August Highlights in US Women’s History

• August 23, 1902 – Fanny Farmer opens the “School of Cookery” in Boston, MA
• August 26, 1920 – The 19th Amendment of the US Constitution is ratified granting women the right to vote
• August 28, 1963 – More than 250,000 gather for a march on Washington, DC and listen to Martin Luther King Jr’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech
• August 6, 1965 Voting Rights Act outlaws the discriminatory literacy tests that had been used to prevent African Americans from voting. Woman Suffrage is finally fully extended to African American women.
• August 8, 1969 – Executive order 11478 issued by President Nixon requires each federal department and agency to establish and maintain an affirmative action program of equal employment second US woman opportunity for civilian employees and applicants
• August 26, 1970 – Betty Friedan leads a nationwide protest called the Women’s Strike for Equality in New York City on the fiftieth anniversary of woman’s suffrage
• August 12, 1972 – Wendy Rue founds the National Association for Female Executives (NAFE), the largest businesswomen’s organization in the US
• August 26, 1974 – Bella Abzug (D-NY) sponsors bill in Congress designating August 26 as “Women’s Equality Day”
• August 30, 1984 – Judith A. Resnick is the in space, traveling on the maiden flight of the space shuttle “Discovery”
• August 14, 1986 - Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper retires from active duty in the US Navy. A pioneering computer scientist and inventor of the computer compiler, she was the oldest officer still on active duty at the time of her retirement
• August 10, 1993 – Ruth Bader Ginsburg is sworn in as the second woman and 107th Justice to serve ion the US Supreme Court
• August 9, 1995 – Roberta Cooper Ramo becomes the first woman to hold the office of president of the American Bar Association

August Birthdays

• August 1, 1818 (1889) – Maria Mitchell, astronomer, professor and the first woman elected to both the Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society
• August 3, 1905 (1995) – Maggie Kuhn – Senior rights activists; founded Gray Panthers
• August 5, 1879 Josephine Collins
• August 6, 1886 (1916) – Inez Milholland Boissevain – Lawyer; suffrage leader who rode a white horse in Washington, DC suffrage parade, March 1913
• August 7, 1890 (1964) – Elizabeth Gurley Flynn – Labor organizer; helped found ACLU in 1920
• August 12, 1859 (1929) – Katharine Lee Bates – Poet; wrote “America the Beautiful”
• August 13, 1818 (1893) – Lucy Stone – Suffragist; supported rights for women and African Americans; boldly kept her own name when she got married
• August 14, 1952 – Debbie Meyer – Swimming champion; first female triple Olympic gold medalist
• August 19, 1814 (1904) – Mary Ellen Pleasant, – Entrepreneur; called “Mother of Civil Rights in California,” successfully sued trolley line when refused service because of her color
• August 23, 1944 – Dr. Antonia C. Novello – First woman and first Latina Surgeon General (1990-1993)
• August 25, 1927 – Althea Gibson – Tennis champion; first African-American to compete and win US Open and Wimbledon. Also first African American member of the Ladies Pro Golf Association
• August 28, 1774 (1921) - Elizabeth Seton – First American-born Roman Catholic Saint, canonized 1975
• August 30, 1876 (1952) – Rosa Minoka-Hill – one of the first Native American physicians in United States; member of the Mohawk nation