The Times They Are A Changing

March is Women’s History Month. When I was in college I took a U.S. Women’s History class. It was an option for U.S. History, which I felt through grammar and high school I’d had enough of. It became one of my most treasured classes as I learned about the women I’d both heard of and hadn’t heard of before. It seemed as though the courageous acts of women through history had been pushed aside and trampled on, in our history books, to make way for the deeds of men and their wars.

Thank goodness in the years since then many of the deeds of these women have come to light. The times they are a changing.

FIRSTS

Elizabeth Blackwell - first woman to receive a medical degree in 1849, at Geneva Medical College.

Harriet Tubman - first woman to run an underground railroad, helping slaves escape in 1850.

Susan B. Anthony - Cofounded the first U.S. women’s suffrage organization, 1869

Ann Teresa Mathews - first invention patent, issued to her husband (for cleaning/curing corn), 1715.

Mary Kathrine Goddard - first woman postmaster, 1775.

Betsy Ross - first person to be an American flag maker, 1776.

Lucy Hobbs - first woman to graduate dental school, 1866.

Francis Elizabeth Willard - first woman to become a college president (Evanston College), 1871.

Victoria Chaflin Woodhull - first woman presidential candidate, 1872.

Clare Barton - American Red Cross founder, 188.1

Suzanna Madora - first woman mayor (Argonia, Kansas), 1887.

Blanche Scott - first woman to fly an airplane, 1910.

Jeannette Rankin - first woman in Congress in the U.S. House of Representatives (Montana), 1916.

Florence Allen - first woman judge, 1920.

Hallie Ferguson - first woman governor (Texas), 1924.

Jane Adams - first woman receiving a Nobel Peace Prize, 1931.

Amelia Earhart - first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, solo, 1932.

Pearl S. Buck - (my favorite writer since the 6th grade), first woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, 1935.

Georgia Ness Clark - first woman U.S. Treasurer, 1949.

Muriel Siebert - first woman seated at the New York Stock Exchange, 1967.

Janice Lee York Romary - first woman at the Olympic games to carry the U.S. flag, 1968.

Mary Clarke - first woman U.S. Army major general, 1978.

Sandra Day O’Connor - first woman justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, 1981.

Joan Benoit - first woman Olympic marathon winner, 1984.

Ann Bancroft - first woman to walk to the North Pole, 1986.

Halle Berry - first African-American woman to win a “best actress” Oscar, 2002.

Condoleezza Rice - first African-American woman to become U.S. Secretary of State, 2005.

Nancy Pelosi - first woman Speaker of the House, 2007.

WELL BEHAVED WOMEN SELDOM MAKE HISTORY - TOTE AND T-SHIRT

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