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25 of the Most Influential Women in American History

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25 of the Most Influential Women in American History

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25 of the Most Influential Women in American History

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As Women's History Month comes to an end, a list of some of the ladies who continue to inspire us here at The Daily Signal, along with recommended reading.

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Why March is National Women’s History Month

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Why March is National Women’s History Month

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Local Celebrations
As recently as the 1970s, women's history was virtually an unknown topic in the K-12 curriculum or in general public consciousness. To address this situation, the Education Task Force of the Sonoma County (California) Commission on the Status of Women initiated a "Women's History Week" celebration for 1978.

The week March 8th, International Women's Day, was chosen as the focal point of the observance. The local Women's History Week activities met with enthusiastic response, and dozens of schools planned special programs for Women's History Week. Over one-hundred community women participated by doing special presentations in classrooms throughout the country and an annual "Real Woman" Essay Contest drew hundreds of entries. The finale for the week was a celebratory parade and program held in the center of downtown Santa Rosa, California.

Mobilizing a Movement
In 1979, Molly Murphy MacGregor, a member of our group, was invited to participate in The Women's History Institute at Sarah Lawrence College, which was chaired by noted historian, Gerda Lerner and attended by the national leaders of organizations for women and girls. When the participants learned about the success of the Sonoma County's Women's History Week celebration, they decided to initiate similar celebrations within their own organizations, communities, and school districts. They also agreed to support an effort to secure a "National Women's History Week."

Presidential and Congressional Support
The first steps toward success came in February 1980 when President Carter issued the first Presidential Proclamation declaring the Week of March 8th 1980 as National Women's History Week. In the same year, Representative Barbara Mikulski, who at the time was in the House of Representatives, and Senator Orrin Hatch co-sponsored a Congressional Resolution for National Women's History Week 1981. This co-sponsorship demonstrated the wide-ranging political support for recognizing, honoring, and celebrating the achievements of American women.

A National Lobbying Effort
As word spread rapidly across the nation, state departments of education encouraged celebrations of National Women's History Week as an effective means to achieving equity goals within classrooms. Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, Oregon, Alaska, and other states developed and distributed curriculum materials for all of their public schools. Organizations sponsored essay contests and other special programs in their local areas. Within a few years, thousands of schools and communities were celebrating National Women's History Week, supported and encouraged by resolutions from governors, city councils, school boards, and the U.S. Congress.

Each year, the dates of National Women's History Week, (the week of March 8th) changed and every year a new lobbying effort was needed. Yearly, a national effort that included thousands of individuals and hundreds of educational and women's organizations was spearheaded by the National Women's History Alliance.

National Women's History Month
By 1986, 14 states had already declared March as Women's History Month. This momentum and state-by-state action was used as the rational to lobby Congress to declare the entire month of March 1987 as National Women's History Month. In 1987, Congress declared March as National Women's History Month in perpetuity. A special Presidential Proclamation is issued every year which honors the extraordinary achievements of American women.

Presidential Message 1980
President Jimmy Carter's Message to the nation designating March 2-8, 1980 as National Women's History Week.

" From the first settlers who came to our shores, from the first American Indian families who befriended them, men and women have worked together to build this nation. Too often the women were unsung and sometimes their contributions went unnoticed. But the achievements, leadership, courage, strength and love of the women who built America was as vital as that of the men whose names we know so well.
As Dr. Gerda Lerner has noted, "Women's History is Women's Right." - It is an essential and indispensable heritage from which we can draw pride, comfort, courage, and long-range vision." I ask my fellow Americans to recognize this heritage with appropriate activities during National Women's History Week, March 2-8, 1980. I urge libraries, schools, and community organizations to focus their observances on the leaders who struggled for equality - - Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth, Lucy
Stone, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Harriet Tubman, and Alice Paul.
Understanding the true history of our country will help us to comprehend the need for full equality under the law for all our people.
This goal can be achieved by ratifying the 27th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which states that "Equality of Rights under the Law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex."

By Molly Murphy MacGregor, Executive Director and Co-founder of the National Women's History Alliance

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Why March is National Women's History Month - National Women's History Alliance

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Local Celebrations As recently as the 1970s, women's history was virtually an unknown topic in the K-12 curriculum or in general public consciousness. To address this situation, the Education Task Force of the Sonoma County (California) Commission on the Status of Women initiated a "Women's History Week" celebration for 1978.

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This Month in History, March: Women's History Month and notable female first

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This Month in History, March: Women's History Month and notable female first

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This Month in History, March: Women's History Month and notable female firsts Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Transcript

This Month in History March: National Women's History Month March 4, 1933 The first woman is sworn in as a member of a U.S. presidential cabinet.
U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed Frances Perkins as secretary of labor. March 7-13, 1982 The first Women's History Week is celebrated.
The U.S. Congress passed a resolution in August 1981 authorizing the president to declare this week in March 1982 as Women's History Week. March 11, 2006 Chile's first female president is sworn into office.
Also the first South American female president to have a political career independent from her husband, President Michelle Bachelet served from 2006 to 2010 and from 2014 to 2018. March 19, 1911 International Women's Day is observed for the first time.
The day was intended to acknowledge women's continued struggle for equal rights with men. A few years later the annual observance was moved to March 8, the date currently celebrated as International Women's Day. March 1987 Women's History Week becomes Women's History Month in the United States.
As a result of lobbying from the National Women's History Project, Congress established March as Women's History Month. Schools, government institutions, and other organizations observe Women's History Month by focusing on unsung American women through history.

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Women's History Month and accomplishments by women revealed

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This Month in History March: National Women's History Month March 4, 1933 The first woman is sworn in as a member of a U.S. presidential cabinet. U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed Frances Perkins as secretary of labor. March 7-13, 1982 The first Women's History Week is celebrated. The U.S.

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Contents

1. Rosa Parks' Early Life

2. Rosa Parks: Roots of Activism

3. December 1, 1955: Rosa Parks Is Arrested

4. Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott

5. Rosa Parks's Life After the Boycott

Rosa Parks (1913-2005) helped initiate the civil rights movement in the United States when she refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama bus in 1955. Her actions inspired the leaders of the local Black community to organize the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Led by a young Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the boycott lasted more than a year-during which Parks not coincidentally lost her job-and ended only when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that bus segregation was unconstitutional. Over the next half-century, Parks became a nationally recognized symbol of dignity and strength in the struggle to end entrenched racial segregation.
WATCH: 10 Things You Don't Know About: Civil Rights on HISTORY Vault
Rosa Parks' Early Life

Rosa Louise McCauley was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, on February 4, 1913. She moved with her parents, James and Leona McCauley, to Pine Level, Alabama, at age 2 to reside with Leona's parents. Her brother, Sylvester, was born in 1915, and shortly after that her parents separated.

Did you know? When Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat in 1955, it wasn't the first time she'd clashed with driver James Blake. Parks stepped onto his very crowded bus on a chilly day 12 years earlier, paid her fare at the front, then resisted the rule in place for Black people to disembark and re-enter through the back door. She stood her ground until Blake pulled her coat sleeve, enraged, to demand her cooperation. Parks left the bus rather than give in.

Rosa's mother was a teacher, and the family valued education. Rosa moved to Montgomery, Alabama, at age 11 and eventually attended high school there, a laboratory school at the Alabama State Teachers' College for Negroes. She left at 16, early in 11th grade, because she needed to care for her dying grandmother and, shortly thereafter, her chronically ill mother. In 1932, at 19, she married Raymond Parks, a self-educated man 10 years her senior who worked as a barber and was a long-time member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP). He supported Rosa in her efforts to earn her high-school diploma, which she ultimately did the following year.
READ MORE: Before the Bus, Rosa Parks Was a Sexual Assault Investigator
Rosa Parks: Roots of Activism

Raymond and Rosa, who worked as a seamstress, became respected members of Montgomery's large African American community. Co-existing with white people in a city governed by " Jim Crow " (segregation) laws, however, was fraught with daily frustrations: Black people could attend only certain (inferior) schools, could drink only from specified water fountains and could borrow books only from the "Black" library, among other restrictions.

Although Raymond had previously discouraged her out of fear for her safety, in December 1943, Rosa also joined the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP and became chapter secretary. She worked closely with chapter president Edgar Daniel (E.D.) Nixon. Nixon was a railroad porter known in the city as an advocate for Black people who wanted to register to vote, and also as president of the local branch of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters union.

December 1, 1955: Rosa Parks Is Arrested

On Thursday, December 1, 1955, the 42-year-old Rosa Parks was commuting home from a long day of work at the Montgomery Fair department store by bus. Black residents of Montgomery often avoided municipal buses if possible because they found the Negroes-in-back policy so demeaning. Nonetheless, 70 percent or more riders on a typical day were Black, and on this day Rosa Parks was one of them.

Segregation was written into law; the front of a Montgomery bus was reserved for white citizens, and the seats behind them for Black citizens. However, it was only by custom that bus drivers had the authority to ask a Black person to give up a seat for a white rider. There were contradictory Montgomery laws on the books: One said segregation must be enforced, but another, largely ignored, said no person (white or Black) could be asked to give up a seat even if there were no other seat on the bus available.

Nonetheless, at one point on the route, a white man had no seat because all the seats in the designated "white" section were taken. So the driver told the riders in the four seats of the first row of the "colored" section to stand, in effect adding another row to the "white" section. The three others obeyed. Parks did not.

"People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired," wrote Parks in her autobiography, "but that isn't true. I was not tired physically... No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in."

Eventually, two police officers approached the stopped bus, assessed the situation and placed Parks in custody.
READ MORE: The MLK Graphic Novel That Inspired Generations of Civil Rights Activists
Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott

Although Parks used her one phone call to contact her husband, word of her arrest had spread quickly and E.D. Nixon was there when Parks was released on bail later that evening. Nixon had hoped for years to find a courageous Black person of unquestioned honesty and integrity to become the plaintiff in a case that might become the test of the validity of segregation laws. Sitting in Parks' home, Nixon convinced Parks-and her husband and mother-that Parks was that plaintiff. Another idea arose as well: The Black population of Montgomery would boycott the buses on the day of Parks' trial, Monday, December 5. By midnight, 35,000 flyers were being mimeographed to be sent home with Black schoolchildren, informing their parents of the planned boycott.

On December 5, Parks was found guilty of violating segregation laws, given a suspended sentence and fined $10 plus $4 in court costs. Meanwhile, Black participation in the boycott was much larger than even optimists in the community had anticipated. Nixon and some ministers decided to take advantage of the momentum, forming the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) to manage the boycott, and they elected Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.-new to Montgomery and just 26 years old-as the MIA's president.

As appeals and related lawsuits wended their way through the courts, all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Montgomery Bus Boycott engendered anger in much of Montgomery's white population as well as some violence, and Nixon's and Dr. King's homes were bombed. The violence didn't deter the boycotters or their leaders, however, and the drama in Montgomery continued to gain attention from the national and international press.

On November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court ruled that bus segregation was unconstitutional; the boycott ended December 20, a day after the Court's written order arrived in Montgomery. Parks-who had lost her job and experienced harassment all year-became known as "the mother of the civil rights movement."
READ MORE: Rosa Parks' Life After the Bus Was No Easy Ride
Rosa Parks's Life After the Boycott

Facing continued harassment and threats in the wake of the boycott, Parks, along with her husband and mother, eventually decided to move to Detroit, where Parks' brother resided. Parks became an administrative aide in the Detroit office of Congressman John Conyers Jr. in 1965, a post she held until her 1988 retirement. Her husband, brother and mother all died of cancer between 1977 and 1979. In 1987, she co-founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development, to serve Detroit's youth.

In the years following her retirement, she traveled to lend her support to civil-rights events and causes and wrote an autobiography, "Rosa Parks: My Story." In 1999, Parks was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honor the United States bestows on a civilian. (Other recipients have included George Washington, Thomas Edison, Betty Ford and Mother Teresa.) When she died at age 92 on October 24, 2005, she became the first woman in the nation's history to lie in honor at the U.S. Capitol.

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Rosa Parks' Early Life Rosa Parks: Roots of Activism December 1, 1955: Rosa Parks Is Arrested Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott Rosa Parks's Life After the Boycott Rosa Parks (1913-2005) helped initiate the civil rights movement in the United States when she refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama bus in 1955.

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Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden | Smithsonian

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From WondaGurl to Ebonie Smith, Black women have produced award-winning pop hits. Yet they are not always household names like some of their counterparts. In Respect Her Crank!: Producing Sounds of Blackness, this changes. Award-winning producer J'Nae White facilitates multiple workshops designed to teach the art of music production, as inspired by Black women producers.

Register for a workshop, or several, today. No prior experience is needed.

This workshop will show you basic production fundamentals in a free Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). You will arrange melodies and drum patterns, use synthesizers and samplers, and ultimately create your own unique beat using FL Studio and BandLab. You'll walk away with the fundamentals in music production and resources to continue exploring music production on your own.

This workshop is all about music sampling, a technique used primarily in producing hip-hop music. You will learn how to identify music samples in contemporary songs and reconstruct a sample for a beat of your own while using FL Studio, Sampulator, and Sample Stitch. The best part is that your MIDI is the keyboard.

Mixing is the key to taking your beats to the next level. In this workshop, we will get to the nitty gritty of mixing. Using critical listening, Soundation and Sampulator, participants will make their own beats and practice mixing strategies.

Did you know that there is theory behind some of your favorite songs? This workshop introduces you to music theory for producers. Inspired by the award-winning record producers Nova Wav, you will learn standard beat composition from intro to outro on FL Studio, BandLab, and Incredibox and flourish into a dope music producer.

This final workshop is a comprehensive exploration of the tools, techniques, and workflow required to produce RnB and hip-hop music. Inspired by the famous Missy Elliot, you will have the opportunity to learn advanced skills and apply them using FL Studio, Soundation, and Sampulator.
This project received support from the Smithsonian American Women's History Initiative.

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Respect Her Crank!: Producing Sounds of Blackness - Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden | Smithsonian

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From WondaGurl to Ebonie Smith, Black women have produced award-winning pop hits. Yet they are not always household names like some of their counterparts. In Respect Her Crank!: Producing Sounds of Blackness, this changes. Award-winning producer J'Nae White facilitates multiple workshops designed to teach the art of music production, as inspired by Black women producers.

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Today is the first day of Women's History Month, which means it is time to reflect on the past milestones for women, examine the issues facing women today, and celebrate the incredible women who are working to change lives around the world.

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Who are some of the important women in your life who have shaped who you are and what you think?

Comment down below!

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John Green

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Women's Suffrage: Crash Course US History #31

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The historic women's suffrage march on Washington - 

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The historic women's suffrage march on Washington - 

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Michelle Mehrtens

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The historic women’s suffrage march on Washington

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On March 3, 1913, after months of strategic planning and controversy, thousands of women gathered in Washington D.C. for the Women’s Suffrage Parade -- the first mass protest for a woman’s right to vote. Michelle Mehrtens details how the march rejuvenated the fight for the 19th amendment. [Directed by WOW-HOW Studio, narrated by Christina Greer, music by Bamm Bamm Wolfgang].

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Yve Blake

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When you think of fangirls, what comes to mind: large swaths of fandom (usually for a boyband) whose feelings culminate in tears and joyful screams? Perhaps you grimace or roll your eyes at the thought.