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Grace Brewster Murray Hopper (1906-1992) was a computer pioneer and naval officer. She earned a master's degree (1930) and a Ph.D. (1934) in mathematics from Yale. Hopper is best known for her trailblazing contributions to computer programming, software development, and the design and implementation of programming languages. A maverick and an innovator, she enjoyed long and influential careers in the U.S. Navy and the computer industry.
Early Life and Education
The daughter of Walter Fletcher Murray (Yale B.A. 1894, Phi Beta Kappa) and Mary Campbell Van Horne, Grace Brewster Murray was born in 1906 in New York City. Her father owned an insurance company. In 1928, she graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Vassar College with degrees in mathematics and physics. After receiving her master's degree in mathematics from Yale, Hopper began teaching mathematics at Vassar while pursuing her doctorate. She completed her Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale in 1934. During a one-year sabbatical from Vassar, Hopper studied with the famous mathematician Richard Courant at New York University.
Service in the Navy
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the United States' entry into World War II, Hopper decided to join the war effort. She was initially rejected because of her age and diminutive size, but she persisted and eventually received a waiver to join the U.S. Naval Reserve (Women's Reserve). In December 1943, she took a leave of absence from Vassar, where she was an associate professor, and completed sixty days of intensive training at the Midshipmen's School for Women at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.

After receiving her commission (lieutenant junior grade), Hopper was assigned to the Bureau of Ships Computation Project at Harvard University. There, she joined a team working on the IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, better known as the MARK I, the first electromechanical computer in the United States. Under the guidance of Howard Aiken, who had developed the MARK I, Hopper and her colleagues worked on top-secret calculations essential to the war effort-computing rocket trajectories, creating range tables for new anti-aircraft guns, and calibrating minesweepers. One of the first three "coders" (now known as programmers), Hopper also wrote the 561-page user manual for the MARK I.

After the war ended, Hopper turned down a full professorship at Vassar to continue her work with computers. In 1946, she left active service when the Navy declined her request for a regular commission due to her age, but she remained a naval reservist. From 1946 to 1949, she continued to work on the MARK II and MARK III computers under Navy contracts. At the end of her three-year term as a research fellow, she left Harvard because there were no permanent positions for women.
A Programming Pioneer
In 1949, Hopper joined the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation in Philadelphia as a senior mathematician. The company, which was soon acquired by Remington Rand and then Sperry Rand, had built the first electronic computer (ENIAC) under army contracts. In the early 1950s Eckert-Mauchly was developing the Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC I), the first commercial electronic computer. While working on the UNIVAC I and II, Hopper pioneered the idea of automatic programming and explored new ways to use the computer to code. In 1952 she developed the first compiler called A-0, which translated mathematical code into machine-readable code-an important step toward creating modern programming languages.

In 1953, Hopper proposed the idea of writing programs in words, rather than symbols, but she was told her idea would not work. Nevertheless, she continued working on an English-language compiler, and in 1956 her team was running FLOW-MATIC, the first programming language to use word commands. Unlike FORTRAN or MATH-MATIC, which used mathematical symbols, FLOW-MATIC used regular English words and was designed for data processing purposes. She also demonstrated how programs could be written in word-based languages other than English.

Hopper's project of creating word-based languages helped expand the community of computer users. Making computers accessible to people without an engineering or math background was especially important at a time when computer companies were marketing their products to the private sector. By developing programs that used word commands rather than symbols, Hopper believed that more people would feel comfortable using computers, particularly for business applications such as payroll. In a 1980 interview Hopper explained, "What I was after in beginning English language [programming] was to bring another whole group of people able to use the computer easily...I kept calling for more user-friendly languages. Most of the stuff we get from academicians, computer science people, is in no way adapted to people."[i]

As the number of computer languages proliferated, the need for a standardized business language increased. In 1959, Hopper took part in the Conference on Data Systems Languages (CODASYL), the goal of which was to develop a common business language that could be used across industries and sectors. The finished product was COBOL, short for "common business-oriented language." Although many people contributed to this effort, Hopper is widely recognized for her work designing COBOL, developing compilers for it, and encouraging its broad adoption. By the 1970s, COBOL was the "most extensively used computer language" in the world.[ii]

Throughout her career in the computer industry, Hopper remained a Navy reservist. In 1966, age restrictions forced her to retire from the Navy as a commander. She later called it "the saddest day of my life."[iii] Just months later, however, she was recalled to active service to help standardize the Navy's multiple computer languages and programs. She retired from UNIVAC, a division of Sperry Rand, in 1971.

Nicknamed "Amazing Grace" by her subordinates, Hopper remained on active duty for nineteen years. She retired from the Navy as a rear admiral at the age of 79-the oldest serving officer in the U.S. armed forces. That same year she went to work as a senior consultant in public relations at the Digital Equipment Corporation, where she worked until her death in 1992. Hopper was buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery.

Rear Admiral Hopper was the recipient of more than forty honorary degrees, and many scholarships, professorships, awards, and conferences are named in her honor. In 1972 she received Yale's Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal awarded to outstanding alumni. In 1973, she became the first woman and the first American to become a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society. In 1991, President George Bush awarded Hopper the National Medal of Technology "for her pioneering accomplishments in the development of computer programming languages that simplified computer technology and opened the door to a significantly larger universe of users;" she was the first woman to receive the nation's highest technology award as an individual.[iv] In 1996, the Navy commissioned the USS Hopper, a guided military destroyer. In 2016, Hopper posthumously received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, in recognition of her "lifelong leadership role in the field of computer science."[v]
A Gifted Teacher and Communicator
Hopper was not only a brilliant mathematician and computer scientist; she was also a gifted teacher and communicator. Although she left her faculty position at Vassar to join the Navy, teaching remained an important part of her life. In 1959, Hopper was a visiting and then adjunct lecturer at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. In the 1960s and 1970s, she taught and lectured at Penn, George Washington University, and for the U.S. Naval Reserve. Outside of academia, she organized myriad workshops and conferences to promote the understanding of computers and programming. In her remarks upon accepting the National Medal of Technology, Hopper said, "If you ask me what accomplishment I'm most proud of, the answer would be all the young people I've trained over the years; that's more important than writing the first compiler."[vi]

Hopper's talents as a teacher also helped her communicate with a wide variety of audiences-technical experts, engineers, business leaders, data processors, young people, and the general public. She helped persuade business clients of the value of adopting new technologies, and her biographer Kurt Beyer describes her as a "spokesperson for the evolving computer industry" in the 1950s.[vii] Hopper played a similar role for the Navy. From 1977 to 1986, she was "the Navy's foremost propagandist for its computer program as...[its] representative to learned societies, industry associations, and technical symposia."[viii] In the last years of her life, she did similar public relations work for the Digital Equipment Corporation. Throughout her career, Hopper placed great value on being able to explain complex situations and problems to many different audiences. "I've come to feel that there is no use doing anything unless you can communicate," she said in a 1980 interview.[ix]
A Visionary Trailblazer
Hopper came of age at a time of unusual opportunity for women. A relatively high number of women were receiving doctorates in the 1920s and 1930s-numbers that would not be matched again until the 1980s.[x] World War II also created opportunities for women to enter the workforce in greater numbers. Nonetheless, her success in a male-dominated field and in male-dominated organizations, including the U.S. Navy, was exceptional.

An optimist as well as a visionary, Hopper celebrated the potential of computers. "I think we consistently...underestimate what we can do with computers if we really try," she once said.[xi] In a 1983 interview on "60 Minutes," host Morely Safer asked if the computer revolution was over. Hopper replied, "No, we're only at the beginning...We've got the Model-T." Until the end of her life, Rear Admiral Grace Hopper looked forward with confidence to new technologies and their problem-solving capabilities.
Further Reading
Kurt W. Beyer, Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009).

Kathleen Broome Williams, Grace Hopper: Admiral of the Cyber Sea (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2004).

[vii] Beyer, Grace Hopper, 11.

[ix] Pantages/Hopper Oral History, 26.

[xi] Pantages/Hopper Oral History, 48.

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Grace Brewster Murray Hopper (1906-1992) was a computer pioneer and naval officer. She earned a master's degree (1930) and a Ph.D. (1934) in mathematics from Yale. Hopper is best known for her trailblazing contributions to computer programming, software development, and the design and implementation of programming languages.

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Edited By Arlisha R. Norwood, NWHM Fellow | 2017

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Grace Murray Hopper helped to outline the fundamental operating principles of computing machines. Learn more at womenshistory.org.

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Admiral Grace Murray Hopper: When Women Were Computers

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Admiral Grace Murray Hopper: When Women Were Computers

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Admiral Grace Murray Hopper: When Women Were Computers | The National WWII Museum | New Orleans

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Naval Reserve officer Grace Hopper was a pioneer of computing during World War II, laying the foundation for today’s technology.

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The breathtaking courage of Harriet Tubman

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The breathtaking courage of Harriet Tubman

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The breathtaking courage of Harriet Tubman - Janell Hobson

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When Was Harriet Tubman Born?

Harriet Tubman was born around 1820 on a plantation in Dorchester County, Maryland. Her parents, Harriet ("Rit") Green and Benjamin Ross, named her Araminta Ross and called her "Minty."

Rit worked as a cook in the plantation's "big house," and Benjamin was a timber worker. Araminta later changed her first name to Harriet in honor of her mother.

Harriet had eight brothers and sisters, but the realities of slavery eventually forced many of them apart, despite Rit's attempts to keep the family together. When Harriet was five years old, she was rented out as a nursemaid where she was whipped when the baby cried, leaving her with permanent emotional and physical scars.

Around age seven Harriet was rented out to a planter to set muskrat traps and was later rented out as a field hand. She later said she preferred physical plantation work to indoor domestic chores.

A Good Deed Gone Bad

Harriet's desire for justice became apparent at age 12 when she spotted an overseer about to throw a heavy weight at a fugitive. Harriet stepped between the enslaved person and the overseer-the weight struck her head.

She later said about the incident, "The weight broke my skull ... They carried me to the house all bleeding and fainting. I had no bed, no place to lie down on at all, and they laid me on the seat of the loom, and I stayed there all day and the next."

Harriet's good deed left her with headaches and narcolepsy the rest of her life, causing her to fall into a deep sleep at random. She also started having vivid dreams and hallucinations which she often claimed were religious visions (she was a staunch Christian). Her infirmity made her unattractive to potential slave buyers and renters.

Escape from Slavery

In 1840, Harriet's father was set free and Harriet learned that Rit's owner's last will had set Rit and her children, including Harriet, free. But Rit's new owner refused to recognize the will and kept Rit, Harriet and the rest of her children in bondage.

Around 1844, Harriet married John Tubman, a free Black man, and changed her last name from Ross to Tubman. The marriage was not good, and the knowledge that two of her brothers-Ben and Henry-were about to be sold provoked Harriet to plan an escape.

Harriet Tubman: Underground Railroad

On September 17, 1849, Harriet, Ben and Henry escaped their Maryland plantation. The brothers, however, changed their minds and went back. With the help of the Underground Railroad, Harriet persevered and traveled 90 miles north to Pennsylvania and freedom.

Tubman found work as a housekeeper in Philadelphia, but she wasn't satisfied living free on her own-she wanted freedom for her loved ones and friends, too.

She soon returned to the south to lead her niece and her niece's children to Philadelphia via the Underground Railroad. At one point, she tried to bring her husband John north, but he'd remarried and chose to stay in Maryland with his new wife.

Fugitive Slave Act

The 1850 Fugitive Slave Act allowed fugitive and freed workers in the north to be captured and enslaved. This made Harriet's role as an Underground Railroad conductor much harder and forced her to lead enslaved people further north to Canada, traveling at night, usually in the spring or fall when the days were shorter.

She carried a gun for both her own protection and to "encourage" her charges who might be having second thoughts. She often drugged babies and young children to prevent slave catchers from hearing their cries.

Over the next 10 years, Harriet befriended other abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass, Thomas Garrett and Martha Coffin Wright, and established her own Underground Railroad network. It's widely reported she emancipated 300 enslaved people; however, those numbers may have been estimated and exaggerated by her biographer Sarah Bradford, since Harriet herself claimed the numbers were much lower.

Nevertheless, it's believed Harriet personally led at least 70 enslaved people to freedom, including her elderly parents, and instructed dozens of others on how to escape on their own. She claimed, "I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger."

Harriet Tubman's Civil War Service

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Harriet found new ways to fight slavery. She was recruited to assist fugitive enslaved people at Fort Monroe and worked as a nurse, cook and laundress. Harriet used her knowledge of herbal medicines to help treat sick soldiers and fugitive enslaved people.

In 1863, Harriet became head of an espionage and scout network for the Union Army. She provided crucial intelligence to Union commanders about Confederate Army supply routes and troops and helped liberate enslaved people to form Black Union regiments.

Though just over five feet tall, she was a force to be reckoned with, although it took over three decades for the government to recognize her military contributions and award her financially.

Harriet Tubman's Later Years

After the Civil War, Harriet settled with family and friends on land she owned in Auburn, New York. She married former enslaved man and Civil War veteran Nelson Davis in 1869 (her husband John had died 1867) and they adopted a little girl named Gertie a few years later.

Harriet had an open-door policy for anyone in need. She supported her philanthropy efforts by selling her home-grown produce, raising pigs and accepting donations and loans from friends. She remained illiterate yet toured parts of the northeast speaking on behalf of the women's suffrage movement and worked with noted suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony.

In 1896, Harriet purchased land adjacent to her home and opened the Harriet Tubman Home for Aged and Indigent Colored People. The head injury she suffered in her youth continued to plague her and she endured brain surgery to help relieve her symptoms. But her health continued to deteriorate and eventually forced her to move into her namesake rest home in 1911.

Pneumonia took Harriet Tubman's life on March 10, 1913, but her legacy lives on. Schools and museums bear her name and her story has been revisited in books, movies and documentaries.

Harriet Tubman: $20 Bill

Tubman even had a World War II Liberty ship named after her, the SS Harriet Tubman.

In 2016, the United States Treasury announced that Harriet's image will replace that of former President and slaveowner Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin (who served under President Trump) later announced the new bill would be delayed until at least 2026. In January 2021, President Biden's administration announced it would speed up the design process to mint the bills honoring Tubman's legacy.

Sources

Early Life. Harriet Tubman Historical Society.

General Tubman: Female Abolitionist was Also a Secret Military Weapon. Military Times.

Harriet Tubman Biography. Biography.

Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged, Residence, and Thompson AME Zion Church. National Park Service.

Harriet Tubman Myths and Facts. Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman Portrait of An American Hero by Kate Clifford Larson, Ph.D.

Harriet Tubman. National Park Service.

Harriet Tubman. National Women's History Museum.

Harriet Tubman: The Moses of Her People. Harriet Tubman Historical Society.

Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad. National Park Service.

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Harriet Tubman: Facts, Underground Railroad & Legacy | HISTORY

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Harriet Tubman was an escaped enslaved woman who became a "conductor" on the Underground Railroad, leading enslaved people to freedom before the Civil War. She was also a nurse, a Union spy and a women's suffrage supporter.

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Harriet Tubman cautiously watched the shore from one of three gunboats on the Combahee River. She and several hundred Union soldiers were preparing a raid to free hundreds of enslaved people from plantations in South Carolina, part of the Confederate states that were fighting against the Union during the Civil War of 1861 to 1865. Enemy soldiers were hiding nearby-success was far from guaranteed.

Harriet Tubman is well known for risking her life as a "conductor" in the Underground Railroad, which led escaped enslaved people to freedom in the North. But the former enslaved woman also served as a spy for the Union during the Civil War. Tubman decided to help the Union Army because she wanted freedom for all of the people who were forced into slavery, not just the few she could help on the Underground Railroad. And she convinced many other brave African Americans to join her as spies-even at the risk of being hanged if they were caught.

A SECRET MISSION

The Civil War was a time when women were usually restricted to traditional roles like cooking and nursing. Tubman did jobs like that, but as a spy she worked side-by-side with men, says Tom Allen, author of the Nat Geo book Harriet Tubman, Secret Agent.

In one of her most dramatic and dangerous roles, Tubman helped Colonel James Montgomery plan a raid to free enslaved people from plantations along the Combahee (pronounced "KUM-bee") River in South Carolina. Early on the morning of June 1, 1863, three gunboats carrying several hundred male soldiers along with Tubman set out on their mission.

Tubman had gathered key information from her scouts about the Confederate positions. She knew where they were hiding along the shore. She also found out where they had placed torpedoes, or barrels filled with gunpowder, in the water.

As the early morning fog lifted on some of the South's most important rice plantations, the Union expedition hit hard. The raiders set fire to buildings and destroyed bridges so they couldn't be used by the Confederate Army. They also freed about 750 enslaved people-men, women, children, and babies-and did not lose one soldier in the attack.

A WRITER'S QUEST

To gather the facts, Allen searched libraries and the internet, and even walked in Tubman's footsteps. "I went on the river just south of the area where the raid took place," he says. "You're in that kind of country she would have known, with plenty of mosquitoes and snakes, and dirt roads are still there today-so you get a feeling of what it was like."

Allen says his most exciting moment came when a librarian led him to written accounts by people who actually saw Tubman and the raiders in action.

"She was five feet two inches (157 centimeters) tall, born a slave, had a debilitating illness, and was unable to read or write. Yet here was this tough woman who could take charge and lead men," Allen says. "I got to like her pretty quickly because of her strength and her spirit."

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You might know her as a conductor for the Underground Railroad. She was also a spy.

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New Zealand was the first country in the world to grant women the vote. Kate Sheppard, leading light of the suffrage movement, was vindicated when 65% of New Zealand women took the chance to vote in their first general election.

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New Zealand was the first country to give women the right to vote. Kate Sheppard is the reason

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New Zealand was the first country to give women the right to vote. Kate Sheppard is the reason

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New Zealand was the first country to give women the right to vote. Kate Sheppard is the reason

Kate Sheppard was a leader in New Zealand's women's suffrage movement. Her activism paved the way for women's access to the polls around the world.

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Kate Sheppard was a leader in New Zealand's women's suffrage movement. Her activism paved the way for women's access to the polls around the world.

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Life Story: Lozen - Women & the American Story

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An Apache warrior who defied gender norms and protected her people.

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A respected Apache warrior and medicine woman, she excelled in horseback riding, shooting, roping, and horse thievery, participating in raids and Apache resistance to placement on reservations. Her special powers are credited for successful evasion of pursuers.

Little Sister Lozen was a respected Apache warrior and medicine woman. She resisted Apache placement onto reservations alongside her brother, the Warm Springs Apache chief, Victorio, his successor Nana, and later Geronimo. With outstretched hands, it was said she was able to determine the location of an enemy. Apaches have credited Lozen's special powers for Victorio's successful evasion of pursuers.

Lozen was born in the 1840s, likely somewhere in southwestern New Mexico, to the Warm Springs or Ojo Caliente Apaches-the eastern branch of the Chiricahua, also known as the Mimbres Apaches. Lozen was about twenty-one years younger than Victorio and remained unmarried throughout her life. She acquired several names including, "Little Sister," "Warrior Woman," and "a Shield to her People," a name bestowed by Victorio.

Lozen has stirred up controversy among scholars, with some regarding her as merely myth. Eve Ball, noted historian of Apache history, first uncovered stories of Lozen while working on her 1970 publication In the Days of Victorio. Ball attributed Lozen's previous anonymity to Apache discomfort at revealing that an unmarried woman had joined men on raids. According to her sources, Lozen excelled in horseback riding, shooting, roping, and horse thievery, and Victorio considered her on par with other male warriors and did not go on a raid without her.

In the early 1870s, the U.S. government moved the Warm Springs Apaches to a reservation in Tularosa, New Mexico, and in 1877 to San Carlos, Arizona, despite their protests to remain at Ojo Caliente. Under Victorio's leadership, the Warm Springs Apaches resisted. From 1878 to 1880, in what has become known as Victorio's War, the U.S. army feverishly pursued the elusive band. In 1880, fearing an attack from the Mexican cavalry, Victorio led his band to Tres Castillos, Chihuahua, where they were ambushed. Victorio was killed, while other members of the band were either killed or taken prisoner. Nana-who would become head after Victorio's death-and several others managed to flee.

Lozen narrowly escaped the ambush, instead staying behind to aid a woman in labor and escort her and her newborn child to the Mescalero Apache Reservation. Some Apaches believed that if Lozen had been at Tres Castillos, her people would have survived that day. She rejoined Nana and other survivors at an encampment where they gathered with other Apache bands, including those led by Geronimo and Juh. Lozen eventually joined Geronimo's group.

Scholars Angie Debo and Ball disagree on whether Lozen was with Geronimo during his final surrender in September 1886. Debo believes that Lozen was not there while Ball thinks otherwise. According to Ball, Lozen traveled by train with Geronimo and others to Ft. Marion, Florida. The Apache prisoners were later transferred to Mount Vernon Barracks in Alabama. Lozen likely succumbed to tuberculosis and was buried in an unmarked grave at Mount Vernon.

Ball, Eve, with Nora Henn and Lynda Sanchez. Indeh: An Apache Odyssey. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1980.

Ball, Eve, with James Kaywayla. In the Days of Victorio: Recollections of a Warm Springs Apache. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1970.

Ball, Eve, with Lynda Sanchez. "Legendary Apache Women." Frontier Times, vol. 54, October/November 1980, pp. 8-12.

Boyer, Ruth McDonald, and Narcissus Duffy Gayton. Apache Mothers and Daughters: Four Generations of Family. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992.

Buchanan, Kimberly Moore. "Apache Women Warriors." Southwestern Studies Series, no. 79. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1986.

Cole, D.C. The Chiricahua Apache, 1846-1876: From War to Reservation. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988.

Etulain, Richard W. and Glenda Riley eds. "Chiefs and Generals: Nine Men Who Shaped the American West.) Notable Westerners Series, Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 2004.

Robinson, Sherry. "Apache Voices: Their Stories of Survival as Told to Eve Ball." American Indian Biography Series. University of New Mexico Press, 2000.

Stockel, H. Henrietta. "Lozen: Apache Warrior Queen." Real West 25, December 1982, pp. 20-22.

Stockel, Henrietta H. Shame and Endurance: The Untold Story of the Chiricahua Apache Prisoners of War. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2004.

Stockel, H. Henrietta. Survival of the Spirit: Chiricahua Apaches in Captivity. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1991, p.p. 20-22.

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Little Sister Lozen - New Mexico Historic Women Marker Program

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Little Sister Lozen was a respected Apache warrior and medicine woman. She resisted Apache placement onto reservations alongside her brother, the Warm Sprin ...

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Lozen: Chiricahua Apache Medicine Woman, Warrior & War Leader

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Lozen: Chiricahua Apache Medicine Woman, Warrior & War Leader

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Lozen: Chiricahua Apache Medicine Woman, Warrior & War Leader

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Lozen: Fearless Apache Warrior (WAMS E24)

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Who were Las Mariposas and why were they murdered?

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Who were Las Mariposas and why were they murdered?

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Who were Las Mariposas, and why were they murdered? - Lisa Krause

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How the Mirabal Sisters Helped Topple a Dictator

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How the Mirabal Sisters Helped Topple a Dictator

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On November 25, 1960, three sisters-Patria, Minerva and María Teresa Mirabal-were reported killed in an "automobile accident." Reports said a car they were riding in plunged over a cliff in the Dominican Republic.

At least, that was the story in El Caribe, a newspaper sanctioned by the government of Rafael Trujillo, the brutal dictator who had seized control of the island nation in a military coup 30 years earlier. In reality, the Mirabal sisters were active members of the growing underground resistance against Trujillo's regime, and everyone knew their deaths were no accident.

Growing Up in Trujillo's Dictatorship

As middle-class women, wives and mothers, the Mirabal sisters didn't seem like obvious revolutionaries. Patria, Minerva and María Teresa, along with their sister Dedé, grew up in the town of Ojo de Agua, Salcedo Province, where their parents owned and operated a successful farm, along with a coffee mill and general store.

After attending the Colegio Inmaculada Concepción, a Catholic boarding school in the city of La Vega, Minerva headed to college in Santo Domingo, the capital, to study law. By that time, she had become increasingly aware of the injustices that existed in the Dominican Republic during the Trujillo era.

Known as "El Jefe" ("the Boss") or "el Chivo" ("the Goat"), Trujillo was the commander in chief of the army before he seized power in 1930. The prosperity, modernization and stability his regime brought to the country came at a high price: Trujillo took over the country's economy, including production of such goods as salt, meat, tobacco and rice, and channeled the profits to his own family and supporters. Civil and political liberties disappeared, and only one political party, the Dominican Party, was allowed to exist.

Trujillo's fearsome secret police rooted out dissenters, using tactics of intimidation, imprisonment, torture, kidnapping and rape of women, and murder. His regime would ultimately be responsible for tens of thousands of deaths, including the massacre of an estimated 20,000 Haitians living near the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic in 1937.

"There was a huge danger during that period," says Elizabeth Manley, an associate professor of history at Xavier University of Louisiana and the author of The Paradox of Paternalism: Women and Authoritarian Politics in the Dominican Republic (2017). "People were being disappeared and jailed and killed."

Joining the Resistance

Resistance was still building to the regime, both among exiled groups of Dominicans abroad, and at home. The majority of those involved were men, but many women also joined the movement, including the Mirabal sisters. By the end of 1949, Minerva had been arrested for suspected opposition activities; she also reportedly angered Trujillo by rejecting his sexual advances. At the University of Santo Domingo, she met fellow activist Manolo Tavárez Justo, and they married in 1955.

Minerva and her husband became resistance leaders, and Patria, María Teresa and their husbands soon joined them. In early 1960, they helped form the 14th of June Movement, named for the date of a failed insurrection against Trujillo led by a group of exiled Dominicans with the support of the Cuban government the previous year. Shortly after the movement was officially organized, Trujillo began mass arrests of resistance figures, including the sisters and their husbands, though he later freed female prisoners as a supposed gesture of his leniency.

After the attempt to assassinate Venezuela's President Romulo Betancourt on Trujillo's orders that June, the Organization of American States (OAS) cut diplomatic ties with and imposed sanctions on the Dominican Republic, and the United States withdrew its support of the regime. Trujillo was also losing ground at home, with the powerful church condemning his government's actions.

Against this backdrop, the Mirabal sisters traveled on November 25, 1960, to visit their husbands in prison in Puerto Plata. On the way back, Trujillo's henchmen stopped their car along a mountain road and killed their driver, Rufino de la Cruz, before kidnapping the sisters at gunpoint, beating and strangling them. The assassins then put the four bodies back in the car and pushed it over a cliff to make it look like an accident.

Impact of the Mirabal Sisters' Murders

The Butterflies, as the Mirabals were known, instantly became martyrs to the revolutionary cause, helping solidify resistance to Trujillo both at home and abroad.

"Killing women...was just beyond what people could stomach, and that catalyzed a lot of people to become more active in the movement," says Manley. Trujillo had painted himself as a champion of women and of mothers, granting full female suffrage in 1942 and sending one of the first female delegates (from any country) to the United Nations in 1945. "He touted these things and said they were an element of his progressivism," says Manley. "So this failure to protect women and [going] against this kind of maternal politics was a serious blow."

On May 30, 1961, seven assassins (including former members of the armed forces) ambushed the dictator's car along a coastal highway and killed him. Though Trujillo's death did not immediately bring democracy to the Dominican Republic-his successor, Joaquin Balaguer, continued the authoritarian tradition until the late 1970s-the country did not return to the level of brutal repression experienced during his reign.

Dedé Mirabal, who had largely maintained her distance from the resistance, survived the Trujillo regime and went on to raise her sisters' children, along with her own. Minerva's daughter, Minou Tavárez Mirabal, became a congressional representative and vice foreign minister, while Dedé's son Jaime David Fernández Mirabal served as vice president of the Dominican Republic (1996-2000).

The fame of the Mirabal sisters, fueled by Julia Alvarez's historical novel In the Time of the Butterflies (1994), spread worldwide. In 1999, the United Nations designated November 25, the anniversary of their deaths, as International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. Dedé Mirabal also ensured her sisters' legacy, managing a museum out of their childhood home, the Casa Museo Hermanas Mirabal. She died in 2014, at the age of 88.

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How the Mirabal Sisters Helped Topple a Dictator | HISTORY

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The assassination of "las Mariposas" ("the Butterflies") fueled public outrage against one of the longest and most ruthless regimes in modern history.

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Remembering the Mirabal Sisters - JSTOR Daily

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International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women honors three sisters who were murdered by the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic.

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Nanny of the Maroons was the first and foremost leader of the Windward Maroons of Jamaica, an autonomous community of self-emancipated formerly enslaved people in eastern Jamaica. Her historicity and legendary status belend into one another, but she was most likely born into an Akan community in present-day Ghana around 1680. Dispossessed of her homeland sometime around the turn of the eighteenth century, she survived the Middle Passage across the Atlantic. In the legend that distinguishes Maroons from Jamaicans, Nanny and her sister, Sekesu, arrived in Jamaica. Nanny escaped into the mountains, establishing the lineage of Maroons; Sekesu remained enslaved, establishing the lineage of Jamaican non-Maroons. Alongside this mythical arrival in Jamaica, a growing consensus among contemporary Maroon leaders argues that Nanny arrived in Jamaica with her brother, Kojo, known in some accounts as Cudjoe. Kojo was the leader of the Leeward Maroons in the mountainous Cockpit Country in western Jamaica.

Nanny and Kojo plagued the British plantation owners and soldiers so fiercely that they forced the British to draw up a treaty with the Maroons, formally declaring their autonomy from the Crown in 1738 and 1739, and again in 1796. A 1741 land grant stipulates the gift of five hundred acres to Nanny and her people. This area, originally called New Nanny Town, is now called Moore Town, and on the annual Jamaican observance of National Heroes Day in mid-October, locals celebrate Nanny Day, commemorating the founder of their community. At some point during her life in Jamaica, it is possible that she married a man named Adou. She had no children, and yet all "true-born Maroons"-those who can trace an endogamous Maroon genealogy-claim her as their ancestor. It is believed that she died sometime in the 1750s.

Nanny's Maroon Town grew in the first half of the eighteenth century, following the social organization of matrifocal Akan society, and swelling to the size of between eight hundred and a thousand people. Protecting Nanny Town from invasion and administering spiritual and physical sustenance though natural and supernatural means marked the parameters of Nanny's responsibilities. While the colonists referred sparingly and negatively to the Maroons in their records, enforcing a kind of discursive invisibility on them and rendering them without history, the Maroons themselves made judicious use of the tactics of invisibility in guerilla warfare to obstruct the colonists' desire to find, overtake, and enslave them. Nanny strategically positioned her community along a 900-foot precipice that overlooked the Stony River. From this position and from others nearby, she advised her Maroon warriors on the techniques of concealment, misdirection, and ambush. She covered them in branches and leaves, cloaking them from soldiers' sight, and used an abeng, a cow's horn also used among Akan tribes, to signal the moment of surprise attack.

In the long-standing oral tradition recomposed by Windward and Leeward Maroons, Nanny is a central figure and the foremost ancestor of both groups. Several stories about Nanny recur, and some of them have their roots in the colonial writings on Jamaica. In colonial discourse, these stories seek to prove Nanny's diabolical use of obeah, a British term for West African-based witchcraft, but here referring to what Maroons describe as Nanny's oracular wisdom and science, or the mixture of natural and supernatural practices that make up her abilities. These Maroon stories reveal Nanny as an astoundingly gifted leader of her people, at times magically saving them from certain death. Three stories were transposed from the oral tradition and published in the Jamaican Daily Gleaner newspaperby the Maroon Colonel C. L. G. Harris in 1967, reformatting Nanny's achievements into written form, which catalyzed the effort to historicize this legendary figure of Jamaican national identity.

The story that is most repeated in the oral histories, and most critiqued by scholars of marronage, concerns Nanny's ability to catch and fire bullets with her buttocks-a tale that did not appear in print until Thomas's Untrodden Jamaica (1890). Twentieth-century writing on Nanny regularly refers to her bullet-catching abilities. Kamau Brathwaite and Carolyn Cooper have led the efforts to critique this talent rather than simply repeat it. In Wars of Respect (1977), Brathwaite suggests that while Nanny's abilities as a bullet catcher can be traced to similar alleged feats reported among African military maneuvers, the reference to the power of her buttocks is an attempt in colonial discourse to vulgarize and denigrate the fearsome power and presence that Nanny commanded. By focusing on one part of her body at the expense of considering the whole, colonial discourse and the oral histories of the Maroons commit a synecdochic violence on Nanny, eliding her other major qualities, such as leading, nurturing, and healing. Cooper highlights the empowering possibilities inherent in bodily acts committed by women, placing Nanny at the beginning of a practice by which Jamaican women assert authority through the self-conscious vulgarization of their own bodies. Brathwaite joins Cooper in consensus on this point in a 1994 reflection on Nanny, when he suggests that her bullet-catching feat is at the root of the Jamaican woman's practice of showing her backside to express insult toward another.

As a powerful Maroon leader and a Jamaican National Hero, Nanny is celebrated in oral history, scholarship, and imaginative writing as the quintessential Jamaican woman, and as the figure through which African traditions are translated into a Caribbean setting. To begin the study of Jamaican resistance history with Nanny argues that the story of the African diaspora begins not with "slavery and conquest, but [with] the common human heritage of freedom and exploration" (Cooper, 1994 , p. 109). By this logic, the upright and powerful image of Nanny, refusing to countenance the British while nurturing her Maroon community and its descendants, replaces the paradigmatic image of the man in chains.

In the 1980s, Caribbean fiction began to incorporate Nanny and the stories associated with her as a way of reanimating folk traditions, histories of resistance, and feminist genealogies in the region. In Michelle Cliff's Clare Savage novels, Abeng (1984) and No Telephone to Heaven (1987), Nanny appears as the spectral presence of refusal and resistance that guides the protagonist toward reclaiming a Jamaican identity. The Guadeloupean author Maryse Condé takes a more critical approach to Nanny in her novella Nanna-Ya (1999). Though none of Nanny's achievements are diminished in the novel, she has become an ancestral figure used by the modern-day Maroon characters to distinguish themselves from Jamaicans, cleaving national identity into those descended from freedom fighters and those descended from slaves.

The government of prime minister Michael Manley declared Nanny of the Maroons as a Jamaican National Hero in 1975. She is the only woman and the only Maroon in the national pantheon. Since 1994 she has been featured in the $500 Jamaican dollar note.

Read the full, original biography by Erin M. Fehskens in The Dictionary of Caribbean and Afro-Latin American Biography.

View complete story (pdf)
Online Resources

Jamaican Government
https://jis.gov.jm/information/heroes/nanny-of-the-maroons/

Bibliography

Bilby, Kenneth, and Filomina Chioma Steady. "Black Women and Survival: A Maroon Case." in The Black Woman Cross-Culturally, edited by Filomena Chioma Steady, pp. 451-467. Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkmann, 1981.

Brathwaite, E. Kamau. "Nanny, Palmares and the Caribbean Maroon Connexion." in Maroon Heritage: Archaeological, Ethnographic, and Historical Perspectives, edited by E. Kofi Agorsah, pp. 119-138. Barbados: Canoe, 1994.

Brathwaite, E. Kamau. Wars of Respect: Nanny, Sam Sharpe, and the Struggle for People's Liberation. Kingston, Jamaica: API for the National Heritage Week Committee, 1977.

Campbell, Mavis C. The Maroons of Jamaica, 1655-1796: A History of Resistance, Collaboration and Betrayal. Trenton, N.J.: Africa World, 1990.

Cooper, Carolyn. " 'Resistance Science: Afrocentric Ideology in Vic Reid's Nanny Town." in Maroon Heritage: Archaeological, Ethnographic, and Historical Perspectives, edited by E. Kofi Agorsah, pp. 109-118. Barbados: Canoe, 1994.

Gottlieb, Karla. The Mother of Us All: A History of Queen Nanny, Leader of the Windward Jamaican Maroons. Trenton, N.J.: Africa World, 2000.

Sharpe, Jenny. Ghosts of Slavery: A Literary Archaeology of Black Women's Lives. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003.

Zips, Werner. Nanny's Asafo Warriors: The Jamaican Maroon's African Experience. Translated by Francesca Deakin. Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle, 2011.

Adapted by

Briona S. Jones and Steven J. Niven

Contributing Institutions

Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.

Key Events

born enslaved in present-day Ghana, into an Akran group

Nanny and her brother Kojo formally declare autonomy from the Crown

land grant stipulates that five hundred acres are given to Nanny and her people

Nanny dies sometime around the 1750s in the original Nanny Town, as a uniting figure for the Windward and Leeward Maroons.

The government of prime minister Michael Manley declared her as a Jamaican National Hero in 1975. She is the only woman and the only Maroon, in the national pantheon.

Nanny's image appears on the new $500 Jamican banknote.

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Nanny of the Maroons - Jamaican National Hero | Black Heroes Foundation

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Nanny of the Maroons has a special place in Jamaica's history, and for that reason Nanny has become a National Hero.

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The Voice of a Maroon The Story of Nanny of the Maroons

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A History of Queen Nanny of the Maroons in Jamaica

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A History of Queen Nanny of the Maroons in Jamaica

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A History of Queen Nanny of the Maroons in Jamaica

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A History of Queen Nanny of the Maroons in Jamaica

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Queen Seondeok (Sondok) ruled the ancient kingdom of Silla from 632 to 647 CE and was the first female sovereign in ancient Korea. Silla was on the verge of dominating the whole of the Korean peninsula…

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Queen Seondeok (c. 595~610-647) was the first reigning queen of Silla, one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, and the first female monarch in Korean history.

She was born Princess Deokman, the daughter of King Jinpyeong and Queen Maya of Silla, a kingdom situated on the east coast of what is now South Korea.

Legend has it that after hearing that her father, the king, was thinking of passing down the throne to his son-in-law, the princess asked her father for a chance to prove herself worthy of reigning. Her intelligence led Jinpyeong and his advisers to select Seondeok as his heir.

Some men, however, disagreed with the idea of a woman inheriting the throne and organised a coup in 631 to stop her from being crowned. The plot was uncovered and suppressed early on. The coup leaders were executed.

In 632, Seondeok ascended the throne - the first known reigning queen in Korean history.

As a ruler, Queen Seondeok's primary concern was the livelihood of her people. She sent royal inspectors throughout the kingdom to improve the care of widows, orphans, the poor and the elderly. She also announced a whole year of tax exemption for the peasants and reduced the tax for the middle class. Because of these, the queen won the people's support and strengthened her position against the male aristocracy's position.

Queen Seondeok actively encouraged students and scholars to study in China, strengthening cultural ties with the far larger neighbour. The queen also encouraged a renaissance in literature and arts.

Like her father, Queen Seondeok was drawn to Buddhism. It is recorded that she herself studied Buddhism seriously and became a bhikkuni, or ordained nun.

During her reign, Silla built many temples, pagodas and Buddha statues. Seondeok was also responsible for the completion of Punhwang and Yongmyo temples to promote the study of Buddhism in Korea. Seondeok oversaw the construction of Cheomseongdae, an astronomy observatory, in Gyeongju, to help farmers at that time. To this day, Cheomseongdae is the oldest surviving observatory in Asia.

When Seondeok ascended the throne, Silla was on the verge of conquering her long-time Three Kingdom rivals: Baekje (Paekche) to the west and Goguryeo (Koguryo) to the north. As the two kingdoms continued to harass Silla, in 643 the queen sent a diplomatic envoy to the Chinese Tang dynasty to persuade them to help Silla fend off the attacks.

Emperor Taizong offered military assistance, but with one catch. The queen would have to step down and let a Chinese prince to rule her kingdom because the Tang emperor believed a female ruler was emboldening Silla's enemies. Seondeok refused but still managed to gain Tang military assistance anyway, and the two states formed a joint army to face off Baekje and Goguryeo.

In early 647, Queen Seondeok faced her greatest challenge when Bidam, the highest court official she herself appointed, led a rebellion against her. Bidam asserted: "The female king failed to rule the country, therefore women should stop ruling." Since most of the army had been sent to different parts of the Silla kingdom to defend it from potential foreign invasions, the rebellion was a great threat.

On the night of Bidam's rebellion, the queen was already in poor health due to an unspecified illness. The rebellion itself lasted less than two weeks and failed to overthrow the queen's government. Bidam and his 30 followers were executed.

Queen Seondeok stayed in power until her death in 647 - just shortly before Bidam's rebellion was completely suppressed. Because she died without an heir, the throne was given to a female cousin, who became Queen Jindeok.

Sources:
World History Encyclopedia: Queen Seondeok
Wikipedia: Queen Seondeok of Silla
New World Encyclopedia: Queen Seondeok of Silla

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Queen Seondeok (c. 595~610-647) was the first reigning queen of Silla, one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, and the first female monarch in Korean history. She was born Princess Deokman, the daughter...

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Queen Seondeok of Silla, the first female ruler of Korea

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Queen Seondeok of Silla, the first female ruler of Korea

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The First Female Ruler of Korea: The Story of Queen Seondeok of Silla (Korean History)

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Splendor in Silla---Royal Tomb of Queen Seondeok

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Wangari Maathai (1940-2011) was the founder of the Green Belt Movement and the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. She authored four books: The Green Belt Movement; Unbowed: A Memoir; The Challenge for Africa; and Replenishing the Earth. As well as having been featured in a number of books, she and the Green Belt Movement were the subject of a documentary film, Taking Root: the Vision of Wangari Maathai (Marlboro Productions, 2008).

Wangari Muta Maathai was born in Nyeri, a rural area of Kenya (Africa), in 1940. She obtained a degree in Biological Sciences from Mount St. Scholastica College in Atchison, Kansas (1964), a Master of Science degree from the University of Pittsburgh (1966), and pursued doctoral studies in Germany and the University of Nairobi, before obtaining a Ph.D. (1971) from the University of Nairobi, where she also taught veterinary anatomy. The first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate degree, Professor Maathai became chair of the Department of Veterinary Anatomy and an associate professor in 1976 and 1977 respectively. In both cases, she was the first woman to attain those positions in the region.

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Wangari Maathai (1940-2011) was the founder of the Green Belt Movement and the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. She authored four books: The Green Belt Movement; Unbowed: A Memoir; The Challenge for Africa; and Replenishing the Earth.

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It's impossible to overlook the impact of her commitment to the environment: 20 million trees have been planted in Kenya, above all by women, since 1977 when Wangari Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement. "We have a special responsibility for our planet's ecosystem. By protecting other species, we secure our own survival." Her Green Belt Movement sharpened both the population's ecological and political awareness. Wangari Maathai, born in 1940, was her country's Deputy Minister of the Environment from 2003 to 2007. She has always been ahead of the times. She was the first woman from East Africa to gain a doctorate in biology, the first woman professor of veterinary anatomy in 1971, and later dean of her department at the University of Nairobi. In 1978, the veterinary scientist completed a DAAD-funded study visit to Germany.

We have a special responsibility for our planet's ecosystem. By protecting other species, we secure our own survival.
- Wangari Maathai

Despite this remarkable career, she never lost sight of the massive social and economic problems which the women of her country face. On the contrary, as Chairwoman of the National Council for Women in Kenya she encouraged other women to become more independent and won their support for the gigantic tree-planting campaign. Nor did the mother of three shrink from conflict with the authoritarian Moi regime. Respect for human rights, women's emancipation, non-violence, ecological sustainability and democracy were the goals which Wangari Maathai staunchly championed and for which she was repeatedly arrested without charge, above all in the 1990s. Her opposition to a president-supported building project in the jungle attracted worldwide attention in 1998. December 2002 saw Wangari Maathai become a Member of Parliament and eventually a cabinet member under the country's new President, Mwai Kibaki. In December 2005 he appointed her Deputy Minister of the Environment once again.

Wangari Maathai died in Nairobi on 25 September 2011 at the age of 71.

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This is a portrait of the politician, environmental activist, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate 2004 Prof. Dr. Wangari Maathai, DAAD Scholarship holder 1978.

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Wangari Maathai and the Green Belt Movement

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Wangari Maathai and the Green Belt Movement

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Wangari Maathai & The Green Belt Movement

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Wangari Maathai and the Nobel Peace Prize

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Wangari Maathai and the Nobel Peace Prize

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Wangari Maathai: the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Who Planted Trees

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Queen Mother Nana Yaa Asantewaa of West Africa's Ashanti Empire

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Queen Mother Nana Yaa Asantewaa of West Africa's Ashanti Empire

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Queen Mother Nana Yaa Asantewaa

of the Ejisu Clan of the Asante (b. 1863 - d. October 1923)

Yaa Asantewaa was named Queen Mother of the Ejisuhene (part of the Asante or Ashanti Confederacy) by her exiled brother Nana Akwasi Afrane Okpese. Prior to European colonization, the Ashanti people developed an influential West African empire. Asantewaa was the Gatekeeper of the "Golden Stool" (Sika 'dwa) during this powerful Ashanti Confederacy (Asanteman), an independent federation of Asanti tribal families that ruled from 1701 to 1896.

The Flag of The Republic of Ghana

containing image of the Golden Stool

The story of Queen Mother Nana Yaa Asantewaa is a story of the modern history of the nation of Ghana, Africa. In 1896, Asantehene ( King) Prempeh I of the Asanteman federation was captured and exiled to the Seychelles islands by the British who had come to call the area the British "Gold Coast." Asantewaa's brother was said to be among the men exiled with Prempeh I, deported because of his opposition to British rule in West Africa.

In 1900, British colonial governor Frederick Hodgson called a meeting in the city of Kumasi of the Ashantehene local rulers. At the meeting, Hodgson stated that King Prempeh I would continue to suffer an exile from his native land and that the Ashanti people were to surrender to the British their historical, ancestral Golden Stool - a dynastic symbol of the Ashanti empire. In fact, power was transferred to each Asantahene by a ceremonial crowning that involved the sacred Golden Stool. The colonial governor demanded that it be surrendered to allow Hodgson to sit on the Sika 'dwa as a symbol of British power.

The Sika 'dwa or Golden Stool

At this time, Yaa Asantewaa was the Gatekeeper of the Golden Stool. After this meetings, the Ashantehenes of the federation gathered to discuss the British development. Upon hearing some of the Ashantehenes entertain surrender to the British demands, it is reported that the Queen Mother Yaa Asantewaa rose and said the following:

"Now I have seen that some of you fear to go forward to fight for our King.

If it were in the brave days of Osei Tutu, Okomfo Anokye, and Opoku Ware, leaders would not sit down to see their King taken away without firing a shot.

No white man could have dared to speak to a leader of the Ashanti in the way the Governor spoke to you this morning.

Is it true that the bravery of the Ashanti is no more? I cannot believe it. It cannot be!

I must say this, if you the men of Ashanti will not go forward, then we will. We the women will. I shall call upon my fellow women. We will fight the white men. We will fight till the last of us falls in the battlefields."

-- Queen Mother Nana Yaa Asantewa

Queen Mother Nana Yaa Asantewaa (picture of unknown date)

The Ashanti-British "War of the Golden Stool" was led by Queen Mother Nana Yaa Asantewaa with an army of 5,000. While Yaa Asantewaa was captured by the British and deported, her bravery stirred a kingdom-wide movement for the return of Prempeh I and for independence.

Early map of West Africa (cir. 1625 map of pre-Asanti/Akan federated state)

Ashanti Empire (Asante Empire) during the 19th Century

Today, Ashanti is an administrative region in central Ghana where most of the inhabitants are Ashanti people who speak Twi, an Akan language group, similar to Fante. In 1935 the Golden Stool was used in the ceremony to crown Osei Tutu Agyeman Prempeh II (ruled 1935-1970). Independence from the British colonialist was secured in 1957. On August 3, 2000, a museum was dedicated to Queen Mother Nana Yaa Asantewaa at Kwaso in the Ejisu-Juaben District of Ghana.

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Queen Mother Nana Yaa Asantewaa of West Africa's Ashanti Empire

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Queen Mother Nana Yaa Asantewaa of the Ejisu Clan of the Asante (b. 1863 - d. October 1923) Yaa Asantewaa was named Queen Mother ...

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Yaa Asantewaa was an influential Ashanti queen at the beginning of the twentieth century who remains a powerful symbol today. Her birthdate is contested; she is generally believed to be born between the 1840s to 1860s in the Ashanti Confederacy in present-day Ghana. She was a skilled farmer before a…

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The Legendary Nana Yaa Asantewaa & the War of the Golden Stool

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The Legendary Nana Yaa Asantewaa & the War of the Golden Stool

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The Legendary Nana Yaa Asantewaa & the War of the Golden Stool

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Born in Madrid in 1888. She is considered o ne of the mothers of the feminist and suffragist movement in Spain, being one of the three deputies of the constituent courts of the Second Republic. Defender of the equality of women's rights, she was one of the impellers of the approval of the universal suffrage in Spain, obtaining the feminine vote in the first republican elections, as well as the first divorce law.

Undoubtedly it is Clara Campoamora Spain (among others) to whom we must thank or this milestone in women's rights. The politics and founder of the Feminine Republican Union was the great impeller of the feminine suffrage in Spain.

In 1914 and after taking the number one of its opposition, it becomes adult teacher in the Ministry of Public Instruction.

In 1923 participates in a cycle on Feminism organized by the Feminine University Youth where it begins to develop its ideology on the right to the equality of the women.

In 1924, at the age of thirty-six, she was granted a degree in law, which allowed her to defend two very famous cases of divorce at the time: the writer Concha Espina, her husband Ramón de la Serna and Cueto, and Josefina Blanco, Valle-Inclán´s wife.

She was also the first woman to intervene before the Supreme Court and to develop jurisprudence on issues related to the rights of the legal situation of women in Spain.

In 1928 she created with the companions of other European countries the I nternational Federation of Women of Legal Care, which still exists and in 1930 contributes to found the Spanish Feminine League for Peace.
Work:
He wrote articles in the newspapers of the "La Tribuna", "Nuevo Heraldo", "El Sol" and "El Tiempo" and published "The Right of Women in Spain" (1936), "The legal situation of Spanish women "(1938)," My mortal sin. The female vote and I" and "The revolution seen by a republican".

After their famous speech in the Cortes the women obtained the right to vote in Spain by 161 votes against 131. The deputy Clara Campoamor defended it against Victoria Kent. In this link you can read the full text of his speech of October 1, 1931 before the Cortes.
Http://sociedad.elpais.com/sociedad/2006/10/01/actualidad/1159653602_850215.html

WOMAN LEADER About

WOMAN LEADER es una ORGANIZACIÓN INTERNACIONAL orientada a fomentar el empoderamiento femenino para ayudar a las mujeres a alcanzar sus metas personales y profesionales. Nuestras iniciativas buscan promover la igualdad de género, la educación, la formación y el desarrollo profesional de las mujeres.

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Clara Campoamor (1888 - 1972) | WOMAN LEADER

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Born in Madrid in 1888. She is considered one of the mothers of the feminist and suffragist movement in Spain, being one of the three deputies of the constituent courts of the Second Republic.

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CLARA CAMPOAMOR - A TRUE ADVOCATE OF WOMEN’S RIGHTS

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CLARA CAMPOAMOR - A TRUE ADVOCATE OF WOMEN’S RIGHTS

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Clara Campoamor was born in 1888 and would become the most important advocate for women's rights in Spain. Due to the early death of her father she had to quit school and start working to support her family at a very young age. Despite difficult conditions, she managed to complete a law degree. After her graduation, Campoamor devoted herself entirely to the fight for women's rights in society.

At the age of thirteen Campoamor had to leave school and work to increase the family's income.

One of her first jobs as secretary for the liberal political journal "La Tribuna" influenced Campoamor's political views.

As one of the only female members of the parliament, Clara Campoamor vehemently demanded woman's suffrage.

Time of her life she stood up for the rights of women. Even in exile in Switzerland, she wrote further critical political texts.

Clara Campoamor was born in the district Maravillas, todays Malasaña in Madrid on the 12 th of February 1888. Her father, Manuel Martínez Campoamor worked for a newspaper and ensured the family's main income, while her mother earned some extra money from tailoring.

At the age of thirteen, Clara was buffeted by fate: The early death of her father forced Clara to quit school and help her mother as a seamstress. In the following years she worked for several public companies, such as the post office in San Sebastian.

In 1914 she got hired as a teacher for adults, however, as she did not have any academic qualification, she was only allowed to teach typewriting. Additionally she worked for the liberal political newspaper " La Tribune ", which coined her politically. After passing the entrance exam at the University of Madrid, Campoamor started studying law. During this time she more and more noticed how discriminated women were in society and she started to get involved in politics.

At the age of 36 she graduated and was the first female lawyer at the Spanish Supreme Court.

One day she was asked in a newspaper interview if she preferred Spain to be a monarchy or a republic and she answered with her famous words: " Republic! Always republic!" 1931 was the first year in which women were allowed to stand as candidates for the national parliament, however women were still excluded from suffrage. Campoamor was one of the first females elected into parliament and fought for equal voting rights, but had to face resistance not only in her own party but also from one of the few other female members of parliament, Victoria Kent. Due to this conflict she left her party and became a party-independent member in parliament. She saw the representation of women's concerns as her most important task, and managed to help female activists who demanded the right to vote for women.

In 1936 General Franco managed a coup against the Spanish Republic and Campoamor had to go into exile, because her life was in danger in Spain. She could have only returned to the country under the Franco regime if she had withdrawn some of her political statements and revealed names of political enemies of the Franco regime. However Campoamor stood by her principles and remained in exile in Switzerland for the rest of her life, where she continued to publish political and feminine texts. 1972 Clara Campoamor passed away in Switzerland. Today she is considered as the toughest and most important advocate for the right to vote for women in Spanish history.

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Clara Campoamor - A True Advocate Of Women's Rights

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Clara Campoamor. Advocate for women's rights and a fighter for women's suffrage

# data[].attributes.headline
Clara Campoamor. Una mujer adelantada a su tiempo

# data[].attributes.subject
Clara Campoamor. Una mujer adelantada a su tiempo

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Clara Campoamor. Una mujer adelantada a su tiempo