociologist, and women's rights advocate. She had a significant role in the reorganisation of the University of London in the 1980s: Principal of Bedford College (1982-1985), which then merged with Royal Holloway College, and she became the first principal of the merged college (1985-1990); head of the Department of Social and Economic Studies (1978-1981) at the Imperial College of Science and Technology, University of London. Previously a professor of industrial sociology at ICST (1965-1981). She also supported the coalition of women's groups fighting to increase the participation of women in the professions, more employment opportunities, and pay equity after WWII.
- September 18, 1927 – Muriel Turner born, Baroness Turner of Camden, British Labour politician and trade union leader; Life Peer of the House of Lords (1985-2017); Assistant General Secretary of the Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staffs (ASTMS – 1970-1987).
- September 18, 1929 – Nancy Kassell Littlefield born, producer-director of documentary programs; Director of NYC Mayor’s Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting (1978-1983).
- September 18, 1937 – Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri born, South African politician and teacher; served twice as Acting President of South Africa, the first time in 2005 when both President Mbeki and his Deputy President were outside the country, and for 14 hours in September 2008, between the resignation of Mbeki and Kgalema Motlanthe taking the oath of office; Minister of Communications (1999-2009). She went into exile in 1965, working as a teacher, and for the UN Institute for Namibia, based in Zimbabwe, as a lecturer and registrar, and earned her PhD in sociology from Rutgers University in the U.S., then returned to South Africa in 1990.
- September 18, 1946 – Meredith Oakes born, Australian playwright and music critic, primarily working in London; her plays include The Neighbor; The Editing Process; Scenes from the Back of Beyond; and Mind the Gap; she wrote the libretto for the opera The Tempest, loosely based on Shakespeare’s play.
- September 18, 1948 – Lynn Abbey born, American computer programmer, fantasy author and anthology editor; known for Daughter of the Bright Moon.
- September 18, 1949 – Dr. Mo Mowlam born, British Labour politician; Minister for the Cabinet Office Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (1999-2001); first woman Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (1997-1999), overseeing the negotiations which led to the Good Friday Agreement, and was instrumental in restoring the IRA ceasefire; Member of Parliament for Redcar (1987-2001); after her retirement in 2001, she became a vocal critic of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and took part the anti-Iraq war protests. She was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 1997, which she kept quiet for as long as possible, before dying in 2005.
- September 18, 1950 – Anna Deavere Smith born, actress and playwright; founding director of the Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue at New York University; noted for writing, and starring in her one-woman “documentary theatre” shows , including Fires in the Mirror, Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, The Arizona Project, and Notes from the Field: Doing Time in Education; recipient of the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize.
- September 18, 1950 – Siobhan Davies born, British modern dance choreographer; founder of the Siobhan Davies Dance Company in 1988; two-time winner of the Laurence Olivier Award for outstanding achievement in dance.
- September 18, 1960 – Carolyn Harris born, British Labour politician; the first woman Deputy Leader of Welsh Labour since 2018; Member of Parliament for Swansea East since 2015.
- September 18, 1970 – Aisha Tyler born, African-American comedian, director and talk show host. She won a Daytime Emmy Award for co-hosting The Talk (2011-2016). She directed the short independent film The Whipper, and the feature film Axis, which was released via video-on-demand in 2018. She does volunteer work for the American Red Cross, The Trust for Public Land, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and the International Rescue Committee.
- September 18, 1971 – Jada Picket Smith born, African American actress, screenwriter, producer,and business woman. She has also written songs for the heavy metal band Wicked Wisdom, and opened a music company, 100% Women Productions, in 1994. She was an executive producer on the series Hawthorne (2009-2011) in which she played a leading role.
- September 18, 1981 – Lucy Aharish born, Arab-Israeli news anchor, reporter, and television host; the first Muslim Arab presenter on mainstream Hebrew-language Israeli television. Since 2018, she is a news anchor on Reshet 13, after previously being the morning anchor on a current-affairs show, a news presenter and reporter, and a co-host on radio programme. She and Jewish-Israeli actor Tsahi HaLevi kept their relationship secret for four years before they got married in 2018, fearing harassment. Their marriage did cause a public controversy, with one members of the Knesset criticizing it as “assimilation” while several others congratulated them, and called the criticism “racist.”
- September 18, 2019 – Khalda Saber, a Sudanese teacher and outspoken women’s rights activist, was arrested and jailed in January 2019. Then, after her family was threatened by paramilitary forces, they had to go into exile in Egypt just two days before strongman Omar al-Bashir was deposed in an April 2019 coup d'état. Sudanese Women Action (SWA), a women’s rights group, has been documenting the violence against women during the protests both before and after al-Bashir lost power. Their report says that women protesters have faced an “unprecedented amount of violence and human rights violations” that amounted to “serious atrocities.” Twelve women and a 7-year-old girl were killed in the protests. The report also documents 26 cases of rape as security forces broke up the protest camp outside the military headquarters in early June. Dozens more rape cases weren’t reported or documented “due to fears of reprisals or stigma,” SWA alleged. Khalda Saber says “It was not strange to see so many women at the front in the marches. This is because of growing awareness of women’s rights. Women in time realized they have to stick to their demands.” A still-fragile democratic transition government has offered some hope. Several women have been appointed to the interim government, including Sudan’s first woman foreign minister, and two women to an eleven-member sovereign council.
- September 18, 2020 — Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1987-2020) died, due to complications of metastatic pancreas cancer, the court announced. She served on the Supreme Court from 1987 to 2020. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was 87 at the time of her death.
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- September 19, 1426 – Marie of Cleves born, German princess, poet, songwriter, and patron of letters. In 1440, she became Duchess of Orléans by marriage at age 14 to Charles, grandson of the French King Charles V. Marie’s son became King Louis XII of France. Her husband, who was 32 years her senior, died in 1465. In 1480, she secretly married the Artesian "Sieur de Rabodanges" who was one of her gentlemen of the chamber, and several years her junior. She died at age 60 in 1487.
- September 19, 1883 – Mabel Vernon born, American Quaker pacifist and national leader in U.S. suffragist movement; a principal member of the Congressional Union for Women Suffrage. With major figures like Inez Milholland and Alice Paul, she was an organizer of the 1913 Woman Suffrage Parade and of the Silent Sentinels, the six-day-week picket of Woodrow Wilson by Suffragists in front of the White House, later moved to Lafayette Square, from January 1917 to June 1919.
- September 19, 1887 – Lovie Austin born, American bandleader, pianist, and composer-arranger; considered one of the best women jazz blues piano players of the 1920s.
- September 19, 1889 – Sarah Louise Delany born, African American civil rights pioneer and educator; the first black teacher of high-school-level domestic science in New York public schools; she and her sister are the subjects of the oral history, Having Our Say, by journalist Amy Hill Hearth. Delany lived to be 109 years old.
- September 19, 1893 – New Zealand women win the right to vote by Royal Assent of the governor to the Electoral Act of 1893. All New Zealand women, including the Māori, may vote. New Zealand becomes first independent country in modern times to enfranchise women. However, New Zealand women were not eligible to run for office until 1920.
- September 19, 1894 – Rachel Field born, American novelist, poet and children’s author; best known for Hitty, Her First Hundred Years, winner of the 1930 Newbery Award, and also named to the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, for books considered worthy of placement “on the same shelf” as Carroll’s Alice; Time Out of Mind won an inaugural National Book Award in 1935, for Most Distinguished Novel.
- September 19, 1911 – Judith Vallentun Auer born, German resistance fighter against the Nazi regime. As a student, she joined the Young Communist League of Germany in 1924, and married Erich Auer, a worker in the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1926, and became a member of the KPD. When Hitler seized power in 1933, the KPD was banned. After her daughter Ruth was born in 1929, she learned typing and shorthand. She found work at Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft (AEG, producer of electrical equipment) in the cable works division, first as a short-hand typist, and later as a buying agent. At AEG, she came in contact with the resistance group led by Fritzs Plön, who was a welder. Auer managed the finances of the resistance group, and used her buying trips for AEG to do courier work, establishing links with other resistance groups, especially Theodor Neubauer in Thuringia, one of the states which became a Nazi stronghold early in the 1930s. She hid the Communist politician and resistance fighter Franz Jacob in her flat for several months after he fled from Hamburg. Auer was arrested at her workplace in July 1944, and later tortured. She was sentenced to death along with others who had been arrested, and hanged in October 1944.
- September 19, 1911 – Jane Oppenheimer born, studied fish embryos and investigated similarities/differences between fish and avian and amphibian species, sent embryos into space on 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission to study effects of zero gravity on embryonic development. She was also a major patron of the Philadelphia Orchestra.
- September 19, 1915 – Elizabeth Stern born in Canada, American pathologist; a pioneer in work on cell progression from normal to cancerous. Her breakthrough studies of cervical cancers have changed the disease from fatal to one of the most easily diagnosed and treatable. Her studies showed that a normal cell advanced through 250 distinct stages before becoming cancerous and thus is the most easily diagnosed of all cancers. Stern was the first to linking a virus in herpes simplex to cervical cancer. She was also the first to report a possible link between oral contraceptives and cervical cancer.
- September 19, 1917 – Amalia Hernández Navarro born, Mexican ballet choreographer; pioneer in developing baile folklorico, and a Mexican cultural icon. In 1952, she founded the world-renowned Ballet Folklórico de México. Originally there were only eight dancers, but the company grew to 60 performers by 1959, and was commissioned to represent Mexico at the Pan American Games in Chicago, Illinois. She created over sixty baile folklorico works. Hernández also founded the Folkloric Ballet School in Mexico City. She was knowledgeable about pre-Columbian culture, and used elements from Mexico’s diverse cultural heritage, including specific regional folklorico traditions, in her choreography.
- September 19, 1917 – Pablita Velarde born Tse Tsan (Tewa for ‘Golden Dawn’), American Santa Clara Pueblo ‘flat style’ painter; at age fourteen, she was one of the first female artists accepted to Dorothy Dunn’s Santa Fe Studio Art School. Velarde learned to prepare paints from natural pigments for her later work, which she called ‘earth paintings.’ She was commissioned in 1939 by the U.S. National Park Service, under a grant from the Works Progress Administration (WPA), to depict scenes from Pueblo life for the Bandelier National Monument. In 1953, she was the first woman recipient of the Grand Purchase Award at the Philbrook Museum’s annual Exhibition of Contemporary Indian Painting, and in 1954, Velarde was among the twelve Native American artists and craftsmen honored by the government of France with the Palmes Académiques, the first foreign honors ever paid to Native American artists. She published Old Father the Story Teller, featuring six Tewa tribal stories, in 1960. Honored as a Santa Fe Living Treasure in 1988, and by the National Women’s Caucus for Art with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1990.
- September 19, 1929 – Marge Roukema born, American moderate Republican politician, Member of the U.S, House of Representatives for New Jersey’s 5th District (1983-2003), and 7th District (1981-1983). She was frequently challenged by more conservative male Republicans in the primaries, but continued to be reelected, until she decided not to run for a 12th term in 2002 after her district had been gerrymandered in favor of conservative voters. She refused to endorse Scott Garrett, the conservative Republican who won the primary to succeed her. He held the seat from 2003 to 2017 (in the 2016 election, he was the only incumbent Congressman in New Jersey not to be reelected). Marge Roukema died of complications related to Alzheimer’s disease in 2014, at the age of 85.
- September 19, 1930 – Bettye Lane born, American photojournalist who covered the American feminist movement, donating over 1700 images and her collection of ephemera, all documenting the women’s movement from the 196os to the 1980s, to the Schlesinger Library; some of her work is also preserved at the Library of Congress and the NY Public Library.
- September 19, 1932 – Stefanie Zweig born, German Jewish writer and journalist; best known for her novel Nirgendwo in Afrika (Nowhere in Africa), a bestseller in Germany, based on her early life in Kenya, where her family had fled to escape persecution by the Nazis.
- September 19, 1939 – Louise Botting born, British radio presenter and journalist, and she became one of the first women directors on the board of an FTSE-100 (Financial Times Stock Exchange Index) company, when she was appointed to the board of AVIVA, a multinational insurance company. Her career in journalism began in 1970 when she wrote articles for the Daily Mail newspaper. She was the founding presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Money Box programme (1977-1992?), a financial advice programme aimed at “ordinary people,” which is still on the air. Among her many appointments to various boards and committees, she was a member of the Top Salaries Review Body (1987-1994) and was honored as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CPE) for her service.
- September 19, 1940 – Zandra Rhodes born, English fashion designer, noted for her 1977 collection, a take on punk which she called Conceptual Chic, featuring beaded safety pins and dresses with holes; she was the founder of the Fashion and Textile Museum, which opened in London in 2003.
- September 19, 1945 – Kate Adie born, English television and radio journalist; as chief news correspondent for BBC News (1980-2003), she frequently covered war zones and terrorist attacks; since 2003, she has been the presenter for From Our Own Correspondent on BBC Radio 4.
- September 19, 1947 – Torunn ‘Teri’ Garin born, Norwegian chemical engineer, one of the developers of aspartame sweetener as a sugar substitute while working for General Foods (1971-1985), where she became a senior laboratory manager. Earlier in her career, she researched ways to minimize water pollution caused by food production. She co-patented an adsorption process to extract caffeine from coffee (1978) and a method to derive food dyes from natural sources to replace possibly cancer-causing synthetic dyes (1983), yielding, for example, non-toxic betanin, a natural red pigment from red beet. These U.S. patents were assigned to General Foods Corp.
- September 19, 1947 – Tanith Lee born, prolific British science fiction, horror and fantasy author of over 90 novels and 300 short stories; first woman to win the British Fantasy Award for Best Novel for Death’s Master in 1979, which is part of her Flat-Earth Cycle, won several World Fantasy Awards for Best Short Story, and 2009 World Horror Grand Master Award.
- September 19, 1950 – Joan Lunden born, American television news correspondent and co-host of ABC’s Good Morning America (1980-1997).
- September 19, 1965 – Sunita Williams born, U.S. astronaut and Naval officer; assigned to the International Space Station as a member of Expeditions 14 and 15, flight engineer on Expedition 32, and commander of Expedition 33.
- September 19, 1966 – Soledad O’Brien born, American broadcast journalist and executive producer; anchor for the syndicated weekly program Matter of Fact with Soledad O’Brien; founder and chair of Starfish Media Group since 2013.
- September 19, 1970 – The Mary Tyler Moore Show debuts on CBS; a rare American television show which made a point of having a female lead character over 30 who has never married.
- September 19, 2019 – In over 250 towns and cities in Spain, protesters took to the nighttime streets, declaring a ‘Feminist Emergency’ after a series of high-profile rape cases and a summer in which 19 women were murdered. Since the government began recording such murders in 2003, 1,017 women have been killed by their current or former partners, as of September 2019. In the first nine months of 2019, 42 women were murdered in domestic violence attacks, and 32 children left motherless. “This has been a summer dominated by barbarity, murders, rapes, assault, paedophilia and gang attacks,” said the organisers at Feminist Emergency, a women’s advocacy group. “The gender-based violence of the summer has led to the worst figures in more than a decade. We can’t let another school or parliamentary term begin as if nothing has happened. To do so would be to tolerate the intolerable … This is an emergency.” Participants were urged to carry lights and wear the color of the feminist movement to “turn the night purple” and raise the alarm against apathy, indifference and lack of attention from politicians and the media. By 8 pm, masses of people were demonstrating in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Bilbao, Tarragona, Salamanca, Seville and Alicante.
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- September 20, 1822 – “Libby” Smith Miller born, suffragist, campaigner for ‘rational dress’ and designer of the “bloomer” costume made popular by Amelia Bloomer in The Lily magazine.
- September 20, 1831 – Kate Harrington born, teacher, author of children’s books and educational materials; pioneer in developing a sequential reading program, with emphasis on phonics, complete with a separate teacher's manual and spelling and reading books; noted for innovative use of music and reading materials geared to children’s interests.
- September 20, 1847 – Susanna Rubinstein born, Austrian psychologist; she earned a Ph.D. in 1874 in psychology and German literature. Her 1878 work "Psychologisch-Asthetische Essays" ("Psychological-Aesthetic Essays") is considered a major contribution to the study of human emotions. It was reprinted in 2012.
- September 20, 1884 – The National Equal Rights Party is founded in San Francisco; Belva Lockwood and Marietta Snow are nominated as President and V.P. candidates.
- September 20, 1886 – Mae Ella Nolan born, American Republican politician; fourth woman to serve in the U.S. Congress (1923-1925); first woman elected to Congress from California; first woman representative to chair a Congressional Committee (on Expenditures in the Post Office Department); and the first widow elected to fill the seat left vacant by her husband's death. She initially supported her husband’s negative stance on women’s suffrage, but later supported women’s right to vote. However, she did not run for a second term, claiming “politics is man’s business.”
- September 20, 1888 – Sue S. Dauser born, serves as a Navy nurse from 1917 until her appointment as Superintendent of the U.S. Navy Nurse Corps during WWII; retires in 1945.
- September 20, 1890 – Linda Eenpalu born, Estonian politician and women’s rights activist. She was the first Estonian woman member of the National Constituent Assembly (1937) and of the Second Chamber of the National Council (1938). She was a librarian at the Tartu Public Library Society (1913-1914), co-founder of the Estonian Female Student's Society (1911), member of the central committee of the Estonian Women's Club from 1928, Chairperson of the Central Society of the Estonian Rural Women in 1929–1940 and a member of the National Economic Council in 1935–1938. In 1937, she was a member of the national housing department, and in 1938–1940 she was the only woman member of the Second Chamber of the National Council. She was arrested in 1941, and deported to Tomsk Oblast in Siberia, where she remained until 1956.
- September 20, 1899 – Anna L. Strauss born, League of Women Voters national president (1944-1950); President Truman named her to the Commission on Internal Security and Individual Rights (1951). Strauss was the great-granddaughter of abolitionist and women’s rights advocate Lucretia Mott.
- September 20,1902 – Stevie Smith born, English poet, novelist and short story writer.
- September 20, 1906 – Vera Faddeeva born, Soviet mathematician; she published some of the earliest work in the field of numerical linear algebra. Her 1950 work, Computational methods of linear algebra was widely acclaimed, and she won a USSR State Prize for it. Between 1962 and 1975, she wrote many research papers with her husband, Dmitry Konstantinovich Faddeev.
- September 20, 1917 – Olga Dahl born, Swedish genealogist. In the 1950s, she wrote consumer advice articles for the women's magazine Husmodern, then became interested in family history when she moved to Gothenburg. In the late 1970s she was a co-author with Per Clemensson, Sven Gulin and other contributors of Gothenburg, Göteborgs hjärta – en bok om människor, affärer och byggnader kring Kungsgatan (The Heart of Gothenburg - a book about people, things, and buildings around Kungsgatan). In 2007, the database "Göteborgs tomtägare 1637-1807," based on their work, opened to the public, detailing 900 properties and their owners over two centuries. Dahl is a member of the Gothenburg Regional genealogical society.
- September 20, 1923 – Geraldine Clinton Little born in Northern Ireland, American author, playwright, poet and singer; her book-length poem Hakugai (Persecution) is based on the Japanese-American internment during WWII, but her best-known work is her historical play Heloise and Abelard; sang with the Choral Arts Society of Philadelphia.
- September 20, 1928 – Olga Ferri born, Argentine choreographer and ballet dancer. She joined the Ballet of the Teatro Colón at eighteen, became prima ballerina in 1949, and danced until 1977. Noted for her performances of Giselle.
- September 20, 1929 – Anne Meara born, American actress, comedian and writer; she and her husband, Jerry Stiller, performed as the comedy team Stiller and Meara; she wrote the play, After-Play, and won a Writers Guild Award for The Other Woman. Meara was nominated for four Emmys and a Tony Award.
- September 20, 1934 – Sophia Loren born as Sofia Villani Scicolone; Italian actress and international film legend; first woman to win an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in a non-English language film, Two Women (originally called La ciociara in Italy). In 1991, Loren received an Academy Honorary Lifetime Achievement Award for her contributions to world cinema and was declared "one of the world cinema's treasures." In September 1999, she filed a lawsuit against 79 adult websites for posting altered nude photos of her on the internet.
- September 20, 1937 – Birgitta Dahl born, Swedish Social Democratic Party politician: Member of Parliament (1969- 2002; Minister for Energy Affairs (1982-1990); Minister for the Environment (1986- 1991); Speaker of the Parliament (1994- 2002). Since 2005, chair of the Swedish section of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).
- September 20, 1940 – Anna Pavord born, Welsh-English gardening expert and writer; correspondent for the Independent newspaper since 1986, associate editor of Gardens Illustrated magazine, contributor to the Observer newspaper, and to the magazines Country Life, Country Living and Elle Decoration. Author of a number of books, including The Curious Gardener, The Tulip, Landskipping, and The Naming of Names: The Search for Order in the World of Plants.
- September 20, 1942 – Rose Francine Rogombé born, Gabonese Democratic Party politician; acting President of Gabon (June to October 2009) after the death of President Omar Bongo; President of the Senate, and Senator from Lambaréné since 2009.
- September 20, 1946 – Judith Baca born, Latina visual artist and muralist, community activist. Teaches art in the University of California system since 1984. Artistic director of the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC).
- September 20, 1956 – Jennifer Tour Chayes born, American computer scientist and mathematician; Managing Director of Microsoft Research New England since 2008; known for work on phase transitions in discrete mathematics and computer science, structural and dynamical properties of self-engineered networks, and algorithmic game theory. She is also an expert in the modeling and analysis of dynamically growing graphs; she holds over 25 patents, and has published over 100 papers; honored in 2015 with the John von Neumann Lecture Prize by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.
- September 20, 1959 – Meral Okay born, Turkish film producer, screenwriter, and actress; producer of the TV series Second Spring (1998-2001), and screenwriter for the historical soap opera, Muhteşem Yüzyil, based on the life of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent.
- September 20, 1960 – Deborah Roberts born, American television journalist; 20/20 correspondent (1995 to present), Dateline NBC (1991-1995).
- September 20, 1961 – Caroline Flint born, British Labour politician; Member of Parliament for Don Valley since 1997; Minister for Public Health (2005-2007).
- September 20, 1973 – Billie Jean King defeats Bobby “No-Broad-Can-Beat-Me” Riggs in their famous media event, the ‘Battle of the Sexes’ tennis match at the Houston Astrodome in Texas.
- September 20, 1995 – Laura Dekker born in New Zealand, Dutch sailor; at age 16, she became the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe single-handed. Her solo voyage began August 21, 2010, in a 12.4 metre (40 foot) two-masted ketch called Guppy. After 518 days at sea, she completed her circumnavigation on January 21, 2012.
- September 20, 2011 – Repeal of the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" compromise takes effect, making it possible for LGBTQ members of the military to serve more openly.
- September 20, 2019 – The New England Patriots released wide receiver Antonio Brown following an investigation of allegations of sexual assault. One woman accused him of rape and sexual assault and has filed a civil lawsuit against him, while another woman accused him of inappropriate conduct and sending threatening text messages. The plaintiff in the lawsuit, 28-year-old Britney Taylor, alleges the 31-year-old Brown sexually assaulted her on three occasions in 2017 and 2018, and the third incident escalated to rape. Brown has denied the accusations through an attorney, and filed a countersuit, claiming their relationship was consensual “at all times.”
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- September 21, 1552 – Barbara Longhi born, Italian painter, admired as a portraitist during her lifetime, but many of her works are now lost or unattributed.
- September 21, 1809 – Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, painter, illustrator, writer, and wife of Nathaniel Hawthorne; one of the Peabody Sisters; she and her sisters, Elizabeth and Mary, had a notable impact on early childhood education, the Transcendentalist movement, and the arts and letters of their day.
- September 21, 1819 – Louise Marie Thérèse d’Artois born, Duchess of Parma; after the assassination of her husband, she served as regent (1854-1859) of Parma during the minority of her son, Robert I.
- September 21, 1851 – Susan McDowell Eakins born, American painter and photographer.
- September 21, 1884 – Ethel Percy Andrus, educator, first woman principal at a California high school; founder of the National Retired Teachers Association (NRTA) and the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP).
- September 21, 1898 – Empress Dowager Cixi, virulently opposed to foreigners, seizes power and ends the Hundred Days’ Reform in China.
- September 21, 1916 – Françoise Giroud born to immigrant Turkish Sephardic Jews, French journalist, screenwriter, writer and politician; French Minister of Culture (1976-1977); editor of Elle magazine (1946-1953); co-founder in 1953 of the French newsmagazine, L’Express, which she edited until 1971, and then became its director until 1974.
- September 21, 1917 – Phyllis Nicolson born, British mathematician; notable for work on the Crank-Nicolson Method with John Crank, for numerically solving the heat equation and similar partial differential equations.
- September 21, 1898 – Frances Albrier born, influenced Marcus Garvey to expand his vision to include black women, organized Pullman Company waiters, started the “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” campaign, and was one of first black women welders.
- September 21, 1923 – Kim Williams born, naturalist, reporter for NPR on organic gardening and All Things Considered (1976-1986); author of Book of Uncommon Sense.
- September 21, 1932 – Shirley Conran born, British novelist and journalist; author of Lace, which was on the New York Times Bestseller list for 13 weeks; founder of Maths Action, an educational non-profit.
- September 21, 1932 – Marjorie Fletcher born, Director of the British Women’s Royal Navy Service (WRNS – 1986-1988); she joined the WRNS in 1953, and served two tours in Malta; director of the naval staff college in 1979; first woman to become director of the naval staff duties division in the Ministry of Defense.
- September 21, 1936 – Diane Rehm born, host of the long-running National Public Radio talk show, The Diane Rehm Show, which ran from 1984 until December 2016; Rehm is an advocate for the right to die with dignity.
- September 21, 1944 – Fannie Flagg born, American comedian, actress and author; noted for her 1987 best-selling novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café, and her screenplay adaptation for the 1991 movie, which was nominated for an Academy Award.
- September 21, 1945 – Kay Ryan born, American poet and educator; U.S. Poet Laureate (2008-2010), 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for The Best of It: New and Selected Poems.
- September 21, 1946 – Rose Garrard born, English sculptor, multi-media artist and author; noted for sculptures and fountains, many installed in Malvern and other places in Worcestershire, her home county; she has also done much research and written books on the area’s history and the restoration of its local springs.
- September 21, 1947 – Marsha Norman born, American playwright, screenwriter and novelist; 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for ‘night, Mother.
- September 21, 1956 – Marta Kauffman born, American writer and TV producer; co-creator and co-executive producer with David Crane of the comedy series Friends (1994-2004), and co-creator with Howard J. Morris of Grace and Frankie since 2015.
- September 21, 1960 – Masoumeh Ebtekar born, Iranian politician and professor of Immunology; first woman Vice President of Iran (1997-2005); currently Vice President and Head of Environmental Protection Organization, since 2013.
- September 21, 1965 – Johanna Vuoksenmaa born, Finnish director and screenwriter for television and film; noted for her feature films, Nousukausi (Upswing), and 21 Tapaa Pilata Avioliitto (21 ways to Ruin a Marriage).
- September 21, 1969 – Anne Burrell born, American chef, and host on the Food Network shows, Secrets Of a Restaurant Chef and Worst Cooks in America.
- September 21,1970 – Samantha Power born in Ireland, American academic, war correspondent, author, diplomat and dedicated to atrocity prevention. During the Obama Administration, she was a Special Assistant to the President (2008) and Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights on the National Security Council (2009-2013); the inaugural Chair of the Atrocities Prevention Board (2012), where she focused on UN reform, women’s and LGBT rights, religious freedom and religious minorities, refugees, human trafficking, human rights, and democracy. Appointed as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (2013-2017).
- September 21,1973 – Vanessa Grigoriadis born, American journalist of Greek descent; contributor to The New York Times Magazine and Vanity Fair; author of Blurred Lines: Rethinking Sex, Power, and Consent on Campus.
- September 21, 1981 – U.S. Senate confirms Sandra Day O’Connor as first woman Supreme Court justice, in a 99-0 vote.
- September 21, 1986 – Lindsey Stirling born, American violinist, composer and performance artist; presents choreographed violin performances, live and as music videos on her YouTube channel (2007); in 2013, she teamed with the non-profit Atlanta Music Project to allow under-served children in Atlanta to learn and perform music in choirs and orchestras.
- September 21, 1996 – The all-male Virginia Military Institute (VMI) decides to admit women cadets.
- September 21, 1996 – U.S. Congress passes the “Defense of Marriage Act” (DOMA), prohibiting federal recognition of same-sex marriage, allowing states to use their own definition, but not requiring them to recognize same-sex marriages granted under laws of other states.
- September 21, 2019 – At the First Congregational Church in Long Beach, California, ‘Suffrage! A History in Word and Song’ was performed as part of a year-long celebration of the 19th Amendment organized by the City of Long Beach. The production’s opening number was an original song, ‘Rebels and Reformers’ with lyrics by Jane Hansen and music by Curtis Heard. “The whole intention of [the song] was to recognize women of history that no one seems to know about,” Hansen said. “Women have gained so much thanks to those women. We’re standing on the shoulders of giants.”
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Sources
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