Herstory

Herstory – Determined Suffragettes

On March 3,1913, five thousand women gathered for a march in Washington, DC to call for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote. Surrounded by a large number of spectators, the women were jeered, jostled and violently attacked. The police did little to help. One hundred women were hospitalized that day.

Fifty years later, my grandmother, Ruth Bassett Lehman, would tell me about her experience in the march, perhaps declaring her determination: she, too, had been whacked with a billy club.

~Peggy Baker, Member LWVAB

Herstory – Nancy Hopkins

Nancy Hopkins received her undergraduate degree from Radcliffe College and her Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from Harvard. She studied DNA tumor virus at Cold Spring Harbor and when she joined the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1973 she turned her attention RNA tumor viruses. Later she developed a method for large scale insertional mutagenesis in zebrafish which greatly enhanced the usefulness of this model organism. Dr. Hopkins was very successful in getting funding for her research and internationally recognized in her field. Yet she found herself frequently battling for space, equipment, fair pay, and respect at MIT. Along with fifteen senior women faculty at MIT a complaint of gender discrimination was lodged. A committee was formed that documented a history of gender bias. The MIT administration acknowledged the findings, worked to change polices, and enjoined other leading research institutions to do the same. The Exceptions: Nancy Hopkins, MIT, and the Fight for Women in Science by Kate Zernike (who broke the discrimination story for the Boston Globe) is an account of a passionate scientist and champion for women.

~Suzanne Fisher, Member LWVAB

Herstory – Wilma Mankiller

Wilma Mankiller is the first woman elected Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, activist for Native American rights and women’s rights and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998. She was born in 1945 in Oklahoma; her ancestors had been forced to relocate from Tennessee in the “Trail of Tears and her own family was forced to relocate to San Francisco. Ms. Mankiller became an activist for native communities and women. She is represented on a U.S. quarter as part of the U.S. Mint’s American Women Quarters Program, which began in 2022 and will run through 2025. Mankiller: A Chief and Her People, her autobiography, was published in 1993. Ms. Mankiller died in 2010.

Herstory – Margaret Wise Brown

Margaret Wise Brown is beloved by children and the heroine of every parent looking for a reliable bedtime routine. She is the author of Good Night Moon (published in 1947) and numerous other children’s books including Runaway Bunny, the Noisy Book series, and Little Fur Family. Ms. Brown was born in New York City in 1910 and enrolled in a boarding school in Switzerland and private schools in New York and Massachusetts before getting her B.A in English at Hollins College. While she worked the Bank Street Experimental School in New York City, Ms. Brown began writing children’s books. Her inspirations were Gertrude Stein and the Banks Street teaching focus on the real world. She published 40 books in her life time and 29 were published after her death in 1952. She never married and never had any of her own children but continues to be a favorite of a legion of children. “In the great green room there was a ……goodnight stars, goodnight air, goodnight noises everywhere.” Can you find the mouse?

Suzanne Fisher, LWVAB Member

Herstory – Frances Albrier

Frances Albrier (1898-1987) (https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/frances-albrier) was the granddaughter of formerly enslaved people who spent her life as a community organizer and activist. As a member of the National Council of Negro Women, she was a champion of voter rights. The San Francisco chapter of the NCNW used the slogan “A Voteless People is a Hopeless People” to encourage voter registration and voter education. During the 1950s, she created the first Negro History Week displays in an Oakland department store window.

Linda Kinsinger, LWVAB Member

Herstory – Mabel Ping-Hua Lee

Mabel Ping-Hua Lee was a pathbreaking Chinese immigrant and prominent suffragist. She immigrated from China to New York City at the turn of the 20th century following her parents, who were teachers with the Baptist Church. In 1912 at age 16 Lee (on horseback!) helped lead a massive women’s suffrage parade across New York City, gaining coverage in The New York Times. She wrote articles and gave speeches on gender equality and women’s rights and worked to combat xenophobia toward Chinese people. Her activism was part of the statewide movement that culminated in 1917 with New York women being granted the right to vote. The discriminatory Chinese Exclusion Act barred Lee from becoming an American citizen and casting her own ballot for decades.

Herstory – Marian Wright Edelman

Born and raised in South Carolina, Marian Wright Edelman is an advocate for children, a lawyer and educator, and a human rights activist. She graduated from Spellman College and later went on to Yale. At Spellman in 1959 she became active in the Civil Rights Movement and worked closely with Dr. King. Then she put that same passion into propelling the rights of children to the forefront, including speaking before Congress. She started the Children’s Defense Fund and established Head Start in Mississippi. She became the first African American woman admitted to the Mississippi State Bar when she was the director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund in Jackson. In 1971 she was elected as the first Black woman on the Yale Board of Trustees. At 84 she still is a strong advocate for children and human rights.

Herstory – Mildred Ella (Babe) Didrikson Zaharias

Mildred Ella (Babe) Didrikson Zaharias was born of Norwegian immigrant parents in 1911 in Port Arthur, Texas. Her nickname after Babe Ruth was earned after she hit five homeruns in a childhood baseball game. She excelled not only in baseball but in basketball, track and field, and golf. At the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles, she set four world records, earned two gold medals and one silver while competing in 80-meter hurdles, javelin, high jump – the only track and field athlete (male or female) to win individual medals in running, throwing, and jumping events. In 1935 Babe turned her attention to golf; she won both the U.S. Women’s Amateur and the British Ladies Amateur tournaments. In 1938 she was the first woman to compete against men in the Los Angeles Open.

As a professional Babe dominated the Women’s Professional Golf Association and was a founding member of the Ladies Professional Golf Association. Babe died of complications of colon cancer in 1956 after serving as an advocate for cancer awareness.

Herstory – Florence Ryan

Most of the work that the LWV Asheville-Buncombe County does is funded through donations to the Florence Ryan Education Fund, named for an early member of our League chapter. Florence was born in 1896 in North Platte, Nebraska. Her undergraduate degree was from Bryn Mawr and she earned a masters at Smith College. She was an early suffragist and met Emmeline Parkhurst, leader of the suffragists in England. Florence also supported the Equal Rights Amendment. She moved to. Asheville in 1926 and worked as a psychiatric social worker. Florence was a member of the League of Women Voters, active in Planned Parenthood, and a founder of Meals on Wheels in Asheville. Florence Ryan gave this interview in 1991: https://www.newspapers.com/article/asheville-citizen-times-pah-florence-rya/15849914/; she died at the age of 99. We are inspired by her activism.

Obituary, Asheville Citizen-Times, February 1, 1994

Herstory – Rebecca Lee Crumpler (born Rebecca Davis)

Rebecca became the first black woman to earn an MD , in 1864, after going to New England Female Medicine College. The college, established in 1848, was the first to award MDs to women. This is remarkable that the school allowed Rebecca Crumpler to attend, since most medical schools barred all black people—both men and women—from attending.