{"id":1660,"date":"2019-01-14T06:00:38","date_gmt":"2019-01-14T10:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/?p=1660"},"modified":"2019-01-14T06:00:38","modified_gmt":"2019-01-14T10:00:38","slug":"forgotten-women-in-history-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/uncategorized\/forgotten-women-in-history-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Forgotten Women in History\u2014Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t\t\t\t
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After publishing my first \u201cForgotten\nWomen in History\u201d blog<\/a>, a number of readers let me know that they\nfound the stories of these amazing women as fascinating as I did. The New York Times<\/em> continues to make amends\nfor ignoring the accomplishments of women by publishing some of their stories. Here\nare a few more:<\/p>\n\n\n

Rosanell\nEaton<\/em> (1921\u20132018): Robert\nD. McFadden describes Rosanell Eaton<\/a> as a \u201cresolute African-American\nwoman who was hailed by President Barack Obama as a beacon of civil rights.\u201d\nCalled out by Obama as an \u201cobscure civil rights pioneer,\u201d her story is one of\ncourage and perseverance. At the age of twenty-one, she went to the county\ncourthouse in North Carolina where she lived to register to vote. When three\nwhite men stopped her at the courthouse door and told her she could not\nregister unless she could recite from memory the preamble to the Constitution, she\ndid so flawlessly. These types of \u201cliteracy tests\u201d were often used to turn away\nblack voters, not unlike the challenges faced today in many states, but the men\nconceded that Eaton passed the test and let her in. She cast her ballot in\n1942, becoming one of the state\u2019s first black voters since Reconstruction. She\ncontinued her work fighting against racial discrimination until her death in\nDecember 2018 at the age of ninety-seven. <\/p>\n\n\n

Madeline\nPollard<\/em> (1867\u2013?): In a review of Patricia Miller\u2019s new book Bringing Down the Colonel: A Sex Scandal of\nthe Guilded Age, and the \u201cPowerless\u201d Woman Who Took on Washington,<\/em> Gail\nCollins of the New York Times<\/em> notes<\/a>\nthat Madeline Pollard was a #MeToo pioneer in 1893. In a story with clear\nparallels to Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein, and Brett Kavanaugh, Pollard sued\nKentucky congressman William Breckinridge, a powerful politician from a\nprominent family who was thirty years her senior, for seducing her as a\nteenager and leaving her a \u201cruined woman.\u201d Miller contends that Pollard\u2019s sole\nmotivation for the lawsuit was to challenge the hypocrisy of a system that did\nnot hold powerful men accountable\u2014and she won! In her prescient testimony to an\nall-male jury, she basically said \u201ctime\u2019s up\u201d\u2014and they agreed with her\u2014although\nwe know progress since then has been slow.<\/p>\n\n\n

Shirley\nChisholm<\/em> (1924\u20132005): It is fitting that we reflect on the\naccomplishments of Shirley Chisholm<\/a>, the first black woman elected\nto the United States Congress in 1968\u2014fifty years ago\u2014as the largest number of\nwomen of color ever to be elected prepare to be sworn in to Congress in 2019. Born\nin 1924 to a factory worker from Guyana and a seamstress from Barbados, Chisholm\ntaught school and was active in Democratic Party politics before running for\nand winning national office in 1968. She unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential\nnomination in 1972 and is still a powerful role model today.<\/p>\n\n\n

Jackie\nMitchell<\/em> (1913\u20131987): In 1931, at the age of seventeen, Jackie\nMitchell took the pitching mound for an otherwise all-male minor league team in\nTennessee and struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in an exhibition game against\nthe Yankees. Talya\nMinsberg of the New York Times<\/em> writes<\/a>\nthat while Mitchell had been signed to a contract just the week before with the\nChattanooga Lookouts as the only female pitcher for a professional team, the\nbaseball commissioner voided her contract after the game, \u201cperhaps embarrassed\nby the episode.\u201d While many contended that the strikeouts had been rigged,\nMitchell denied this to her dying day. In an interview shortly before her\ndeath, she said, \u201cHell, better hitters than them couldn\u2019t hit me. Why should\nthey\u2019ve been any different?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

As a new year begins, it\u2019s important to keep talking about the strong and impactful women from the past and present who have changed the world for the better. Are there any unknown women from history who have inspired you?<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n

Photo of Rosanell Eaton courtesy of A Jones<\/a> (CC BY-ND 2.0<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n

Photo of Shirley Chisholm courtesy\nof Wikimedia<\/a>\n(CC0 1.0<\/a>)<\/p>\n]]>\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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