{"id":1553,"date":"2018-10-08T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-10-08T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/?p=1553"},"modified":"2018-10-08T06:00:00","modified_gmt":"2018-10-08T10:00:00","slug":"forgotten-women-in-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/uncategorized\/forgotten-women-in-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Forgotten Women in History"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tI have often wondered, \u201cWhere are the women in history? Where are the inventors, pioneers, artists, and leaders who must have existed but are missing from our history books and museums? I applaud the New York Times<\/em> for acknowledging that their paper has historically ignored the accomplishments of women in both news stories and obituaries. In their attempts to make amends, they are now belatedly publishing some of those stories\u2014and they are fascinating! Here are a few:\nAda Lovelace<\/em> (1815\u20131852): Claire Cain Miller writes of Ada Lovelace<\/a>, a mathematician in England who, in 1843, \u201cdescribed how the computer would work, imagined its potential, and wrote the first program\u201d as an addendum, entitled \u201cNotes,\u201d to an academic paper that she translated. Lovelace explained that the computer could not just calculate but could also create, as it \u201cweaves algebraic patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves.\u201d Miller cites Walter Isaacson as saying, \u201cThis insight would become the core concept of the digital age.\u201d When her work was rediscovered in the midtwentieth century, the Defense Department was inspired to name a programming language after her.\nMary Ann Shadd Cary <\/em>(1823\u20131893): Mary Ann Shadd Cary<\/a> was the “first black woman in North America to edit and publish a newspaper, one of the first black female lawyers in the United States, and an advocate for granting women the right to vote,\u201d writes Megan Specia. Shadd Cary\u2019s first published work was a long letter advocating \u201cWe should do more and talk less\u201d to improve the lives of black people in America. She wrote her letter to the newspaper published by African American abolitionist and statesman Frederick Douglass, who published her letter in its entirety. Born in 1823 to abolitionist parents who often gave refuge to fugitive slaves, Shadd Cary and some members of her family moved to Canada when Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850. Shadd Cary threw herself into encouraging hunted black fugitives to migrate to Canada to safety through her newspaper, the Provincial Freeman<\/em>, which she established in Ontario. She also traveled by horseback or stagecoach at great personal risk to cross the border back into America to talk about how black people would benefit from life in Canada. After the Civil War she moved back to the United States, graduated from Howard University with a law degree, and thrust herself into the suffrage movement, even though black women often found themselves marginalized in the movement by white women.\nEsther Morris<\/em> (1814\u20131902): In 1869, at the age of 54, Esther Morris<\/a> moved to the territory of Wyoming where that year the women of Wyoming gained the right to vote and hold public office\u2014about fifty years before Congress ratified the Nineteenth Amendment. By 1870, less than one year later, the first women were sworn in as jurors in the Wyoming territory, and Morris was appointed as the first female justice of the peace. Jessica Anderson tells us that while Morris was the first woman in the United States to become a judge, she is not mentioned in the history books. Nonetheless, the state of Wyoming has always honored her as \u201cMother Morris\u201d with a statue in front of the state capitol, and as one of the two statues every state is allowed to place in the National Statuary Hall at the Capitol in Washington, DC. Morris\u2019s statue is just one of nine women (out of one hundred) represented in the collection in Washington.\nMadam C. J. Walker<\/em> (1867\u20131919): Madam C. J. Walker<\/a> was one of the first American women to become a self-made millionaire. Walker invented a line of African American hair products in 1905 that grew into the manufacture of hair products and cosmetics. She used her savvy business acumen to build an empire that trained sales beauticians who became well-known throughout the black community not only for product sales but for philanthropic and educational efforts among the African American community. Walker was herself known for her civil rights activism and philanthropy involving educational scholarships and homes for the elderly. But the New York Times<\/em> has yet to pay her a proper tribute\u2014maybe she’ll be next on their list.\nI now count these women as some of my heroines from long ago. Who are yours?]]>\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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