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Toni Stone (born July 17, 1921, St. Paul, Minnesota, U.S.-died November 2, 1996, Alameda, California) was an American baseball player who, as a member of the Negro American League 's Indianapolis Clowns, was the first woman to ever play professional baseball as a regular on a big-league team.

Stone's love for the game began when she was a child. At age 10 she played in a league sponsored by a cereal company. At age 15 she began playing with the St. Paul Giants, a men's semiprofessional team. After graduating from high school, Stone moved to California to live with her sister. She soon began playing centre field for the American Legion team. From there she moved to the San Francisco Sea Lions, where her batting average was .280. Stone then secured a position with the Negro league All Star team. In 1949 she began playing second base for the minor league New Orleans Creoles, and in 1953 she joined the Indianapolis Clowns, playing the same position.

Able to run 100 yards in 11 seconds and maintaining a .243 batting average while with the Clowns, Stone was taunted at times by teammates, once being told, "Go home and fix your husband some biscuits." She was undeterred, however, and, during an exhibition game in 1953, she hit a single off a fastball pitch delivered by legendary player Satchel Paige. After playing 50 games with the Clowns, Stone was traded to the Kansas City Monarchs, where she retired at the end of the 1954 season.

Stone then worked as a nurse, mainly caring for her husband, Aurelious Alberga (some 40 years her senior), until he died in 1987. In 1991 Stone and other players from the Negro leagues were honoured by the Baseball Hall of Fame, and in 1993 she was inducted into the Women's Sports Hall of Fame.

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Toni Stone, American baseball player who, as a member of the Negro American League's Indianapolis Clowns, was the first woman to ever play professional baseball as a regular on a big-league team. Learn more about Stone's life and accomplishments in this article.

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I am Amelia Earhart Read Aloud by Brad Meltzer

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I am Amelia Earhart Read Aloud by Brad Meltzer

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Storytime with Brad Meltzer 🛩️ I am Amelia Earhart | NEW Read-Along

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I am Marie Curie Read Aloud by Brad Meltzer

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I am Marie Curie Read Aloud by Brad Meltzer

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Storytime with Brad Meltzer 🧪 I am Marie Curie | NEW Read-Along

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Mama reads “I am Lucille Ball” by Brad Meltzer [Read Aloud Children’s Book]

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FLO-JO'S UNBEATABLE WORLD RECORDS! || MAKING A WORLD RECORD - 100 AND 200 METERS

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Justice Sonia Sotomayor | The Supreme Court Historical Society

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Justice Sonia Sotomayor Image Credit: Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States, Photographer: Steve Petteway Your browser does not support the audio element. Please Right click here and Save As to download the audio file (MP3 format). SONIA SOTOMAYOR, Associate Justice of the United Stat…

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Florence Griffith Joyner, in full Delorez Florence Griffith Joyner, née Delorez Florence Griffith, byname FloJo, (born December 21, 1959, Los Angeles, California, U.S.-died September 21, 1998, Mission Viejo, California), American sprinter who set world records in the 100 metres (10.49 seconds) and 200 metres (21.34 seconds) that have stood since 1988.

Griffith started running at age seven, chasing jackrabbits to increase her speed. In 1980 she entered the University of California, Los Angeles (B.A., 1983), to train with coach Bob Kersee. At the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, she won a silver medal in the 200-metre race and quickly became a media celebrity with her 6-inch (15-cm) decorated fingernails and eye-catching racing suits. Disappointed with her performance, however, she went into semiretirement. In 1987 she rededicated herself to the sport, adopting an intense weight-training program and altering her starting technique. That same year she married Al Joyner, winner of the 1984 gold medal in the triple jump and brother of Jackie Joyner-Kersee, a heptathlon champion. The changes produced dramatic results. At the 1988 Olympic trials, Griffith Joyner set a world record in the 100-metre sprint (10.49 seconds), beating the old mark by 0.27 second and improving her previous best by more than half a second. Later that year at the Olympics in Seoul, she captured three gold medals (100 metres, 200 metres, and 4 × 100-metre relay) and a silver (4 × 400-metre relay). In 1988 Griffith Joyner received the Sullivan Award as the nation's top amateur performer. Though her remarkable performances sparked rumours of steroid use, drug tests revealed no banned substances.

After retiring in 1989, Griffith Joyner established a foundation for underprivileged children and from 1993 to 1995 served as the cochair of the President's Council on Physical Fitness. A comeback attempt in 1996 ended following a leg injury. She was inducted into the Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1995.

Amy Tikkanen, Corrections Manager.

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The women's competition featured Americans Florence Griffith Joyner, winner of three gold medals, and Jackie Joyner-Kersee, who earned gold medals in the heptathlon and the long jump....

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The women's competition featured Americans Florence Griffith Joyner, winner of three gold medals, and Jackie Joyner-Kersee, who earned gold medals in the heptathlon and the long jump. Weightlifter Naim Suleymanoglu of Turkey won the first of his two career gold medals in the featherweight division. Soviet Greco-Roman wrestler Aleksandr Kareline...

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This article was most recently revised and updated by Florence Griffith Joyner, in full Delorez Florence Griffith Joyner, née Delorez Florence Griffith, byname FloJo, (born December 21, 1959, Los Angeles, California, U.S.-died September 21, 1998, Mission Viejo, California), American sprinter who set world records in the 100 metres (10.49 seconds) and 200 metres (21.34 seconds) that have stood since 1988.

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For more than three decades, Margaret Chase Smith served as a role model for women aspiring to national politics. As the first woman to win election to both the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate, Smith cultivated a career as an independent and courageous legislator. Senator Smith bravely denounced McCarthyism at a time when others feared speaking out would ruin their careers. Though she believed firmly that women had a political role to assume, Smith refused to make an issue of her gender in seeking higher office. "If we are to claim and win our rightful place in the sun on an equal basis with men," she once noted, "then we must not insist upon those privileges and prerogatives identified in the past as exclusively feminine." ¹

Margaret Madeline Chase was born on December 14, 1897, in Skowhegan, Maine-the oldest of six children-to George Emery, the town barber, and Carrie Murray Chase, a waitress, store clerk, and shoe factory worker. ² After graduating from Skowhegan High School in 1916, Chase took jobs as a teacher, telephone operator, and office manager for a woolen mill and on the staff of a small newspaper. In 1930 she married Clyde Harold Smith, an accomplished local politician. ³ In 1936 Clyde Smith was elected as a Republican to the House of Representatives for the 75th Congress (1937-1939). Margaret Smith managed his Washington office and served as president of the Business and Professional Women's Club of Maine. She also worked on behalf of the Maine GOP committee.

In the spring of 1940, Representative Clyde Smith fell ill with a life-threatening heart condition. Realizing that he could not survive the rigors of an election campaign, he persuaded his wife to run for his seat in the general election the following November. Before his death on April 8, 1940, the Congressman told voters, "I know of no one else who has the full knowledge of my ideas and plans or is as well qualified as she is, to carry on these ideas or my unfinished work for the district." ⁴ His seat left vacant with his passing, Margaret Chase Smith declared her candidacy for the special election to serve out his unexpired term in the 76th Congress (1939-1941). ⁵ In the May 13, 1940, Republican special primary, Smith topped her challenger by a more-than 10-to-1 margin, virtually assuring her election to the House in the heavily Republican district. 6 Without a Democratic challenger, she won the June 3 special election, becoming Maine's first woman Member of Congress. On June 17, 1940, only a week after being seated in the House, Congresswoman Smith won the GOP primary for the full term in the 77th Congress (1941-1943), garnering more than 27,000 votes and amassing more than four times the total of her nearest competitor. ⁷ Her second primary triumph dispelled a popular notion that voters would abandon her-having believed that by electing her to a brief term they had fulfilled their obligation to seeing her husband's programs through to conclusion.

In the 1940 general election, Smith ran on a platform of military preparedness (including expansion of the Navy, which played well in her shipbuilding district) and support for old-age pensions and assistance, which appealed to the state's large elderly population. She portrayed herself as a moderate who, in contrast to liberal feminists, would work within the established order; she employed that argument for many later campaigns. Smith drew upon her experiences campaigning with her husband, particularly his ability to strike up personal relationships with voters. ⁸ Smith won the general election over Democrat Edward Beauchamp, with 65 percent of the vote. After her 1940 campaigns, Smith was re-elected to the three succeeding Congresses with relatively little challenge, defeating her opponents with 60 percent or more of the vote. ⁹

As a freshman in 1940, Representative Smith had hoped to carry on her husband's work on the Labor Committee, but she was instead pushed onto four low-level committees: War Claims; Revision of the Laws; Invalid Pensions; and the Election of the President, Vice President, and Representatives in Congress. ¹⁰ Though she often broke with her GOP colleagues on important votes, party leaders answered her persistent request for a better committee assignment in the 78th Congress (1943-1945). Smith received a position on the prominent House Naval Affairs Committee-a fair compromise after her strategic request for the highly coveted Appropriations panel. "When I asked for a committee, I asked for Appropriations, knowing that I would not get it," Smith recalled, "I asked for it, because that was the thing to do in those days. You didn't expect to get what you asked for, so you would ask for something that was impossible. . . . And Naval Affairs was what I wanted; I didn't want Appropriations . . . I think I was smart." ¹¹ In addition to her Naval Affairs duties, Smith served on the Education Committee and the Post Office and Post Roads Committee. After the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 merged disparate committees with military jurisdictions, the Congresswoman was assigned to the Armed Services Committee.

Smith was an active member of the Naval Affairs and Armed Services Committees. Her position gave her power to award shipbuilding projects in Maine. It also made her an expert on military and national security matters, leading to her participation in an investigation of the construction of destroyers and the inspection of bases in the South Pacific. In addition, Smith participated in a trip to observe the postwar reconstruction in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Though she expressed concern for the spread of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe, Smith remained wary of domestic communist fears. She voted against legislation to make the House Select Committee on Un-American Activities permanent.

As a member of the Armed Services Committee, Smith passed her landmark legislative achievement in the House: the Women's Armed Forces Integration Act. With a wartime peak enrollment of about 350,000, women were still considered volunteers for the armed services and did not receive any benefits. ¹² In April 1947, while chairing the Armed Services' Subcommittee on Hospitalization and Medicine, Smith passed a bill giving regular status to Navy and Army nurses-well-accepted by her House colleagues because it covered women in traditional, "angel of mercy" roles. ¹³ When the Armed Forces Integration Act, providing for the permanent inclusion of all uniformed women in the military, easily passed the Senate in July 1947, Smith faced a greater challenge pushing the bill through the House. Opponents on the Armed Services Committee amended it over Smith's lone dissenting vote, significantly curtailing women's rights and benefits by offering them reserve status. The House passed the committee's version. In an effort to restore the bill's original intent in the conference committee, Smith appealed to her personal friend, Secretary of Defense James V. Forrestal, who gave her his full backing. Smith prevailed when the House conferees accepted a version of the legislation granting women regular status on June 2, 1948. President Harry S. Truman signed the bill into law 10 days later, just weeks before he racially integrated the armed forces by Executive Order. ¹⁴

In 1947, when Maine's senior U.S. Senator, Republican Majority Leader Wallace Humphrey White Jr., announced he would not seek a fourth term, Smith entered the hotly contested 1948 primary to succeed him. The state Republican Party, stung by Smith's many votes across party lines, opposed her candidacy and supported Maine Governor Horace A. Hildreth in the four-way Running on the slogan, "Don't trade a record for a promise," Smith insisted that her legislative achievements in the House were worth more than the campaign promises of her opponents. ¹⁵ The personal touch that marked her House campaigns also aided in her senatorial bid. As she crisscrossed the state making speeches and meeting personally with constituents, many simply addressed her by her first name, "Margaret," with the kind of intimacy indicative of an old friendship. ¹⁶ A large corps of Maine women volunteers also greatly aided her shoestring, grassroots campaign. 17 In the June 21 primary, Smith received nearly 64,000 votes, a greater margin than the combined votes of her three challengers. After capturing the primary, Smith won a lopsided election, defeating Democrat Adrian Scolten with 71 percent of the vote. Smith's election marked the first time a woman won election to the Senate without the widow or appointment connection and the first time a woman served in both chambers. Smith was re-elected to the Senate three more times by comfortable majorities. ¹⁸

Despite her experience in the House, Smith needed to earn her seniority in the Senate. In her first term, she received three less powerful assignments: Committee on the District of Columbia; Committee on Rules and Administration; and the Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Departments, which later was renamed Government Operations in the 83rd Congress (1953-1955). When Republicans briefly controlled the chamber in the 83rd Congress, Smith earned seats on two prominent committees which no woman had held before: Appropriations and Armed Services. She gave up Government Operations for an assignment on the Aeronautical and Space Sciences Committee in the 86th Congress (1959-1961)-a particularly influential panel at the dawn of the space race with the Soviet Union. ¹⁹ She maintained a place on these three key panels for the remainder of her Senate career.

Margaret Chase Smith's defining moment in the U.S. Senate came on June 1, 1950, when she took the Senate Floor to denounce the investigatory tactics of the redbaiting Wisconsin Senator Joseph Raymond McCarthy. In a speech she later called a "Declaration of Conscience," Smith charged that her Republican colleague had "debased" Senate deliberations "through the selfish political exploitation of fear, bigotry, ignorance and intolerance." She said, "The American people are sick and tired of being afraid to speak their minds lest they be politically smeared as 'Communists' or 'Fascists' by their opponents. Freedom of speech is not what it used to be in America. It has been so abused by some that it is not exercised by others." ²⁰ Although the speech attracted favorable nationwide attention and was endorsed by six fellow Republicans in the Senate, it did little to restrain Senator McCarthy and his supporters. McCarthy ridiculed Senator Smith on the Senate Floor, and he poured political capital into the campaign of Smith's 1954 GOP rival. Late in 1954, the Senate censured McCarthy for his conduct of the Army-McCarthy hearings, effectively silencing him. Despite Smith's bravery in standing up to McCarthy, her reputation as a political maverick limited her later potential in the Senate. Among the costs were her removal from the Republican Policy Committee and a drop in seniority on the Permanent Investigations Subcommittee of the Government Operations Committee. ²¹

In the Senate, Smith remained more of an independent than a party-line Republican vote. The Senator's meticulous and independent nature was most evident in her rejection of several high-profile presidential nominees. In 1957, after President Dwight D. Eisenhower nominated Hollywood actor, decorated World War II veteran, and army reservist James (Jimmy) Stewart for promotion to brigadier general, Senator Smith recommended against his promotion. She led an unexpected rejection of Commerce Secretary nominee Lewis L. Strauss in 1959, marking the third time in a century that a Cabinet appointment was rejected and deeply angering the Eisenhower administration. 22 Nearly a decade later, Smith enraged the Richard M. Nixon White House when she and fellow Senators rejected Supreme Court nominee G. Harrold Carswell. Smith's independence on high-visibility issues made it hard to categorize her politics and somewhat diminished her influence. On the domestic front, the Senator supported legislation for primarily Democratic initiatives on educational funding and civil rights. However, Smith supported a much more aggressive foreign policy than that of the John F. Kennedy administration. After the Berlin Crisis of 1961, she accused President Kennedy of lacking the resolve to use nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union, chiding the President on the Senate Floor, "In short, we have the nuclear capability but not the nuclear credibility." ²³ In her long career, Smith became a Senate institution in her own right. From June 1, 1955, to September 6, 1968, she cast 2,941 consecutive roll call votes. Her streak was interrupted only by recovery from hip surgery.

After months of denying rumors that she would seek the top of the Republican ticket or the vice presidential nomination, Senator Margaret Chase Smith announced her run for President in January 1964. "I have few illusions and no money, but I'm staying for the finish," she noted, "When people keep telling you, you can't do a thing, you kind of like to try." ²⁴ Smith embarked on her typical grassroots campaign-losing every primary but picking up a surprising high of 25 percent of the vote in Illinois. ²⁵ At the 1964 Republican Convention, she became the first woman to have her name put in for nomination for the presidency by a major political party. Receiving the support of just 27 delegates and losing the nomination to Senate colleague Barry Goldwater, it was a symbolic achievement.

To the surprise of many across the country, Maine voters turned the venerable septuagenarian out of office in 1972, during her bid for a fifth consecutive term. Prior to the election, Smith had given serious consideration to retiring, but charges that she was too old-at age 74-to serve as a Senator had motivated her to run for re-election. The Democratic nominee, Maine U.S. Representative William Dodd Hathaway, emphasized Smith's age. He also claimed Smith was inaccessible and inattentive to Maine's concerns, citing the fact that she did not maintain an office in the state. Smith lost the election by 27,230 votes, a margin of 53 to 47 percent. ²⁶

Smith resettled in her hometown of Skowhegan to oversee the construction of the Margaret Chase Smith Library Center, the first of its kind to focus its collection on the papers of a female Member of Congress. In 1989 President George H. W. Bush awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. Margaret Chase Smith died on May 29, 1995, at the age of 97, in Skowhegan. ²⁷

View Record in the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress

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SMITH, Margaret Chase | US House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives

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For more than three decades, Margaret Chase Smith served as a role model for women aspiring to national politics. As the first woman to win election to both the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate, Smith cultivated a career as an independent and courageous legislator.

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At the age of 17, Maria Tallchief moved to New York City to pursue her dreams of becoming a dancer. She went from dance company to dance company looking for work. Many of the companies discriminated against her because of her Native American ancestry. Rejection did not stop Tallchief; she continued working towards her goal and eventually became one of America's most popular ballerinas.

Elizabeth Marie Tall Chief was born January 24, 1925 in Fairfax, Oklahoma. Her father was a member of the Osage Nation. Her mother, Ruth Porter, had grown up very poor and was never able to take dancing lessons. Therefore, when Tallchief and her sister Marjorie showed interest in dance her mother immediately placed them in lessons. Tallchief excelled at dance and music. During her teen years, Tallchief's family moved to Los Angeles, California in hopes of securing a significant role. Unfortunately, major opportunities were slow coming. In the meantime, Tallchief explored different genres of dance and was drawn to ballet.

Upon graduating from high school, Tallchief moved to New York City to pursue ballet full time. She was selected as an understudy in the Ballet Russe, the premier Russian ballerina company in the United States. In 1942, when one of the lead ballerinas abruptly stepped down, Tallchief was called to stand in. Her performance received positive reviews from top critics. As her career began to take off, many tried to persuade Tallchief to change her last name so that dance companies would not discriminate against her. She refused and continued to perform as Maria Tallchief. In 1947, she became the first American to dance with the Paris Opera Ballet. After marrying choreographer George Balanchine, who created her signature Firebird role, she became prima ballerina of the New City Ballet. One of Tallchief's best-known roles was as the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker. Tallchief perform at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow in 1960, making her the first American to do so.

After retiring from dancing, Tallchief and her sister opened the Chicago City Ballet, a ballet school and dance company. Never forgetting her Native American ancestry, she spoke out against injustices and discrimination. As prima ballerina, Tallchief not only broke barriers for Native Americans, she also became one of the only Americans recognized in European ballet companies. Tallchief died on April 11, 2013.

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At the age of 17, Maria Tallchief moved to New York City to pursue her dreams of becoming a dancer. She went from dance company to dance company looking for work. Many of the companies discriminated against her because of her Native American ancestry.

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Virginia Apgar, (born June 7, 1909, Westfield, N.J., U.S.-died Aug. 7, 1974, New York, N.Y.), American physician, anesthesiologist, and medical researcher who developed the Apgar Score System, a method of evaluating an infant shortly after birth to assess its well-being and to determine if any immediate medical intervention is required.

Apgar graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1929 and from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1933. After an internship at Presbyterian Hospital, New York City, she held residencies in the relatively new specialty of anesthesiology at the University of Wisconsin and then at Bellevue Hospital, New York City, in 1935-37. In 1937 she became the first female board-certified anesthesiologist. The first professor of anesthesiology at the College of Physicians and Surgeons (1949-59), she was also the first female physician to attain the rank of full professor there. Additionally, from 1938 she was director of the department of anesthesiology at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center.

An interest in obstetric procedure, and particularly in the treatment of the newborn, led her to develop a simple system for quickly evaluating the condition and viability of newly delivered infants. As finally presented in 1952, the Apgar Score System relies on five simple observations to be made by delivery room personnel (nurses or interns) of the infant within one minute of birth and-depending on the results of the first observation-periodically thereafter. The Apgar Score System soon came into general use throughout the United States and was adopted by several other countries.

Al Ravenna-World Journal Tribune/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (dig. id. cph 3c31540)

In 1959 Apgar left Columbia and took a degree in public health from Johns Hopkins University. She headed the division of congenital malformations at the National Foundation-March of Dimes from 1959-67. She was promoted to director of basic research at the National Foundation (1967-72), and she later became senior vice president for medical affairs (1973-74). She cowrote the book Is My Baby All Right? (1972) with Joan Beck.

Al Ravenna-World Journal Tribune/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (dig. id. cph 3c31542)

Amy Tikkanen.

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Virginia Apgar, American physician, anesthesiologist, and medical researcher who developed the Apgar Score System, a method of evaluating an infant shortly after birth to assess its well-being and to determine if any immediate medical intervention is required. Apgar graduated from Mount Holyoke

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Clara Lemlich, Courtesy: Cornell Kheel Center

Clara Lemlich, a 23-year-old Ukrainian immigrant, rose to a position of power in the women's labor movement, becoming the voice that incited the famous Uprising of the Twenty Thousand in 1909. Born in 1886 in the Ukrainian town of Gorodok, Lemlich grew up in a Jewish family that experienced the social upheaval and hardships defined by the declining Russian monarchy. Facing poverty and an increase in anti-Jewish violence, Lemlich's family fled Ukraine in 1903 and found a new home and new work in the United States.

Like many Jewish and Italian immigrant laborers, Lemlich joined the textile-manufacturing workforce only two weeks after arriving in New York. At the Gotham shirtwaist factory, women worked 11 hours a day, six days a week, for starting wages of $3 a week -- conditions that reduced workers "to the status of machines," wrote 17-year-old Lemlich. Appalled by these circumstances, Lemlich joined the executive board of a local chapter of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU), a relatively new organization gaining momentum in the fight for workers' rights. In that role, Lemlich led picket lines, wrote opinion pieces, and organized strikes to improve factory conditions. Lemlich and her supporters were often physically harmed by policemen and thugs hired by factory owners. In one case Lemlich was hospitalized after a beating she received while standing in the picket line.

On November 22nd, 1909, Lemlich helped incite a strike that ultimately proved instrumental to industrial labor reform. As she stood in front of thousands of her fellow female workers at the Cooper Union in New York City, speaking in her native Yiddish language, she demanded swift action. "I am a working girl," proclaimed Lemlich. "One of those who are on strike against intolerable conditions. I am tired of listening to speakers who talk in general terms. What we are here for is to decide whether we shall strike or shall not strike. I offer a resolution that a general strike be declared now." After a prolonged roar of approval, Lemlich and the thousands in attendance took a Yiddish oath to strike the following day, pledging, "If I turn traitor to the cause I now pledge, may this hand wither from the arm I now raise."

The next morning, Lemlich and 15,000 factory workers stood in the streets of New York to protest wages and working conditions. This strike, later dubbed the Uprising of the Twenty Thousand, lasted for over two months and transformed the culture of the industrial worker. Protestors won concessions from several factories for fair wages and shorter hours. Lemlich had not only started a protest, but she had also instigated a worker's revolution.

The progress towards workers' rights, however, was overshadowed by the disastrous Triangle Fire that claimed the lives of 146 factory workers in March of 1911. In response to the tragedy, Lemlich, who at the time was organizing unions throughout New York City, attributed the high number of casualties from the fire to the absence of union standards at the factory, which would have prohibited locked doors and required accessible fire escapes.

In the years following the Triangle Fire, Lemlich continued to fight for workers' rights. She became an active member of the Communist party and petitioned for women's suffrage. Because of her political leanings Lemlich eventually broke ties with the ILGWU and many of her colleagues, including activist Pauline Newman, who stated, "Her politics [were] not my cup of tea... We no longer had anything in common except the memory of the strike and our participation in it."

In 1913, Lemlich married Joe Shavelson, a printer's union activist, and together they had three children. She continued to speak on behalf of several causes, and she lead a nationwide food strike in response to inflated prices during World War I. Throughout the 1940's Lemlich served on the American Committee to Survey Trade Union Conditions in Europe, and became an organizer for the American League against War and Fascism. Due to her earlier involvement in the Communist Party, Lemlich and her family were monitored by the House of Un-American Activities Committee throughout the 1950s. Lemlich officially retired from the ILGWU in 1954. She died on July 12, 1982.

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Clara Lemlich and the Uprising of the 20,000 | American Experience | PBS

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This 23-year-old Ukrainian immigrant was the voice that helped incite the famous 1909 women's labor strike.

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Born into an affluent, progressive family, Gertrude Bell lived a life of adventure and intrigue. She defied the expectations of a woman in Victorian England, becoming a world traveler, a skilled mountaineer and an accomplished archaeologist. Well versed in the lands and cultures of Mesopotamia, Bell put her knowledge to work for the British government during World War I. After the war ended, she was instrumental in the creation of the country we now know as Iraq.

Take a look at these facts about the real life of this extraordinary woman:

Bell was the first woman to earn first-degree honors in modern history at Oxford

At the time, few women attended college, but Bell was fortunate to have a supportive family who allowed her to advance her education. She attended Lady Margaret Hall, one of the only colleges in Oxford that accepted women.

Photo: Mansell/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

Bell was unlucky in love

The first man she fell for was Henry Cadogan, a member of the foreign service she met while visiting Iran in 1892. The couple shared a love of literature, including the poetry of Rudyard Kipling and the stories of Henry James. Unfortunately for Bell, her father disapproved of the match. He objected to Cadogan's gambling habit and its accompanying debt.

Later Bell became enamored with a married British officer, Dick Doughty-Wylie. According to an article in the Telegraph newspaper, the pair exchanged numerous letters expressing their affection for each other. Bell wanted Doughty-Wylie to leave his wife for her, and his wife threatened suicide if he did. The whole tragic mess ended when Doughty-Wylie died in the battle at Gallipoli in 1915.

A skilled mountaineer, Bell almost met her end on a slope

She started climbing years earlier during a family holiday in La Grave, France, in 1897. She tackled greater heights with her 1899 ascents of the Meije and Les Ecrins in the French region of the Alps. Bell continued to challenge herself with other peaks in the Swiss Alps the following year. Becoming one of the leading female climbers of her day, she helped tackle some of the virgin peaks of the Engelhorner range. One of these previously uncharted peaks was named Gertrudspitze in her honor.

Bell, with her guides, tried to climb another mountain, the Finsteraarhorn, in 1902, when a blizzard hit. She spent more than 50 hours on a rope on the mountain's northeast side before she was able to make it back to a local village with her guides. The experience left Bell with frostbitten hands and feet, but it did not end her love of climbing. She went on to scale the Matterhorn in 1904. She described her experience in one of her letters, according to A Woman in Arabia: The Writings of the Queen of the Desert. "It was beautiful climbing, never seriously difficult, but never easy, and most of the time on a great steep face which was splendid to go upon."

Bell's fascination with the Middle East began with a visit to Iran in 1892

Her uncle, Sir Frank Lascelles, was the British ambassador at the time she made her first journey to the region. To prepare for the trip, Bell studied Persian and continued to actively work on learning the language while in Tehran. She later took up Arabic, a language she found especially challenging. As she wrote in one of her letters, "there are at least three sounds almost impossible to the European throat."

Later traveling extensively through the region, Bell found inspiration for several of her writing projects. She published her first travel book, Safar Nameh: Persia Pictures, in 1894. In 1897, her English translations of Poems from the Divan of Hafiz were published and are still considered some of the finest versions of these works today.

Bell was passionate about archaeology

She had developed this interest during a family trip in 1899, visiting an excavation of the Melos, an ancient city in Greece. Bell undertook several archaeology-related journeys, including a 1909 trek along the course of the Euphrates River. She often documented the sites she found by taking photographs. In one of her projects, she worked with archaeologist Sir William Mitchell Ramsey on The Thousand and One Churches (1909), which featured Bin-Bir-Kilisse, an archaeological site in Turkey.

Photo: Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis/Getty Images

Bell was the only woman working for the British government in the Middle East

She worked with T.E. Lawrence, perhaps better known as "Lawrence of Arabia," in the Arab Bureau during World War I. Based in Cairo, the bureau gathered and analyzed information to help the British oust the Ottoman Empire from the region. The British had suffered several military defeats against them when Lawrence devised a new strategy. He wanted to recruit Arab peoples to oppose the Turks, and Bell helped him to drum up support for this effort.

After the war, Bell sought to help the Arabs. She wrote "Self-Determination in Mesopotamia," a paper that earned her a seat at the 1919 Peace Conference in Paris. Bell continued to explore related political and social issues in her 1920 work Review of the Civil Administration of Mesopotamia. She was involved the 1921 Conference in Cairo with Winston Churchill, then colonial secretary, that established the boundaries of Iraq. Bell also helped bring Faisal I to power as Iraq's new king. For her work on their behalf, Bell earned the respect of the peoples of Mesopotamia. She was often addressed as "khutan," which means "queen" in Persian and "respected lady" in Arabic.

Bell helped establish what is now the Iraq Museum

She wanted to help preserve the country's heritage. In 1922, Bell was named the director of antiquities by King Faisal and she worked hard to keep important artifacts in Iraq. Bell aided in the crafting of the 1922 Law of Excavation. A few years later, the museum opened its first exhibition space in 1926. She spent the final months of her life working on the museum, cataloging items found at Ur and Kish, two ancient Sumerian cities.

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Gertrude Bell: 7 Facts About Her Fascinating Life

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Born into an affluent, progressive family, Gertrude Bell lived a life of adventure and intrigue. She defied the expectations of a woman in Victorian England, becoming a world traveler, a skilled mountaineer and an accomplished archaeologist. Well versed in the lands and cultures of Mesopotamia, Bell put her knowledge to work for the British government during World War I.

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I am Helen Keller by Brad Meltzer | READ ALOUD

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Helen Keller - Deafblind Author & Activist | Mini Bio | Biography

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Quick Facts

Name

Gertrude Bell

Occupation

Archaeologist

Birth Date

July 14, 1868

Death Date

July 12, 1926

Education

Oxford University

Place of Birth

Durham, England

Place of Death

Baghdad, Iraq

Originally

Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell

Full Name

Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell

CBE

Gertrude Bell

Gertrude Bell was a British writer, archaeologist and political officer best known for helping to establish modern Iraq after World War I.

Synopsis

Gertrude Bell was born on July 14, 1868, in Durham, England. She studied history at Oxford and embarked on a career as a writer, traveler and archaeologist. Fluent in Persian and Arabic, Bell worked for the British government in Cairo during World War I. She contributed to the construction of the Iraqi state in 1921, as well as the National Museum of Iraq. Bell died in Baghdad on July 12, 1926.

Early Life

Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell was born on July 14, 1868, in Durham, England. Her grandfather, Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell, was a member of Parliament who worked alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. She grew up in a wealthy family in Redcar, a Yorkshire town, in a home built by her father, businessman and industrialist Sir Thomas Hugh Bell. Her mother Mary died in 1871 after giving birth to her younger brother Maurice. Gertrude Bell gained her first exposure to politics and world affairs through her grandfather and his associates. Her father married Florence Bell when Gertrude was still a young child and the union added a half-brother and two half-sisters to the family. Bell would go on to attend Oxford University, where she studied history.

In 1892 Bell graduated with honors from Oxford and shortly thereafter traveled to Tehran, Iran, where her uncle, Sir Frank Lascelles, was serving as British minister. This trip sparked her interest in the Middle East, the region on which she would focus much of her energy for the remainder of her life.

Early Writings and Political Career

In 1899, Gertrude Bell returned to the Middle East and visited Palestine and Syria, touching off a period of sustained travel there and in Asia and Europe. Her writings on her experiences across the globe informed British audiences about the distant parts of their empire. Bell's works published during the two decades preceding World War I include Safar Nameh (1894), Poems from the Divan of Hafiz (1897), The Desert and the Sown (1907), The Thousand and One Churches (1909) and Amurath to Amurath (1911). Bell also maintained a vast correspondence during this period, which was eventually compiled and published in 1927.

During World War I, Bell worked for the Red Cross in France before joining the a British intelligence unit in Cairo, Egypt, known as the Arab Bureau. There, she collaborated with famed British traveler T. E. Lawrence to try to forge alliances with Arab tribes. Her writings about her experiences in the Middle East-particularly in Iraq-continue to be studied and referenced by policy experts in the 21st century.

British forces eventually captured Baghdad in 1917. Subsequently, Bell became involved in the political reinvention of Mesopotamia, where she helped colonial authorities install ruler Faisal I as monarch of Iraq. Fluent in Arabic and Persian, Bell assisted British diplomats and local rulers in the construction of a stable government infrastructure. She was the only woman present at the 1921 Conference in Cairo, convened by Winston Churchill to determine the boundaries of the Iraqi state.

Despite her own political achievements, Bell actively opposed women's suffrage in Britain. She argued that the vast majority of her contemporaries lacked the education and knowledge of the world necessary to participate meaningfully in political debate.

Later Life

Bell remained in Baghdad after Faisal's 1921 ascension, working to fund and construct an archaeological museum. She pioneered the idea of retaining antiquities in their country of origin rather than transporting them to European centers of learning. The result of Bell's efforts was the National Museum of Iraq, which holds one of the world's greatest collections of Mesopotamian antiquities. The museum collections were damaged in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States.

After taking a fatal dose of sleeping pills, Gertrude Bell died on July 12, 1926, in Baghdad. Her death has been interpreted as a suicide, given her persistent health problems and the recent death of her brother. She is buried in a British cemetery in Baghdad.

In 2012, directors Ridley Scott and Werner Herzog were both planning feature films based on Bell's life. Scott's project eventually foundered, but Herzog's biopic, Queen of the Desert, which stars Nicole Kidman as Bell, Robert Pattinson as T. E. Lawrence and James Franco as a colleague of Bell's, premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in February 2015.

Fact Check

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Name Gertrude Bell Occupation Archaeologist Birth Date July 14, 1868 Death Date July 12, 1926 Education Oxford University Place of Birth Durham, England Place of Death Baghdad, Iraq Originally Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell Full Name Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell CBE Gertrude Bell Gertrude Bell was a British writer, archaeologist and political officer best known for helping to establish modern Iraq after World War I.

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Ronda Rousey: Best Finishes | Ultimate MMA

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Janet & Randy Jackson "Love Is Strange (whit Jackson Five on Dina! 1975)

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Ronda's constantly traveling the world. Get the latest news and follow her on her adventures from heading to RAW to tending the Browsey Acres farm. Cameras are following Ronda everywhere. Follow along as the Rowdy One travels to defend her RAW women's title every week, then check in on Ronda's time on her farm, where she'll try her best to keep the animals in check.

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Empower a new you! Strengthen your inner power, confidence, and mindset with Laila Ali - undefeated boxer, fitness and wellness advocate, television host, mom, wife, and author.

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With her own unique flare and infectious sense of humor, Rae first received attention for her award-winning web series and the accompanying New York Times best-seller, "The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl." She created and starred in the Peabody-award-winning HBO series, INSECURE, which garnered her multiple Emmy® and Golden Globe® nominations.

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Amanda Gorman is the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history, as well as an award-winning writer and cum laude graduate of Harvard University, where she studied Sociology. She has written for the New York Times and has three books forthcoming with Penguin Random House.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, she began writing at only a few years of age. Now her words have won her invitations to the Obama White House and to perform for Lin-Manuel Miranda, Al Gore, Secretary Hillary Clinton, Malala Yousafzai, and others. Amanda has performed multiple commissioned poems for CBS This Morning and she has spoken at events and venues across the country, including the Library of Congress and Lincoln Center. She has received a Genius Grant from OZY Media, as well as recognition from Scholastic Inc., YoungArts, the Glamour magazine College Women of the Year Awards, and the Webby Awards. She has written for the New York Times newsletter The Edit and penned the manifesto for Nike's 2020 Black History Month campaign. In 2017, Amanda Gorman was appointed the first-ever National Youth Poet Laureate by Urban Word - a program that supports Youth Poets Laureate in more than 60 cities, regions and states nationally. She is the recipient of the Poets & Writers Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award, and is the youngest board member of 826 National, the largest youth writing network in the United States.

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Amanda Gorman is the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history, as well as an award-winning writer and cum laude graduate of Harvard University, where she studied Sociology. She has written for the New York Times and has three books forthcoming with Penguin Random House.

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Since 2015, Marley Dias has worked towards racial justice, wrote a book, and hosted a children's Netflix series, but she's only 15 years old. Dias's activism started at ten years old when she came home from school complaining about English class, she explains in an interview for Family Action Network. She liked the teacher and the course, but she was tired of the books he assigned his students. They all seemed to be about the same person--some White boy and his dog. She wanted to read about characters she identified with. It was her mom's response that sparked her activism.

RELATED: Your Teen Can Vote For Their Favorite Book On 'Teens' Top Ten' List

Dr. Janice Johnson Dias (Marley's Mom)

Marley Dias was born into a family of amazing women. According to the GrassROOTS Community Foundation website, Janice Johnson Dias, her mother, holds a Ph.D. in sociology and a post-doctorate from the poverty center at the University of Michigan. She is the president of the GrassROOTS organization. She has won a Congressional Medal of Honor for her work in Long Island on Black girls' mental, sexual and physical health issues. When her daughter came home complaining about the English curriculum, she just shrugged.

Johnson Dias pointed out that she could read what she wanted, and that it was her daughter who didn't like the books. "So what are you going to do about it?" she asked. That got Marley thinking. She came up with a plan.

#1000BlackGirlBooks

Dias decided to organize a drive to collect 1000 books with Black girls as the main characters. Her mother pledged to help her. They would donate the collection to her mother's school in Jamaica. With just two weeks left until her set deadline, she had collected only 200 books. She was feeling pretty down. Again, her parents' support helped her.

They encouraged her to keep trying, but also stay realistic. Dias's mother and father said that she might not reach her goal, but they would still travel with her to Jamaica to turn the books over to the school she had selected. Her drive picked up when she appeared on the and other local Philadelphia news sources. Since then, she's managed to add 11,000 books to her collection.

Marley Dias Gets It Done (and So Can You).

In an interview on , Marley Dias describes her book, Marley Dias Gets It Done (and So Can You). It is about inspiring other young adults to become activists in their communities. She encourages her peers to educate themselves and find their passions. She said it was easy for her since she knew that she loved reading at a young age and that she used that to impact her community. Education, she says, is learning about the helpers in one's community--librarians, mailmen, and teachers. Then, young people should take steps to assist them.

Dias also talks about what it means to be an "upstander." She says that it's the opposite of a bystander--someone who stands and watches while another young person is bullied. She says it's more than just standing up for the victim. It means talking to the bully, finding out why he or she is mean, and helping educate the person to prevent future bullying. She wants everyone to learn to be kinder to each other.

When one of the hosts asks her how she can encourage her children to read more, Dias answers that kids and parents should read together. She says that kids should get to choose the book. Parents should never use reading as a punishment. Finally, families can try watching the movie version first and then read the book together.

Inspirations For Marely Dias

On CBS This Morning, Dias explains that one of her inspirations is Augusta Baker, a woman who was a librarian in New York City's Public Libraries for 37 years. Baker worked to provide various narratives through books, allowing all different groups of people to have voices. She was born in the 1940s and lived when segregation was still legal in the U.S.

Dias had never heard of this woman when she started her campaign, but their goals were similar. The teen says that she wanted to create a world where all people have voices, whether they're Black, white, Pacific South Islanders, Latinxs, people with disabilities, or anyone. She says it's not about pushing one group out so another can be heard, but instead creating a safe space in which everyone has a chance to express themselves and be listened to.

Marley Dias's newest project is a children's series. She hosts and produces Netflix's Bookmarks. Some have described the show as a modern Reading Rainbow. In each episode, Dias introduces a children's book. Then Black celebrities like Misty Copland and Lupita Nyong' o read the story and lead a discussion about the message in each one.

What's Marley's next move going to be? We don't know, but she's sure to continue doing big things to make the world a better place. It'll probably have something to do with books. We'll be busy working our way through her #1000BlackGirlBooks list in the meantime.

READ NEXT: 20 #Boss Lessons All (Good) Moms Need To Be Teaching Their Teenage Girls
Sources: CBS This Morning, View, Good Morning America, Family Action Network, GrassROOTS Community Foundation

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Get To Know Marley Dias, The Young Activist Changing The World

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Since 2015, Marley Dias has worked towards racial justice, wrote a book, and hosted a children's Netflix series, but she's only 15 years old. Dias's activism started at ten years old when she came home from school complaining about English class, she explains in an interview for Family Action Network.

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Stand tall wherever you may be.Look around and allow yourself to see, This planet that needs you and me. We are the future, Don't you see?

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Khloe Thompson United states, Age 13

Project: Khloe Kares
Focus Area: Homelessness/Youth Voice

Khloe is a 13-year-old international philanthropist. She recognized a common challenge faced by youth was connecting their passion with a sustainable purpose. At age 8, she started her own global non-profit organization called Khloe Kares, which helps young people discover and realize their passions. The Khloe Kares Leadership Workshop trains youth in leadership, business planning, and public speaking skills. Khloe's mission is to show students how to both set goals and achieve them.

Khloe Kares also partners with companies, churches and other organizations throughout Southern California and the United States to co-host "Kare Bag Day." They distribute supplies to homeless communities and engage youth in service.

On a global scale, Khloe collaborates with well-known advocate Dawn Sutherland to host a weeklong seminar in Ghana to empower and encourage young women to be leaders in business. Khloe has also installed water pumps and bathroom facilities in schools there that lack access to clean water.

Khloe has published two children's books, GirlBlazer and Marisol's Helping Hand, is a Giving Tuesday Leader, and she continues to lead youth in her community and across the world to be changemakers.

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Khloe Thompson - We Are Family Foundation

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Project: Khloe Kares Focus Area: Homelessness/Youth Voice Khloe is a 13-year-old international philanthropist. She recognized a common challenge faced by youth was connecting their passion with a sustainable purpose. At age 8, she started her own global non-profit organization called Khloe Kares, which helps young people discover and realize their passions.

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Sara Mora La migración es un derecho humano Using the power and force of the internet in the greater fight for migrant rights; human rights at large.

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16-year-old activist, philanthropist, and "future president" Mari Copeny is on the front lines of tackling America's water crisis head on, and helping kids to embrace their power through equal opportunity. When the Flint Water Crisis began instead of feeling helpless Mari decided to use her voice to help out her community and to fight for the kids in Flint. Since then she has expanded her efforts to help communities across the nation dealing with toxic drinking water.

"My generation will fix this mess of a government. Watch us."

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16-year-old activist, philanthropist, and "future president" Mari Copeny is on the front lines of tackling America's water crisis head on, and helping kids to embrace their power through equal opportunity. When the Flint Water Crisis began instead of feeling helpless Mari decided to use her voice to help out her community and to fight for the kids in Flint.

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Nupol Kiazolu is a 20-year-old activist, pageant queen and president of the Greater New York chapter of the Black Lives Matter movement.

When she was 12, Kiazolu was horrified by the news of Trayvon Martin's death, a Black unarmed teenager who was killed by police officers in 2012. She went to school with a gray hoodie and a pack of skittles with the words "Do I Look Suspicious?" written on the back. After getting written up by a teacher, her principal challenged her to present her case.

"I brought up Tinker vs. Des Moines, which in short is a Supreme Court case that established the right for students to peacefully organize within school grounds," Kiazolu told In The Know. "I ended up winning the case [and] at that moment I knew that being an activist and organizer was my calling."

When Kiazolu was 16 she joined the Black Lives Matter movement officially.

"As a young Black woman in this country, I don't have the privilege to sit back and do nothing. I could still be killed because of the color of my skin," Kiazolu said.

The 2019 Miss Liberia USA was featured in the 2020 BET docuseries Copwatch America. She's currently studying political science at Hampton University and plans to devote her life to public service.

"You are never too young to raise your voice and stand up for what you believe in," Kiazolu said. "I still encounter ageism on a day-to-day basis but I would encourage young people all across the world to stay encouraged despite the adversities you may face in this work."
In The Know is now available on Apple News - follow us here! If you enjoyed reading this article, check out In The Know's other profiles here. More from In The Know: Teen founds initiative to make STEM more accessible to girls of color These travel-size beauty kits at Ulta are all under $20 Supreme is launching its first lipstick with beauty mogul Pat McGrath I tried Bread Beauty Supply - the newest Black-owned haircare brand to hit Sephora
The post Nupol Kiazolu is the 20-year-old Black Lives Matter activist defying ageism appeared first on In The Know.

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Nupol Kiazolu is the 20-year-old Black Lives Matter activist defying ageism

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Nupol Kiazolu is a 20-year-old activist, pageant queen and president of the Greater New York chapter of the Black Lives Matter movement. When she was 12, Kiazolu was horrified by the news of Trayvon Martin's death, a Black unarmed teenager who was killed by police officers in 2012.

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Activist Fannie Lou Hamer was one of the most powerful voices of the civil and voting rights movements. Read more at womenshistory.org.

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From:
National Institutes of Health │ Bethesda, Maryland

Award: Benjamin Franklin NextGen Award

Citation:
For her outstanding contributions to the field of viral immunology and vaccine development, including an mRNA-based vaccine to combat the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, cause of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Kizzmekia S. Corbett, Ph.D., is a scientist who is destined for history books. Corbett has been at the forefront of the development of a highly effective vaccine to protect against COVID-19. Less than a year after the virus began spreading globally, the vaccine began to be delivered to millions of healthcare workers and others at high-risk. Prior to the pandemic, Corbett was part of a team at the National Institutes of Health whose research on other coronaviruses laid the foundation for the design of the COVID-19 vaccine. These early efforts were pivotal to the unprecedented speed with which their COVID-19 vaccine was developed in collaboration with the biotech company Moderna. Corbett is not only a renowned immunologist, she is a powerful voice bringing awareness to racial health disparities and encouraging trust in science. During an exceptionally difficult period in our history, Corbett is a beacon of hope and an inspiration for scientists to come.

It was an unprepossessing name, "mRNA-1273," for something so critical. But when Kizzmekia Corbett and her colleagues in the Vaccine Research Center of the federal National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) unveiled their molecular prototype in January 2020, mRNA-1273 became a gamechanger. It would soon be better known as the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, one of two revolutionary messenger RNA vaccines to emerge from laboratories in record time to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, a swiftly spreading disease that caused at least 2.5 million deaths worldwide, approximately 500,000 of those in the U.S., in the span of about one year.

A week after her lab produced mRNA-1273, Kizzmekia Corbett turned 34. Within a year, two sitting presidents would drop by her lab for briefings. Her top boss at NIAID, Anthony Fauci, would call her a "rising star." Like mRNA-1273 itself, Corbett seemed to emerge overnight, but both the scientist and the science behind messenger RNA vaccines were a long time coming. Before being thrust into the spotlight by the COVID-19 pandemic, Corbett was little known outside the world of viral immunology. A senior research fellow in NIAID's vaccine development unit, Corbett focused on viral diseases including dengue, respiratory syncytial virus, and recent coronaviruses such as MERS. These early research efforts were pivotal to the speed with which the COVID-19 vaccine was developed.

In those quieter years, Corbett studied the shapes of coronavirus "spikes" that protrude from the virus's surface. She discovered how to genetically engineer stable spike pieces that the immune system could recognize and mount a broadly neutralizing protective response. Corbett and her colleagues determined how to deliver the genetic material encoding these spike fragments to cells in tiny bubbles, encouraging them to make a small fragment of the MERS virus for the immune system to recognize and to attack should the real virus later enter the body. Corbett and her colleagues successfully tested their experimental mRNA vaccine in mouse and monkey models and developed methods for assessing effectiveness.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Corbett's team partnered with a Massachusetts-based biotech company, Moderna, to transfer their discoveries about the MERS vaccine to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. While the mRNA system was yet untested in humans, it offered huge advantages for rapid development and mass manufacturing. The gene fragments in the vaccine could also be easily reshaped to target new viral variants and other viruses.

On January 11, 2020, Corbett's lab received the first full genomic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 from Chinese scientists. Two days later, Corbett and colleagues had mRNA-1273. Just 66 days after the genetic code of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was determined, the NIH/Moderna team gave the first vaccine dose in a pilot clinical trial. Subsequent large clinical trials showed that the NIH/Moderna vaccine had an astounding 94% effectiveness rate in protecting against COVID-19. On December 18, the FDA issued an Emergency Use Authorization for the Moderna two-dose vaccine. Since then, millions of healthcare workers, high-risk individuals, and increasingly ordinary Americans have received the vaccine that got its start in Corbett's lab.

As the Moderna vaccine distribution progresses, Corbett's lab is pursuing work on a universal coronavirus vaccine that would use mRNA to alert the immune system to features fundamental to all members of the coronavirus family. The Vaccine Research Center is also at work developing novel therapeutic uses for the antibodies triggered by SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Corbett herself has taken on a prominent role as a vaccine educator, reaching out especially to communities of color, which have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 and have long suffered from healthcare disparities. As one of the most highly visible African-American scientists in the fight against COVID-19, Corbett feels she has a special role. She works to bridge the gap between vaccine science and public understanding by explaining the science to address people's concerns. "For a long time, we left the general public on the outside of vaccine development, until it was time to give them their shot. And that's just unacceptable. I can't even blame anyone for being skeptical about this, because they don't have any idea what went into it," Corbett said in an interview with Nature. To get the word out, she often virtually meets with church and school groups, engages with news media outlets, and creates online videos. Corbett also volunteers her time in schools as a role model for children from under-resourced communities, encouraging them to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and math.

Her own story is certainly inspirational. Born in rural North Carolina, Corbett was educated in local schools where her teachers spotted her gifts. In the tenth grade, Corbett was picked for a summer program aimed at minority students, interning in chemistry labs at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill. She earned her undergraduate degree in biological sciences and sociology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) in 2008. She returned to UNC Chapel Hill for her graduate work, researching antibody responses to dengue virus for her Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology. After graduating, Corbett became a research fellow at NIH.

Corbett's research has been honored with Kaiser Permanente's African Americans in Health Care Award (2021), the American Association for the Advancement of Science's The Golden Goose Award (2020), the Foundation for National Institutes of Health's Salzman Memorial Award in Virology (2020), the American Society for Microbiology's Early Career Applied and Biotechnological Research Award (2020), and many more.

In January 2021, mRNA-1273 turned one and Kizzmekia Corbett turned 35. In a year of extraordinary suffering and challenge, Corbett has shown the combined power of scientific brilliance and a fierce dedication to the public good in the emergence of mRNA vaccines.
Watch "History in the Making: Meet Kizzmekia S. Corbett, Inspiring Vaccine Scientist" Information as of March 2021

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From: National Institutes of Health │ Bethesda, Maryland Award: Benjamin Franklin NextGen Award Citation: For her outstanding contributions to the field of viral immunology and vaccine development, including an mRNA-based vaccine to combat the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, cause of the COVID-19 pandemic. Kizzmekia S. Corbett, Ph.D., is a scientist who is destined for history books.

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National Institutes of Health

Dr. Kizzmekia S. Corbett is a research fellow and the scientific lead for the Coronavirus Vaccines & Immunopathogenesis Team at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Vaccine Research Center (VRC). She received a B.S. in Biological Sciences, with a secondary major in Sociology, in 2008 from the University of Maryland - Baltimore County, where she was a Meyerhoff Scholar and an NIH undergraduate scholar. She then enrolled at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she obtained her Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology in 2014. A viral immunologist by training, Dr. Corbett uses her expertise to propel novel vaccine development for pandemic preparedness. Appointed to the VRC in 2014, her work focuses on developing novel coronavirus vaccines, including mRNA-1273, a leading candidate vaccine against the virus that causes COVID-19. In response to the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic, the vaccine concept incorporated in mRNA-1273 was designed by Dr. Corbett's team from viral sequence data and rapidly deployed to industry partner, Moderna, Inc., for U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved Phase 1 clinical trial, which unprecedently began only 66 days from the viral sequence release. Following promising results in animal models and humans, mRNA-1273 is currently in Phase 3 clinical trial. Alongside mRNA-1273, Dr. Corbett's team boasts a portfolio that also includes universal coronavirus vaccine concepts and novel therapeutic antibodies. Additionally, Dr. Corbett spent several years working on a universal influenza vaccine, which is slated for Phase 1 clinical trial. In all, she has 15 years of expertise studying dengue virus, respiratory syncytial virus, influenza virus and coronaviruses. Along with her research activities, Dr. Corbett is an active member of the NIH Fellows Committee and avid advocator of STEM education and vaccine awareness in the community. Combining her research goals with her knack for mentoring, Dr. Corbett aims to become an independent principal investigator.

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National Institutes of Health Dr. Kizzmekia S. Corbett is a research fellow and the scientific lead for the Coronavirus Vaccines & Immunopathogenesis Team at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Vaccine Research Center (VRC). She received a B.S.

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Awards And Honors:

Academy Award (2002) Academy Award (2002): Actress in a Leading Role Emmy Award (2000): Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie Golden Globe Award (2000): Best Actress in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television

Does Halle Berry have an Academy Award?

What was Halle Berry's first film role?

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Halle Berry, (born August 14, 1966, Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.), American film actress, the first African American to win the Academy Award for best actress. She received the honour for her nuanced portrayal of Leticia Musgrove, a down-on-her-luck character in Monster's Ball (2001).

Berry was a teenage finalist in national beauty pageants, worked in modeling, and began acting on television in 1989. Film roles in Jungle Fever (1991), directed by Spike Lee, and in (1992), starring Eddie Murphy, first brought her notice. She costarred with Jessica Lange in Losing Isaiah (1995), a drama about adoption, before earning acclaim for her portrayal of film star Dorothy Dandridge, the first African American to be nominated for a best actress Oscar, in the television film Introducing Dorothy Dandridge (1999). That performance earned her Emmy and Golden Globe awards.

Berry was cast in action roles in (2000) and its sequels (2003, 2006, 2014), (2001), and Die Another Day (2002), an installment in the James Bond spy series. The thriller Gothika (2003) and the Batman spin-off (2004) were the first theatrical films in which she received top billing. After starring in the television movie Their Eyes Were Watching God (2005), an adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston's novel, Berry played opposite Bruce Willis in the crime film Perfect Stranger (2007). She then took lead roles in the character-oriented dramas Things We Lost in the Fire (2007), as a recent widow, and Frankie & Alice (2010), as a woman with dissociative identity disorder.

In 2011 Berry appeared in the ensemble romantic comedy New Year's Eve, and the following year she starred as a diving instructor vexed by sharks in the thriller Dark Tide. In the elaborately structured epic Cloud Atlas (2012), she performed multiple roles, including a 1970s journalist and a futuristic island tribeswoman. Berry later starred in the thrillers The Call (2013) and Kidnap (2017), portraying an emergency call-centre operator attempting to thwart a serial killer and a mother whose son is abducted, respectively. She then appeared in the spy movie Kingsman: The Golden Circle and starred in (both 2017), playing a foster parent living in Los Angeles during the riots of 1992. She later was cast in the action thriller John Wick: Chapter 3-Parabellum (2019). Berry made her directorial debut with Bruised (2020), in which she starred as a washed-up mixed martial arts fighter seeking redemption in the ring and as a mother.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Patricia Bauer.

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Halle Berry | Biography, Movies, & Facts

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Halle Berry, American film actress, the first African American to win the Academy Award for best actress. She received the honor for her nuanced portrayal of Leticia Musgrove, a down-on-her-luck character in Monster's Ball (2001). Read more about Berry's life and career.

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Tegla Loroupe (9 May 1973 - ) is a Kenyan long-distance track and road runner. She was the first African woman to win the New York City Marathon and has held many world records - from 20km to the marathon. She now devotes much of her time to humanitarian and peace activities, through her Tegla Loroupe Peace Foundation.

Early Life Tegla Loroupe

Tegla Loroupe was born in Kutomwony in the West Pokot District of Keyna - situated in the Rift Valley, north of Nairobi. Tegla grew up with 24 siblings; her father had four wives. She spent her childhood working in the fields and looking after younger brothers and sisters. From an early age, Loroupe was given a nickname - Chametia. It means "the one who never gets annoyed." - reflecting her cheerful personality.

At the age of seven, she started to go to school - which involved a barefoot run of ten kilometres every morning. It was at school that her first talent for running was spotted. These early races were normally held over a distance of 800 or 1500 metres. However, with the exception of her mother and older sister, she received little support for her dream to become a runner. At one point, her father banned her from running saying it was not ladylike. Loroupe was expected to concentrate on more utilitarian tasks such as looking after her siblings. Loroupe became dismayed at the obstacles placed in front of her. At one point, she even considered becoming a nun.

"At this point, I was so fed up with men," Ms. Loroupe said, "I thought of becoming a nun." (NYT)

However, Loroupe persisted and continued her running. Ever the peacemaker, she also later made peace with her father. Although she wryly commented "Of course we're friends now," she said. "When you're successful, everyone wants to be your friend."

"He said he was sorry that he was close to destroying my career," Loroupe said. "I told him I was lucky that I had a strong mind, and I didn't listen to him."

Initially, the Kenyan athletics federation were not too impressed with Loroupe - she was considered too frail. However, after winning a prestigious cross country race in 1988, this changed. She was nominated for the junior world championships, and at her first attempt (1989) she finished 28th. This enabled her to focus on running full time.

In 1994, Loroupe ran her first major marathon in New York and won. She was the first African woman to win the New York Marathon. As a consequence, she became an important sporting role model. Kenya, at last, had a female runner to rank alongside its talented male athletes. After this initial success, Tegla Loroupe went on to win many major marathons around the world.

Between 1997 and 1999, she won three consecutive world half marathon Championships. In the World Championships, she won bronze in the 10,000m in both 1995 and 1999.

During the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Loroupe was tipped to be a hot favourite. However, on the eve of the race, she suffered from food poisoning. Despite being weakened by the illness, she managed to complete both the marathon in 13th place and the 10,000m in fifth place. Loroupe late stated that she started the marathon out of a sense of duty to all the people looking up to her as a role model in Kenya.

Between 19 April 1998 - 30 September 2001, Loroupe held the world record for the marathon. She initially set a time of 2:20:47 in the 1998 Rotterdam marathon. In 1999, she broke her own record, setting a time of 2:20:43 in the Berlin marathon. She has also held world records at one hour, 20, 25 and 30 kilometres.

The marathon proved to be Loroupe's most successful distance. She won the marathons of Rotterdam three times between 1997 and 1999, New York in 1994 and 1995, Berlin in 1999, London and Rome in 2000 and Lausanne in 2002.

In 2003, Loroupe found the Tegla Loroupe Peace Foundation and has been an active advocate for peace. She has been successful in bringing members of warring tribes together. In 2006, she founded the 10km Peace Race, which included 2,000 warriors from six different tribes. Loroupe said the motivation for the race was to use her fame to help bring about greater harmony.

"I grew up in a pastoral environment where life was really hard because of the local conflicts between the tribes and people stealing cattle. All of this on top of conditions that were hard to start with", she said, "I was lucky. I had talent and was able to make a success out of running and I felt that I wanted to give things back to the community I grew up in."

The race has become an important and significant athletic event. Loroupe's work in promoting peace has been praised by many. Beatrice Karanja, a regional media officer for Oxfam said.

"Tegla is doing brilliant work, absolutely brilliant work," She's given these warriors options. She hasn't just gone in there and told them to stop. She's given them hope for things they can do."

In 2006, she was named a United Nations Ambassador of Sport. She is also a member of the 'Champions for Peace' a group of athletes seeking to use the power of sport to bring about peace. Loroupe has also sought to advance the opportunities of Kenyan women. She is a role model and has helped many women widen their horizons and enter new fields such as running.

'Right now, we have a lot of women running, more than before. For me, I had to fight the federation. Still now, I have to and I don't why. But at least now there are chances for other women. It makes me proud. That is very positive. I'm happy about that." (NYT)

Tegla Loroupe is single and has not married. She splits her time between Detmold, Germany, Kenya and travelling around the world for her various humanitarian initiatives.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan. "Biography Tegla Loroupe", Oxford, www.biographyonline.net. Published 1 March 2013. Last updated 6 February 2018.

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Tegla Loroupe Achievements

2002 Lausanne marathon - 1st
2000 Kenyan National Championships, 10,000 meters, 1st
2000 London Marathon, 1st
1999 Half-Marathon World Championships, 1st
1999 Berlin Marathon, 1st
1999 World Championships, 10,000 meters, 3rd
1998 New York City, 3rd
1998 Half-Marathon World Championships, 1st
1998 Rotterdam Marathon, 1st
1998 Goodwill Games, 10,000 meters, 1st
1997 New York City Marathon, 7th
1997 Half-Marathon World Championships, 1st
1997 Rotterdam Marathon, 1st
1996 New York City Marathon, 7th
1996 Boston Marathon, 2nd
1996 Olympic Games, 10,000 meters, 6th
1995 World Championships, 10,000 meters, 3rd
1995 New York City Marathon, 1st
1995 Boston Marathon, 9th
1994 New York City Marathon, 1st
1993 World Championships, 10,000 meters, 4th
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Tegla Loroupe (9 May 1973 - ) is a Kenyan long-distance track and road runner. She was the first African woman to win the New York City Marathon and has held many world records - from 20km to the marathon. She now devotes much of her time to humanitarian and peace activities, through her Tegla [...]

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Amy Tikkanen Amy Tikkanen is Managing Editor at Encyclopaedia Britannica.

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Rita Moreno | Biography, West Side Story, Movies, Oscar, & Facts

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Rita Moreno, Puerto Rican-born American actress, dancer, and singer who accomplished the rare feat of winning the four major North American entertainment awards (EGOT): Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony. She was also the first Hispanic woman to receive an Oscar (Academy Award). Learn more about Moreno’s…

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Ike & Tina Turner - River Deep Mountain High 1971 (including intro)

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TINA TURNER ★ We Don't Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)【music video】

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This article was most recently revised and updated by

Tina Turner, original name Anna Mae Bullock, (born November 26, 1939, Brownsville, Tennessee, U.S.), American-born singer who found success in the rhythm-and-blues, soul, and rock genres in a career that spanned five decades.

Turner was born into a sharecropping family in rural Tennessee. She began singing as a teenager and, after moving to St. Louis, Missouri, immersed herself in the local rhythm-and-blues scene. She met Ike Turner at a performance by his band, the Kings of Rhythm, in 1956, and soon became part of the act. She began performing as Tina Turner, and her electric stage presence quickly made her the centrepiece of the show. The ensemble, which toured as the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, was renowned for its live performances but struggled to find recording success. That changed in 1960, when "A Fool in Love" hit the pop charts, and a string of hit singles followed. Ike and Tina were married in 1962, although the date is subject to some speculation (during the couple's divorce proceedings in 1977, Ike claimed that the two were never legally married). The Phil Spector-produced album River Deep-Mountain High (1966) was a hit in Europe, and its title track is arguably the high point of Spector's "wall of sound" production style, but it sold poorly in the United States. Ike and Tina's final hits as a couple were the cover version of Creedence Clearwater Revival's " Proud Mary " (1971) and "Nutbush City Limits" (1973). Tina divorced Ike in 1978, alleging years of physical abuse and infidelity.

After a series of guest appearances on the albums of other artists, she released her debut solo album, Private Dancer, in 1984. It was a triumph, both critically and commercially, selling more than 20 million copies worldwide and winning three Grammy Awards, including record of the year and best female vocal performance for "What's Love Got to Do with It." The single became Turner's signature song. She followed her musical success with a role in the film Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985). Later albums included Break Every Rule (1986), Foreign Affair (1989), and Wildest Dreams (1996). Her greatest-hits compilation All the Best was released in 2004. Turner continued touring into the 21st century and also appeared on other artists' albums, notably Herbie Hancock's River: The Joni Letters (2007), a Grammy-winning tribute to Joni Mitchell.

After residing in Switzerland for a number of years, Turner became a Swiss citizen in 2013 and shortly thereafter submitted the paperwork to relinquish her U.S. citizenship. She wrote the autobiographies I, Tina (1986; written with Kurt Loder and adapted in 1993 as the film What's Love Got to Do with It) and My Love Story (2018) as well as the self-help book Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good (2020; written with Taro Gold and Regula Curti). Ike and Tina were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991. In addition to receiving a Kennedy Center Honor (2005), Tina was given a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement in 2018. That year Tina, a jukebox musical based on her life and directed by Phyllida Lloyd, opened in London's West End. The musical debuted on Broadway in 2019. Two years later Turner was later the focus of the documentary Tina. In 2021 she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo performer.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Amy Tikkanen.

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Tina Turner | Biography, Songs, Albums, Movies, & Facts

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Tina Turner, American-born singer who found success in the rhythm-and-blues, soul, and rock genres in a career that spanned five decades. She is best known for singing the hit songs 'Proud Mary' and 'What's Love Got to Do with It.' Learn more about her life and career in this article.

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Eartha Kitt, in full Eartha Mae Kitt, (born January 17, 1927, North, South Carolina, U.S.-died December 25, 2008, Weston, Connecticut), American singer and dancer noted for her sultry vocal style and slinky beauty who also achieved success as a dramatic stage and film actress.

Kitt was the daughter of a white father and a black mother, and from the age of eight she grew up with relatives in an ethnically diverse section of Harlem, New York City. At 16 she joined Katherine Dunham's dance troupe and toured the United States, Mexico, South America, and Europe. When the Dunham company returned to the United States, the multilingual Kitt stayed in Paris, where she won immediate popularity as a nightclub singer. She made her acting debut as Helen of Troy in Time Runs, an Orson Welles adaptation of Faust, in 1950. With her appearance in the Broadway revue Leonard Sillman's New Faces of 1952 and with early 1950s recordings such as "C'est Si Bon," "Santa Baby," and "I Want to Be Evil," Kitt became a star.

Kitt's success continued in nightclubs; theatre productions, such as Mrs. Patterson (1954-55) and Shinbone Alley (1957); films, including St. Louis Blues (1958) and Anna Lucasta (1959); and television appearances, notably the role of Catwoman in the late 1960s series Batman. After she publicly criticized the Vietnam War at a 1968 White House luncheon in the presence of the first lady, Lady Bird (Claudia) Johnson, Kitt's career went into a severe decline; in the 1970s, however, it began to recover after news surfaced that she had been subjected to U.S. Secret Service surveillance.

Kitt made a comeback in the United States with the stage musical Timbuktu! (1978), a remake of Kismet featuring an all-black cast. Other Broadway productions include The Wild Party (2000) and Nine (2003). In addition, Kitt continued to perform in nightclubs and films and on recordings until her death, and she received two Daytime Emmy Awards (2007 and 2008) for providing the voice of the scheming Yzma in the children's television program The Emperor's New School. She also did voice work for numerous other film and TV productions. Her autobiographies are Thursday's Child (1956), Alone with Me (1976), and I'm Still Here: Confessions of a Sex Kitten (1989).

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Eartha Kitt, in full Eartha Mae Kitt, (born January 17, 1927, North, South Carolina, U.S.-died December 25, 2008, Weston, Connecticut), American singer and dancer noted for her sultry vocal style and slinky beauty who also achieved success as a dramatic stage and film actress.

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Chien-Shiung Wu, (born May 29, 1912, Liuhe, Jiangsu province, China-died Feb. 16, 1997, New York, N.Y., U.S.), Chinese-born American physicist who provided the first experimental proof that the principle of parity conservation does not hold in weak subatomic interactions.

Wu graduated from the National Central University in Nanking, China, in 1936 and then traveled to the United States to pursue graduate studies in physics at the University of California at Berkeley, studying under Ernest O. Lawrence. After receiving a Ph.D. in 1940, she taught at Smith College and at Princeton University. In 1944 she undertook work on radiation detection in the Division of War Research at Columbia University. Remaining on the university staff at Columbia after the war, she became Dupin professor of physics there in 1957.

In 1956 Tsung-Dao Lee of Columbia and Chen Ning Yang of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey, proposed that parity is not conserved for weak nuclear interactions. With a group of scientists from the National Bureau of Standards, Washington, D.C., Wu that year tested the proposal by observing the beta particles given off by cobalt-60. Wu observed that there is a preferred direction of emission and that, therefore, parity is not conserved for this weak interaction. She announced her results in 1957. The success of this and similar additional experiments brought worldwide acclaim not only to Wu but also to Lee and Yang, who won the 1957 Nobel Prize for Physics for their work. In 1958 Richard P. Feynman and Murray Gell-Mann proposed the conservation of vector current in nuclear beta decay. This theory was experimentally confirmed in 1963 by Wu in collaboration with two other Columbia University research physicists. She later investigated the structure of hemoglobin.

Wu, who received the National Medal of Science in 1975 and served as president of the American Physical Society that year as well, was considered one of the premier experimental physicists in the world. She retired from her professorship at Columbia in 1981.

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...led by the Chinese-born physicist Chien-Shiung Wu announced conclusive experimental proof that the electrons ejected along with antineutrinos from certain unstable cobalt nuclei in the process of beta decay, a weak interaction, are predominantly left-handed-that is to say, the spin rotation of the electrons is that of a left-handed screw....

...their hypothesis, and in 1956-57 Chien-Shiung Wu, working at Columbia University, experimentally confirmed their theoretical conclusions. ( See also CP violation.)...

Weak interaction, a fundamental force of nature that underlies some forms of radioactivity, governs the decay of unstable subatomic particles such as mesons, and initiates the nuclear fusion reaction that fuels the Sun. The weak interaction acts upon left-handed fermions-i.e., elementary particles...

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Chien-Shiung Wu | Chinese-American physicist

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Chien-Shiung Wu, Chinese-born American physicist who provided the first experimental proof that the principle of parity conservation does not hold in weak subatomic interactions. Wu graduated from the National Central University in Nanking, China, in 1936 and then traveled to the United States to

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Pocahontas, also called Matoaka and Amonute, Christian name Rebecca, (born c. 1596, near present-day Jamestown, Virginia, U.S.-died March 1617, Gravesend, Kent, England), Powhatan woman who fostered peace between English colonists and Native Americans by befriending the settlers at the Jamestown Colony in Virginia and eventually marrying one of them.

Among her several native names, the one best known to the English was Pocahontas (translated at the time as "little wanton" or "mischievous one"). She was a daughter of Powhatan (as he was known to the English; he was also called Wahunsenacah), chief of the Powhatan empire, which consisted of some 28 peoples of the Tidewater region. Pocahontas was a girl of age 10 or 11 when she first became acquainted with the colonists who settled in the Chesapeake Bay area in 1607.

By the account of colonial leader John Smith, she interceded to save Smith's life in December of that year, after he had been taken prisoner by her father's men. Smith wrote that, when he was brought before Powhatan, Pocahontas halted Smith's execution by placing herself over him as he was about to have his head clubbed on a stone. Powhatan released Smith to return to Jamestown. Some writers have theorized that Smith may have misunderstood what he saw and that what he believed to be an execution was instead a benign ceremony of some kind; others have alleged that he invented the rescue outright.

What is known is that Pocahontas became a frequent visitor to the settlement and a friend of Smith. Her playful nature made her a favourite, and her interest in the English proved valuable to them. She sometimes brought gifts of food from her father to relieve the hard-pressed settlers. She also saved the lives of Smith and other colonists in a trading party in January 1609 by warning them of an ambush.

After Smith's return to England in late 1609, relations between the settlers and Powhatan deteriorated. The English informed Pocahontas that Smith had died. She did not return to the colony for the next four years. In the spring of 1613, however, Sir Samuel Argall took her prisoner, hoping to use her to secure the return of some English prisoners and stolen English weapons and tools. Argall did so by conspiring with Japazeus, the chief of the Patawomeck people, who lived along the Potomac River and whom Pocahontas was visiting. Japazeus and his wife lured Pocahontas onto Argall's ship, where Argall kept her until he could take her to Jamestown. Although Pocahontas's father released seven English prisoners, an impasse resulted when he did not return the weapons and tools and refused to negotiate further.

Pocahontas was taken from Jamestown to a secondary English settlement known as Henricus. Treated with courtesy during her captivity, Pocahontas was converted to Christianity and was baptized Rebecca. She accepted a proposal of marriage from John Rolfe, a distinguished settler; both the Virginia governor, Sir Thomas Dale, and Chief Powhatan agreed to the marriage, which took place in April 1614. Following the marriage, peace prevailed between the English and the Native Americans as long as Chief Powhatan lived. According to Powhatan tradition and the account of one colonist, Pocahontas had previously been married to a Powhatan man named Kocoum.

In the spring of 1616 Pocahontas, her husband, their one-year-old son, Thomas, and a group of other Native Americans, men and women, sailed with Governor Dale to England. There she was entertained at royal festivities. The Virginia Company apparently saw her visit as a device to publicize the colony and to win support from King James I and investors. While preparing to return to America, Pocahontas fell ill, probably with an upper respiratory ailment (though some historians believe that she may have contracted smallpox or dysentery). Her illness took a turn for the worse and interrupted her return voyage before her ship left the River Thames. She died in the town of Gravesend at about age 21 and was buried there on March 21, 1617. Afterward her husband immediately returned to Virginia; her son remained in England until 1635, when he went to Virginia and became a successful tobacco planter.

Pocahontas has been an enduring image in American literature and art, the prototypical "Indian princess," whose narrative has been relentlessly refashioned to suit the polemical, poetic, or marketing needs of its interpreters. From the early 19th century the emphasis of her story shifted from Smith's description of his rescue to Pocahontas's relationship with Rolfe, a mixed marriage that provided a practical and metaphoric model for the beneficial possibilities of the blending of indigenous and colonial cultures. By the time of John Gadsby Chapman's painting of The Baptism of Pocahontas for the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in 1836-40, the benefits of the coupling of Rolfe and Pocahontas had become more contingent, predicated on her assimilationist acceptance of Christianity.

In the journey from Simon van de Passe's 1616 engraving from life to her depiction in Chapman's painting, Pocahontas's features and skin tone were dramatically altered to more closely resemble European and European American concepts of human beauty. Over the years, Smith's mythic description of his rescue was increasingly accepted as history, and imaginative presentations of Pocahontas's story were often molded into romances that sometimes focused as much on her relationship with Smith-as in the Walt Disney Company's animated feature Pocahontas (1995)-as on her relationship with Rolfe. In the run-up to the American Civil War, according to cultural historian Robert P. Tilton, abolitionists claimed Pocahontas as a symbol of the possibility of racial harmony, while Southerners pointed to her and Rolfe as progenitors of Southern aristocracy who offered an alternative national foundation myth to the Northern version centred on the Pilgrims. Pocahontas even found her way into rock music. Canadian singer-songwriter Neil Young's paean "Pocahontas," from his album Rust Never Sleeps (1979), casts her as the object of male romantic desire situated in pristine, unspoiled America.

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Pocahontas | Biography, Cultural Legacy, & Facts

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Pocahontas, Powhatan woman who fostered peace between English colonists and Native Americans by befriending the settlers at the Jamestown Colony in Virginia and eventually marrying one of them. Learn more about Pocahontas's life and her legacy, including her portrayal in popular culture.

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📚 Kids Books Read Aloud: The Story of Ruby Bridges- Ruby Bridges Book

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MLA - Michals, Debra. "Ruby Bridges." National Women's History Museum. National Women's History Museum, 2015. Date accessed.

Chicago - Michals, Debra. "Ruby Bridges." National Women's History Museum." 2015. www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/ruby-bridges.

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Trailblazer Ruby Bridges was only six when she advanced the cause of civil rights in November 1960 when she became the first African American student to integrate an elementary school in the South. Learn more about her on womenshistory.org.

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Ida B. Wells-Barnett was a prominent journalist, activist, and researcher, in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries. In her lifetime, she battled sexism, racism, and violence. As a skilled writer, Wells-Barnett also used her skills as a journalist to shed light on the conditions of African Americans throughout the South.

Ida Bell Wells was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi on July 16 th, 1862. She was born into slavery during the Civil War. Once the war ended Wells-Barnett's parents became politically active in Reconstruction Era politics. Her parents instilled into her the importance of education. Wells-Barnett enrolled at Rust College but was expelled when she started a dispute with the university president. In 1878, Wells-Barnett went to visit her grandmother. While she was there Wells-Barnett was informed that a yellow fever epidemic had hit her hometown. The disease took both of Wells-Barnett's parents and her infant brother. Left to raise her brothers and sister, she took a job as a teacher so that she could keep the family together. Eventually, Wells-Barnett moved her siblings to Memphis, Tennessee. There she continued to work as an educator.

In 1884, Wells-Barnett filed a lawsuit against a train car company in Memphis for unfair treatment. She had been thrown off a first-class train, despite having a ticket. Although she won the case on the local level, the ruling was eventually overturned in federal court. After the lynching of one of her friends, Wells-Barnett turned her attention to white mob violence. She became skeptical about the reasons black men were lynched and set out to investigate several cases. She published her findings in a pamphlet and wrote several columns in local newspapers. Her expose about an 1892 lynching enraged locals, who burned her press and drove her from Memphis. After a few months, the threats became so bad she was forced to move to Chicago, Illinois.

In 1893, Wells-Barnett, joined other African American leaders in calling for the boycott of the World's Columbian Exposition. The boycotters accused the exposition committee of locking out African Americans and negatively portraying the black community. In 1895, Wells-Barnett married famed African American lawyer Ferdinand Barnett. Together, the couple had four children. Throughout her career Wells-Barnett, balanced motherhood with her activism.

Wells-Barnett traveled internationally, shedding light on lynching to foreign audiences. Abroad, she openly confronted white women in the suffrage movement who ignored lynching. Because of her stance, she was often ridiculed and ostracized by women's suffrage organizations in the United States. Nevertheless, Wells-Barnett remained active the women's rights movement. She was a founder of the National Association of Colored Women's Club which was created to address issues dealing with civil rights and women's suffrage. Although she was in Niagara Falls for the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), her name is not mentioned as an official founder. Late in her career Wells-Barnett focused on urban reform in the growing city of Chicago. She died on March 25 th, 1931.

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Pioneering journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett battled sexism, racism, and violence, particularly working to shed light on the conditions of African Americans throughout the South. Read her story on womenshistory.org.

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MLA - Norwood, Arlisha. "Dorothy Height." National Women's History Museum. National Women's History Museum, 2017. Date accessed.

Chicago- Norwood, Arlisha. "Dorothy Height." National Women's History Museum. 2017. www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/dorothy-height.

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A leader in the Civil Rights movement, Dr. Dorothy Height served as president of the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years. Find out more at womenshistory.org

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Few people know the story of Claudette Colvin: When she was 15, she refused to move to the back of the bus and give up her seat to a white person - nine months before Rosa Parks did the very same thing.

Most people know about Parks and the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott that began in 1955, but few know that there were a number of women who refused to give up their seats on the same bus system. Most of the women were quietly fined, and no one heard much more.

Colvin was the first to really challenge the law.

Now a 69-year-old retiree, Colvin lives in the Bronx. She remembers taking the bus home from high school on March 2, 1955, as clear as if it were yesterday.

The bus driver ordered her to get up and she refused, saying she'd paid her fare and it was her constitutional right. Two police officers put her in handcuffs and arrested her. Her school books went flying off her lap.

"All I remember is that I was not going to walk off the bus voluntarily," Colvin says.

It was Negro history month, and at her segregated school they had been studying black leaders like Harriet Tubman, the runaway slave who led more than 70 slaves to freedom through the network of safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. They were also studying about Sojourner Truth, a former slave who became an abolitionist and women's rights activist.

The class had also been talking about the injustices they were experiencing daily under the Jim Crow segregation laws, like not being able to eat at a lunch counter.

"We couldn't try on clothes," Colvin says. "You had to take a brown paper bag and draw a diagram of your foot ... and take it to the store. Can you imagine all of that in my mind? My head was just too full of black history, you know, the oppression that we went through. It felt like Sojourner Truth was on one side pushing me down, and Harriet Tubman was on the other side of me pushing me down. I couldn't get up."

Colvin also remembers the moment the jail door closed. It was just like a Western movie, she says.

"And then I got scared, and panic come over me, and I started crying. Then I started saying the Lord's Prayer," she says.
'Twice Toward Justice'
Now her story is the subject of a new book, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice.

Author Phil Hoose says that despite a few articles about her in the Birmingham press and in USA Today, and brief mentions in some books about the civil rights movement, most people don't know about the role Colvin played in the bus boycotts.

Hoose couldn't get over that there was this teenager, nine months before Rosa Parks, "in the same city, in the same bus system, with very tough consequences, hauled off the bus, handcuffed, jailed and nobody really knew about it."

He also believes Colvin is important because she challenged the law in court, one of four women plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, the court case that successfully overturned bus segregation laws in Montgomery and Alabama.

There are many reasons why Claudette Colvin has been pretty much forgotten. She hardly ever told her story when she moved to New York City. In her new community, hardly anyone was talking about integration; instead, most people were talking about black enterprises, black power and Malcolm X.

When asked why she is little known and why everyone thinks only of Rosa Parks, Colvin says the NAACP and all the other black organizations felt Parks would be a good icon because "she was an adult. They didn't think teenagers would be reliable."

She also says Parks had the right hair and the right look.

"Her skin texture was the kind that people associate with the middle class," says Colvin. "She fit that profile."

David Garrow, a historian and the author of Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, says people may think that Parks' action was spontaneous, but black civic leaders had been thinking about what to do about the Montgomery buses for years.

After Colvin's arrest, she found herself shunned by parts of her community. She experienced various difficulties and became pregnant. Civil rights leaders felt she was an inappropriate symbol for a test case.

Parks was the secretary of the NAACP. She was well-known and respected and, says Garrow, Parks had a "natural gravitas" and was an "inherently impressive person."

At the same time, Garrow believes attention to Colvin is a healthy corrective, because "the real reality of the movement was often young people and often more than 50 percent women." The images you most often see are men in suits.

Hoose says he believes Colvin understands the pragmatism that pushed Parks to the fore, but "on the other hand, she did it."

Hoose says the stories of Parks and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. are wonderful, but those are the stories of people in their 30s and 40s. Colvin was 15. Hoose feels his book will bring a fresh teen's perspective to the struggle to end segregation.

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Before Rosa Parks, There Was Claudette Colvin

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Most people know about Rosa Parks and the 1955 Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott. Nine months earlier, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat on the same bus system.

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Table of Contents

1. Angela Davis: Early Life and Education

2. Angela Davis and the Soledad Brothers

3. Angela Davis Books

Educator, activist and author Angela Davis (1944-) became known for her involvement in a politically charged murder case in the early 1970s. Influenced by her segregated upbringing in Birmingham, Alabama, Davis joined the Black Panthers and an all-Black branch of the Communist Party as a young woman. She became a professor at UCLA, but fell out of favor with the administration due to her ties. Davis was charged with aiding the botched escape attempt of imprisoned Black radical George Jackson, and served roughly 18 months in jail before her acquittal in 1972. After spending time traveling and lecturing, Davis returned to the classroom as a professor and authored several books.

Angela Davis: Early Life and Education

Angela Yvonne Davis is best known as a radical African American educator and activist for civil rights and other social issues. She was born on January 26, 1944, in Birmingham, Alabama to Sallye and Frank Davis, an elementary school teacher and the owner of a service station, respectively. Davis knew about racial prejudice from a young age; her neighborhood in Birmingham was nicknamed "Dynamite Hill" for the number of homes targeted by the Ku Klux Klan. As a teenager, Davis organized interracial study groups, which were broken up by the police. She also knew several of the young African American girls killed in the Birmingham church bombing of 1963.

Angela Davis later moved north and went to Brandeis University in Massachusetts where she studied philosophy with Herbert Marcuse. As a graduate student at the University of California, San Diego, in the late 1960s, she joined several groups, including the Black Panthers. But she spent most of her time working with the Che-Lumumba Club, which was all-Black branch of the Communist Party.

Hired to teach at the University of California, Los Angeles, Angela Davis ran into trouble with the school's administration because of her association with communism. They fired her, but she fought them in court and got her job back. Davis still ended up leaving when her contract expired in 1970.

Angela Davis and the Soledad Brothers

Outside of academia, Angela Davis had become a strong supporter of three prison inmates of Soledad Prison known as the Soledad brothers (they were not related). These three men-John W. Cluchette, Fleeta Drumgo, and George Lester Jackson-were accused of killing a prison guard after several African American inmates had been killed in a fight by another guard. Some thought these prisoners were being used as scapegoats because of the political work within the prison.

During Jackson's trial in August 1970, an escape attempt was made when Jackson's brother Jonathan entered the courtroom to claim hostages he could exchange for his brother. Jonathan Jackson, Superior Court Judge Harold Haley, and two inmates were killed in the ensuing shoot-out.

Angela Davis was brought up on several charges for her alleged part in the event, including murder. She went into hiding and was one of the FBI's "Most Wanted" before being caught two months later. There were two main pieces of evidence used at trial: the guns used were registered to her, and she was reportedly in love with Jackson. Her case drew the attention of the international press and after spending roughly 18 months in jail, Davis was acquitted in June 1972.

Angela Davis Books

After spending time traveling and lecturing, Angela Davis returned to teaching. She served as a Distinguished Professor Emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz, before retiring in 2008. Davis is the author of several books, including Women, Race, and Class (1980), Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday (1999), Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003), Abolition Democracy: Beyond Empire, Prisons, and Torture (2005), The Meaning of Freedom: And Other Difficult Dialogues (2012) and Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement (2016).

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Educator, activist and author Angela Davis became known for her involvement in a politically charged murder case in the early 1970s.

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Firebird by Misty Copeland

This story, by William Joyce and Christina Ellis, imagines a world defined by numbers rather than letters. When five friends decide they want to add something more, they come up with the alphabet and bring new joy into the world through words and all the things they make possible.

Arts Alive!
The closure of our schools in March forced us to re-think learning and living. All of our lives have changed in some way these last two months, but one thing remains - the spirit and strength of our Dapplegray family. Arts Alive is a treasured tradition of Dapplegray Elementary School. In 2007, former Dapplegray parents Kris Skeie, Nancy Shafer, and Jane Calvert wanted to expose their children to the thrill of the arts while they were young, curious, and adventurous. They created the "Arts Alive and Writer's Workshop" for third through fifth graders and a small Art Walk with six to eight creative people performing as the students passed by. Today, Arts Alive has grown into a full-day program bringing over 40 artist presenters to campus who teach students a variety of arts, including visual arts, dramatic arts, martial arts, culinary arts, photography, videography, dance, yoga, writing, music, screen writing, fashion design, graphic design, and storytelling. Arts Alive still includes an Art Walk with 15 to 20 creative people performing and talking with students about their talents. This year, Arts Alive looks and feels a little different, but the Dapplegray PTA and Booster Club are very proud and honored to bring you the first ever Virtual Arts Alive! We are deeply grateful to the artists who are donating their time to bring the ARTS ALIVE to our students from home on
May 15, 2020. Enjoy the day and stay healthy and safe! And remember, together or apart, we are all Colts at heart!
Warmly,
HOLLY WOESNER
ARTS ALIVE CHAIR

Arts Alive 2020 Program:

8 stations: 30 seconds each (Two times around)
Mountain Climbers
Russian Twists
Push-ups
Wall Sits
Curl-ups
Squat Jumps
Lunges
Planks

See all

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Please enable Javascript when viewing video pages. This story, by William Joyce and Christina Ellis, imagines a world defined by numbers rather than letters. When five friends decide they want to add something more, they come up with the alphabet and bring new joy into the world through words and all the things they make possible.

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'This Week' Sunday Spotlight: Misty Copeland

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Misty Copeland | Biography, Performances, & Facts

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Misty Copeland: Misty Copeland, American ballet dancer who, in 2015, became the first African American female principal dancer with the American Ballet Theatre (ABT). Her inspiring story made her a role model and a pop icon. She appeared in music videos, on Broadway, and in film. Read more about Copeland's life and career.

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Rising star Misty Copeland makes history as the first African American Female Principal Dancer with the prestigious American Ballet Theatre.

When she discovered ballet, however, Misty was living in a shabby motel room, struggling with her five siblings for a place to sleep on the floor. A true prodigy, she was dancing en pointe within three months of taking her first dance class and performing professionally in just over a year: a feat unheard of for any classical dancer.

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Rising star Misty Copeland makes history as the first African American Female Principal Dancer with the prestigious American Ballet Theatre. When she discovered ballet, however, Misty was living in a shabby motel room, struggling with her five siblings for a place to sleep on the floor.

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Gymnastics Superstar Olympian Gold - Story of Simone Biles Picture Book Read Aloud

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Gabby Douglas 🇺🇸 - The First African American Olympic All-Around Champion | Athlete Highlights

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Gabby Douglas, in full Gabrielle Christina Victoria Douglas, (born December 31, 1995, Virginia Beach, Virginia, U.S.), gymnast who, at the 2012 Olympic Games in London, became both the first American to claim gold medals in the team and individual all-around events and the first African American to win the all-around title.

Douglas grew up in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where she practiced gymnastics from the age of six. In 2010-at age 14-she left her family and moved in with a host family in West Des Moines, Iowa, where she started training with prominent coach Liang Chow. Douglas soon began to attract attention at national competitions-she finished fourth in the all-around event at the 2010 Nastia Liukin Supergirl Cup, and at the 2011 Visa Championships she tied for third on the uneven bars and placed seventh all-around. She was named to the senior national team and helped the United States earn the team gold at the 2011 world championships, where she also placed fifth on the uneven bars. Douglas's skill on the uneven bars-specifically, her ability to gain extraordinary height in the air when releasing from the apparatus-led U.S. team coordinator Martha Karolyi to dub her "the Flying Squirrel," a nickname that Douglas and her coterie of fans embraced.

At the 2012 Visa Championships, Douglas narrowly lost the all-around gold to Jordyn Wieber, the reigning world and national all-around champion. In addition to taking the all-around silver medal, Douglas claimed gold on the uneven bars and bronze in the floor exercise. Weeks later, at the U.S. Olympic trials, Douglas narrowly edged out Wieber to claim the all-around title. With the victory Douglas secured an automatic berth on the Olympic team. In London Douglas and her teammates-Wieber, Aly Raisman, McKayla Maroney, and Kyla Ross-captured the first U.S. women's team gold medal since 1996. Douglas then competed in the all-around event, posting strong scores during each rotation to finish with the top overall score. Douglas also competed individually on the balance beam and the uneven bars but did not medal in either event, finishing in seventh and eighth place, respectively. Her memoir Grace, Gold and Glory: My Leap of Faith (cowritten with Michelle Burford) was released in 2012.

Douglas took two years off from competitive gymnastics before returning to the U.S. national team in November 2014. At the 2015 artistic gymnastics world championships, she won a gold medal in the team event and a silver in the all-around. The following year she won a team gold at the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games but failed to win an individual medal.

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Gabby Douglas | Biography, Medals, Book, & Facts

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Gabby Douglas, gymnast who, at the 2012 Olympic Games in London, became both the first American to claim gold medals in the team and individual all-around events and the first African American to win the all-around title. Learn more about her life and career in this article.

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Although she was an enslaved person, Phillis Wheatley Peters was one of the best-known poets in pre-19th century America. Educated and enslaved in the household of prominent Boston commercialist John Wheatley, lionized in New England and England, with presses in both places publishing her poems, and paraded before the new republic's political leadership and the old empire's aristocracy, Wheatley was the abolitionists' illustrative testimony that blacks could be both artistic and intellectual. Her name was a household word among literate colonists and her achievements a catalyst for the fledgling antislavery movement.

Wheatley was seized from Senegal/Gambia, West Africa, when she was about seven years old. She was transported to the Boston docks with a shipment of "refugee" slaves, who because of age or physical frailty were unsuited for rigorous labor in the West Indian and Southern colonies, the first ports of call after the Atlantic crossing. In the month of August 1761, "in want of a domestic," Susanna Wheatley, wife of prominent Boston tailor John Wheatley, purchased "a slender, frail female child ... for a trifle" because the captain of the slave ship believed that the waif was terminally ill, and he wanted to gain at least a small profit before she died. A Wheatley relative later reported that the family surmised the girl-who was "of slender frame and evidently suffering from a change of climate," nearly naked, with "no other covering than a quantity of dirty carpet about her"-to be "about seven years old ... from the circumstances of shedding her front teeth."

After discovering the girl's precociousness, the Wheatleys, including their son Nathaniel and their daughter Mary, did not entirely excuse Wheatley from her domestic duties but taught her to read and write. Soon she was immersed in the Bible, astronomy, geography, history, British literature (particularly John Milton and Alexander Pope), and the Greek and Latin classics of Virgil, Ovid, Terence, and Homer. In "To the University of Cambridge in New England" (probably the first poem she wrote but not published until 1773), Wheatley indicated that despite this exposure, rich and unusual for an American slave, her spirit yearned for the intellectual challenge of a more academic atmosphere.

Although scholars had generally believed that An Elegiac Poem, on the Death of that Celebrated Divine, and Eminent Servant of Jesus Christ, the Reverend and Learned George Whitefield ... (1770) was Wheatley's first published poem, Carl Bridenbaugh revealed in 1969 that 13-year-old Wheatley-after hearing a miraculous saga of survival at sea-wrote "On Messrs. Hussey and Coffin," a poem which was published on 21 December 1767 in the Newport, Rhode Island, Mercury. But it was the Whitefield elegy that brought Wheatley national renown. Published as a broadside and a pamphlet in Boston, Newport, and Philadelphia, the poem was published with Ebenezer Pemberton's funeral sermon for Whitefield in London in 1771, bringing her international acclaim.

By the time she was 18, Wheatley had gathered a collection of 28 poems for which she, with the help of Mrs. Wheatley, ran advertisements for subscribers in Boston newspapers in February 1772. When the colonists were apparently unwilling to support literature by an African, she and the Wheatleys turned in frustration to London for a publisher. Wheatley had forwarded the Whitefield poem to Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, to whom Whitefield had been chaplain. A wealthy supporter of evangelical and abolitionist causes, the countess instructed bookseller Archibald Bell to begin correspondence with Wheatley in preparation for the book.

Wheatley, suffering from a chronic asthma condition and accompanied by Nathaniel, left for London on May 8, 1771. The now-celebrated poetess was welcomed by several dignitaries: abolitionists' patron the Earl of Dartmouth, poet and activist Baron George Lyttleton, Sir Brook Watson (soon to be the Lord Mayor of London), philanthropist John Thorton, and Benjamin Franklin. While Wheatley was recrossing the Atlantic to reach Mrs. Wheatley, who, at the summer's end, had become seriously ill, Bell was circulating the first edition of Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773), the first volume of poetry by an African American published in modern times.

Poems on Various Subjects revealed that Wheatley's favorite poetic form was the couplet, both iambic pentameter and heroic. More than one-third of her canon is composed of elegies, poems on the deaths of noted persons, friends, or even strangers whose loved ones employed the poet. The poems that best demonstrate her abilities and are most often questioned by detractors are those that employ classical themes as well as techniques. In her epyllion "Niobe in Distress for Her Children Slain by Apollo, from Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book VI, and from a view of the Painting of Mr. Richard Wilson," she not only translates Ovid but adds her own beautiful lines to extend the dramatic imagery. In "To Maecenas" she transforms Horace's ode into a celebration of Christ.

In addition to classical and neoclassical techniques, Wheatley applied biblical symbolism to evangelize and to comment on slavery. For instance, " On Being Brought from Africa to America," the best-known Wheatley poem, chides the Great Awakening audience to remember that Africans must be included in the Christian stream: "Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain, /May be refin'd and join th' angelic train." The remainder of Wheatley's themes can be classified as celebrations of America. She was the first to applaud this nation as glorious "Columbia" and that in a letter to no less than the first president of the United States, George Washington, with whom she had corresponded and whom she was later privileged to meet. Her love of virgin America as well as her religious fervor is further suggested by the names of those colonial leaders who signed the attestation that appeared in some copies of Poems on Various Subjects to authenticate and support her work: Thomas Hutchinson, governor of Massachusetts; John Hancock; Andrew Oliver, lieutenant governor; James Bowdoin; and Reverend Mather Byles. Another fervent Wheatley supporter was Dr. Benjamin Rush, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Wheatley was manumitted some three months before Mrs. Wheatley died on March 3, 1774. Although many British editorials castigated the Wheatleys for keeping Wheatley in slavery while presenting her to London as the African genius, the family had provided an ambiguous haven for the poet. Wheatley was kept in a servant's place-a respectable arm's length from the Wheatleys' genteel circles-but she had experienced neither slavery's treacherous demands nor the harsh economic exclusions pervasive in a free-black existence. With the death of her benefactor, Wheatley slipped toward this tenuous life. Mary Wheatley and her father died in 1778; Nathaniel, who had married and moved to England, died in 1783. Throughout the lean years of the war and the following depression, the assault of these racial realities was more than her sickly body or aesthetic soul could withstand.

On April 1, 1778, despite the skepticism and disapproval of some of her closest friends, Wheatley married John Peters, whom she had known for some five years, and took his name. A free black, Peters evidently aspired to entrepreneurial and professional greatness. He is purported in various historical records to have called himself Dr. Peters, to have practiced law (perhaps as a free-lance advocate for hapless blacks), kept a grocery in Court Street, exchanged trade as a baker and a barber, and applied for a liquor license for a bar. Described by Merle A. Richmond as "a man of very handsome person and manners," who "wore a wig, carried a cane, and quite acted out 'the gentleman,'" Peters was also called "a remarkable specimen of his race, being a fluent writer, a ready speaker." Peters's ambitions cast him as "shiftless," arrogant, and proud in the eyes of some reporters, but as a Black man in an era that valued only his brawn, Peters's business acumen was simply not salable. Like many others who scattered throughout the Northeast to avoid the fighting during the Revolutionary War, the Peterses moved temporarily from Boston to Wilmington, Massachusetts, shortly after their marriage.

Merle A. Richmond points out that economic conditions in the colonies during and after the war were harsh, particularly for free blacks, who were unprepared to compete with whites in a stringent job market. These societal factors, rather than any refusal to work on Peters's part, were perhaps most responsible for the newfound poverty that Wheatley Peters suffered in Wilmington and Boston, after they later returned there. Between 1779 and 1783, the couple may have had children (as many as three, though evidence of children is disputed), and Peters drifted further into penury, often leaving Wheatley Peters to fend for herself by working as a charwoman while he dodged creditors and tried to find employment.

During the first six weeks after their return to Boston, Wheatley Peters stayed with one of her nieces in a bombed-out mansion that was converted to a day school after the war. Peters then moved them into an apartment in a rundown section of Boston, where other Wheatley relatives soon found Wheatley Peters sick and destitute. As Margaretta Matilda Odell recalls, "She was herself suffering for want of attention, for many comforts, and that greatest of all comforts in sickness-cleanliness. She was reduced to a condition too loathsome to describe. ... In a filthy apartment, in an obscure part of the metropolis ... . The woman who had stood honored and respected in the presence of the wise and good ... was numbering the last hours of life in a state of the most abject misery, surrounded by all the emblems of a squalid poverty!"

Yet throughout these lean years, Wheatley Peters continued to write and publish her poems and to maintain, though on a much more limited scale, her international correspondence. She also felt that despite the poor economy, her American audience and certainly her evangelical friends would support a second volume of poetry. Between October and December 1779, with at least the partial motive of raising funds for her family, she ran six advertisements soliciting subscribers for "300 pages in Octavo," a volume "Dedicated to the Right Hon. Benjamin Franklin, Esq.: One of the Ambassadors of the United States at the Court of France," that would include 33 poems and 13 letters. As with Poems on Various Subjects, however, the American populace would not support one of its most noted poets. (The first American edition of this book was not published until two years after her death.) During the year of her death (1784), she was able to publish, under the name Phillis Peters, a masterful 64-line poem in a pamphlet entitled Liberty and Peace, which hailed America as "Columbia" victorious over "Britannia Law." Proud of her nation's intense struggle for freedom that, to her, bespoke an eternal spiritual greatness, Wheatley Peters ended the poem with a triumphant ring:

Britannia owns her Independent Reign,
Hibernia, Scotia, and the Realms of Spain;
And Great Germania's ample Coast admires
The generous Spirit that Columbia fires.
Auspicious Heaven shall fill with fav'ring Gales,
Where e'er Columbia spreads her swelling Sails:
To every Realm shall Peace her Charms display,
And Heavenly Freedom spread her gold Ray.

On January 2 of that same year, she published An Elegy, Sacred to the Memory of that Great Divine, The Reverend and Learned Dr. Samuel Cooper, just a few days after the death of the Brattle Street church's pastor. And, sadly, in September the "Poetical Essays" section of The Boston Magazine carried "To Mr. and Mrs.________, on the Death of their Infant Son," which probably was a lamentation for the death of one of her own children and which certainly foreshadowed her death three months later."

Phillis Wheatley Peters died, uncared for and alone. As Richmond concludes, with ample evidence, when she died on December 5, 1784, John Peters was incarcerated, "forced to relieve himself of debt by an imprisonment in the county jail." Their last surviving child died in time to be buried with his mother, and, as Odell recalled, "A grandniece of Phillis' benefactress, passing up Court Street, met the funeral of an adult and a child: a bystander informed her that they were bearing Phillis Wheatley to that silent mansion."

Recent scholarship shows that Wheatley Peters wrote perhaps 145 poems (most of which would have been published if the encouragers she begged for had come forth to support the second volume), but this artistic heritage is now lost, probably abandoned during Peters's quest for subsistence after her death. Of the numerous letters she wrote to national and international political and religious leaders, some two dozen notes and letters are extant. As an exhibition of African intelligence, exploitable by members of the enlightenment movement, by evangelical Christians, and by other abolitionists, she was perhaps recognized even more in England and Europe than in America. Early 20th-century critics of Black American literature were not very kind to Wheatley Peters because of her supposed lack of concern about slavery. She, however, did have a statement to make about the institution of slavery, and she made it to the most influential segment of 18th-century society-the institutional church. Two of the greatest influences on Phillis Wheatley Peter's thought and poetry were the Bible and 18th-century evangelical Christianity; but until fairly recently her critics did not consider her use of biblical allusion nor its symbolic application as a statement against slavery. She often spoke in explicit biblical language designed to move church members to decisive action. For instance, these bold lines in her poetic eulogy to General David Wooster castigate patriots who confess Christianity yet oppress her people:

But how presumptuous shall we hope to find
Divine acceptance with the Almighty mind
While yet o deed ungenerous they disgrace
And hold in bondage Afric: blameless race
Let virtue reign and then accord our prayers
Be victory ours and generous freedom theirs.

And in an outspoken letter to the Reverend Samson Occom, written after Wheatley Peters was free and published repeatedly in Boston newspapers in 1774, she equates American slaveholding to that of pagan Egypt in ancient times: "Otherwise, perhaps, the Israelites had been less solicitous for their Freedom from Egyptian Slavery: I don't say they would have been contented without it, by no Means, for in every human Breast, God has implanted a Principle, which we call Love of freedom; it is impatient of Oppression, and pants for Deliverance; and by the Leave of our modern Egyptians I will assert that the same Principle lives in us."

In the past decade, Wheatley scholars have uncovered poems, letters, and more facts about her life and her association with 18th-century Black abolitionists. They have also charted her notable use of classicism and have explicated the sociological intent of her biblical allusions. All this research and interpretation has proven Wheatley Peter's disdain for the institution of slavery and her use of art to undermine its practice. Before the end of this century the full aesthetic, political, and religious implications of her art and even more salient facts about her life and works will surely be known and celebrated by all who study the 18th century and by all who revere this woman, a most important poet in the American literary canon. -Original by Sondra A. O'Neale, Emory University

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Although she was an enslaved person, Phillis Wheatley Peters was one of the best-known poets in pre-19th century America. Educated and enslaved in the household of prominent Boston commercialist John Wheatley, lionized in New England and England, with presses in both places publishing her poems,...

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This article was most recently revised and updated by

Marian Anderson, (born February 27, 1897, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.-died April 8, 1993, Portland, Oregon), American singer, one of the finest contraltos of her time.

Anderson displayed vocal talent as a child, but her family could not afford to pay for formal training. From the age of six, she was tutored in the choir of the Union Baptist Church, where she sang parts written for bass, alto, tenor, and soprano voices. Members of the congregation raised funds for her to attend a music school for a year. At 19 she became a pupil of Giuseppe Boghetti, who was so impressed by her talent that he gave her free lessons for a year. In 1925 she entered a contest with 300 competitors and won first prize, a recital at Lewisohn Stadium in New York City with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Her appearance in August 1925 was a great success.

Although many concert opportunities were closed to her because of her race, Anderson appeared with the Philadelphia Symphony and toured African American Southern college campuses. She made her European debut in Berlin in 1930 and made highly successful European tours in 1930-32, 1933-34, and 1934-35. Still relatively unknown in the United States, she received scholarships to study abroad and appeared before the monarchs of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and England. Her pure vocal quality, richness of tone, and tremendous range made her, in the opinion of many, the world's greatest contralto.

Anderson's New York concert debut at Town Hall in December 1935 was a personal triumph. She subsequently toured South America and in 1938-39 once again toured Europe. In 1939, however, she attempted to rent concert facilities in Washington, D.C.'s Constitution Hall, owned by the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), and was refused because of her race. This sparked widespread protest from many people, including Eleanor Roosevelt, who, along with many other prominent women, resigned from the DAR. Arrangements were made for Anderson to appear instead at the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday, and she drew an audience of 75,000. On January 7, 1955, she became the first African American singer to perform as a member of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. Before she began to sing her role of Ulrica in Verdi's Un ballo in maschera, she was given a standing ovation by the audience.

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In 1957 Anderson's autobiography, My Lord, What a Morning, was published. The same year, she made a 12-nation, 35,000-mile (56,000-km) tour sponsored by the Department of State, the American National Theatre and Academy, and Edward R. Murrow's television series . Her role as a goodwill ambassador for the United States was formalized in September 1958 when she was made a delegate to the United Nations. Anderson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963 by President Lyndon B. Johnson, and she was the recipient of numerous honorary degrees. She made farewell tours of the world and the United States in 1964-65. In 1977 her 75th birthday ( see Researcher's Note) was marked by a gala concert at Carnegie Hall. Among her myriad honours and awards were the National Medal of Arts in 1986 and the U.S. music industry's Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1991.

John M. Cunningham, Readers Editor.

Learn More in these related Britannica articles:

Un ballo in maschera: Background and context

American contralto Marian Anderson sang the role of Ulrica at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City on January 7, 1955, thereby becoming the first African American to appear with the company....

...Revolution (DAR) refused to let Marian Anderson, an African American opera singer, perform in Constitution Hall, Eleanor resigned her membership in the DAR and arranged to hold the concert at the nearby Lincoln Memorial; the event turned into a massive outdoor celebration attended by 75,000 people. On another occasion, when...

Marian Anderson, the famed African American contralto, with the support of first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, was granted permission by the Department of the Interior to perform at the Lincoln Memorial in 1939 after being denied the right to sing at Constitution Hall by the Daughters...

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Marian Anderson, American singer, one of the finest contraltos of her time. Anderson displayed vocal talent as a child, but her family could not afford to pay for formal training.

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Harriet Beecher Stowe, née Harriet Elizabeth Beecher, (born June 14, 1811, Litchfield, Connecticut, U.S.-died July 1, 1896, Hartford, Connecticut), American writer and philanthropist, the author of the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, which contributed so much to popular feeling against slavery that it is cited among the causes of the American Civil War.

Harriet Beecher was a member of one of the 19th century's most remarkable families. The daughter of the prominent Congregationalist minister Lyman Beecher and the sister of Catharine, Henry Ward, and Edward, she grew up in an atmosphere of learning and moral earnestness. She attended her sister Catharine's school in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1824-27, thereafter teaching at the school. In 1832 she accompanied Catharine and their father to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he became president of Lane Theological Seminary and she taught at another school founded by her sister.

In Cincinnati she took an active part in the literary and school life, contributing stories and sketches to local journals and compiling a school geography, until the school closed in 1836. That same year she married Calvin Ellis Stowe, a clergyman and seminary professor, who encouraged her literary activity and was himself an eminent biblical scholar. She wrote continually and in 1843 published The Mayflower; or, Sketches of Scenes and Characters Among the Descendants of the Pilgrims.

Stowe lived for 18 years in Cincinnati, separated only by the Ohio River from a slave-holding community; she came in contact with fugitive slaves and learned about life in the South from friends and from her own visits there. In 1850 her husband became professor at Bowdoin College and the family moved to Brunswick, Maine.

There Harriet Stowe began to write a long tale of slavery, based on her reading of abolitionist literature and on her personal observations in Ohio and Kentucky. Her tale was published serially (1851-52) in the National Era, an antislavery paper of Washington, D.C.; in 1852 it appeared in book form as Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly. The book was an immediate sensation and was taken up eagerly by abolitionists while, along with its author, it was vehemently denounced in the South, where reading or possessing the book became an extremely dangerous enterprise. With sales of 300,000 in the first year, the book exerted an influence equaled by few other novels in history, helping to solidify both pro- and antislavery sentiment. The book was translated widely and several times dramatized (the first time, in 1852, without Stowe's permission), where it played to capacity audiences. Stowe was enthusiastically received on a visit to England in 1853, and there she formed friendships with many leading literary figures. In that same year she published A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, a compilation of documents and testimonies in support of disputed details of her indictment of slavery.

In 1856 she published Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp, in which she depicted the deterioration of a society resting on a slave basis. When The Atlantic Monthly was established the following year, she found a ready vehicle for her writings; she also found outlets in the Independent of New York City and later the Christian Union, of which papers her brother Henry Ward Beecher was editor.

She thereafter led the life of a woman of letters, writing novels, of which The Minister's Wooing (1859) is best known, many studies of social life in both fiction and essay, and a small volume of religious poems. An article she published in The Atlantic in 1869, in which she alleged that Lord Byron had had an incestuous affair with his half-sister, created an uproar in England and cost her much of her popularity there, but she remained a leading author and lyceum lecturer in the United States. Late in her life she assisted her son Charles E. Stowe on a biography of her, which appeared in 1889. Stowe had moved to Hartford in 1864, and she largely remained there until her death.

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Harriet Beecher Stowe | Biography, Books, & Facts

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Harriet Beecher Stowe, née Harriet Elizabeth Beecher, (born June 14, 1811, Litchfield, Connecticut, U.S.-died July 1, 1896, Hartford, Connecticut), American writer and philanthropist, the author of the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, which contributed so much to popular feeling against slavery that it is cited among the causes of the American Civil War.

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Leontyne Price, in full Mary Violet Leontyne Price, (born February 10, 1927, Laurel, Mississippi, U.S.), American lyric soprano, the first African American singer to achieve an international reputation in opera.

Both of Price's grandfathers had been Methodist ministers in Black churches in Mississippi, and she sang in her church choir as a girl. Only when she graduated from the College of Education and Industrial Arts (now Central State College) in Wilberforce, Ohio, in 1948 did she decide to seek a career as a singer. She studied for four years at the Juilliard School of Music in New York City, where she worked under the former concert singer Florence Page Kimball, who remained her coach in later years. Her debut took place in April 1952 in a Broadway revival of Four Saints in Three Acts by Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein. Her performance in that production, which subsequently traveled to Paris, prompted Ira Gershwin to choose her to sing the role of Bess in his revival of Porgy and Bess, which played in New York City from 1952 to 1954 and then toured the United States and Europe. The year 1955 saw her triumphant performance of the title role in the National Broadcasting Company's television production of Tosca, and she sang leading roles in other operas on television in the next few years.

Price's operatic stage debut did not take place until September 1957, when she appeared in the American premiere of Francis Poulenc's Les Dialogues des Carmélites at the San Francisco Opera. She continued in San Francisco until 1960, appearing in such works as Aïda, Thaïs, and The Wise Maidens. By that time she was one of the most popular lyric sopranos in the country and had also made successful appearances in Vienna in 1959 and at Milan's La Scala in May 1960.

Leontyne Price Carl Van Vechten Collection/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (digital file no. LC-USZ62-128087)

Despite this great success, her debut at the Metropolitan Opera (the Met) in New York City was deferred until January 1961, when she appeared there in the role of Leonora in Il Trovatore. After a brilliant performance she became one of the Met's leading regular sopranos. Her later roles there included Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly, Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, and Liu in Turandot.

In the 1970s Price began to devote more time to recitals, but she scored another great success in her first performance of Ariadne auf Naxos in San Francisco in October 1977. She gave her farewell performance of Aïda at the Met in 1985 but continued to give recitals, which she described as her first love. In 1990 she published a children's book, Aida, based on Giuseppe Verdi's opera. That work later inspired a musical by Elton John and Tim Rice; it debuted in 1999.

One of the most frequently recorded opera singers, Price was the recipient of more than 20 Grammy Awards, including a lifetime achievement award (1989). She also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1964), a Kennedy Center Honor (1980), and the National Medal of the Arts (1985). In 2008 she was among the first to be named a National Endowment for the Arts Opera Honoree.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Amy Tikkanen.

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Leontyne Price | Biography, Opera, & Facts

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Leontyne Price, American lyric soprano, the first African American singer to achieve an international reputation in opera. She was one of the Metropolitan Opera's leading regular sopranos, notably appearing in Madama Butterfly, Don Giovanni, and Aida. Learn more about Price's life and career.

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As an activist, community organizer, and executive, Tarana Burke has made quite an impact. Known as the founder of the 'me too' Movement, Burke's hashtag has been used more than 19 million times on Twitter alone. Since then, Burke has been widely recognized for her work, and was named Person of the Year by TIME Magazine in 2017.

Tarana Burke was born on September 12, 1973 in The Bronx, New York. From a young age, Burke developed a passion for activism and community organizing. In the late 1980s, she joined an organization focused on youth development called 21 st Century. Starting as a teenager, Burke led campaigns and launched initiatives around issues like housing inequality, racial discrimination, and economic injustice. Fueled by her passion for activism, she decided to attend Alabama State University, a Historically Black University (HBCU), to further develop her organizing skills. Burke's advocacy and leadership continued throughout her college career. After graduating, she moved to Selma, Alabama to work for 21 st Century. While working with this organization, Burke encountered many young women of color that were survivors of sexual violence and abuse. Also a survivor of sexual abuse, Burke identified with these young women and her efforts shifted towards supporting them. She began to find ways to provide resources, support and safe spaces for young women of color to share their stories.

In 1996, Burke was working as the director of a youth camp when she encountered a young woman that would have a profound effect on her. After holding an all-girl bonding session at the camp, a young woman asked to speak with Burke privately about experiencing sexual abuse. Although Burke was unable to respond thoroughly in the moment, this encounter would become the foundation for the 'me too' Movement she created a decade later. She continued to focus on young women of color and co-founded an African-centered Rites of Passage program for girls called Jendayi Aza. This program evolved into her non-profit JustBe, Inc. which was founded in 2007. This organization was created to empower and encourage young Black girls through unique programming and workshops. JustBe, Inc. had a tremendous impact on the community, and the program was adopted by every public school in Selma, Alabama. Shortly after, the 'me too' Movement was born. Created as a way for young women of color to share their stories, Burke began using the phrase 'me too' to promote the idea of "empowerment through empathy." Her campaign was not only designed to facilitate healing, but she also wanted to train survivors to work in communities of color.

While developing 'me too,' Burke continued to work in the non-profit sector. She served as Managing Director of a Black arts organization in Philadelphia called Art Sanctuary. She was also the Executive Director of the Black Belt Cultural Arts Center, where she created community programs designed for underserved youth. In Selma, Alabama, Burke worked as a curatorial consultant and special projects director at the National Voting Rights Museum & Institute. While at this museum she helped to organize the annual Selma Bridge Crossing Jubilee to commemorate the Selma Voting Rights Struggle. Burke's work earned her a consulting position on Ava DuVernay's award-winning film, Selma in 2014. A few years later, Burke's work returned to the spotlight. During the 2017 Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse scandal, Burke's hashtag #metoo went viral. People all over the world began posting the phrase on their social media accounts to align with the movement.

Following this surge of support, Burke became a global leader and helped to get a larger conversation started around sexual violence. According to the Pew Research Center, in just one year the #metoo hashtag was used more than 19 million times on Twitter alone. In 2017, TIME Magazine named Burke and other "Silence Breakers" as Person of the Year. The very next year, she attended the 75 th Annual Golden Globe Awards as a guest of actress Michelle Williams. Burke has been internationally celebrated for her work and has been invited to speak across the country. In 2019, she earned the Sydney Peace Prize in Sydney, Australia. Burke currently serves as the Senior Director of Girls for Gender Equity in Brooklyn, NY. She is also frequently asked to provide social commentary and has been published in Teen Vogue, Colorlines, Mic, BK Nation, Glamour, Ebony, Essence, The Source, and The Root, among others. Burke currently resides in New York City with her daughter.

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As an activist, community organizer, and executive, Tarana Burke has made quite an impact. Discover more at womenshistory.org.

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Despite being told as a child she would never walk again, Wilma Rudolph relentlessly pursued her dreams becoming an international track and field star. At the height of her career, "the fastest woman in the world" used her platform to shed light on social issues.

Wilma Glodean Rudolph was born on June 23, 1940 in Saint Bethlehem, Tennessee. As one of 22 children, she was constantly surrounded by support and care, which she needed given her poor health. Rudolph survived bouts of polio and scarlet fever. Her illness forced her to wear a brace on her leg. Rudolph's diagnosis was very bleak, "my doctor told me I would never walk again. My mother told me I would. I believed my mother." Together, Rudolph's parents and siblings took turns taking care of her. They would often remove her leg brace and massage her injured leg. At the age of six, Rudolph began to hop on one leg. By eight she could move around with a leg brace. At the age of 11, Rudolph's mother discovered her playing basketball outside. She quickly turned to sports, becoming a natural athlete. She was nominated as All-American in basketball during high school. However, after a chance meeting with a college coach she turned to track and field.

While still in high school Rudolph competed on the collegiate level. She competed in the 1956 Olympic games and won a bronze medal in 4x100 relay. Four years later, Rudolph headed to the 1960 summer Olympics determined to get gold. Her performance in Rome cemented her as one of the greatest athletes of the 20 th century. She won three gold medals and broke at least three world records. Rudolph became the first American woman to win three gold medals in track and field at the same Olympic game. Her performance also earned her the title of "the fastest woman in the world."

Returning home an Olympic champion Rudolph refused to attend her homecoming parade if it was not integrated. She won the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year award in 1961. The following year, Rudolph retired from track and field. She went on to finish her degree at Tennessee State University and began working in education. She continued her involvement in sports, working at several community centers throughout the United States. She was inducted into the US Olympic Hall of Fame and started an organization to help amateur track and field stars. In 1990, Rudolph became the first woman to receive the National Collegiate Athletic Association's Silver Anniversary Award. The indoor track and dormitory at Tennessee State University are named in honor of Rudolph. In 1977, her life was the subject of a prime-time television movie. Rudolph died of a brain tumor on November 12, 1994.

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Wilma Rudolph relentlessly pursued her dreams becoming an international track and field star.

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Rosie the Riveter was the star of a campaign aimed at recruiting female workers for defense industries during World War II, and she became perhaps the most iconic image of working women. American women entered the workforce in unprecedented numbers during the war, as widespread male enlistment left gaping holes in the industrial labor force. Between 1940 and 1945, the female percentage of the U.S. workforce increased from 27 percent to nearly 37 percent, and by 1945 nearly one out of every four married women worked outside the home.

Rosies in the Workforce

While women during World War II worked in a variety of positions previously closed to them, the aviation industry saw the greatest increase in female workers.

More than 310,000 women worked in the U.S. aircraft industry in 1943, making up 65 percent of the industry's total workforce (compared to just 1 percent in the pre-war years). The munitions industry also heavily recruited women workers, as illustrated by the U.S. government's Rosie the Riveter propaganda campaign.

Based in small part on a real-life munitions worker, but primarily a fictitious character, the strong, bandanna-clad Rosie became one of the most successful recruitment tools in American history, and the most iconic image of working women in the World War II era.

Did you know? Though women who entered the workforce during World War II were crucial to the war effort, their pay continued to lag far behind their male counterparts: Female workers rarely earned more than 50 percent of male wages.

In movies, newspapers, propaganda posters, photographs and articles, the Rosie the Riveter campaign stressed the patriotic need for women to enter the workforce. On May 29, 1943, The Saturday Evening Post published a cover image by the artist Norman Rockwell, portraying Rosie with a flag in the background and a copy of Adolf Hitler's racist tract "Mein Kampf" under her feet.

Though Rockwell's image may be a commonly known version of Rosie the Riveter, her prototype was actually created in 1942 by a Pittsburgh artist named J. Howard Miller, and was featured on a poster for Westinghouse Electric Corporation under the headline "We Can Do It!"

Early in 1943, a popular song debuted called "Rosie the Riveter," written by Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb, and the name went down in history.

Who Was Rosie the Riveter?

The true identity of Rosie the Riveter has been the subject of considerable debate. For years, the inspiration for the woman in the Westinghouse poster was believed to be Geraldine Hoff Doyle of Michigan, who worked in a Navy machine shop during World War II.

Other sources claim that Rosie was actually Rose Will Monroe, who worked as a riveter at the Willow Run Bomber Plant near Detroit. Monroe also was featured in a promotional film for war bonds.

And Rosalind P. Walter from Long Island, New York, is known to be the Rosie from the popular song by Evans and Loeb. Walter was, in fact, a riveter on Corsair fighter planes.

But the most credible claim on Rosie's legacy came from Naomi Parker Fraley, who was photographed working in the machine shop at the Naval Air Station in Alameda, California. In the 1942 photo, she is sporting a telltale polka-dotted bandana. Fraley passed away in January 2018.

WACs

In addition to factory work and other home front jobs, some 350,000 women joined the Armed Services, serving at home and abroad. At the urging of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and women's groups, and impressed by the British use of women in service, General George C. Marshall supported the idea of introducing a women's service branch into the Army.

In May 1942, Congress instituted the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps, later upgraded to the Women's Army Corps, which had full military status. Its members, known as WACs, worked in more than 200 non-combatant jobs stateside and in every theater of the war.

By 1945, there were more than 100,000 WACs and 6,000 female officers. In the Navy, members of Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES) held the same status as naval reservists and provided support stateside. The Coast Guard and Marine Corps soon followed suit, though in smaller numbers.

WASPs

One of the lesser-known roles women played in the war effort was provided by the Women's Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPs. These women, each of whom had already obtained their pilot's license prior to service, became the first women to fly American military aircraft.

They ferried planes from factories to bases, transporting cargo and participating in simulation strafing and target missions, accumulating more than 60 million miles in flight distances and freeing thousands of male U.S. pilots for active duty in World War II.

More than 1,000 WASPs served, and 38 of them lost their lives during the war. Considered civil service employees and without official military status, these fallen WASPs were granted no military honors or benefits, and it wasn't until 1977 that the WASPs received full military status.

Impact of Rosie the Riveter

The call for women to join the workforce during World War II was meant to be temporary and women were expected to leave their jobs after the war ended and men came home. The women who did stay in the workforce continued to be paid less than their male peers and were usually demoted. But after their selfless efforts during World War II, men could no longer claim superiority over women. Women had enjoyed and even thrived on a taste of financial and personal freedom-and many wanted more. The impact of World War II on women changed the workplace forever, and women's roles continued to expand in the postwar era.

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Rosie the Riveter - Real Person, Facts & Norman Rockwell

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Rosie the Riveter was the star of a campaign aimed at recruiting female workers for defense industries during World War II. Artist Normal Rockwell's cover image of Rosie, made in 1943, became, perhaps the most iconic image of working women.

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On a warm August evening, Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, granting women the right to vote. It was the culmination of a 144-year odyssey from the Declaration of Independence and clarified once and for all, the meaning of "all men are created equal." As was the case throughout this journey, the final vote did not come easy.

It all came down to one man, 24-year-old state legislator Harry Burn. On the morning of August 18, 1920, Mr. Burn, who had been against ratification, received a letter from his mother which stated, "Dear son... Vote for suffrage and don't keep them in doubt... Don't forget to be a good boy..."

As the roll call neared his name, he clutched the letter from his mother in his hand.

"Mr. Burns..." the assembly clerk called his name.

"Yea."

And then, it was done. The painful struggle was over. American women had the right to vote and with it, full citizenship. The arduous work of thousands of women-and men-had finally been rewarded. However, to truly appreciate this achievement, one has to understand how far American attitudes towards women had evolved from the previous century.

Women were restricted in society

By the early 19th century, American society had fully embraced the "Cult of True Womanhood," an ideology that claimed women were best suited in the home, serving as the family's moral guide. This protected-class status was intended to shield women from being sullied by the nefarious influences of work, politics and making war. In reality, the custom paved the way for laws banning women from attending colleges, entering professional work, voting, serving on juries and testifying in court. Many states outlawed women from owning property or entering into contracts. From an early age, women were placed on the path of marriage and motherhood. For single women, options were limited to teaching or nursing, with the social label of being an "old maid."

However, during this time the United States was also going through a tremendous transformation. Industry was surpassing agriculture in productivity and profitability. Slavery's days were numbered, though its demise would only happen through civil war. Religious enlightenment was engaging Americans to think of themselves as a chosen people with a mission to improve society. The political climate was ripe and in need of women's moral guidance. At the top of the list was the abolition of slavery. Two sisters from a South Carolina plantation, Angelina and Sara Grimke, wrote and spoke fervently to end slavery. The subsequent disapproval by some clergymen of their activities led them to expand their efforts towards women's rights.

Photo: John Opie [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Fueled by the writings of 18th-century women's rights activist Mary Wollstonecraft, whose book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, many women began to push for greater rights. The seminal moment for Elizabeth Cady Stanton came while attending the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London when she, and the other women attending, were banned from participating in the proceedings.

When Stanton returned to her hometown of Seneca Falls, New York, she and her friend Lucretia Mott organized the first women's right convention, held on July 19-20, 1848. There she introduced a "Declaration of Rights and Sentiments" modeled after the Declaration of Independence. As she stood before the delegation, she nervously read from the document,

"We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

The convention delegates nodded approvingly, hearing the familiar words spoken. Emboldened, Stanton introduced several resolutions, the last advocating a woman's right to vote. Many delegates, both men and women, were appalled at the audacity. Some doubted whether women were qualified to vote, while others felt that such a right was unnecessary as most women would likely vote with their husbands. After a stirring speech by African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass, the resolution passed. The partnership between abolition and suffrage had been solidified and, it seemed, the two movements would achieve their respective goals together.

The NWSA was formed to support the 15th amendment

The next pivotal battle for women's equality took place in 1868 during Congressional debates on the 15th Amendment, guaranteeing the right to vote. Women had worked hard over the past 20 years for Black freedom and enfranchisement and expected they would be included in this goal. While many abolitionists were initially supportive of suffrage for both African Americans and women, leaders felt that it was now "the Negro's hour" and to ask for more would jeopardize the cause. In an unexpected turnaround, Frederick Douglass made an impassioned plea at the American Equal Rights Association convention to let the Black man go first, turning the effort away from enfranchising women.

Stanton and Susan B. Anthony saw this as a betrayal and campaigned against any amendment that denied women the right to vote. This caused a breach in the women's movement and led to Stanton and Anthony forming the National Women's Suffrage Association (NWSA), while Lucy Stone, her husband Henry Blackwell, and Julia Ward Howe founded the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), which supported the 15th Amendment.

Many African American women also pushed for women's rights, beginning with Sojourner Truth, who in 1851 made her impassioned "Ain't I a Woman" speech. Other African American women, such as Mary Anne Shadd Cary and Charlotte Forten Grimke (the niece of two abolitionists/suffragists Margaretta and Harriet Forten) participated in suffrage organizations. Unfortunately, as was the case in society, oftentimes African American women weren't always welcomed by white suffragists and had to participate in separate organizations. In 1896, many Black women's clubs affiliated to form the National Association of Colored Women with Mary Church Terrell as president.

Through the second half of the 19th century, the suffrage movement remained divided. In the 1870s, some women used the language of the 14th Amendment to try to vote. In 1872, Susan B. Anthony was arrested when she illegally voted in a presidential election. She was fined $100, which she never paid, and moved on. This tactic of invoking the 14th Amendment to enfranchise women was permanently squashed when the Supreme Court ruled in Minor v. Happersett (1875) that the 14th Amendment did not grant women the right to vote.

In 1874, Francis Willard founded the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) which soon became the largest and most powerful women's movement in the country. Its hundreds of thousands of members helped support the suffrage movement, but linking suffrage to prohibition was strongly opposed by many who were not against alcohol and weakening the effort.

By the 1890s, the acrimony between the two women's suffrage associations had subsided and they merged into the National American Suffrage Association (NAWSA). With the passing of Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1902 and Susan B. Anthony in 1906, a new generation of leaders assumed control of the women's movement. NAWSA president Carrie Chapman Catt pursued a state-by-state strategy to win the vote for women, which by 1896, proved successful in four states-Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, and Colorado. Still, the goal of national suffrage was a long way off. However, Catt left the organization tired of the internal squabbling.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Progressive movement emerged to address issues associated with industrialization, immigration and urbanization. Many in the labor movement saw women as allies and potential voters for their cause. In 1906, Harriot Stanton Blatch, Elizabeth Cady Stanton's daughter, founded the Equality League of Self-Supporting Women to organize working-class suffragists. In 1910, they conducted the first large-scale suffrage march in the United States. In addition, Black women founded clubs that worked exclusively for woman's suffrage, such as the Alpha Suffrage Club of Chicago, founded by Ida B. Wells in 1913.

In 1915, Carrie Chapman Catt returned as president of NAWSA and turned the organization into an effective political machine, recruiting key supporters, raising money, and conducting public demonstrations with participants wearing white uniforms designed to draw crowds and newspaper reporters. Catt set up a Washington office to exert pressure on members of Congress and convince the Democratic and Republican parties to support women's suffrage. In addition, she developed a close relationship with President Woodrow Wilson to gain his support.

In 1919, both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate finally voted to approve the 19th Amendment. The bill went on to the states, seeking the approval of three-quarters of state legislatures. It finally happened a year later on that hot August night in Tennessee, when young Hank Burn followed the advice of his mother and cast his vote for women's suffrage.

However, the battle for women's equality didn't end there. Within a decade, state laws disenfranchised most African American women - and men - under the custom of Jim Crow. It would take another movement in the 1960s before all Black people in the South would be enfranchised. The struggle for gender equality continues today for equal pay and opportunity and equal justice in cases of rape and assault.

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On August 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote, was formally adopted into the U.S. Constitution. Here is a look at the events surrounding this important chapter in U.S. history and the women who made change happen.

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Despite being an amputee, Virginia Hall bolstered the Allied resistance in France so successfully that the Gestapo launched special missions just to find her. They never did.

To the Nazis, Virginia Hall was "the most dangerous of all Allied spies," and they sent their entire stable of double agents to "find and destroy her." Her face, or one of many of her faces, was plastered on reward posters across occupied France - but the Third Reich's most elusive adversary remained at large.

The Gestapo's senior officer in charge of her case, Klaus Barbie a.k.a. "the butcher of Lyon," was right to fear her. He never even managed to uncover her true nationality - or her real name.

This so infuriated Barbie that he once reportedly cried out in a fit of rage, "I would give anything to get my hands on that limping Canadian bitch."

Of course, Virginia Hall wasn't Canadian. And that wasn't all the Nazis never knew about this daring spy.

Virginia Hall's Unconventional Early Life

Born on April 6, 1906, in Baltimore, Maryland, even in her earliest years Virginia Hall was by her own admission, "cantankerous and capricious." While Hall's mother wanted her to marry into money and restore the family's failing fortune, she was more at home hunting than at dances, wore men's clothing, and once went to her upscale high school wearing live snakes as a bracelet.

Despite her eccentricities, she was an exceptional student. Hall was elected class president at Roland Park Country School, where she was also editor-in-chief of the school newspaper, captain of the field hockey team, and even "Class Prophet." Her peers remembered her as the "most original of our class."

Hall spent the next four years studying at Radcliffe and Barnard Colleges, but her distaste for the staid atmosphere of academics and her proficiency in French led her to travel to Paris and then Vienna.

Along the way, Hall earned a degree in economics and international law, fell in love with a young Polish army officer, and learned German, Italian, Russian, and Spanish. By the time she returned to Baltimore in 1929, she was every inch the emancipated, modern European woman.

Sexism Hinders Her Career

Virginia Hall's dream was to join the State Department as a diplomat and ultimately to become an ambassador. She believed that with her proficiency in languages and her travels she was an ideal candidate for this role.

And she may well have been if Washington's diplomatic community at the time wasn't solidly male and its members had no tolerance for a woman in their ranks. Hall consequently sent several unsuccessful applications to join the diplomatic service, each time competing against hundreds of other women of whom only a handful would be accepted.

After her father's death, Hall managed to secure a job as a clerk in the American embassy in Warsaw before transferring to Izmir, Turkey a few months later. It was there that, during a hunting expedition in 1932, Hall accidentally shot herself in the left foot.

The wound turned gangrenous, and only a rapid amputation saved her life, but she was left one-legged and discouraged. Equipped with a prosthetic leg that she affectionately nicknamed "Cuthbert," Hall applied again to the diplomatic service. In 1937, she was again rejected in part due to "an obscure rule barring amputees from diplomacy."

In response to her letter of appeal on the matter, Secretary of State Cordell Hull callously replied that Hall could become "a fine career girl" in the consular service.

Becoming An Allied Spy

Determined to contribute to the fight against fascism, Hall resigned from the State Department and joined the French 9th Artillery Regiment as an ambulance driver in 1940.

But when the German Army crashed through the Maginot Line and swiftly overthrew the French government, she was forced to flee to London. The escape would prove to be yet another decisive moment in Virginia Hall's life.

Hall had obtained a phone number from an acquaintance which she'd been told to call to ask for work upon reaching British soil. She assumed it would be another ambulance driving job, but was astonished to be on the phone with a senior officer of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a top-secret British agency which Prime Minister Winston Churchill had launched in order to "set Europe ablaze."

Through covert channels, Hall's daring and elusiveness had so impressed the SOE that she was immediately accepted for training in weapons, sabotage, disguise, and espionage. Under the codename "Germaine," among many others, Hall was soon sent back to France to collect intelligence on German operations there and to help organize and arm the French resistance.

Soon after reentering France in August of 1941 while posing as a reporter for the New York Post, Hall established a network of SOE operatives and French resistance fighters codenamed HECKLER.

From their base in Lyon, the heart of the resistance, HECKLER helped integrate Allied operatives into the French underground, coordinated supplies and arms, and offered logistical support to nascent resistance groups.

Fighting An Underground War In France

The danger she was under was immense. Of the more than 400 SOE agents ultimately sent to France, 25 percent didn't return, and while Hall managed to escape attention for some time, she was no match for the German Abwehr's network of informants.

In November 1942, Abbé Robert Alesh, a French priest and informant, seemed to suspect her. This was around the time that the German occupation of France was increasing. Sensing the danger she was in, Hall took a train south to the border and walked the 50 miles into neutral Spain through the harsh Pyrenees winter.

At one point during the perilous journey, Hall was able to transmit a message to her superiors in London stating that she hoped "Cuthbert" would give her no trouble. Misunderstanding, they replied: "If Cuthbert troublesome, eliminate him."

After a brief spell in a Spanish jail for illegally entering the country, Hall was able to get word to American officials in Barcelona who secured her release. Now considered by the SOE to be compromised, she instead joined the Office of Strategic Services, or OSS, which was the wartime precursor to the later Central Intelligence Agency.

Now codenamed "Diane," Hall was sent to France once again but this time as the second-in-command of an older, inexperienced OSS officer. Using the cover identity of Marcelle Montagne, a rural Frenchwoman, Hall now bore a far-from-glamorous new disguise, her hair dyed gray and pulled back into a severe bun, affecting a pronounced limp, and with her teeth filed down to resemble those of a French peasant.

Throughout 1944, Hall's men "cut sixteen railway lines, derailed eight trains, blew up four railway bridges, cut all telephone wires in the area, and killed eighty Germans while suffering just twelve casualties themselves" all under her covert command.

As a result, Hall was deemed to have made her network "a most powerful factor in the harassing of enemy troops."

But as successful as she was, the end of Virginia Hall's wartime career was in sight. With the Allied invasion of Normandy, operatives in the SOE and OSS were no longer as valuable, and in September 1944, Hall was finally stood down.

A Decorated Spy Returns Home

After the war ended, Virginia Hall was awarded a French Croix de Guerre and an American Distinguished Service Cross, making her the only female civilian to receive one such medal during the Second World War.

She was also made an honorary Member of the Order of the British Empire. Yet as daring and as capable as she'd proven herself to be during wartime, the return of peace came with the resurrection of the barriers she'd faced so many years before.

As an analyst in the Cold War CIA, Hall was undervalued by her superiors. "No one knew what to do with her. She was a sort of embarrassment to the noncombat CIA types."

Hall nevertheless continued to serve faithfully, performing clerical duties much like those from which she'd been so desperate to escape in the State Department a decade before.

Unsung and practically unknown, she retired from the Agency in 1966, retreating to a farm in Barnesville, Maryland with her husband, former OSS lieutenant Paul Goillot. She spent her remaining years out of the public eye, and died at the age of 76 in 1982 largely without recognition as the greatest Allied spy of World War II.
After this look at Virginia Hall, read up on another female spy, Civil War spy Belle Boyd. Then check out Inga Arvad, the suspected World War II spy romantically linked to both JFK and Hitler.

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Meet Virginia Hall, The Fearless One-Legged Spy Who Tormented The Nazis

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To the Nazis, Virginia Hall was "the most dangerous of all Allied spies," and they sent their entire stable of double agents to "find and destroy her." Her face, or one of many of her faces, was plastered on reward posters across occupied France - but the Third Reich's most elusive adversary remained at large.

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Brenda Berkman (born 1951) is a pioneering female firefighter. She was the sole named class plaintiff in the federal sex discrimination lawsuit that opened the Fire Department of the City of New York (FDNY) to women firefighters. After she won the lawsuit in 1982, she and 40 other women became FDNY firefighters.

Berkman grew up in Minneapolis, where as a child she became acutely aware of gender preference in favor of boys. Her application to Little League was turned down solely on the basis of her gender.

Brenda Berkman was enrolled in her third year of law school when the New York City Fire Department announced that women could take the exam to become firefighters in 1977. After passing the written portion of the exam, Berkman and 89 other women subsequently failed the physical portion. It was stated by an official that their physical test was "the most difficult the department had ever administered, [and] was designed more to keep women out than to accurately assess job-related skills."

After Berkman's requests for a fairer test were ignored, she filed an ultimately successful class-action lawsuit: Brenda Berkman, et al. v. The City of New York (1982). A new test was created in which standards were changed so the test was job-related and Brenda with 40 other women passed to enter the fire academy in 1982. ( See Brenda Berkman, et al. v. The City of New York, CV-79-1813, 536 F. Supp. 177 ( E.D.N.Y. 1982), aff'd Berkman v. City of New York, 705 F.2d 584 (2d Cir. 1983.))

Berkman was the founder of the United Women Firefighters in 1982, an organization for women in the FDNY. She was its first president and then elected president again multiple times until 1996.

Less than a year after joining the fire department Berkman was fired for alleged lack of physical ability, while her performance was consistently in the top tier of every task the fire department had given women. When she had returned to her firehouse on the Lower East Side to collect her belongings, the male firefighters wouldn't speak to her. As she exited in silence, they began clapping.

In 1983 Brenda Berkman and Zaida Gonzalez successfully sued to be reinstated. Judge Sifton's 56-page ruling was highly critical of the Fire Department, which the judge said had ''failed lamentably to prepare its officers and members for the extraordinary task of integrating women into its previously all-male ranks.'' While serving as firefighters, the two women were subjected to ''extensive'' sexual harassment, the judge said.

Lieutenant Berkman was off duty when the first plane hit the World Trade Center on September 11. She ran to the nearest firehouse and arrived at the site just as the North Tower collapsed. Berkman spent the rest of 9/11 and many weeks following looking for survivors and remains. Most 9/11 accounts reinforced the notion of heroes as men, often referring to firefighters as "firemen' instead of the gender-neutral term and paid little attention to female workers at the scene. Her push to have women recognized for their contributions eventually led to the production of a video titled "The Women at Ground Zero." Her experience was also featured in the book Women at Ground Zero: stories of courage and compassion.

She retired in 2006 at the rank of captain.

The struggle of women to join the FDNY, and Berkman's part in it, was featured in a 2006 PBS documentary called Taking The Heat.

Berkman has remained an outspoken advocate for gender equality.

Susan B. Anthony Award from the National Organization for Women (1984)

Revson Fellowship on the Future of the City of New York, from Columbia University (1987-1988)

New York Women's Foundation Celebrating Women Honoree (2000)

Distinguished Alumni Award from St. Olaf College (1996)

Women of Courage Award from the National Organization for Women (2002).

She was also the first firefighter to be a White House Fellow.

Berkman responded to the World Trade Center attacks and in 2011 decided for the first time, to deal with her 9/11 experience in her art. She drew and created the stone lithograph print "2001", a self-portrait depicting a bent over figure, covering her head and moving away as if under attack from above. In 2012 a self-portrait she created was exhibited at the 9/11 Decade Exhibit at the Westbeth Sculpture Gallery Annex. The series of stone lithograph images she drew and printed over three years (2015-2017) is titled "Thirty-Six Views of One World Trade Center." "Thirty-six Views" documents both the rebuilding and the memories of the World Trade Center site. The entire series was acquired by the National September 11 Memorial & Museum permanent collection, St. Olaf College (MN) and a private collector. The 36th print, the only one with color, depicts the two blue lights beamed from Ground Zero annually on 9/11.

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Brenda Berkman (born 1951) is a pioneering female firefighter. She was the sole named class plaintiff in the federal sex discrimination lawsuit that opened the Fire Department of the City of New York (FDNY) to women firefighters. After she won the lawsuit in 1982, she and 40 other women became FDNY firefighters.

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MLA - Michals, Debra. "Shirley Chisholm." National Women's History Museum. National Women's History Museum, 2015. Date accessed.

Chicago - Michals, Debra. "Shirley Chisholm." National Women's History Museum. 2015. www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/shirley-chisholm.

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Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm was the first African American woman in Congress (1968) and the first woman and African American to seek the nomination for president of the United States from one of the two major political parties (1972).

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Aretha Franklin - Respect [1967] (Aretha's Original Version)

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Dorothy Elizabeth Levitt, (born Elizabeth Levi; 5 January 1882 - 17 May 1922) was the first British woman racing driver, holder of the world's first water speed record, the women's world land speed record holder, and an author. She was a pioneer of female independence and female motoring, and taught Queen Alexandra and the Royal Princesses how to drive. In 1905 she established the record for the longest drive achieved by a lady driver by driving a De Dion-Bouton from London to Liverpool and back over two days, receiving the soubriquets in the press of the Fastest Girl on Earth, and the Champion Lady Motorist of the World.

Levitt's book The Woman and the Car: A Chatty Little Handbook for all Women who Motor or Who Want to Motor, recommended that women should "carry a little hand-mirror in a convenient place when driving" so they may "hold the mirror aloft from time to time in order to see behind while driving in traffic", thus inventing the rear-view mirror before it was introduced by manufacturers in 1914. She also advised women travelling alone to carry a handgun; her recommendation was an automatic Colt, as in her opinion its relative lack of recoil made it particularly suitable for women.

Levitt was born Elizabeth Levi, in Hackney on 5 January 1882. She was the daughter of Jacob Levi, a prosperous jeweller, tea dealer, and Commission Agent of Colvestone Crescent, Hackney. Dorothy's mother was born Julia Raphael in Aldgate on 31 October 1856 (or possibly 1858) and married Jacob Levi in March 1877. Jacob died in 1934 and Julia in 1942. Levitt had two sisters: Lilly, (6 March 1878 - 8 April 1879); and Elsie Ruby (1892-1959 or 1963). Levitt or Levit had been adopted as the anglicized family surname by 1901. Her family was of Sephardi Jewish descent.

Scant information is available about Levitt's life except indications that she was an experienced horse rider. She described remaining astride a galloping horse while it negotiated jumps in a steeplechase as easier than retaining a seat in a car being driven at speed. In 1902 she was employed as a secretary at the Napier & Son works in Vine Street, Lambeth, where she was engaged initially on a temporary basis. The Napier engineering company had been purchased by Montague Napier from the executors of his father's estate. After undertaking work for Selwyn Edge on his Panhard et Levassor racing car, Napiers diversified to manufacturing cars in 1899. At this time the British motor industry was only beginning to develop; even the suggestion of motor races on public roads caused an outcry with hill climbs and speed tests having to be undertaken on private land.

When or how Levitt met Edge is unclear, as several versions and nuances are reported and both she and Edge appear to have been "orientated towards self-publicity". Napier cars were driven by Edge in motor races and he piloted one to win the 1902 Gordon Bennett Cup, a race from Paris to Austria; while competing there he noticed the influence Camille du Gast's participation had in drawing media attention to French racing cars. One suggestion was that Edge was seeking an English version of du Gast to enhance the sale of British cars. Jean Williams, British sports historian, hypothesises it may also have been to initiate a similar strategy to that employed by Kodak to infer "even women" could manage it. Edge noticed Levitt, who was described by author Jean Francois Bouzanquet as a "beautiful secretary with long legs and eyes like pools", working in the Napier office and promoted her to become his personal assistant, as she fulfilled almost all of his criteria for a suitable woman to attract extra publicity for the company.

Later newspaper accounts paint a "romantic history" for Levitt by reporting that when she was twenty her parents moved to the countryside and tried to arrange a marriage for her. Unhappy about their choice of prospective husband, she absconded. While her parents searched fruitlessly for her, she became acquainted with Edge, who advised her to develop a career.

Edge's influence on her career was enormous, having recognised her spirit he instigated her career in motoring, arranged her training in Paris, provided her cars in order to promote his dealerships and supplied her motor boats. She is presumed to have also been his mistress for a time.

The turn of the 20th-century saw a transition from the more austere Victorian era towards the dynamics of Edwardian times; transport methods were beginning to change yet there remained little opportunity for men to race motors so women driving was almost unheard of. Levitt had to be taught to drive and Leslie Callingham, a young salesman employed by Napiers, was instructed to undertake the task during his day off work. Fortunately Levitt was a fast learner as Callingham disliked her intensely and was affronted at having to teach a woman to drive. Cars were entered in official trials to accumulate performance information for possible buyers; only the company driver and an official were permitted in the vehicle. The driver was required to undertake any necessary maintenance during the proceedings so Edge had to ensure Levitt was also proficient in mechanics. In later interviews, Levitt described how after Edge advised her to make a career in automobiles, he arranged a six-month apprenticeship to a French automobile maker in Paris, where she learned all aspects of building and driving cars. On her return to London she began teaching women how to drive, reportedly teaching Queen Alexandra, the Royal Princesses ( Louise, Victoria and Maud), other ladies of nobility and female American tourists.

Levitt's introductory experience competing in a motor race took place in April 1903, the first English woman driver ever to do so. She did not feature among the prize winners but determined that she would improve. Edge was the British agent for Gladiator vehicles and that was the marque driven by Levitt during the first year of her career. In May she piloted the 16 hp version in the four hundred mile Glasgow to London non-stop run, losing only six points out of a possible maximum of 1,000; the points reduction was due to having to stop to address a problem with the vehicle tyres. Her vehicle was a non-starter in the Sun-Rise Hill Climb near Edge Hill, Warwickshire on 25 July so on that occasion she accompanied Edge in his vehicle as official passenger. Levitt became the first British woman to take part in a speed competition when she made her début in speed races at the Southport Speed Trials where she won the class for cars priced between £400 and £550 in her four seater Gladiator. The heats were held on Friday 2 October and the finals on the Saturday when she covered the flying kilometre in a time of one minute forty-five seconds. At a time when purchasing cars was only within the reach of the aristocracy and the upper middle classes and women were expected to remain at home tending to their husband's needs, British society was astonished a woman working in a secretarial capacity was competing in a sport commonly believed to be a male discipline.

Typically, Edwardian women interested or involved in any mechanical disciplines were perceived to be masculine in outlook, temperament and style, who would also dress in utilitarian male type clothing. When du Gast competed in the Paris to Madrid 1903 road race, her face was almost entirely obscured by a mask and she wore a hat that featured ear flaps; her coat was leather and double breasted and she was assumed to be male until her voice revealed her gender. Levitt, however, raced dressed in flattering feminine outfits complete with co-ordinating hat and veil; a loose, lightweight coat, which became popularly known as a dust coat, afforded overall protection to her fashionable clothes.

Both Levitt's book and newspaper column in The Graphic described her atypical lifestyle for the Edwardian era: an independent, privileged, "bachelor girl", living with friends in the West End of London and waited on by two servants.

In the vernacular of the 1900s Levitt was a scorcher, a motorist who delighted in exceeding the speed limit and who therefore came to the attention of the police. On 6 November 1903, she was summonsed to appear at Marlborough Street Assizes for speeding in Hyde Park. According to the reported statement by the police she was said to have driven at a "terrific pace" and, when stopped, reportedly said that "[she] ... would like to drive over every policeman and wished she had run over the sergeant and killed him." Although she did not appear personally, the magistrate, Mr Denman, fined her £5 with 2s costs. The other six motoring defendants that day were only fined £2 plus costs. In November 1903, Levitt and her friend Hena Frankton claimed damages against a GPO van driver who had hit their car. In two discrete cases they received compensation of £35 each.

During 1904, Levitt suffered some ill health and spent time convalescing in Madeira.

In September Levitt drove an officially entered 8 horse-power De Dion car in the Hereford 1,000-mile (1,600 km) Light Car Trial, entirely alone, without mechanics. Her diary records that she "did everything myself, Had non-stop for five days." Only mechanical problems on the final day, which she repaired herself, prevented her from winning a gold medal.

The Times of 5 September 1904 reported:

It is satisfactory to note that no cars disappeared from the list, although one of the De Dions - the one driven by Miss Dorothy Levitt - which had up to Saturday afternoon run without any loss of marks, came to a standstill owing to a needle valve in the carburetter[sic] (which regulates the flow of petrol) getting loose and consequently closing. The trouble took more than the official 20 minutes to locate, with the result that not only did the car lose its chance of any non-stop award, but the fellow to it was also cut out, as similar cars have to run as a team. This was hard on both drivers after a week's work.

In October she won two medals at the Southport Speed Trials (Blackpool) driving a 50 horse-power Napier (or 20 hp). (Touring cars £750-£1200, second place behind Leon Bollee Syndicate (40 hp Léon Bolllée).

According to a November 1906 interview with the Penny Illustrated Paper Levitt balanced "the fearful excitement of automobile racing by quietly going fishing, and described trout fishing as her favourite sport. She also described poker as her favourite game and claimed significant expertise at roulette. Outlining her "most wonderful secret system with which she is going this winter to attempt to break the bank at Monte Carlo."

Levitt was noted for her ever-present, yappy, black Pomeranian dog called Dodo. A gift from Mademoiselle Marie Cornelle around 1903, he had been smuggled into England by being drugged and then hidden in the repair box of an automobile.

Levitt sometimes mixed at the highest social levels, such that her appearances were reported in advance in the Court Circulars of . To wit her attendance at Major General Sir Alfred Turner's "Salon reception" at the Picadilly Hotel on 14 July 1909.

In the book The car and British society: class, gender and motoring, 1896-1939, Sean O'Connell described Levitt as "arguably the best known of the early women drivers" in an age when male prejudices against women drivers were typified by a 1905 item in that opined the hope that "the controlling of motor cars will be wrested from the hands of ... these would be men". Thus, in the preface to the first edition of her book The Woman and the Car: A chatty little handbook for all women who motor or who want to motor, the editor, C. Byng-Hall, stated that:

The public, in its mind's eye, no doubt figures this motor champion as a big, strapping Amazon. Dorothy Levitt is exactly, or almost so, the direct opposite of such a picture. She is the most girlish of womanly women.

She was described as "slight in nature, shy and shrinking, almost timid". Her book went on to state that "[there might] be pleasure in being whisked around the country by your friends and relatives, or ... chauffeur, but the real intense pleasure only comes when you drive your own car."

In July 1903 (possibly the 12th), Levitt won the inaugural British International Harmsworth Trophy for motor-boats, defeating the French entry Trefle-A-Quatre. The event was officiated by the Automobile Club of Great Britain and Ireland and the Royal Victoria Yacht Club and took place at the Royal Cork Yacht Club at Cork Harbour in Ireland. Levitt set the world's first Water Speed Record when she achieved 19.3 mph (31.1 km/h) in a 40-foot (12 m) steel-hulled, 75-horsepower Napier speedboat fitted with a 3-blade propeller. Selwyn Edge was both the owner and entrant of the boat, and thus "S. F. Edge" is engraved on the trophy as the winner. The third crew member, Campbell Muir, may also have taken the controls. An article in the Cork Constitution on 13 July reported "A large number of spectators viewed the first mile from the promenade of the Yacht Club, and at Cork several thousand people collected at both sides of the river to see the finishes."

On 8 August 1903, Levitt drove the Napier motor-boat at Cowes and won the race. She was then commanded to the Royal yacht Albert & Victoria by King Edward VII where he congratulated her on her pluck and skill, and they discussed, among other things, the performance of the boat and its potential for British government despatch work.

Later in August she went to Trouville, France, and won the Gaston Menier Cup. This was reported as "a very competitive race, 'against the world's cracks'", and she won what was described as the "five-mile world's championship of the sea" and the $1,750 prize.

In October 1903 she returned to Trouville with the Napier motor-boat and won the Championship of the Seas. The French government, like King Edward VII, saw the merit of the design, so went ahead and bought the boat for £1,000.

In February Levitt established the record for the "longest drive achieved by a lady driver". She drove an 8-horse-power De Dion-Bouton from London to Liverpool and back in two days, without the aid of a mechanic but accompanied by an official observer, her pet Pomeranian dog Dodo, plus a revolver. On 29 March 1905 she departed from the De-Dion showroom in Great Marlborough Street London at 07:00, reached Coventry at 11:36 94 miles (151 km), and arrived at the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool at 18:10, having completed the 205 miles (330 km) in a little over 11 hours. The following day she completed the return journey. (Note: Liverpool was the home of her maternal grandmother.) Her diary records that February 1905 - Did Liverpool and back to London in two days, averaging a level 20 miles per hour throughout for the entire 411 miles.

In May she won a Non-stop Certificate at the Scottish Trials driving her eight horse-power De Dion. In her diary she noted that these trials "Ran over very rough and hilly roads in the Highlands."

In July Levitt set her first Ladies World Speed record when competing at the inaugural Brighton Speed Trials, in which she drove an 80 hp Napier at a speed of 79.75 miles per hour. She won her class, the Brighton Sweepstakes and the Autocar Challenge Trophy. Her diary records that she "Beat a great many professional drivers .... Drove at rate of 77.75 miles in Daily Mail Cup."

She also drove a 100 hp (74.6 kW) development of the Napier K5 at the Blackpool Speed Trials.

Her success and skills meant that she was offered a works drive in a French Mors in the inaugural RAC Tourist Trophy Race on the Isle of Man, but she was prohibited from accepting by Selwyn Edge, to protect the reputation of his Napier marque. Ironically the 208-mile (335 km) 1905 event was won by Mr. J. S. Napier in his Arrol Johnson car, ahead of 40 competitors.

The highlight of Levitt's year was at the Blackpool Speed Trial in October when she broke her own Women's World Speed Record (which she set at the Brighton Speed Trials in 1905). She recorded a speed of 90.88 mph (146.26 km/h) (146.25 km/h) over a flying kilometre, driving the 100 hp (74.6 kW) development of the Napier K5-L48. Thus, she was described as the "Fastest Girl on Earth"' and the "Champion Lady Motorist of the World". Her diary recorded:

Broke my own record and created new world's record for women at Blackpool. Ninety horse-power six cylinder Napier. Racing car. Drove at rate of 91 miles an hour. Had near escape as front part of bonnet worked loose and, had I not pulled up in time, might have blown back and beheaded me. Was presented with a cup by the Blackpool Automobile Club and also a cup by S. F. Edge, Limited.

-  Dorothy Levitt. October 1906.

Dorothy's diary records : June 1906 - Shelsey Walsh Hill Climb Worcestershire. Was only sixth at finish. Fifty horse-power Napier. Mine was only car competing which was not fitted with non-skids [tyres]. Car nearly went over embankment owing to this and greasy state of roads. In the Open Class she set the Ladies' Record in a 50 hp Napier (7790 cc), making the climb in 92.4 seconds, 12 seconds faster than the male winner and around three minutes faster than the previous record set by Miss Larkins. Her record stood until 1913.

In July she competed at the Aston Clinton Hillclimb, near Tring in Buckinghamshire, finishing third on a 50 horse-power Napier.

She was unsuccessful in a challenge run against a White Motor Company steam car driven by Frederic A. Coleman of Camden, London.

In November 1906, after setting her new world record, Levitt was the subject of a full page profile in the national Penny Illustrated Paper that was headlined - The Sensational Adventures of Miss Dorothy Levitt, - Champion Lady Motorist of the World. In the article she described her career and spoke of the sensations of travelling at the "awful pace" of world record speeds.

Wonderful. One can hardly describe one's sensations. There is a feeling of flying through space. I never think of the danger. That sort of thing won't do. But I know it is omnipresent. The slightest touch of the hand and the car swerves, and swerves are usually fatal. But I am a good gambler, and always willing to take the chance. In going that pace, the hardest thing is to keep in the car. Half the time the wheels don't touch the ground at all, and when they do touch you must be prepared to take the shock and lurch, else out you will go. It is far harder work to sit in the car than to ride a galloping horse over the jumps in a steeplechase. When I made the records I was in the car alone. I prefer it.

In 1907 the newly opened Brooklands circuit would not accept her entry, even though she was vouchsafed by S. F. Edge, and it continued to reject women drivers until the following year. Thus, she set her sights on Europe, and achieved great success in France and Germany driving for Napier.

In May she finished second in the Appearance Competition at the Bexhill on Sea Speed Trial along the sea front. She was driving her Eight horse-power De Dion.

In June she won a Gold Medal at the Herkomer Trophy Race (1,818 kilometres) in Germany, finishing fourth out of 172 competitors, and the first of all women in all competitions. Her diary records that she drove a "Sixty horse-power six-cylinder Napier. There were 42 cars with much larger engines than I had."

In October she won her class in the Gaillon Hillclimb in France, driving a 40 hp 6-cylinder Napier. In her diary she noted that "Won in my class by 20 seconds. Gradient of hill 1 in 10 average."

Her 1908 schedule was hectic and successful and Brooklands began to allow lady competitors. In June she drove a 45 hp Napier to win a silver plaque in the Prinz Heinrich Trophy at the Herkomer Trophy Trial in Germany. Her diary states "Made absolute non-stop run on 45 horse-power Napier. Won large silver placque."

In July her 60 hp Napier was second fastest of over 50 competitors at the Aston Clinton Hill Climb in Buckinghamshire.

In August she competed at La Côte du Calvaire hill climb at Trouville, France.

In 1909 Levitt attempted to qualify as a pilot at the Hubert Latham School of Aviation at Châlons Camp Mourmelon-le-Grand, between Châlons-en-Champagne and Rheims in France. She attended along with Marie Marvingt and Baroness Raymonde de Laroche, the only woman ever licensed in the difficult to fly Antoinette monoplane. Levitt became a member of The Aero Club of the United Kingdom in January 1910, and was booked to give a talk at the Criterion Restaurant on Thursday, 3 March 1910 about her experiences learning to fly. According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography she learned to fly a Farman aircraft at a flying school in France in 1910, and by March she was interviewed in the Daily Chronicle about her flying experiences although there is no record of her having qualified.

Levitt became the leading exponent of a woman's "right to motor" and in 1909 published The Woman and the Car: A Chatty Little Hand Book for Women Who Motor or Want to Motor, based on her newspaper column in The Graphic. She also gave many lectures to encourage women to take up motoring.

She tried to counter the clichés about mechanically ignorant females:

I am constantly asked by some astonished people "Do you really understand all the horrid machinery of a motor, and could you mend it if it broke down? ... the details of an engine may sound complicated and look "horrid", but an engine is easily mastered.

Her book contained many tips, including carrying a ladies hand mirror, to "occasionally hold up to see what is behind you". Thus, she can be said to have pioneered the rearview mirror seven years before it was adopted by manufacturers.

In 1912 she received a byline for a column in the Yorkshire Evening Post on Saturday 3 August 1912 entitled "Motoring for Ladies : Some Commonsense Hints to Amateurs."

Levitt's career reflected that of several of her contemporaries with a meteoric rise to prominence before abruptly vanishing from public engagements, and her life after 1910 is undocumented. She was found dead in her bed at 50 Upper Baker Street on 17 May 1922 in Marylebone, according to probate granted on 27 September 1922. The death certificate named her as Dorothy Elizabeth Levi, unmarried, and stated that "the cause of death was morphine poisoning while suffering from heart disease and an attack of measles. The inquest recorded a verdict of misadventure." The beneficiary of her estate, valued at £224 2s 5d (equivalent to £12,500 in 2020), was her sister Elsie.

Burman, Barbara (2000), "Racing bodies: dress and pioneer women aviators and racing drivers", Women's History Review, Routledge, 9 (2): 299-326, doi:10.1080/09612020000200243, S2CID 143668161 - via Taylor & Francis

Davis, S. C. H. (1960), Atalanta: Women as Racing Drivers, Foulis

Levitt, Dorothy (1909), The Woman and the Car - A chatty little handbook for all women who motor or who want to motor

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Dorothy Elizabeth Levitt, (born Elizabeth Levi; 5 January 1882 - 17 May 1922) was the first British woman racing driver, holder of the world's first water speed record, the women's world land speed record holder, and an author. She was a pioneer of female independence and female motoring, and taught Queen Alexandra and the Royal Princesses how to drive.

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Photo: Bettmann/Getty Images

Quick Facts
"I have never regarded myself as a crusader. I don't consciously beat the drums for any cause, not even the negro in the United States.""People thought I was ruthless, which I was. I didn't give a darn who was on the other side of the net. I'd knock you down if you got in my way."

Althea Gibson became the first African American tennis player to compete at the U.S. National Championships in 1950, and the first Black player to compete at Wimbledon in 1951.

After Althea Gibson won the women's singles and doubles at Wimbledon in 1957, a ticker tape parade was held in her honor when she returned home to New York City.

Althea Gibson had won 56 singles and doubles championships by the time she turned pro in 1959.

Althea Gibson was the first African American tennis player to compete at the U.S. National Championships in 1950, and the first Black player to compete at Wimbledon in 1951.

Who Was Althea Gibson?

Althea Gibson developed a love of tennis at an early age, but in the 1940s and '50s, most tournaments were closed to African Americans. Gibson kept playing (and winning) until her skills could no longer be denied, and in 1951, she became the first African American to play at Wimbledon. Gibson won the women's singles and doubles at Wimbledon in 1957 and won the U.S. Open in 1958.

Early Life and Career

Althea Neale Gibson was born on August 25, 1927, in Silver, South Carolina. Gibson blazed a new trail in the sport of tennis, winning some of the sport's biggest titles in the 1950s, and broke racial barriers in professional golf as well.

At a young age, Gibson moved with her family to Harlem, a neighborhood in the borough of New York City. Gibson's life at this time had its hardships. Her family struggled to make ends meet, living on public assistance for a time, and Gibson struggled in the classroom, often skipping school altogether. However, Gibson loved to play sports - especially paddle tennis - and she soon made a name for herself as a local paddle tennis champion. Her skills were eventually noticed by musician Buddy Walker, who invited her to play tennis on local courts.

After winning several tournaments hosted by the local recreation department, Gibson was introduced to the Harlem River Tennis Courts in 1941. Incredibly, just a year after picking up a racket for the first time, she won a local tournament sponsored by the American Tennis Association, an African American organization established to promote and sponsor tournaments for Black players. She picked up two more ATA titles in 1944 and 1945. Then, after losing one title in 1946, Gibson won 10 straight championships from 1947 to 1956. Amidst this winning streak, she made history as the first African American tennis player to compete at both the U.S. National Championships (1950) and Wimbledon (1951).

Making History

Gibson's success at those ATA tournaments paved the way for her to attend Florida A&M University on a sports scholarship. She graduated from the school in 1953, but it was a struggle for her to get by. At one point, she even thought of leaving sports altogether to join the U.S. Army. A good deal of her frustration had to do with the fact that so much of the tennis world was closed off to her. The white-dominated, white-managed sport was segregated in the United States, as was the world around it.

The breaking point came in 1950, when Alice Marble, a former tennis No. 1 herself, wrote a piece in American Lawn Tennis magazine lambasting her sport for denying a player of Gibson's caliber to compete in the world's best tournaments. Marble's article caught notice, and by 1952 - just one year after becoming the first Black player to compete at Wimbledon - Gibson was a Top 10 player in the United States. She went on to climb even higher, to No. 7 by 1953.

In 1955, Gibson and her game were sponsored by the United States Lawn Tennis Association, which sent her around the world on a State Department tour that saw her compete in places like India, Pakistan and Burma. Measuring 5 feet, 11 inches, and possessing superb power and athletic skill, Gibson seemed destined for bigger victories.

In 1956, it all came together when she won the French Open. Wimbledon and U.S. Open titles followed in both 1957 and 1958. (She won both the women's singles and doubles at Wimbledon in 1957, which was celebrated by a ticker-tape parade when she returned home to New York City.) In all, Gibson powered her way to 56 singles and doubles championships before turning pro in 1959.

For her part, however, Gibson downplayed her pioneering role. "I have never regarded myself as a crusader," she states in her 1958 autobiography, I Always Wanted to Be Somebody. "I don't consciously beat the drums for any cause, not even the negro in the United States."

Photo: Getty Images

Commercial Success

As a professional, Gibson continued to win - she landed the singles title in 1960 - but just as importantly, she started to make money. She was reportedly paid $100,000 for playing a series of matches before Harlem Globetrotter games. For a short time, too, the athletically gifted Gibson turned to golf, making history again as the first Black woman ever to compete on the pro tour.

But failing to win on the course as she had on the courts, she eventually returned to tennis. In 1968, with the advent of tennis' Open era, Gibson tried to repeat her past success. She was too old and too slow-footed, however, to keep up with her younger counterparts.

Later Years and Death

Following her retirement, in 1971, Gibson was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. She stayed connected to sports, however, through a number of service positions. Beginning in 1975, she served 10 years as commissioner of athletics for New Jersey State. She was also a member of the governor's council on physical fitness.

But just as her early childhood had been, Gibson's last few years were dominated by hardship. She nearly went bankrupt before former tennis great Billie Jean King and others stepped in to help her out. Her health, too, went into decline. She suffered a stroke and developed serious heart problems. On September 28, 2003, Gibson died of respiratory failure in East Orange, New Jersey.

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"I have never regarded myself as a crusader. I don't consciously beat the drums for any cause, not even the negro in the United States." "People thought I was ruthless, which I was. I didn't give a darn who was on the other side of the net.

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Indira Gandhi - Biography, Achievements & Assassination | HISTORY

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Indira Gandhi (1917-1984) served as India’s first female prime minister from 1966 to 1977 and again from 1980 until her assassination in October 1984. She garnered widespread public support for agricultural improvements as well as for her success in the Pakistan war. Gandhi was the daughter of former Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

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Table of Contents

Why is Nadia Comăneci famous?

What was Nadia Comăneci's childhood like?

What is Nadia Comăneci best known for?

This article was most recently revised and updated by

Nadia Comăneci, (born November 12, 1961, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej [now Onești], Romania), Romanian gymnast who was the first gymnast to be awarded a perfect score of 10 in an Olympic event.

Comăneci was discovered by Bela Karolyi, later the Romanian gymnastics coach, when she was six years old. She first competed in the national junior championships in 1969, placing 13th, and she won the competition in 1970. In her first international competition, in 1972, a pre-Olympic junior meet for the communist-bloc countries, she won three gold medals, and in 1973 and 1974 she was all-around junior champion. In her first international competition as a senior, in 1975, she bested the Russian Lyudmila Turishcheva, the five-time European champion, winning four gold medals and one silver. She won the American Cup in New York City in 1976, becoming the first woman to perform a backward double salto as a dismount from the uneven parallel bars.

At the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, Comăneci received seven perfect scores and won the gold medals for the balance beam, the uneven bars, and the all-around individual competition. She won a silver medal as a member of her team and a bronze medal for the floor exercises. After the 1976 Games, she was named a Hero of Socialist Labour by her country. The song used to accompany her floor exercises was retitled "Nadia's Theme (The Young and the Restless)" and became an international hit, earning a Grammy Award in 1977. She finished a disappointing fourth in the world championships in 1978, however, and was out of competition during most of 1979 with an infected hand. At the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow, she won gold medals for the beam and the floor exercises (tying for first in the latter event with Nelli Kim of the U.S.S.R.). She won a silver medal as a member of her team and tied with Maxi Gnauck of East Germany for second place in the all-around individual competition. She retired from competition in 1984.

Comăneci defected to the United States in 1989; she became a U.S. citizen in 2001. In 1996 she married American gymnast Bart Conner, with whom she thereafter worked to promote gymnastics. She published an autobiography, Nadia (1981), and a book on mentoring, Letters to a Young Gymnast (2003). In 1993 Comăneci became the second person (after Olga Korbut) inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Amy Tikkanen.

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Nadia Comaneci | Biography, Medals, & Facts

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Nadia Comăneci, (born November 12, 1961, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej [now Onești], Romania), Romanian gymnast who was the first gymnast to be awarded a perfect score of 10 in an Olympic event. Comăneci was discovered by Bela Karolyi, later the Romanian gymnastics coach, when she was six years old.

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The Real Story of Kathrine Switzer's 1967 Boston Marathon

A note from Kathrine Switzer, especially to journalists and students:

The following is an excerpt from my memoir, Marathon Woman. It first appeared in Runner's World Magazine, in April 2007. While Marathon Woman tells the fuller story of my life before, during and after the momentous 1967 Boston Marathon, this excerpt deals mostly with that race itself. By the way, the drawings in this article are taken from the famous series of photos which are displayed on the home page slider; they are courtesy of the Boston Herald newspaper.

My entry and run in the 1967 Boston Marathon is usually the first thing people ask me about, and it is important to have the facts presented accurately. Over the years, many sources of information-the internet and poorly researched books especially-present distortions and inaccuracies.

I encourage writers, historians, journalists and students to read and quote from this story first rather than attempt to piece together misinformation handed down from source to source.

Another accurate source is the "Life is for Participating" chapter in the book Spirit of the Marathon by Gail Waesche Kislevitz (2003).

Please also understand that it is not practical for me to do repeated personal interviews when the facts and quotes are here at hand. Thank you!

The Girl Who Started it All

Excerpted from Marathon Woman, Kathrine Switzer's memoir.

On a dark six-mile run in a wild snowstorm in mid-December 1966, I had a terrible argument with my otherwise kindly old coach, Arnie Briggs. It was in Syracuse, New York, where God first invented snow and never let up. I was a 19-year-old journalism student at Syracuse University, and since there was no women's running team there or anywhere else for that matter, I began training unofficially with the men's cross-country team. That's where I met 50-year-old Arnie, who had trained for years with the team. Arnie was actually the university mailman and a veteran of 15 Boston Marathons. He was excited to see a woman-the first-come out to run, and took slowpoke me under his training wing. To cajole me through tough evening sessions like this, Arnie told and retold stories of famous Bostons. I loved listening to them-until this night when I snapped and said, "Oh, let's quit talking about the Boston Marathon and run the damn thing!"

"No woman can run the Boston Marathon," Arnie fired back.

"Why not? I'm running 10 miles a night!"

Arnie insisted the distance was too long for fragile women to run and exploded when I said that Roberta Gibb had jumped into the race and finished it the previous April.

"No dame ever ran the Boston Marathon!" he shouted, as skidding motorists nearly killed us. Then he added, "If any woman could do it, you could, but you would have to prove it to me. If you ran the distance in practice, I'd be the first to take you to Boston." I grinned through the gloom and flakes. Hot damn, I thought, I have a coach, a training partner, a plan, and a goal: the biggest race in the world-Boston.

Three weeks before the marathon, Arnie and I ran our 26-mile trial. As we came down our home stretch, it felt too easy, so I suggested that we run another five-mile loop just to feel extra confident about Boston. Arnie agreed, reluctantly. Toward the end of our 31-mile run, he began turning grey. When we finished, I hugged him ecstatically-and he passed out cold. The next day Arnie came to my dorm and insisted that I sign up for the race. He said it was wrong to run without registering and, besides, I could get in serious trouble with the Amateur Athletic Union, our sport's strict governing body. We checked the rule book and entry form; there was nothing about gender in the marathon. I filled in my AAU number, plunked down $3 cash as entry fee, signed as I always sign my name, "K.V. Switzer," and went to the university infirmary to get a fitness certificate. (Unlike today, the marathon did not require qualifying times then.) Arnie got the travel permits and mailed our entries. Two weeks later, my boyfriend, a 235-pound ex-All American football player and nationally ranked hammer thrower known as Big Tom Miller, announced that he was going to run Boston, too, and didn't need to train because "if a girl can run a marathon, I can run a marathon." Tom was an authority on all things athletic and would not be dissuaded. Then John Leonard, from the university cross-country team, decided to come, too. In all, we had a pretty formidable crew ready to take on the marathon.

In 1967, the Boston Marathon was Wednesday, April 19, Patriots' Day in the state of Massachusetts. I thought it was neat that folks in Massachusetts got a special holiday commemorating the young American patriots who fought the British in the first battles of the American Revolution. The marathon was made part of Patriots' Day in 1897, the year after the revival of the Olympic Games in Athens, when athletes came back from Greece telling of a romantic new event called the marathon. Part of what made the Boston Marathon special to me was its historical importance. I had no idea I was going to become part of that history. I wasn't running Boston to prove anything; I was just a kid who wanted to run her first marathon.

Tuesday afternoon Arnie picked up John, Tom, and me, and by 3 o'clock we hit the road for the five-hour drive to Boston. We found a motel in Natick, and after dinner Arnie insisted on showing us the course even though it was nearly 10 p.m. and freezing cold and rainy outside. He was excited at every land¬mark, saying things like "Here's Wellesley College!" when we couldn't see a thing out the steamy windows. The drive seemed an eternity, and I had this impending feeling of doom-here we were driving at 40 miles an hour and it was taking forever. Ever since that night I've never driven over a marathon course before the event. It is totally demoralizing to see how far 26 miles actually is.

I called my parents in Virginia when I got back to my room. I had to explain first what a marathon was, and then why I was in Boston, ending with, "It is important for me to finish the race." My dad was acutely aware when it came to any anxiety on my part; I never reached out with a lack of confidence unless it was serious. And he delivered perfectly. "Aw hell, kid, you can do it. You're tough, you've trained, you'll do great!"

It was just what I needed to hear. My dad knew I didn't jump into things untrained; although this marathon thing was a surprise, he had no doubt. What I couldn't explain to him, what nobody knows unless they've done one, is that the marathon is unpredictable, anything weird could happen, and anything could happen to me! I could get diarrhea. I could get hit by a dolt opening his car door-Arnie told me about that happening once. Eventually, I got too tired to worry about things I could not control. The thing I worried about most was courage. Would I have the courage to keep running if it re¬ally hurt, if it got harder than I was used to, if Heartbreak Hill broke me? I was worried about maybe not having the courage if it got awful.

The Boston Marathon started at noon, a great gift, as we slept in and didn't eat breakfast until 9. Arnie said to chow down; we needed a lot of fuel because it was a long day and cold outside. He wasn't kidding-it was freezing rain, with sleet and wind. So we ate everything: bacon, eggs, pancakes, juice, coffee, milk, extra toast.

Oddly, the weather didn't concern me; we'd trained five months in weather like this. What was annoying was that I had wanted to look nice and feminine at the start in my just-ironed burgundy shorts and top. We went back to our rooms, packed our stuff, and I carefully put on makeup and gold earbobs. Tom banged on my door holding out a sanitary napkin bag from the back of the toilet and a big safety pin. "Here, we're pinning these on the back of our gloves. They're perfect for holding dextrose tablets. See, you put four tablets in the bottom of the sack, rip off the top, fold it over, and pin it to your glove. When you need the dextrose, you rip it open."

"Why do you need dextrose?" I asked.

"It's sugar, for energy, get it?" he said in that tone that made me feel stupid. I had no idea sugar would give you energy any¬more than, say, a piece of bread. Plenty of times I'd been hungry and tired on a run, but I never craved sugar or equated it to ener¬gy. I told him, "I don't need sugar; we never needed it before." It was just another complication; we had enough to worry about.

"How do you know? Just pin it, already." I shrugged. It was easier not to argue. Still, I felt idiotic, but when I got to the car, Arnie and John had sanitary napkin bags pinned to their gloves, too. What a team!

When we got to Hopkinton High School, the snow was really coming down. Since we'd pre-entered as a team, the race organizers had our stuff together for the team captain. A few minutes later, Arnie came out with the envelope and two number bibs each, to pin on our fronts and backs; they looked like cardboard license plates. We looked up our names in the printed start list and smiled at each other nervously. Seeing "K. Switzer" in print beside "261" gave me a little frisson. There were 741 people listed on the program, a huge race.

I pinned my numbers on my sweatshirt and not my burgundy top. It was the final commitment to wearing that warm sweat¬shirt for the whole race. I was pleased; the sweatshirt had been a buddy in Syracuse for several hundred miles and would live on another day, rather than dying at the roadside on the way to Boston. We started warming up. Everyone was darting about in different directions, all in grey sweat suits, some with hoods up, some with nylon windbreakers over them, some bare-legged, and some with shorts over the pants, a method of wearing sweats I never could understand. We all looked alike, like ragtags.

As runners jogged past, most kept their nervous eyes ahead, lost in prerace concentration, but plenty did double takes, and when they did I'd smile back or wave a little wave. Yep, I'm a girl, my look back said. Many of these guys turned right around and jogged over, all excited. "Hey! You gonna go the whole way?" "Gosh, it's great to see a girl here!" "Can you give me some tips to get my wife to run? She'd love it if I can just get her started." Arnie was kind of holding court with his "This girl ran me into the ground!" routine. He was shining. "See? I told you you'd be welcome at Boston," he said. Indeed, I felt very welcome. I felt special and proud of myself. I knew something other women didn't know, and I felt downright smug.

As we jogged over to the start, Tom said, "God, you're wear¬ing lipstick!"

"I always wear lipstick. What's wrong with that?"

"Somebody might see you are a girl and not let you run. Take it off."

"I will not take off my lipstick."

And that's how we arrived at the start. There was a mob of runners in every getup imaginable funneling into a penlike area. At the gate of the funnel were clipboard-holding Boston Athletic Association officials wearing long overcoats with blue ribbons on the lapels and felt dress hats. Everyone was sodden; hats were gathering snow, as were the shoulders of the runners standing in the pen. It was pretty disorganized, and the officials were agitated. They were checking off bib numbers as runners came through the gate; I held up the big outer sweatshirt so they could check my number and the official put his hand on my shoulder and gently shoved me forward, saying, "C'mon runners, let's move on in, just keep it moving here!" We worked our way into the back of the field, and Arnie said, "See? No problem!"

All around us the men were pleased to have a woman in their presence. I tried to stay low-key; I sure didn't want any attention at this moment, but I tried to be accommodating, even when one runner insisted on having his wife, on the other side of the fence, take our photo together. Then the crowd quieted; someone up front must have been making announcements. We moved close together, and the smell of liniment was so strong that my eyes stung. The gun went off, and we were away at last.

Boston was always Mecca for runners. Now I, too, was one of the anointed pilgrims. After months of training with Arnie and dreaming about this, here we were, streaming alongside the village common and onto the downhill of Route 135 with hundreds of our most intimate companions, all unknown, but all of whom understood what this meant and had worked hard to get here. More than ever before at a running event, I felt at home.

The first few miles of every marathon are fun. The running is easy, the crowd noise is exciting, and your companions are conversational and affable. You know it's going to hurt later, so you just enjoy this time. So it was as we ran in our little group, four abreast, joking and saying thanks to the many well-wishers who passed us with encouragement. Arnie and Tom were in their element, running with me-a girl! All the positive encouragement gave them attention they had never had before. Tom ran with his chest stuck out, and even Arnie pranced; it was nice to see.

Then, at just about mile four, came a honking of horns and someone shouting, "Get over, runners move to your right!" There was a lot of shuffling and some cursing as a big flatbed truck forced us all to the side of the narrow road. Following close behind the truck was a city bus. It was the photo press truck; on the back were risers so the cameramen could each get a clean shot as the vehicle pushed up to the front of the field. Suddenly, though, the truck slowed to be right in front of us, and the photographers were taking our pictures. In fact, they were getting pretty excited to see a woman in the race, a woman wearing numbers! I could see them fumbling to look up my number and name, and then shoot again. We all started to laugh and wave, it was our "Hi-Mom-on-the-nightly-news" moment, and it was fun.

A man with an overcoat and felt hat was then in the middle of the road shaking his finger at me; he said something to me as I passed and reached out for my hand, catching my glove in¬stead and pulling it off. I did a kind of stutter step, we all had to jostle around him. I thought he was a nutty spectator, but when I passed I caught a glimpse of a blue and gold BAA ribbon on his lapel. Where had he come from?

Moments later, I heard the scraping noise of leather shoes coming up fast behind me, an alien and alarming sound amid the muted thump thumping of rubber-soled running shoes. When a runner hears that kind of noise, it's usually danger-like hearing a dog's paws on the pavement. Instinctively I jerked my head around quickly and looked square into the most vicious face I'd ever seen. A big man, a huge man, with bared teeth was set to pounce, and before I could react he grabbed my shoulder and flung me back, screaming, "Get the hell out of my race and give me those numbers!" Then he swiped down my front, trying to rip off my bib number, just as I leapt backward from him. He missed the numbers, but I was so surprised and frightened that I slightly wet my pants and turned to run. But now the man had the back of my shirt and was swiping at the bib num¬ber on my back. I was making little cries of aa-uh, aa-uh, not thinking at all, just trying to get away, when I saw tiny brave Arnie bat at him and try to push him away, shouting, "Leave her alone, Jock. I've trained her, she's okay, leave her alone!" And the man screamed, "Stay out of this, Arnie!" and swatted him away like a gnat.

Arnie knows this maniac, I thought wildly, as I tried to pull away. The air was filled only with the clicking whirr of motor-drive cameras, scuffling sounds, and faintly, one cameraman screeching something I couldn't under¬stand. The bottom was dropping out of my stomach; I had never felt such embarrassment and fear. I'd never been manhandled, never even spanked as a child, and the physical power and swiftness of the attack stunned me. I felt unable to flee, like I was rooted there, and indeed I was, because the man, this Jock guy, had me by the shirt. Then a flash of orange flew past and hit Jock with a cross-body block. It was Big Tom, in the orange Syracuse sweatshirt. There was a thud-whoomph!-and Jock was air¬borne. He landed on the roadside like a pile of wrinkled clothes. Now I felt terror. We've killed this guy Jock. It's my fault, even though hothead Tom did it. My God, we're all going to jail. Then I saw Arnie's face-it was full of fear, too; his eyes were goggled and he shouted, "Run like hell!" All the adrenaline kicked in and down the street we ran, flying past the press truck, running like kids out of a haunted house.

I was dazed and confused. I'd never been up close to physical violence; the power was terrifying and I was shocked at how helpless I, as a strong woman, felt against it. Tom's precise execution, the way he took out Jock and only Jock, was sublime athleticism, but I was not grateful for the "save." I felt sick at heart, it was awful; it had gone too far, I wished Tom was not there, I wished I was not there.

Everyone was shouting. I could hear the journalists on the truck behind us yelling, "Go after her, go after her!" to the driver. The driver accelerated, popped the clutch, and I heard the truck buck and what unfortunately sounded like photographers, tripods, and crank cameras crashing down in a cursing melee.

Everyone was cursing, most loudly Arnie, the mild-mannered sweetheart, who proclaimed he was going to Kill That Jock Semple Who Should Know Better Being a Runner Himself! Tom really looked as if steam was coming out of his ears; he was still in full bombastic mode, and each curse of his was accompanied by another jab or a challenging look over his shoulder. John looked bewildered. I felt puke-ish, afraid that we'd seriously hurt this guy Jock Semple, and maybe we should stop and get it sorted out. But it was clear Jock was some kind of official-in fact, he turned out to be the race manager-and he was out of control. Now he's hurt, we're in trouble, and we're going to get arrested. That was how scared I felt, as well as deeply humiliated, and for just a tiny moment, I wondered if I should step off the course. I did not want to mess up this prestigious race. But the thought was only a flicker. I knew if I quit, nobody would ever believe that women had the capability to run 26-plus miles. If I quit, everybody would say it was a publicity stunt. If I quit, it would set women's sports back, way back, instead of forward. If I quit, I'd never run Boston. If I quit, Jock Semple and all those like him would win. My fear and humiliation turned to anger.

The press truck caught up to us and hovered with its droning engine alongside, three feet away. Off the back and side the journalists began firing aggressive questions, and the photographers hung out close to get face shots. How quickly their tone had changed. Now it was "What are you trying to prove?" and "When are you going to quit?" Consequently, my tone changed, too. I was polite but no longer friendly. I made it clear that I was not trying to "prove" anything except that I wanted to run, I'd trained seriously for the distance, and I was not going to drop out. They wrote down what they wanted to write down. Clearly, they didn't believe me, as they stayed alongside. They thought it was a prank and didn't want to miss the moment when I'd give up. This made me even more resolved. In fact, it infuriated me.

Then, that bus came by. Standing on the floorboards and holding onto the outside door rail was Jock Semple! My God, he's alive! I thought. I was so relieved. But as the bus came by us, it slowed, and Jock, teeth bared again and shaking his fist, screamed in a Scottish brogue, "You all ere in beeeeeggg trooouble!" and all around us, men gave him the finger and shouted obscenities, and Arnie shouted, "Get out of here, Jock! Leave us alone!" I put my head down. I was not going to say a word. And with that, the bus accelerated with a huge cloud of stinking exhaust in our faces and sped away, blaring its horn for the runners to get out of its way.

Eventually, the press truck gave up when they saw I was not talking any more and drifted up toward the front of the race. It started to snow again. We were all deep in thought, and my thoughts were moving all over the place. I said quietly to Arnie, "You know that guy Jock has gone up ahead and is probably arranging for one of those big Irish cops to arrest us when nobody is looking. If it happens, I am resisting arrest, okay? And something else." I turned to Ar¬nie and looked him in the eye. "Arnie, I'm not sure where you stand in this now. But no matter what, I have to finish this race. Even if you can't, I have to-even on my hands and knees. If I don't finish, people will say women can't do it, and they will say I was just doing this for the publicity or something. So you need to do whatever you want to do, but I'm finishing."

"Well, the first thing is to slow down! Forget about time, just finish!" Arnie now was the army sergeant. Tom, John, and I dropped the pace, dropped our arms, shook our hands. My left hand was wet and freezing; losing that glove was bad because if your hands are cold, you are miserable all over. I pulled at the sleeve of my sweatshirt to cover my hand, but the sleeve wasn't long enough.

We were just falling into the rhythm of Arnie's stride and beginning to relax when Tom, still fuming, turned to me and blurted out, "You're getting me into all kinds of trouble!"

It was out of the blue.

"What are you talking about, Tom?"

"I've hit an official, and now I'll get kicked out of the AAU." Tom had aspirations of competing in the Olympics in the ham¬mer throw.

I felt really sad, but I was angry, too. "I didn't hit the official, you hit the official, Tom." I said it quietly. I thought it totally crass of him to pick a fight in public with me, his steady girl¬friend. Everybody looked embarrassed.

"Oh great, yeah, thanks a lot for nothing. I should never have come to Boston," he answered loudly.

"It was your idea to come to Boston!" I shot back.

But with that Tom ripped the numbers off the front and back of his sweatshirt, tore them up and threw them to the pavement, and shouted, "I am never going to make the Olympic team and it's all your fault!" Then he lowered his voice and hissed, "Besides that, you run too slow anyway." And with that, he took off and disappeared among the runners in front.

I couldn't help it. I felt so ashamed, I was crying. Again Tom had convinced me I was just a girl, a jogger, and a no-talent like me now had bumbled the Olympic Dream out of his life. I thought I was a serious girlfriend to him, and so I guessed that was over, too. It was a helluva race so far, that's for sure, and we still had over 20 miles to run.

"Let him go. Just let him go. Forget it, shake it off!" scolded Arnie. Dutifully I dropped my arms like I'd done a million times in practice and shook my hands. I kept my head down, I didn't want to see anyone, as this was the only way I could lick my wounds in public. I felt myself go into a deep trough of fatigue. Actually, Arnie, John and I began to go under together; I could feel the downward pull. I knew the adrenaline had gone. God, what I'd give to just go to sleep for awhile, I thought. We had such a long way to go, but I didn't care anymore, not about Tom, not about anything but finishing. I didn't care how much it hurt or how long it was going to take or if I got put in jail or even if I died. I was going to finish no matter what. We were all quiet for a long time.

A couple of miles later, we slowly began to notice things, like when you first come out of anesthesia. The energy was coming back. First we heard some feeble cheers; this was really nice, and we waved back. I felt I was going so slowly, that my soggy long pants must be dragging me down, so I went to the roadside, pulled them off, and tossed them away. A young boy, about 8, ran and grabbed the pants, swung them around his head and screamed in glee at his souvenir. The three of us made a face at each other as if to say, "Oh God, can you imagine what his mother is going to say when he brings that home?"

Now we were halfway and in the famous Wellesley Hills, where in one of Arnie's theories, "the race began." Suddenly ahead in the grey mist I could see an orange sweatshirt. It was Big Tom, and he was walking. We caught him quickly, of course, surprising him. "Walk with me a while," he pleaded. "I'll get it back."

"I can't, Tom," I answered. "As slow as I'm going, I've got some momentum here," thinking if he had to walk at 13 he should call a taxi. Then I drifted ahead. He screamed after me, "I'd never leave you!"

The distance, as it always does, gave me time to think and dissipated my anger. Jock Semple didn't take me seriously, and that's why he attacked me. I wondered why other women didn't run, thinking that they just didn't get it. Wait a minute, maybe they believed all those old myths like running ruins your reproductive organs, and it scared them away because they didn't know better and nobody gave them opportunities to disprove this nonsense. My folks and Arnie had given me this chance, and it dawned on me that I was not special after all; just lucky. My thinking rolled on: The reason there are no intercollegiate sports for women at big universities, no scholarships, prize money, or any races longer than 800 meters is because women don't have the opportunities to prove they want those things. If they could just take part, they'd feel the power and accomplishment and the situation would change. After what happened today, I felt responsible to create those opportunities. I felt elated, like I'd made a great discovery. In fact, I had.

My mind was whirling, but that couldn't distract me from feeling the very big blisters in my arches that soon would burst. I could handle that; pain was nothing. It was part of what made you a hero, doing this, overcoming it, relegating pain to the incidental for a higher purpose. Arnie said Emil Zatopek would run until he passed out. Now that's something, but I'm not sure what. Crap! How much longer? I didn't want to ask-it sounded sissy-so I said, "Arnie, when do we get to Heartbreak Hill?" Arnie looked startled. "Why, you passed over Heartbreak a long time ago!"

"We did? Gosh, I missed it. Why didn't you tell us?" I actually felt disappointed; I thought there would be a trumpet herald or something at the top. In fact, nowadays there is a guy who is a self-appointed archangel on a megaphone calling, "You've done it! You're at the top of Heartbreak Hill!" but that day it was so unremarkable, I didn't know it from any of the other hills.

Arnie was smiling and shaking his head. "You've got to be the only person not to know they ran over Heartbreak Hill!"

We turned from Commonwealth Avenue onto Beacon Street, and now it really did seem endless. There were all these row houses that looked alike, block after block. There must have been 100 sets of trolley tracks; I was afraid I'd catch my foot and break my ankle, and every time I broke stride to mince over them, my blisters squished and stung. Someone from the sidelines shouted, "One mile to go!" And Arnie snapped, "Don't listen to them. We have at least three miles to go." John groaned. A nice cop directed us up Hereford Street, and Arnie began to protest. The finish was always up Exeter Street in his day. I think he and I were both worried that we were getting misdirected at the last minute on purpose. But up at the top of Hereford, we rounded the corner onto Boylston, and there it was: the long slope down to the front of the Prudential building, to a line painted on the street, FINISH. Nobody had misdirected us, nobody had arrested us, and we were going to do it.

John said, "Let's let Arnie finish first." Arnie said, "No, we'll all finish together." John winked at me and at the last moment we slowed and pushed Arnie in front. We three had run every step together, we never walked, and we never doubted. Then we hugged, but only briefly, as we didn't want to get all gooey.

The finish line crowd consisted of about a dozen waterlogged people, none of whom clapped for us. Half this group converged on us, a few kindhearted souls throwing army blankets over us and the rest peppering us with questions and writing down stuff in their reporter's notebooks. They were very crabby, which is what I would have been if I had to stand out in this freezing wet for four hours and 20 minutes, which is what one of them said our time was. And they were crab¬by at me; they were forced to wait because of me. Plus, I could tell, they felt indignant at having to cover a girl. Being a journalism student, this amused me most. Here you are a big-shot sports reporter and your editor tells you to wait for the girl.

"What made you do it?" (I like to run, the longer the better.) "Oh come on, why Boston, why wear numbers?" (Women deserve to run, too. Equal rights and all that, you know.) "Will you come back to run again?" (Yes.) "They will ban your club." (Then we'll change the name of our club.) "Are you a suffragette?" (Huh? I thought we got the right to vote in 1920!) The questions were asked in such an aggressive way that it put me off to be suddenly challenged again. After all the miles, I'd worked out the anger and was quite mellow. Plus, I felt so great. Really, except for the blisters, I felt like I could have run all the way back to Hopkinton. A BAA official came over, insisting that I have the podiatrist check my feet. When I took off my shoes, the doctor nearly fainted. My socks were blood-soaked. He lanced and bandaged and lanced and taped. When he was done, I could not get my shoes back on. So I pulled the socks over the bandages and hobbled back upstairs to the finish-line area where Arnie and John waited, keeping an eye out for Tom. An hour had past, and we couldn't find him. We assumed he had caught the sag wagon. As we were about to give up, Big Tom came staggering around the corner, lurching to the finish. By golly, he did it, too!

A friend of Arnie's drove us back to Hopkinton to get our car and then had us over to his house for hot showers and a superb steak dinner. We laughed ourselves silly, drinking beer and telling and retelling stories of the day's adventures, and then it was past 10 p.m. and time to begin the long drive back to Syracuse. With our spirits at an all-time high, it didn't even occur to me to phone my parents to tell them how I did.

Albany was halfway home, and around 1 a.m. we stopped sleepily along the New York State Thruway for gas and coffee. We were so stiff we could barely unfold ourselves from the car. In the restaurant, there was only one man, sitting at the U-shaped counter, reading a newspaper. We sat across, yattering away, when my eyes became fixed on the man's newspaper. "My God!" I shouted and ran over to him, babbling, "Excuse me, sir, please let me look at your newspaper!" I was so frantic that he thrust it at me like it was on fire.

All over the front and back covers were our photos. We gathered around gasping as we went from page to page. Everywhere it was girl running, girl being attacked, girl being saved by boyfriend, happy bedraggled girl in bloody socks at finish. When had they taken so many pictures? I handed the man his paper. "Keep it!" he said. "Oh, please, I insist, keep it!"

There sure was no danger of anyone falling asleep at the wheel after that. The guys were in heaven; they sounded like roosters in a barnyard all the way back to Syracuse. I laughed at their jokes, but my revelry had turned into quiet musing. I've stepped into a different life, I thought. To the guys it was a one-off event. But I knew it was a lot more than that. A lot more.

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The Real Story - Kathrine Switzer - Marathon Woman

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The following is an excerpt from my memoir, Marathon Woman. It first appeared in Runner's World Magazine, in April 2007. While Marathon Woman tells the fuller story of my life before, during and after the momentous 1967 Boston Marathon, this excerpt deals mostly with that race itself.

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Birthday: September 12, 1939 Who was Junko Tabei? Junko Tabei was renowned for her achievements in mountain climbing. She was also an educator who wrote books regarding her experiences. In addition, she was also known for climbing the highest peaks on every continent.