Women Pioneering the Future

The women mentioned in the links are all great humanitarians. I had totally forgotten about Hull House until this reminded me. Thanks, Joanne.

Margeret Chase Smith

Thanks Joanne. I like the project but it offends me to see a sportscaster included with the likes of Rachel Carson and Margaret Chase Smith. I noticed the words "innovative women of today," but surely there are space shuttle astronauts, scientists, writers, artists, and even politicians more deserving than Robin Roberts.

Kate Chopin: Ahead of her Time - An Overview of the Life and Works

Kate Chopin

"Kate Chopin was a forgotten American voice until her literary reputation was resuscitated by critics in the 1950s. Today her novel The Awakening (1899) the story of a sensual, determined woman who insists on her independence, is widely read and highly honored, a feminist work which was decidedly ahead of its time. Born Katherine O'FIaherty into an upper-middle-class family in St. Louis, she married Oscar Chopin when she was twenty and moved to her husband's home in Louisiana. In the ten years that she resided in Louisiana she was aware of and receptive to Creole, Cajun, black, and Indian cultures, and when she later came to write fiction, she would incorporate people from these cultures in her work, especially her short stories. When her husband died as a young man, Kate Chopin returned to St. Louis with her six children. Financially secure, she began writing fiction as best she could while rearing her children. She is a good example of an American realist, someone trying to represent life the way it actually is lived, and she acknowledged her debt to the contemporary French naturalists Emile Zola and Guy de Maupassant."

Kate Chopin: A Re-Awakening

Womenwriters.net - Kate Chopin

Kate Chopin: A Guide to Research

Perspectives in American Literature

Dr.Mae C. Jemison



Prior to joining NASA in 1987, Dr. Jemison worked in both engineering and medicine. Following two and a half years (1983-1985) as Area Peace Corps medical officer for Sierra Leone and Liberia in West Africa, she worked as a General Practitioner in Los Angeles.

As the science mission specialist on the STS-47 Spacelab J flight, a US/Japan joint mission, she conducted experiments in life sciences, material sciences, and co-investigated the Bone Cell Research experiment. After serving six years as a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) astronaut, Dr. Jemison resigned from NASA in March 1993 to start The Jemison Group, Inc. The Jemison Group, Inc. was established to focus on the beneficial integration of science and technology into daily life.

In 1994, Dr. Jemison founded and chairs The Earth We Share (TEWS), an annual international science camp where students, ages 12 to 16, work together to solve current global dilemmas. The four-week residential program builds critical thinking and problem solving skills through an experiential curriculum. TEWS is a program of the Dorothy Jemison Foundation for Excellence, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.

As a former professor of Environmental Studies at Dartmouth College (1995-2002), she directs the Jemison Institute for Advancing Technology in Developing Countries. The recipient of numerous awards and honors, including induction into the National Women's Hall of Fame, Dr. Jemison also holds a number of honorary doctorates. She serves on several corporate boards of directors as well as on the Texas Governor's State Council for Science and BioTechnology Development

joanne; and from your own state Barbara Jordan "you low down nigger trying to show off your authority," begins a death threat Barbara Jordan received while serving in Congress. "We are coming to Houston and beware. To shoot off your ass," reads the handwritten letter, which the FBI dusted unsuccessfully for fingerprints, "would be a pleasure."

The authoritative biography of former Texas Congresswoman Barbara Jordan recently appeared, providing endless detail about the life of the most admired black woman in American history, until Oprah Winfrey. Now the Federal Bureau of Investigation has released its file on Jordan. Although there are long gaps in the narrative, the Bureau has come as close as her biographer (in 300 fewer pages) to capturing the spirit of the woman who was, for a time at least, political heir to President Lyndon Johnson.

The world is not good enough - we must make it better.

--- Alice Walker

Alice Walker

Hi Joanne and all,

I recall - and I may be mistaken - that the first female self made millionaire in the USA was an African American lady.

I know for fact, I live in Atlanta, TX, that the first female African American licensed pilot in the world was born in Atlanta, TX.

There is absolutely so much to be proud of for the contributions that African Americans have made in America. And all other American ladies too.

A Tribute To Babara Jordan

The Seneca Falls Declaration on Women's Rights

Lucretia Mott



Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony

NOT FOR OURSELVES ALONE: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony - A Film by Ken Burns

This was a another great Ken Burns documentary that showed on PBS last year.

http://www.pbs.org/stantonanthony/

Click on the left hand side of the screen, Explore the Women's Movement, for a 20 part audio visual presentation. I'm not sure if this is the film above, or a separate presentation.

Wonderful addition Larry.

This is a great topic, thanks Joanne.

Hi Joanne,
Good idea for a subject! I happened to be reading this which "fit" with the letter facsimile you posted.

I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions.
-- Lillian Hellman to the HUAC*-1952.


*House Un-American Activities Committee
http://www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/huac-main.html

Lillian Hellman Bio

Let's not forget the greatest woman in American political history, Eleanor Roosevelt, who fought against racial segregation and for the UN until the day she died. She was far more of a principled, consistent progressive than FDR was.

EMMA GOLDMAN (1869-1940) stands as a major figure in the history of American radicalism and feminism. An influential and well-known anarchist of her day, Goldman was an early advocate of free speech, birth control, women's equality and independence, and union organization. Her criticism of mandatory conscription of young men into the military during World War I led to a two-year imprisonment, followed by her deportation in 1919. For the rest of her life until her death in 1940, she continued to participate in the social and political movements of her age, from the Russian Revolution to the Spanish Civil War.

The Emma Goldman Papers

Excellant Walter and topical.

Larry I agree with you re Eleanor Roosevelt

Eleanor Roosevelt - Tribute to Greatness

Emma Goldman was certainly a great woman. She very early spotted the decline of the Russian Revolution into a Leninist dictatorship, protested it in Russia, and managed to leave to resettle in Europe as an independent radical. She later went to Spain during the Civil War. There is a good portrayal of her in Warren Beatty's movie REDS, where she is beautifully played by Maureen Stapleton.

Eleanor Roosevelt is one of my favorite people out of all who lived during my lifetime.

Rosalind Franklin (1920 - 1958)
David Ardell --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By 1952, much was known about DNA, including its exclusive role as genetic material - the sole substance capable of storing all the information needed to create a living being. What was not yet known was what the elusive DNA molecule looked like, or how it performed this amazing hereditary function. This would change in the course of a single year. The now familiar double helical structure of DNA, and the base-pairing crucial to its hereditary function, were deciphered in 1953, and the individuals most commonly associated with this remarkable feat are James Watson and Francis Crick. Maurice Wilkins played a crucial role as well, and he shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine with Watson and Crick for the discovery. However, another important figure remains, without whom the discovery would not have been possible: the brilliant but short-lived Rosalind Franklin.

Born in July of 1920, Rosalind Franklin graduated from Cambridge University and in 1951 went to work as a research associate for John Randall at King's College. A chemist by training, Franklin had made original and essential contributions to the understanding of the structure of graphite and other carbon compounds even before her appointment to King's College. Unfortunately, her reputation did not precede her. James Watson's unflattering portrayal of Franklin in his account of the discovery of DNA's structure, entitled "The Double Helix," depicts Franklin as an underling of Maurice Wilkins, when in fact Wilkins and Franklin were peers in the Randall laboratory. And it was Franklin alone whom Randall had given the task of elucidating DNA's structure.

The technique with which Rosalind Franklin set out to do this is called X-ray crystallography. With this technique, the locations of atoms in any crystal can be precisely mapped by looking at the image of the crystal under an X-ray beam. By the early 1950s, scientists were just learning how to use this technique to study biological molecules. Rosalind Franklin applied her chemist's expertise to the unwieldy DNA molecule. After complicated analysis, she discovered (and was the first to state) that the sugar-phosphate backbone of DNA lies on the outside of the molecule. She also elucidated the basic helical structure of the molecule.

After Randall presented Franklin's data and her unpublished conclusions at a routine seminar, her work was provided - without Randall's knowledge - to her competitors at Cambridge University, Watson and Crick. The scientists used her data and that of other scientists to build their ultimately correct and detailed description of DNA's structure in 1953. Franklin was not bitter, but pleased, and set out to publish a corroborating report of the Watson-Crick model. Her career was eventually cut short by illness. It is a tremendous shame that Franklin did not receive due credit for her essential role in this discovery, either during her lifetime or after her untimely death at age 37 due to cancer.


http://www.accessexcellence.org/AB/BC/Rosalind_Franklin.html
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