January in Women's History


January Highlights in US Women's History

  • Jan 3, 1949 - Margaret Chase Smith (R-Maine) starts her tenure in the Senate, where she stays in office until 1973; the first woman to serve in both the House and Senate as she previously served in the House (R-Maine, 1940-1949)
  • Jan 5, 1925 - Nellie Tayloe Ross is inaugurated as the first woman governor in U.S. history (governor of Wyoming)
  • Jan 7, 1896 - Fanny Farmer's first cookbook is published in which she standardized cooking measurements
  • Jan 7, 1955 - Marian Anderson is the first African American woman to sing at the Metropolitan Opera
  • Jan 8, 1977 - Pauli Murray, the first female African American Episcopal priest, is ordained
  • Jan 11, 1935 - Amelia Earhart makes the first solo flight from Hawaii to North America
  • Jan 12, 1932 - Hattie Wyatt Caraway (D-Arkansas) is the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate. She was the first woman to chair a Senate Committee and the first to serve as the Senate's presiding officer as well
  • Jan 16:  Martha Cotera, pioneering Chicana Feminist, author of two seminal texts Diosa y Hembra and Chicana Feminist. Founding member Raza Unida Party in Texas, 1969. One of the mothers of Chicana Feminism.
  • Jan 25, 1980 - Runner Mary Decker became the first woman to run a mile under 4 1/2 minutes, running it at 4:17.55
  • Jan 29, 1926 - Violette Neatly Anderson is the first black woman to practice law before the U.S. Supreme Court

 

January Birthdays

  • Jan 3, 1793 (1880 ) - Lucretia Mott, women's rights pioneer, Quaker minister, pacifist; NWHP co-founder Molly MacGregor is honored to share her birth day
  • Jan 7, 1891 (1960) - Zora Neale Hurston, pioneering scholar of African American folklore
  • Jan 8, 1867 (1961) - Emily Greene Balch, economist and sociologist; co-founder of the Women's International League for Peace with Jane Addams (1919); won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1946, shared with John Mott
  • Jan. 9, 1941 - Joan Baez, award winning singer and songwriter; human, civil, and peace activist; founder of Humanitas International Human Rights Committee (1979)
  • Jan. 9, 1859 Carrie Chapman Catt, woman's suffrage leader and president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA)
  • Jan 11, 1885 (1977) - Alice Paul, suffragist leader, founder of National Women's Party (1916); her strategies helped pass the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote (1920); initiated the Equal Rights Amendment (1923)
  • Jan 12, 1820 (1914) - Caroline Severance, early suffragist, social reformer; co-founded the American Woman Suffrage Association (1869); first woman to register to vote in California (1911)
  • Jan 13, 1850 (1911) - Charlotte Ray, first African-American woman lawyer and first woman admitted to the bar in D.C.
  • Jan. 13, 1917 - Edna Hibel the first woman to win the Leonardo da Vinci World Award of Arts.
  • Jan 19, 1905 (1995) - Oveta Culp Hobby, second women in the U.S. Cabinet (20 years after Frances Perkins), first Secretary of the Dept of Health, Education, and Welfare (1953); awarded the Distinguished Medal of Service for her work as Director of the Women's Army Corps (1945)
  • Jan 23, 1918 (1999) - Gertrude Elion, biochemist, won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1988
  • Jan 24, 1968 - Mary Lou Retton, first and only American woman to win a gold medal in the All-Around in gymnastics at the Olympics (1984) and first American woman to win a gold in gymnastics, first woman featured on a Wheaties cereal box
  • Jan 26 (or 20), 1872 (1957) - Julia Morgan, first woman licensed architect in CA, innovative architect of Hearst Castle and over 700 extraordinary buildings
  • Jan 26, 1892 (1926) - Bessie Coleman, first African American woman in the world to fly a plane and earn an international pilot's license