TIMELINE: A History Of Women In The US Military

In January 2017, the first female Marines graduated from infantry school. In 2016, the first female soldiers became infantry officers. Air Force Gen. Lori Robinson also took over as leader of U.S. Northern Command in 2016, becoming the first female service member to lead a unified combatant command and thus the highest ranking woman in U.S. military history. We also saw female enlisted sailors deploy on submarines for the first time ever.

In every case, these were historic firsts for the armed services, and a reminder that the military still has a long way to go before it is a truly integrated institution. But, since the United States first declared itself an independent nation, American women have found ways to serve their country despite resistance from men, sometimes going as far as impersonating male soldiers to join the fight at the frontlines.

In honor of International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, Task & Purpose has compiled a list of historic milestones that changed the course of our nation — milestones set by servicewomen who refused to accept the status quo and paved the way for the next generation. This is by no means a complete timeline; this is simply a snippet of those accomplishments.

read more here @ Task & Purpose

Matilda Joslyn Gage - Forgotten 19th Century Suffragist

It’s easy to say that great strides have been made toward racial and gender equality in the last 150 years, yet one can’t help being struck by the parallel discourse surrounding human rights between then and now. Nowhere is this more evident than in the battles between women’s rights and the religious right. And nowhere is it more clear than in reviewing the works of Matilda Joslyn Gage.

From her first public speech, at age 26, in front of the 1852 National Woman’s Rights Convention in Syracuse, to her culminating thoughts in the 1893 book Woman, Church, and State, Gage used philosophy, theology, biblical studies, and science to rewrite the place of women in socio-political life throughout history.

What Gage saw was that you can’t just “get out the vote.” You have to change the mythologies. New stories need to be told, even if they are the old stories that have been forgotten.

Read entire article by Brent Plate here @ USC Annenberg - Religious Dispatches

Victoria Woodhull - Candidate For US President

From: The Times Leader:

Nearly a century and a half before Hillary Clinton, a fiery activist from Ohio became the first woman nominated for U.S. president.

Victoria Woodhull’s varied and colorful life makes her difficult to pigeonhole. The suffragist, medium, businesswoman, stockbroker and newspaper publisher was “Mrs. Satan” to some, a visionary champion of women’s and children’s rights to others.

She rode motorcycles, preached “free love” and followed the guidance of an ancient Greek orator she believed had presented himself to her as a spirit guide.

The Equal Rights Party nominated Woodhull to face incumbent Republican Ulysses S. Grant in 1872 and Democrat Horace Greeley, nearly 50 years before women had the right to vote. At 34, she was a few months shy of the required age, but most historians still view her nomination and run as the first.

Woodhull lost, of course, but by how much is unclear.

Read rest of article here at The Times Leader

Suffrage March of 1913

From the Smithsonian:

In the spring of 1913, women in six states had the right to vote in all elections: Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Washington and California. Despite these successes, though, the momentum of the 65-year-old suffrage movement was slowing. It was like a car running on fumes.

Alice Paul decided to give it some gas. Having recently returned to the States from England, where she cut her teeth as a suffragist, the 28-year-old New Jersey native pitched an idea to the National American Woman Suffrage Association. She would organize a suffrage parade in Washington, D.C., strategically timed with the influx of crowds arriving for President Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration, to drum up support for the cause. NAWSA appointed Paul the chair of its Congressional committee and approved her plan, but made it clear that she would have to come up with the money for the parade on her own. 

Links:

Womens' Suffrage Parade of 4th March 1913

Womens' Suffrage March - wikipedia

End Invasion Searches Of Female Prisoners

From Detriot Free Press:

The American Civil Liberties Union said it plans today to urge the Michigan Department of Corrections to ban an invasive vaginal strip search that humiliates female prisoners.

It said women are forced to expose themselves, often with unclean hands while sitting on an unsanitized chair and in full view of other prisoners, while a female guard checks to see whether they're concealing contraband.

The ACLU said it believes Michigan's is the only prison system in the nation to routinely use such searches as a matter of policy.

The searches can be especially traumatic because many female prisoners are victims of sexual assault, the ACLU said.

Over the years, female prisoners in Michigan have been awarded more than $100 million in suits resulting from sexual assaults by corrections staff.

The Woman Who Fell from the Sky

From the National:

When Jennifer Steil took on the challenge of editing the Yemen Observer for a year, she was prepared for an adventure.

But what the American journalist had not bargained for was falling in love with the country and eventually leaving with a fiancé and baby in tow.

"It was a wonderful place to live and ended up being the most exciting and rewarding year of my life," she recalls on a visit to Abu Dhabi, where she was invited to speak at last week's book fair.

The 43-year-old, who wrote about her experiences in the book The Woman Who Fell from the Sky, was first enticed to the Arab country by a former boyfriend. Then living in Yemen, he invited her to teach a three-week training course at the daily newspaper to journalists who had no notion of how to investigate and report stories.

Female Flatfoots of Old Chicago

From Chicago Mag:

Strayer's story reminded me of one of her contemporaries, one of the most fascinating and inspiring figures in early 20th-century Chicago: an early feminist, an outspoken woman who could be as tough with her ex and judges as she was with criminals, and an entertainingly canny self-promoter who was, for a brief period, a public figure of considerable reknown—yet almost completely unsung today.

Like Strayer, Alice Clement was a gumshoe, but Clement spent her life working for the Chicago Police Department as the city's first female detective. And like Strayer, she made headlines; when I came across Clement's name—she doesn't have much of a legacy on the Web—I read through her press clippings, enthralled. And there were many: Clement was a woman of great integrity and intellectual independence, but she had a P.T. Barnum streak in her as well. Which is why I was surprised that very little had been written about her since her death.

Saint Katharine Drexel

From Philly Burbs:

She was an assertive Philadelphia debutante who dreamed of changing the world and had the family fortune to make it happen.

In a time before women could vote, she built more than 60 schools and founded Xavier University for blacks in the segregated South.

Katharine Drexel became a nun only after founding her own religious order to control how the money was spent. And 11 years after being named a Catholic saint, she is to take her place among the most famous women in American history.

Drexel will be inducted this weekend into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, N.Y.

Members of her order, based in Bensalem and founded in 1891, were overjoyed this week at the news, hoping it will allow Drexel’s life mission to inspire a new audience. The sisters will travel this weekend to Seneca Falls for ceremonies in the birthplace of the women’s suffrage movement.

“I think she would accept this award only if it gave her an opportunity to draw more attention to her mission for justice and the cries of the poor in our society today, especially among people of color and among the Native American communities,” said Sister Suchalski, president of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament.

Book: 50 Years - 50 Women

From the Daily Advance:

There is pride in Bill Sterritt’s voice. He’s the proud father a book. It’s a book that has been a labor of love for the former College of the Albemarle professor and administrator.

In fact, the book is a celebration of COA, and 50 women who made the community college possible since its inception 50 years ago. The book is “50 Years — 50 Women.”

It was a four-year project that Sterritt says was difficult because those woman who are alive were not willing to talk about themselves.

“They would say they hadn’t done anything but I would tell them they had,” says Sterritt.

The book will be published Sept. 14 and will be on hand for the 50th anniversary of the founding of COA. In the meantime, here are some excerpts from the book, a series of profiles about 50 women who made important contributions to the Albemarle region, and North Carolina.

Maids In America - The Help

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

The Help is already a big success. Having blitzed the US box office, it looks like making more money than the Meryl Streep hit Julie & Julia.

Much of the magic has been worked by its pedigree. It's an adaptation of Kathryn Stockett's bestseller about a group of black maids working in the households of Mississippi's middle class in 1963, one of the most volatile years of the civil rights movement - although the clamour and ferocity of the movement's battles with southern racism is heard only as distant thunder. Here, the front line is in the kitchen, the nursery - and the bathroom. Especially the bathroom.

The trouble begins when Hilly Holbrook (Bryce Dallas Howard), the bossiest and most brittle of Jackson, Mississippi's, fashionable young matrons, decides her black maid is to have a toilet of her own - or rather, an outhouse - so as to protect the family from any exotic diseases she may be carrying. And since Hilly is a trendsetter, the outhouse becomes a neighbourhood feature.

Anniversary of 19th Amendment

From Campbell Patch:

Today is the 91st anniversary of the 19th amendment to the US Constitution taking effect, giving women the right to vote. It's a milestone in the Women's Suffrage Movement in the United States and one that still resonates with modern women.

Three Female Conservationalists

From High Country News:

In the beginning, there was only water as far as the eye could see, according to the Chemehuevi Indians, who once traversed the rocky peaks and steep slopes of what is now Joshua Tree National Park. Ocean Woman, afloat on a woven boat with wolf, mountain lion and coyote, created the land by rubbing dead skin from her body and sprinkling it over the primeval sea.

In this ancient story, a woman creates the desert land that is protected by Joshua Tree National Park from her own body. In contemporary times, three women worked tirelessly to understand and protect what is now Joshua Tree National Park. This year, Joshua Tree National Park will celebrate its 75th Anniversary. I'd like to commemorate that history by honoring the contributions of three women who are key to its preservation.

Women Survivors of The Alamo

From My San Antonio:

In a July 10 column, reader Richard Villanueva asked if there were other female survivors of the siege and battle of the Alamo besides his great-great-great-grandmother Andrea Castañon Villanueva. Known as Madam Candelaria, the innkeeper's wife lived more than 100 years and became legendary for telling generations of reporters and tourists her stories of having nursed Texian defenders.

Like several figures associated with this engagement, Madam Candelaria is not considered by some historians to have been a survivor of the Alamo because she came and went at will, rather than being confined to the compound from Feb. 23, 1836, when Mexican troops first fired on the fort, through the March 6 battle.

However, historian Dora Elizondo Guerra counts her among seven women survivors, all related to men fighting with the Texians.

Guerra, a former librarian at the DRT Library on the Alamo grounds, recently researched the battle's noncombatants. Her list corresponds closely to the individuals named in the Handbook of Texas entry on Alamo noncombatants.

Book: Women & Slavery In America

From News Wise:

Women and Slavery in America: A Documentary History, edited by Catherine M. Lewis and J. Richard Lewis has been published by the University of Arkansas Press.

The edited collection offers readers an opportunity to examine the establishment, growth and evolution of slavery in the United States as it impacted women — enslaved and free, African American and white, wealthy and poor, northern and southern. The primary documents — including newspaper articles, broadsides, cartoons, pamphlets, speeches, photographs, memoirs, and editorials — are organized thematically and represent cultural, political, religious, economic and social perspectives on this dark and complex period in American history.

Wicked Women of Northeast Ohio

From Ohio.com:

There are wicked women everywhere. Though Northeast Ohio hasn't hosted the likes of Bonnie Parker or Lizzie Borden, we have had our fair share of notorious ladies, and in Wicked Women of Northeast Ohio, journalist Jane Ann Turzillo delves into the past of 10 murderesses and other female malefactors, most not covered in other books of this nature.

Turzillo looks into a series of deaths in Ashtabula, speculating that a woman named Jeanette McAdams was responsible for the deaths of her mother and five siblings between 1848 and 1851. She tells of ''Akron Mary,'' a thrice-married good-time girl who was a key witness in a Depression-era murder trial, and the owner of a '20s Cleveland vice club.

There are pictures of some of the wicked women; unfortunately, we don't get to see ''Black Adonis'' Walter McNair, whom ''Dusky Belle of Smokey Hollow'' Sarah Robinson shot in a lovers' quarrel in 1902. (We don't get to see her, either.) ''I oughta give him a second shot,'' she told a Massillon reporter. ''I oughta plugged him once more.''

Wicked Women of Northeast Ohio is part of a ''Wicked'' series offered by the History Press (there's also Wicked Albany and Wicked Indianapolis). The 110-page softcover costs $19.99 from History Press.

Execution of Mary Dyer

From The Examiner:

On this day, June 1, in 1660, American colonist Mary Dyer was hanged in Boston for violating Massachusetts Bay Colony law by preaching Quakerism.

Dyer was among a short list of outspoken women in the colony's earliest years. Before she became a Quaker, she and Anne Hutchinson were banished for preaching that God spoke directly to individuals rather than through the clergy.

Dyer, Hutchinson and their husbands started the colony of Rhode Island after being kicked out of Massachusetts in 1638.

In 1657, she returned to Massachusetts as a Quaker preacher and began spreading her gospel across New England. Dyer was repeatedly arrested and banished.

On May 31, 1660, she was convicted of defying the anti-Quaker law and was hanged the next day.

Willa Cather's Unfinished Novel

From Google:

A passage from Willa Cather's unfinished and purportedly destroyed novel "Hard Punishments" was among a new collection of writings and mementos unveiled Thursday at the world's largest archive devoted to the Pulitzer Prize-winning author.

Andrew Jewell, editor of the archive at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said when Cather died in 1947 the novel was not finished, and scholars believed the incomplete manuscript had been destroyed. An extensive collection left to the university by the author's nephew, Charles Cather, proves otherwise.

"For some reason, the story goes that she burned everything or (her partner) Edith Lewis burned everything," Jewell said. "That simply was not true."

Jewell described the passage, in Cather's hard-to-discern handwriting, as a conversation between a boy named Andre who had his tongue ripped out for the crime of blasphemy and a young, blind priest who gives the boy absolution. The scene takes place in medieval times in Avignon, France. At one point, the priest tells the boy to stop trying to talk or else he'll start to bleed again.

Historic Women of Waukesha

From Waukesha Patch:

History books about our area are replete with the men who made Waukesha famous, from spring prospectors like Col. Dunbar, musicians like Les Paul or politicians like Gov. William Barstow.

What is somewhat lacking, though, is information about Waukesha’s founding mothers, the women who helped make Waukesha what it is today.

In celebration of Mother’s Day, let’s consider a few women from different eras and walks of life who were important to our fair city.

The Woman in the Sunbonnet

From RGJ.com:

If it weren't for the courageous, long suffering pioneer women who left their families to come West in the mid1800s, Nevada's earliest history, particularly around Dayton, might have been lost.

Although Abner Blackburn, a pack train guide for Mormon pioneers, documented his adventures in the 1840s, including finding Nevada's first gold at the mouth of a nondescript desert canyon (Gold Cañon) in 1849; it was the ladies who recorded daily life on a 2,000-plus mile journey from home.

Historians say Lucena Pfuffer Parsons's diary is one of the most geographically accurate, comprehensive histories of the Western migration.

The hand-written journal of her 1850-1851 journey from Wisconsin to Salt Lake City, Gold Cañon, Utah Territory, (Nevada), onto Oakland, California, is preserved in the Stanford University Special Collections Library.

Lucena's diary lay hidden until her oldest daughter Ellen Maria, the first white child born in Oakland, Calif., discovered it in 1928.

Robin Oliveira - My Name Is Mary Sutter

From Buffalo Rising:

This book is a good suggestion for reading on the occasion starting this year of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War and a fitting end to March as Women's History Month. It is the story of one woman who starts out as a midwife and yearns to become a surgeon. Since this was an unlikely occupation for a woman in the mid-1800's, she was rejected time and again from medical school and eventually answers the call of reformer Dorothea Dix to become a nurse just as the Civil War is beginning. She was at first even turned down for that because of the strict social regulations of the time for women and men.

Mary sets off on her own to the front and apprentices herself to a doctor. The story of the Civil War from a medical standpoint unfolds from there. It is not light reading, but her personal story woven throughout exposes the reader to the full scale of how inadequately prepared both the North and South were for real battle, real deaths, and real lifelong injuries.