Forgotten Femmes

Margaret Chase Smith

From Bangor Daily News: "A Facebook campaign to get Margaret Chase Smith included on a list of influential American women proved successful this week when the pioneering politician was given her due. Margaret Chase Smith, a Republican, served four terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and was the first woman to be elected in her own right to the U.S. Senate in 1948. She represented Maine until 1972, when she was defeated, Richards said."

Anna Julia Cooper

From Huffington Post: "Anna Julia Cooper (1858-1964) is not a household name, nor is she someone encountered in most U.S. history books. Yet this woman's life spanned from the post-slavery era to the civil rights movement, and throughout all those years, she fervently pushed for progress, particularly for education and progress for African-American women. Perhaps it is fitting that in the current U.S. Passport, which features numerous quotes from famous American men, Anna Julia Cooper stands alone -- as the only woman and the only African-American -- who is quoted for her advocacy of freedom as a birthright of humanity."

Clover Adams

From the Wall Street Journal: "If a Henry James sort of American innocent could plunge straight into the letters of Clover Adams (1843-85), the swim would be fast and bracing. The letters collected in "First of Hearts," written to amuse her widowed father in Boston after she and her husband moved to Washington, are a portrait of a lady who was an aesthete, a passionate reader, a foodie, a lover of dogs and horses, and a wicked sharp observer of American politics as then practiced in the early 1880s. All but one of the letters in "First of Hearts" were written between 1880 and 1883. Although they are only a small slice of a life, they show many of Clover's abiding preoccupations: flowers, fashion, fine art and fine furnishings."