National Women's History Newsletter
February 2007
"Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise."
---Alice Walker (b. 2/09/1944)"There have been others also just as true and devoted to the cause - I wish I could name every one - but with such women consecrating their lives, failure is impossible!"
--- Susan B. Anthony (b. 2/15/1820)
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
Celebrate great women's birthdays year-round with our
"Celebrate Women!" Birthday Poster.
Dear Friends,
This letter is a call to action.
March, as National Women’s History Month, has been part of our cultural calendar for over a generation. Yet each year, we receive countless complaints about the lack of coverage of National Women’s History Month in the press, radio, and television. Further concerns are expressed about bookstores and libraries that often don’t even put up a poster or a Women’s History Month display. Most discouraging is that Women’s History Month is often not even mentioned in the schools.
Together we can change this! We have three weeks before the start of March and four weeks during March to contact schools, libraries, educators, politicians, bookstores, newspapers, and radio stations—to encourage them to observe and promote March as National Women’s History Month.
Take posters, banners, or bookmarks to whomever you visit and ask them to display the poster or banner or distribute the bookmarks.
Tell them about the amazing and dynamic lives and work of the 2007 Honorees who exemplify this year’s theme, Generations of Women History Forward. Suggest that they display images and biographies of local women who are moving history forward.
Download the NWHM Press Kit available at www.nwhp.org in the Women’s History Section of our website. Send or email the NWHP Press Kit to your local media, including newspapers, radio, and TV stations. If you know a local reporter, send him or her an email and our website address (www.nwhp.org) for background information and encourage that reporter to write a story about women in your community who are moving history forward.
Download the 2007 Printable Brochure from the Women’s History Month section of our website (www.nwhp.org) and make copies for your programs and events as well as to distribute everywhere you go.
Encourage your children to ask their teachers what they will be doing to celebrate National Women’s History Month. Make a gift to your school or community library to ensure that they have books, posters, videos, and other women’s history materials.
Use the information on our website www.nwhp.org to help with your promotional efforts. Post your success stories on our website’s new Forum (http://www.nwhp.org/blog/) so that we share useful and effective strategies for organizing.
Each March throughout the country, tens of thousands recognize and celebrate women as a force in history during Women’s History Month. This year, let’s increase that number to hundreds of thousands in events that celebrate and recognize women’s historic achievements, not just during March, but throughout the year.
If we don’t do this, who will?
Best wishes,
Molly Murphy MacGregor
Executive Director
Celebrating Black History Month
February is Black History Month is Black History Month. This important focal event presents a special opportunity to recognize the bold and daring achievements of African Americans. 2007 is the 50th anniversary of the integration of Central High, a pivotal event in the Civil Right Movement that challenged racist segregation and moved history forward for all Americans.
Fifty years ago, the doors of Little Rock’s Central High School became gates of change, when on September 4, 1957, nine African American students came to school for class — for the first time. Turned away by Arkansas National Guard soldiers under orders from the Governor, the students finally entered safely three weeks later when the President of the United States sent the 101st Airborne to enforce the Supreme Court’s desegregation rulings. Continued...
2007 National Women’s History Month Honorees
Each of this year’s 14 National Women’s History Month Honorees has demonstrated the courage to pave new paths, to push beyond what was considered safe or appropriate. In so doing, they have created an expanded vision of what is possible for all of us to achieve. Their singular and combined work challenges social assumptions and stereotypes about who women are and what women can accomplish.
Their lives and work provide guideposts of hope for our future and remind us all of the tenacity, determination, and hard work needed to move history forward.
Today, we recognize all our Honorees and their individual efforts as Generations of Women Moving History Forward! Continued...
(1944-2007) |
Molly Ivins’ Tribute Molly Ivins lost her long battle with breast cancer on January 31, 2007. As a journalist, she was relentless in pursuing justice and defending the powerless, yet she never lost her optimism and sense of fun. She was an irrepressible columnist whose life and words were unapologetic, free, and bold. In her December 14, 1999 column, she wrote. “I have contracted an outstanding case of breast cancer, from which I fully intend to recover. I don’t need get-well cards, but I would like the beloved women readers to do something for me: Go. Get. The. Damn. Mammogram. Done.” In 1976, when she left the Texas Observer to join The New York Times, she wrote.“I have a grandly dramatic vision of myself stalking through the canyons of the Big Apple in the rain and cold, dreaming about driving with the soft night air of East Texas rushing on my face while Willie Nelson sings softly on the radio, or about blasting through the Panhandle under a fierce sun and pale blue sky….I’ll remember, I’ll remember…sunsets, rivers, hills, plains, the Gulf, woods, a thousand beers in a thousand joints, and sunshine and laughter. And people. Mostly I’ll remember people.” Her spirit and words will continue to be celebrated and used as a clarion call for action… "So keep fightin' for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through … celebratin' the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was." Molly Ivins |
Welcome to the NWHP’s Women’s History Forum
We hope you will use this new Women’s History Forum as a vehicle to communicate and organize. Please feel free to post questions and answers. as well as information about events you are planning. 2007 will be a very exciting year. We look forward to learning about all that is being planned in classrooms, workplaces, and communities throughout the country in recognition of women’s historic achievements. NWHP
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