Women's History Calendar

February Highlights in US Women's History

  • Feb 24, 1912 - Henrietta Szold founds Hadassah, the world's largest and oldest women's Zionist organization focusing on healthcare and education in the US and Israel.
  • Feb 15, 1921 - The Suffrage Monument, depicting Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Lucretia Mott and carved by Adelaide Johnson, is dedicated in the nation's capitol
  • Feb 27, 1922 - US Supreme Court upholds the 19th Amendment to the Constitution which guarantees women the right to vote
  • Feb 15, 1953 - Tenley Albright is the first American woman to win the world figure skating championship
  • Feb 18, 1953 - Rachel Carson is elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters.
  • Feb 12, 1962 - Eleanor Roosevelt becomes first chair of the President's Commission on the Status of Women
  • Feb 6, 1973 - Government Printing Office rules that the prefix "Ms." is acceptable optional identifying label in government publications
  • Feb 9, 1973 - First convention of National Women's Political Caucus meets in Houston, TX
  • Feb 1, 1978 - First postage stamp to honor a black woman, Harriet Tubman, is issued in Washington, DC
  • Feb 16, 1980 - Mary Decker breaks the indoor mile world record finishing race in 4:17:55
  • Feb 21, 1980 - AFL-CIO votes to reserve 2 seats on its 35 member executive team for a woman and a member of a minority group
  • Feb 4, 1987 - First National Women in Sports Day is celebrated in Washington, DC

 

February Birthdays

  • Feb 1, 1878 (1950) - Hattie Wyatt Caraway - First woman elected to the US Senate (1932) and first woman to preside over the Senate in 1943
  • Feb 3, 1821 (1910) - Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell - First woman awarded a medical degree in U.S. (1849)
  • Feb 3, 1874 (1946) - Gertrude Stein - Poet, author, art critic; "A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose."
  • Feb 4, 1913 - Rosa Parks - "Mother of Civil Rights Movement;" her arrest after refusing to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama, leads to Dr. Martin Luther King's bus boycott and eventual Supreme Court decision to integrate buses
  • Feb 4, 1921 - Betty Friedan - Author, The Feminine Mystique (1963); Cofounder of National Organization for Women (NOW)
  • Feb 7, 1867 (1957) - Laura Ingalls Wilder - Author of beloved "Little House" books
  • Feb 9, 1944 - Alice Walker - First African American woman to win Pulitzer Prize for fiction, The Color Purple (1983)
  • Feb 10, 1927 - Leontyne Price - First international American opera star
  • Feb 13, 1906 (1990) - Pauline Frederick - First woman network radio and TV correspondent (1939)\
  • Feb 15, 1820 (1906) - Susan B. Anthony - Leader of 19th century women's right movement; strategist; lecturer
  • Feb 16, 1870 (1927) - Leonora O'Reilly - Labor organizer; founding member of Woman's Trade Union League; helped found NAACP
  • Feb 18, 1931 - Toni Morrison - Pulitzer Prize winning novelist; first African-American to win Nobel Prize for Literature (1993)
  • Feb 21, 1855 (1902) - Alice Freeman Palmer - Educator; Founded American Assn. of University Women (AAUW) in 1882
  • Feb 22, 1876 (1938) - Gertrude Bonnin (Zitkala-Sa) - Writer; Sioux Indian activist; founded National Council of American Indians (1926)
  • Feb 22, 1892 (1950) - Edna St. Vincent Millay - First woman to receive Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1923)
  • Feb 27, 1902 (1993) - Marian Anderson - Contralto; sang to 75,000 at famous Easter concert at Lincoln Memorial in 1939