Hidden Heroines in History

 At the beginning of March, Women’s History Month 2021, I was thinking about little-known women who have made important contributions to our society. I asked my critique group and several non-writer friends if they knew of any such women. They came up with many names, some of whom I had not heard about. Here I have whittled the list to a few who have impacted the world in various fields and historical periods.

Caroline Herschel - U.S. Public Domain

Caroline Herschel was born in Hanover, Germany on March 16, 1750. When Caroline was ten, she contracted typhus. This caused vision loss in her left eye and affected her growth. She reached a height of only four feet, three inches. Assuming she would never marry, her mother decided she should train to be a household servant. Her father, however, thought she should be educated. During her mother’s absences, he tutored Caroline individually and included her in her brothers’ lessons.

Her older brother William became a successful music teacher in Bath, England. In 1772, he brought Caroline to live with him and do the housekeeping. He tutored her in mathematics and trained her as a singer. The siblings gave public musical performances until 1782, when William accepted an appointment to the office of court astronomer to King George III. This position came about after William was credited with discovering the planet Uranus the year before.

While still keeping house for William, Caroline helped with his research by grinding and polishing mirrors for his telescope and executing the calculations related to his observations. Her interest in astronomy grew and she began making her own observations. On February 26, 1783, Caroline made her first discoveries, a nebula that was not previously recorded and a second companion of the Andromeda Galaxy.  In 1786, she became the first woman credited with discovering a comet. The following year, the king gave her an annual salary in her role as her brother’s assistant making her the world’s first professional female astronomer. Over the next ten years she discovered seven more comets.

After her brother’s death in 1822, she returned to Hanover, where she continued her astronomical work, verified and confirmed William’s findings, and produced a catalogue of 2500 nebulae. Her work had gained her the respect and admiration of the general public as well as the scientific  community. In 1828, at the age of 77, the Royal Astronomical Society awarded her a Gold Medal for revising and reorganizing their work. No other woman would again be awarded a Gold Medal until 1996.

Caroline died in Hanover on January 8, 1848. The C. Herschel crater on the moon is named after her, continuing her legacy into the twenty-first century.

 

Susan La Flesche Picotte 

Nebraska State Historical Society Photograph Collections

Susan La Flesche was born on June 17, 1865 to Chief Iron Eyes (Joseph La Flesche) and his wife, One Woman (Mary), on the Omaha Reservation in northeastern Nebraska. Her father was a strong advocate for education. Susan attended school on the reservation until she was fourteen. After a brief period of home-schooling, she was sent to the Elizabeth Institute for Young Ladies in New Jersey. In addition to her native tongue, she was fluent in English, French, and Otoe. She returned home at age seventeen and taught at the Quaker Mission School on the reservation for two years. A co-worker encouraged her to complete her education and earn a medical degree.

When she was twenty-one, Susan entered the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Philadelphia, one of the foremost institutions for higher education of non-white students in the country. The physician there urged her to attend the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, which she did, graduating as valedictorian on March 14, 1889. Susan was the first Native American to earn a medical degree. As a child, she had seen an Omaha woman die because the local white doctor refused to treat her. Later, Susan stated that this heart-breaking experience had inspired her to become a physician so that she could care for her people. She returned to the Omaha Reservation and assumed her position as physician at the Agency Indian School, where she taught students about health and hygiene in addition to providing medical care. Although she was not obligated to treat people outside the school, she made house calls and cared for the sick in the surrounding area. She became a widely trusted community leader.

 In June 1894, she married Henry Picotte, a Sioux man from the Yankton agency. They had two sons. Susan continued to practice medicine after the birth of her children. In her practice, she treated both Omaha and white patients in the town of Bancroft and surrounding communities. Sometimes she even took her children along on house calls.  She worked to teach her community about preventive medicine and other public health issues such as food sanitation and efforts to prevent the spread of tuberculosis. Alcoholism was a serious problem on the Omaha reservation, including Susan’s husband. Susan advocated temperance and struggled against disreputable whites who used alcohol to take advantage of Omahas while making land deals. She also worked on behalf of community members in their struggles with the bureaucracy regarding land interests.

Throughout her adult life, Susan had worked for the building of a hospital. In 1913, the first privately funded hospital on a reservation was completed on the Omaha tribal land. It was later named in Susan’s honor, and in 1993 the Dr. Susan LaFlesche Picotte Memorial Hospital, Walthill, Nebraska, was declared a U.S. National Historic Landmark. Susan died of bone cancer on September 18, 1915 at the age of fifty.

Shirley Chisholm
Library of Congress

Shirley Anita St. Hill was born on November 30, 1924 in Brooklyn, New York. Her father was an immigrant from Guyana, and her mother was an immigrant from Barbados. She graduated from Brooklyn Girls’ High and Brooklyn College, then worked as a nursery school teacher.

In 1949, she married Conrad Chisholm, a private investigator. She earned a master’s degree from Columbia University in early childhood education in 1951. By 1960, she was a consultant to the New York City Division of Day Care. Having encountered discrimination based on her race and her gender, she became active locally in the League of Women Voters, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Urban League to counter inequality. She also joined the Democratic Party. 

Shirley ran for the New York Assembly in 1964 and became the second African American in the New York State Legislature, where she served through 1968. Her accomplishments included the granting of unemployment benefits to domestic workers and a program that gave underprivileged students the opportunity to attend college while taking remedial education classes. Both programs continue today. In 1968, she won a seat in the House of Representatives, becoming the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress. She represented New York's 12th congressional district for seven terms from 1969 to 1983, introducing more than 50 pieces of legislation. Throughout her career, she fought for racial and gender equality, tried to improve conditions for the poor, and advocated for ending the Vietnam War.  

Her autobiography, Unbossed and Unbought, was published in 1970. It chronicled her first-hand account of her journey from her childhood in Brooklyn to her position as the first Black Congresswoman. In it she wrote, “Our representative democracy is not working because the Congress that is supposed to represent the voters does not respond to their needs. I believe the chief reason for this is that it is ruled by a small group of old men.”

In 1972, Shirley became the first Black candidate to seek a major party's nomination for President of the United States, and the first woman to run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. Due to discrimination, she was blocked from participating in televised primary debates and, after taking legal action, was allowed to make just one speech. However, she garnered support of students, women, and minorities, entering twelve primaries and winning 10% of the total delegates to the Democratic Convention. While she did not become the presidential candidate, she continued to serve in the House of Representatives.

     Conrad and Shirley divorced in 1977. She kept the last name of Chisholm in her professional endeavors even after she married Arthur Hardwick Jr., a New York state legislator, She retired from Congress in 1983, taught at Mount Holyoke College and co-founded the National Political Congress of Black Women. Shirley Chisholm died on January 1, 2005 in Florida. President Barack Obama awarded her a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015.

 

Maryam Mirzakhani
National Science Foundation

Maryam Mirzakhani was born on May 12, 1977 in Tehran, Iran. She attended an all-girls high school and in 1994 she became the first Iranian woman to win a gold medal at the International Mathematical Olympiad. She repeated the achievement the following year. This recognition of her genius enabled her to pursue a career in pure mathematics, an opportunity rarely accorded to Iranian women. While attending the Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, she was involved in a serious accident when a bus she was riding in fell off a cliff. She was one of the few survivors.

In 1999, she earned her Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from Sharif University. That year, she published Elementary Number Theory, Challenging Problems in Farsi with friend and fellow student, Roya Beheshti. While at the university, the American Mathematical Society recognized Maryam’s work, and she traveled to the United States for graduate study at Harvard University. In her doctoral thesis, she connected and solved two long-standing mathematical problems. She was awarded her PhD in 2004.

She accepted a position as assistant professor at Princeton University and as a research fellow at the Clay Mathematics Institute. Soon after, she joined the faculty at Stanford University in California, where she was recognized for her work in the fields of hyperbolic geometry, topology and dynamics. In 2008, she became a full professor at Stanford.

Also in 2008, Maryam married Jan Vondrák, a Czech theoretical computer scientist and applied mathematician. They had a daughter named Anahita.

Working alone and with colleagues, Maryam proved several theories related to simple and complex geodesics, tying together fields including geometry, topology and dynamical systems. In an interview, she characterized her process this way: “It is like being lost in a jungle and trying to use all the knowledge that you can gather to come up with some new tricks, and with some luck you might find a way out.”

On August 13, 2014, Maryam was awarded the Fields Medal. Presented every four years, the Fields Medal is the most prestigious award in mathematics, akin to a Nobel Prize. Maryam was the first and, to date, the only woman to be honored with this recognition since its inception in 1936.

After a four-year battle with breast cancer, Maryam died July 14, 2017. She was 40 years old.

Among the many honors and tributes were accorded to her after her death were having an asteroid and a micro-satellite named in her memory, a documentary featuring her and her work, and recognition by the United Nations as one of seven female scientists who have shaped the world. Beginning this year, the Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prize will award $50,000 to outstanding women in the field of mathematics who completed their PhDs within the past two years.

Through the millennia, women have made major contributions that have gone largely unrecognized. Hopefully, in the future, our society will do a better job of acknowledging women’s achievements.

 Ann Markim

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Crusader for Justice: Ida B. Wells

     Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s name came up over and over as I researched the history of the women’s suffrage movement and the history of late 19^th and early 20^th century America. Although I haven’t included her as an actual character in a novel, I have referred to her in many of my writings. In these waning days of 2021’s Black History Month, I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce you to one of the African American women I most admire.

     Ida Bell Wells was born into slavery on July 16, 1862 in Holly Springs, Mississippi, as the Civil War was raging. She was one of eight children. After the war, her parents became active in Reconstruction Era politics. They recognized the importance of education and enrolled young Ida in Shaw College (later Rust College) in Holly Springs, but she was expelled after starting a dispute with the college president.

     When Ida was sixteen, both of her parents and her infant brother died in the 1878 yellow fever epidemic. She convinced a nearby school administrator that she was 18 in order to win a job as a teacher in a Black elementary school. With the help of friends and other family members, she and her paternal grandmother were able to keep the rest of her siblings together.

     In 1882, after her grandmother had a stroke and one of her sisters died, Ida’s brothers found work as carpentry apprentices. She and her remaining sisters moved to Memphis, Tennessee to live with their aunt. There, Ida worked as a teacher and attended Fisk University, Lemoyne-Owen College and graduated from Oberlin College in Ohio in 1884

     After college, she continued to teach school in Memphis and began writing articles attacking Jim Crow policies under the pen name, “Iola.” A local newspaper, the Free Speech and Headlight, invited her to write articles for them in 1889. She refused unless she was made an equal partner with the two male owners. They agreed and she bought a one-third interest in the enterprise. There she wrote about racial and political issues while continuing to teach at the elementary school. She was fired from her teaching job in1891 for being an outspoken critic of the conditions in the segregated schools.

     The 1892 lynching of a friend and his two business associates prompted Ida to investigate and collect information on similar cases. She traveled around the United States and in Britain, giving lectures on the horrific practice, especially in the South, of lynching Black men.  During this time, she also published articles and pamphlets condemning lynchings.  One of her editorials about the circumstances of her friend’s case enraged local whites, who mobbed her office and burned down her press. Luckily, she was in New York at the time or she might not have survived. Subsequently, she stayed in the north due to unrelenting death threats, and a few months later she moved to Chicago.

     There she met Ferdinand Barnett, an attorney and journalist who had founded Chicago’s first Black newspaper, The Conservator. He was also an established activist in their shared passion for civil rights. They married in 1895. Ida was one of the first American women to keep her maiden name. 

     In addition to Ferdinand’s two children from a previous marriage, the couple had four together. Throughout her life, Ida balanced her career in social activism with her family. She established the first kindergarten in Chicago in her local church, prioritizing Black children for admission.

     In addition to her crusade for racial equality, she worked tirelessly for the women’s rights movement. She organized the first civic club for African American women in Chicago and participated in the meeting that founded the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs.

                                                                

      Ida was strongly committed to the campaign for women’s suffrage. She believed that women should be enfranchised, but she also saw the vote as a way for Black women to elect African Americans, regardless of gender, to influential political offices. A long-time member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, Ida attended the 1913 woman’s suffrage parade in Washington, D.C. Fearing that many white Southern women would refuse to march with Black women, the organizers decided that the African American women should march in the back.

      Refusing to follow this directive, Ida stood on the sidelines of the parade route. When the unit from Illinois approached, she stepped into the street and marched with the women of her state’s suffrage delegation.

     The U.S. government labeled her a dangerous “race agitator” and placed her under surveillance during World War I. Despite the risk, she continued traveling the country and writing articles in pursuit of civil rights. Throughout the 1920s, she pursued Urban reform in Chicago and participated in Republican party politics. However, she was disappointed by the Hoover administration’s support of segregation. In 1930, she ran as an independent for the Illinois Senate but was defeated.

     Ida began writing her autobiography in 1928 but was unable to finish it before she passed away on March 25, 1931. Her autobiography was edited by her daughter and published posthumously in 1970 as Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells.

 Ann Markim

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The Tide Turns

 

     Alice Paul, Lucy Burns, and members of the National Woman’s Party (NWP) continued to pursue suffrage, despite U.S. entry into World War I. They maintained their peaceful picketing of the White House and the U.S. Capitol, but the rhetoric denouncing Wilson’s behavior grew harsher. At the same time, the public sentiment was less tolerant of government criticism during wartime.

     On June 20, 1917, NWP members met Russian envoys with a banner proclaiming the United States was a democracy in name only. An angry mob tore the banner to pieces. The women continued to stand in silent protest. Two days later Lucy Burns and Katherine Morey were arrested for picketing, but were never brought to trial.

     Over the following days and weeks, more protesters were arrested. Because peaceful picketing was not against the law, they were charged with “obstructing traffic” even though they stood quietly near the White House fence and it was the crowd of onlookers who were actually obstructing sidewalk traffic. On June 27, six women were sentenced to three days in District jail after refusing to pay $25 fines for obstructing traffic. They were the first of 168 suffragists to serve prison time for picketing.

      The demonstrators carried a new banner on August 14, referring to the President as “Kaiser Wilson,” comparing him to German emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II and accusing Wilson of being a despot over women who lacked a voice in government. An outraged crowd destroyed the banners, attacked the protesters and fired a gunshot at NWP headquarters. The police did little to intervene.

     After three days of brutal attacks by mobs and the police, six women were arrested and sentenced to 60 days in the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia. Other NWP members continued their demonstrations and more were arrested.

     In mid-September, Senator Andrieus Aristieus Jones, chair of the Senate Woman Suffrage Committee, visited the Occoquan Workhouse and verified reports of improper treatment of the suffrage prisoners. The next day, his committee reported out the suffrage bill that had been languishing for six months. On September 24, the House of Representatives created a separate Woman Suffrage Committee

     Imprisoned picketer Lucy Burns, led an effort demanding suffragists be treated as political prisoners rather than criminals. She threatened a hunger strike if this demand was not met. A petition was secretly circulated among inmates. They smuggled it out and the demand presented to commissioners of District of Columbia. Every woman who signed the petition was put in solitary confinement.

     On October 20, Alice Paul was arrested. Two days later she was sentenced to seven months in Occoquan Workhouse. This was the longest sentence handed down.

     Paul and Rose Winslow began a hunger strike on November 5, after demands for political prisoner status were rejected. A week later, they were subjected to force-feeding three times a day for next three weeks. Paul was separated from other suffrage prisoners and transferred to psychiatric ward at District jail for “evaluation” in an effort to intimidate and discredit her. William Alanson White, the superintendent of St. Elizabeths (psychiatric) Hospital, interviewed her in a vain attempt to have her committed. White found Paul to be sane and “perfectly calm, yet determined.”

     New York women won the right to vote on November 6, 1917. The state was the first in the East to grant women’s suffrage.

     A large demonstration was held on November 10 to protest the treatment of Paul and the other suffrage prisoners. Thirty-one pickets were arrested, including Burns, who had just been released from prison. The women were sentenced to varying terms in the District Jail. Five days later they were transferred to Occoquan where the superintendent had just returned from a White House meeting of district commissioners.

     He summarily dismissed the suffragists’ demands for political prisoner status. Moments later, guards burst into the holding area. They carried, pushed, threw and beat the women into their cells and told them to remain silent. Lucy Burns started to call role in order to assure that all of the women were alive and conscious. Guards demanded she stop. When she continued, they handcuffed her to the bars of her cell all night with her arms above her head. This became known as the “Night of Terror.” The next day, 16 women went on a hunger strike. Nearly a week later, Occoquan officials begin force-feeding Lucy Burns and Dora Lewis followed later by Elizabeth McShane, as they were considered leaders in the women’s resistance.   

Lucy Burns

     On November 23, Burns and her fellow prisoners were taken to a small Alexandria, Virginia courtroom. The press and public were shocked by the bruised and sickly appearance of the women. Attorneys for the suffragists successfully argued for returning the women to the District Jail. A few days after their return to Washington, D.C., government authorities unconditionally released Paul, Burns, and the rest of the suffragists in response to increasing public pressure and the likelihood that their convictions would be overturned on appeal. In March, 2018, the U.S. federal appeals court declared the arrests and detainment of all White House suffrage pickets was unconstitutional.

     A vote on the suffrage amendment was scheduled in the House of Representatives for January 10, 1918. Under tremendous political pressure, Wilson publicly declared his support for the amendment the night before the vote.  The House passed the measure with 274 ‘yeas’ to 136 “nays.”                               

     Over the next six months, the NWP embarked on a number of efforts to win the vote.  Many former prisoners participated in a speaking tour called the ‘Prison Special,’ while others intensely lobbied the Senate for passage of the amendment. The national committees of both the Democratic and Republican parties endorsed the amendment.

     The Senate scheduled a vote on the suffrage bill for May 10, but opponents forced a postponement to June 27. The opposition threatened a filibuster, again delaying the vote.      

     On August 6, the NWP held a meeting in Lafayette Park, Washington, D.C. Approximately 100 suffragists demonstrated in protest to the Senate’s inaction on suffrage amendment. Forty-eight women were arrested and released on bail, including Paul and Burns. Subsequent demonstrations led to more arrests. The women were tried, convicted and sentenced to the old District workhouse. Again denied political prisoner status, the women began hunger strikes. After a few days, the women were released before completing their sentences.

     Fall brought campaigns for the mid-term elections. The NWP opposed election of all Democratic senators, especially those in New Hampshire and New Jersey, where anti-suffrage candidates were running.

     New Mexico’s Senator Jones again introduced federal woman suffrage amendment in the Senate on September 26. After several days of debate, President Wilson addressed Senate asking for passage of the federal woman suffrage amendment as a war measure.

     On October 1, the Senate defeated the amendment, failing to achieve the required two-thirds majority by two votes. Supporters quickly added it to the Senate calendar for reconsideration.                   

     The NWP began picketing with banners in front of the U.S. Capitol and Senate Office Building on October 7. Demonstrators were arrested daily and released without charges.  Although harassed by unruly crowds, as well as antagonistic police, the pickets continued throughout October and November.

     World War I ended on November 11, 1918. On December 2, President Wilson urged passage of the federal woman suffrage amendment in his annual address to Congress, while police arrested NWP protesters outside.

     On February 10, 1919, the Senate again defeated the federal suffrage amendment, this time by one vote. NWP members met President Wilson in Boston upon his return from Europe on February 24. They carried banners reminding him of his pledge to support the suffrage amendment and lobbied him to pressure the Senate to pass the amendment before the March recess. The Senate failed to do so.

     The House of Representatives again passed the federal woman suffrage amendment on May 21, this time by a vote of 304 yeas to 89 nays, 42 more than the required two-thirds majority.

     On June 4, the Senate finally passed the federal suffrage amendment (19th Amendment) by vote of 56 yeas to 25 nays.

     The NWP launched a campaign to obtain ratification by 36 state legislatures–the required three-fourths majority at that time. With the war now over, the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) also worked for the ratification of the 19^th Amendment. Throughout the rest of 1919 and early 1920, 35 states ratified the amendment. But then months passed with no additional ratifications.                                 

     On August 9, 1920, Tennessee Governor William Roberts convened a special session of the state legislature to consider ratification. For the next 10 days, suffragists and antisuffragists waged intense lobbying efforts and public relations campaigns. On August 18 Tennessee ratified the 19th Amendment. Antisuffragists tried to overturn the vote, but after six days of legal wrangling, the governor signed the certificate of ratification.

     On August 26, the 19^th Amendment was signed into law—in time for the 1920 election.

     Millions of women across many generations fought for suffrage. To honor their sacrifices, we must make our voices heard. One hundred years later, the battle for the right to vote continues. Please cast your ballot in the 2020 election.

Ann Markim

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