Marguerite Milton Wells

Marguerite Milton Wells

 …there must be a nucleus of people in each community who would carry a continuing responsibility for government and would give an intelligent and disinterested political leadership on issues as they arose. —

It is a political climate of late and I am always grateful to the League of Women Voters for their tireless and critical efforts to keep us informed, aware and exercising our hard won privilege to vote!  A big shout out to you all today and this woman feels like just the right one to spotlight this month. 

Marguerite Milton Wells was born on February 10, 1872 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  At a very young age her family moved to the remotest corner of the Dakota Territories.  It was here she grew and witnessed firsthand the creation of new towns and eventually a new state. She saw many strangers come together to create laws for this new state and their work for the community left a lasting impression on her and was the foundation for her fervent belief in democracy. 

In 1895 Marguerite graduated from Smith College and began teaching, volunteering and serving on many boards of charitable organizations.  With no explicable reason, one day in 1917 she simply resigned from every office she held and presented herself at the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Association to serve wherever needed and in whatever capacity. 

She participated in the final battle for suffrage when Minnesota finally ratified the Nineteenth Amendment.  While attending the National American Woman Suffrage Association Convention in St. Louis in 1919, Marguerite heard the presiding president, Carrie Chapman Catt, call for a new league to be formed to educate voters, particularly new ones. The result was the creation of the National League of Women Voters in 1920. Wells was the organizing force behind the formation of the league and took up its mission with gusto and directed its course over the next 25 years.  

Bessie Coleman

Bessie Coleman was born in Atlanta, Texas, in 1892. Her mother was African American. Her father was part African American and part American Indian. Her family was poor. Bessie had to walk almost four miles to go to school. When she was nine years old, her father left the family. 

Bessie had to pick cotton and wash clothes to help earn money for her family and save small amounts for her education. Bessie was proud of her race, something she learned from her hard-working and religious mother.

She managed to save enough money to attend one year of college in Oklahoma. The money ran out and she had to leave after only one year, but in that year she learned about flying.  She read about the Wright brothers and the first American female pilot, Harriet Quimby.  She thought more and more about flying.  At the age of 23, living in Chicago with her older brothers, she heard stories from pilots returning from WWI. She decided she was going to be a pilot and worked several jobs to save money to learn how.  It was a herculean task as a woman and a woman of color. Finding that there were no opportunities for her in the United States she decided to head to Europe.  She studied French at a language school in Chicago. She also took a higher paying job supervising a restaurant in order to save more.  Soon after the war ended Bessie went to France and attended the famous flight school, Ecole d’Aviation des Ferres Caudron in northern France, where she completed seven months of flight training and earned her international permit to fly in 1921. She was the first black woman to ever earn an international pilot’s license.

She returned to Chicago as the only black female pilot in the United States. Bessie soon learned that it was nearly impossible to earn enough money to live.  In 1922 she returned to Europe to complete four more months of training, learning impressive tricks, with French and German pilots.

Coleman returned to New York where she gave her first public flying performance in the U.S. Before a large gathering she rolled her plane among other breathtaking feats such as stalling the plane and starting again just before it landed.  The crowd went wild. She became famous and performed across the county.  She was a huge success but Bessie wanted more.

She knew she needed a plane of her own and she wanted to establish a school for black pilots in the U.S.so Bessie traveled to Los Angeles where she enlisted the support of a company that sold tires.  They helped her purchase a Curtiss JN-Four airplane, commonly called a Jenny. In return she was to promote the company in public events.  An air show was organized in Los Angeles but the Jenny’s engine stalled soon after takeoff and crashed.  Coleman suffered a broken leg and other injuries. She was made of tough stuff though and sent a message to her public…”Tell them all that as soon as I can walk I’m going to fly!”

In 1925 she traveled to her home state of Texas where she gave speeches and showed films of her flights.  Soon she had enough money to pay for another Jenny and continued her speeches, organized more air shows in Texas, Georgia and Florida hoping to earn enough money to open her school.

On April 13, 1926 during a flight the controls of the Jenny stuck and with no safety devices in place, such as a safety belt or parachute, she plummeted to her to her death as the plane rolled.

Her powerful influence continues today.  “Because of Bessie Coleman, we have overcome that which was much worse than racial barriers.  We have overcome the barriers within ourselves and dared to dream.”  Lt. William Powell.

In 1992 Chicago City Council passed a resolution praising her.  It said: “Bessie Coleman continues to inspire untold thousands, even millions of young persons with her sense of adventure, her positive attitude and her determination to succeed…”

Sarah Breedlove Walker

Sarah Breedlove Walker was born on December 23, 1867 in Louisiana, the daughter of Owen and Minerva  Breedlove,  recently freed slaves.  Sarah, who was their fifth child, was the first in her family to be born free.  She became an orphan at the age of seven and went to live with her sister in Mississippi.  Presumably she picked cotton and did household work to earn her keep. 

At age 14, to escape both her oppressive working environment and frequent mistreatment by her brother in law, she married Moses McWilliams.  In 1885 she gave birth to a beautiful daughter, A’Lelia. Two years later Moses was murdered by a white lynch mob and Sara and her daughter moved to St.Louis.  She found work as a washerwoman earning $1.50 a day, which was enough to send A’Lelia to public school.  Sara herself attended night school when she could. While in St. Louis Sarah met her second husband, Charles J. Walker, who was in advertising and later assisted her in promoting her business.

In 1905 she had dream that revealed to her a formula of pomade to straighten Negro hair. The idea was first conceived in Cherry Creek, a prosperous mining town in Denver CO.  Sarah traveled from Pueblo, to Trinidad, to Colorado Springs and back to Denver selling her product. She mixed the ingredients herself in washtubs and sold it door to door.  She was very successful and “The Walker Method” and “Madam C.J Walker”were born.  She built a factory, recruited sales agents who dressed in starched white shirts and long black skirts taking the Walker products to homes all over the U.S. and the Caribbean. 

Sarah organized her 3,000 employees into social and philanthropic clubs, held national conventions that were attended by delegates from these clubs.  She rewarded her employees for high sales and those who did the most charity work.

By 1910 Sarah was a millionaire and one of the best known black women in America.  She made large donations to Black and Christian charities and endowed scholarships for women at Tuskegee Institute, She founded philanthropies that included educational scholarships and donations to homes for the elderly, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the National Conference on Lynching, among other organizations focused on improving the lives of African-Americans. She also donated the largest amount of money by an African-American toward the construction of an Indianapolis YMCA in 1913.

 

Sara Josephine Baker..."Doctor Jo"

When I hear the name Josephine Baker I think of the beautiful and exotic actress, singer and dancer. You probably do too.  But there is another Josephine Baker that few people know about.  Sara Josephine Baker was born November 15, 1873 in Poughkeepsie New York into a wealthy Quaker family She had fond memories of a happy childhood and a good and supportive relationship with both of her parents.  Her Father Daniel Mosher Baker was a lawyer.  Her mother Jenny Harwood Brown was one of the first women to graduate from Vassar College. Sara was raised with the expectation that she would also attend college but her plans changed when her father and brother died suddenly. Newly responsible for the family’s finances, she gave up her scholarship and applied to medical school instead. In 1894, Baker enrolled at the Woman’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary, originally founded by pioneering physician Elizabeth Blackwell and her sister Emily Blackwell. While associating with the first generation of women to attend medical school, Baker was introduced to some powerful female role models, including faculty member Mary Putnam Jacobi. After graduating in 1898, second in her class of eighteen, Baker negotiated a year’s intern-ship at the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston, where she worked at an outpatient clinic serving some of the city’s poorest residents. She developed a keen interest in the connection between poverty and ill health, which led her to a commitment to social medicine that would shape the rest of her career.

 Later she opened a private practice. After earning only $185 in her first year, she became an inspector for the N.Y. City Health Department. Although she maintained her private practice she became involved in public health work with a special concern for lowering infant mortality rate. 

In New York City, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the infant mortality rate was very high. Often there were 1,500 deaths per week during the heat of summer.  In 1908 she tackled this problem with a team of thirty nurses.  They went door to door, advising mothers on breastfeeding, cleanliness and good ventilation.  The mortality rate dropped considerably, which resulted in the establishment of a Bureau of Child Hygiene with Dr. Jo, as her patients had begun calling her, as director.

Dr. Jo was a pioneer in preventive medicine and public health education.  She lectured throughout the United States on child hygiene and published five popular books on the subject in addition to more than 250 magazine articles.  Josephine Baker became the first woman to be a professional representative to the League of Nations representing the U.S. in the Health Committee. In her lifetime and largely because of her efforts, Dr. Baker saw the infant mortality rate in New York City from 111 to 66 per 1,000 births.

   

Emily Blackwell

Emily Blackwell was born on October 8, 1826 in Bristol, England.  Her family immigrated to America when she was five settling with friends in Cincinnati.  Emily was inspired by her older sister Elizabeth, one of the first women to receive a medical degree in the U.S. and she decided to follow in her footsteps and pursue a degree in medicine.  To earn money for her education she took a teaching position but confided in her diary: “Oh, for life instead of stagnation. I long with such an intense longing for freedom, action, for life, and truth.”

Emily was rejected by eleven medical schools, including her sister’s alma mater in Geneva, New York.  In 1852 she was finally accepted at Chicago’s Rush Medical College, but the state medical society censured Rush for admitting a woman and she was asked to leave at the end of her first year. She joined her sister at her charity dispensary in New York City and gained as much practical experience as she could.  Finally she was accepted at the medical college of Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

Upon graduation with honors, she went to Scotland for further study with Sir James Simpson, a pioneer in the use of chloroform during childbirth.  When she returned to America she rejoined her sister, who had recently established the New York Infirmary for Women and Children as a teaching clinic for women doctors and a place where women could consult physicians of their own gender.  In 1858 Emily was left in control of the infirmary when Elizabeth went abroad for a year for further study.

In 1860 the infirmary moved to larger quarters. The sisters established an on-site nursing school and medical college.  For thirty years Emily served as dean of the medical school and professor of obstetrics and gynecology.  In 1898 the sisters felt that their school was no longer needed as Cornell had begun to accept women students.  During its thirty one years of operation the Woman’s Medical College had graduated 364 women doctors.

The New York Infirmary for Woman and Children is still in operation today.  One of Emily’s former pupils reminisced: “She inspired us all with the vital feeling that we are still on trial and that, for women who meant to be physicians, no educational standards could be too high.  I think not many of us realized that we were going out into the world as test cases, but Dr. Blackwell did.” 

Anna Mary Robertson

Anna Mary Robertson

“I would draw the picture (on butcher paper) and then color it with grape juice or berries…”

Anna was born on September 7, 1860 to a large farm family near Greenwich, New York.  She had no formal schooling other than a few months at a local one room country school.

She left home at twelve to earn her living as a domestic.  After fifteen years as a paid housekeeper she married Thomas Salmon Moses who was a farm worker. They settled in Virginia where she bore ten children, five of whom died as infants.

Her interest in art was expressed throughout her life, including embroidery of pictures with yarn, until arthritis made this pursuit too painful. The family returned to New York State in 1905 and she turned to painting at the age of 78.  Her first work was done in exterior house paint, on “an old piece of canvas which had been used for mending a threshing machine cover.”

Anna put several of her paintings for sale with some of her other craftwork at a local drug store.  I vacationing New York City art collector bought them all and went to her farm house to purchase fifteen others.  He placed three of them in the Museum of Modern Art.  The following year she had a one woman show at a well known gallery and at the age of eighty became an overnight success.  Anna charmed wherever she sent.  She was a tiny, lively woman with mischievous grey eyes, a quick wit but she could be sharp-tongued or stern when necessary.

Madeline Zabriskie Doty

Madeline was born in Bayonne New Jersey, on August 24, 1877. After graduating from Smith College she went on to study law at Harvard, although women were strictly barred.  She attended four lectures dressed as a man, in a tailored suit and trousers, with a hat hiding her hair, before she was discovered by the professor. She argued her case strenuously before the faculty but was not allowed to continue. She completed her law degree at New York University in 1902.  Although she handily passed the bar she did not like trying cases so she turned instead to social reform work.  She worked in the juvenile court system until 1912 when she was appointed to the New York State Commission of Prison Reform beginning her long career in public service.

In 2913 Madeline decided that the best way to determine what reforms were needed in the prison system was to become a prisoner! With the cooperation of the warden and chief matron, she was incarcerated for four days as “Maggie Martin” in the women’s penitentiary at Auburn on a trumped up forgery charge.  Upon her release she wrote a scathing expose for the New York Sunday Post that described the deplorable conditions and her poor treatment as a prisoner.

In 1918 Madeline became engaged to Roger Baldwin, the future founder of the American Civil Liberties Union. As a conscientious objector, he served a year in prison for refusing the draft.  They were finally married in August of 1919. They lived in Greenwich Village until 1924 when Madeline was selected as the international secretary of the Women’s League for Peace and Freedom in Geneva Switzerland. She spent most of her life abroad from this point on with occasional visits to New York or Florida.

In her mid fifties she returned to school and earned her Ph.D. in international relations from the University of Geneva.