October in Women's History


Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month - September 15 to October 15

October Highlights in US Women's History

  • Oct 3, 1904 - Mary McLeod Bethune opens her first school for African-American students in Daytona Beach, FL
  • Oct 4, 1976 - Barbara Walters becomes the first woman co-anchor of the evening news (at ABC)
  • Oct 4, 1993 - Ruth Bader Ginsburg joins the U.S. Supreme Court as its second woman
  • Oct 8, 1993 - Toni Morrison becomes the first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature
  • Oct 10, 1983 - Dr. Barbara McClintock receives the Nobel Prize for Medicine for her discovery in genetics about mobile genetic elements
  • Oct 11, 1984 - Dr. Kathryn D. Sullivan is the first U.S. woman astronaut to "walk" in space during Challenger flight
  • Oct 15, 1948 - Dr. Frances L. Willoughby is the first woman doctor in the regular U.S. Navy
  • Oct 16, 1916 - Margaret Sanger opens the U.S.’s first birth control clinic in Brooklyn, NY
  • Oct 23, 1910 - Blanche Stuart Scott is the first American woman pilot to make a public flight
  • Oct 24, 1956 - Reverend Margaret Towner is the first woman ordained a minister in the Presbyterian Church
  • Oct 28, 1958 - Mary Roebling is the first woman director of a stock exchange (American Stock Exchange)

October Birthdays

  • Oct 6, 1917 (1977) - Fannie Lou Hamer, voting rights crusader; helped organize the Mississippi Freedom Summer in 1964
  • Oct 11, 1884 (1962) - Eleanor Roosevelt, civil rights advocate; feminist; author; world diplomat; former First Lady (1933-1945)
  • Oct 13, c.1754 (1832) - Mary Hays McCauley, "Molly Pitcher" of Battle of Monmouth, 1778; legendary water-carrying heroine of the American Revolution
  • Oct 17, 1943 - Vilma Socorro Martinez, lawyer; first female U.S. Ambassador to Argentina (2009); civil rights crusader; one of first women on the board of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund
  • Oct 18, 1956 - Martina Navratilova, tennis champion; 9 time Wimbledon singles winner
  • Oct 23, 1906 (2003) - Gertrude Ederle, first woman to swim the English Channel, 1926
  • Oct 24, 1830 (1917) - Belva Lockwood, first woman admitted to practice law before Supreme Court, 1879; ran for office of U.S. President 1884 and 1888
  • Oct 26, 1911 (1972) - Mahalia Jackson, considered world’s greatest gospel singer, sang at Martin Luther King’s 1963 March on Washington
  • Oct 27, 1940 - Maxine Hong Kingston, award-winning author of The Woman Warrior , an autobiography about the Chinese-American female experience
  • Oct 31, 1860 (1927) - Juliette Low, founder and first president of the Girl Scouts of the USA