1. Clara E. Westrop & the Women’s Federal Savings
Bank: If that name sounds familiar,
that’s because Clara is a Cleveland native and has a school on the west side
named after her. That is in large part because Clara founded the Women’s
Federal Savings Bank in 1922, the first savings and loan association
directed and run by women. Her financial
acumen also parlayed into other firsts, as Westrop was named president of
Cuyahoga Savings & Loan League in 1952, making her the first woman to hold
that position.
2. The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot: In 1966, just 3 years
before the well known Stonewall
Uprising, there was another major LGBTQ-related revolution in San
Francisco’s Tenderloin
district. Much like the former, the Compton’s Cafeteria was led by
transgender women and was a response to ongoing mistreatment of queer and trans
people by police and community members. Unlike Stonewall, there was no media
coverage to attest to the events, but it is wildly considered one of the first
LGBTQ-related uprisings. The aftermath of the riot yielded a new network of
support services for trans folks, culminating with the 1968 creation of the
National Transexual* Counseling Unit, the first peer-run support and advocacy
group in the world.
3. Lise Meitner: An Austrian-Swedish physicist born in
1878, Meitner is responsible for a number of scientific discoveries. Meitner
was the first woman from the University of Vienna and the second woman in the
world to earn a doctorate in physics; her accomplishments include the discovery
of the element protactinium as well as the process of nuclear fission. Dr.
Meitner was also the first woman to be a full professor of physics in Germany,
a position of which she was stripped because of the 1930’s anti-Jewish
Nuremberg Laws of Nazi Germany. Meitner fled to Sweden, where, in 1938, she
discovered fission alongside chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman;
unfortunately, Otto Hahn was the one awarded the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
for their shared work on the discovery. She would go on to be nominated 19
times for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry between 1924 and 1948, and 29 times for
Nobel Prize in Physics between 1937 and 1965. Though she was never awarded her
well-deserved recognition, she did
receive many other honors, including the naming of element 109, meitnerium, in 1997.
4. Tarana Burke & the #MeToo Movement: Tarana Burke
is an activist, educator, and non-profit practitioner who is responsible for
the birth of the #MeToo Movement. Starting
in 2006, Burke began using “metoo” to help other women feel less alone when
standing up for themselves as it relates to surviving sexual harassment &
violence. It took a decade for the hashtag to become the global organizing tool
that we know it as today, but Burke has been working to uplift the voices of
survivors since 1989. She started the non-profit Just Be Inc, to promote
wellness amongst young women of color, and currently serves as the Senior
Director of Girls for Gender Equity. However
it was the 2017 viral sensation of the #MeToo movement that many of us know;
but like many trending topics, Burke’s name was largely removed as the creator
as it became a nebulous force for good. Thankfully, moments like Burke attending
the Golden Globes as the guest of Michelle Williams and Time
naming her, and other Silence Breakers, as a Person of the Year, we know
who to give credit to.
5. Pura Belpré: Becoming the first Afro-Puerto
Rican librarian in New York City was the start of Pura Belpré activism, but
it certainly was not the end. To reach the many Spanish-speaking residents of
New York’s buroughs, Belpré took her work on the road and began to host
bilingual storytimes, including puppet shows which were not
nearly as common as they are today, especially in English and Spanish.
Noting the distinct lack of stories written in Spanish, Belpré wrote the first Spanish language book for
children, Perez y Martina, in 1932. Beyond her gift for reaching
children through literature, she also leveraged her platform by joining
Latine**-serving organizations. As time went on, joined the Association for the
Advancement of Puerto Rican People, and went on to help establish the Archivo
de Documentación Puertorriqueña, an early effort to collect original Puerto
Rican documents. Belpré felt it was her mission to make sure that all
Spanish-speaking people knew that the library was for them. Today, Belpré’s
legacy is honored by the Pura Belpré Award,
established in 1996, which celebrates Latine authors of children and young
adult books.
6. Elizabeth Magie: Elizabeth Magie was a progressive
women’s advocate born rural Illinois in 1866; as the daughter of a political
advocate, her anti-monopolist values were instilled at an early age. One of her
largest claims to fame, however, is her creation of “Landlord’s
Game,” which would eventually become one of the most infamous games of all
time, Monopoly. Magie received the patent for the game in 1904, more than three
decades before Parker Brothers began manufacturing the game. At the time, less
than 1% of all patent applicants at the time were women and it would be another
17 years before some women were given the right to vote. As her Landlord’s Game
moved through college campuses and “left-wing intellectuals,” it also made its
way through the Quaker community in Atlantic City, the game changed and took on
neighborhood properties of the area. With these modifications, Charles Darrow
was able to secure a patent for his game; In its efforts to seize total control
of Monopoly and other related games, the Parker Brothers struck a deal with
Magie to purchase her Landlord’s Game patent (for $500) and two more of her game designs not long
after it made its deal with Darrow. The truth about Elizabeth Magie didn’t
become widely known until Ralph Anspach began a legal battle against the
company over his Anti-Monopoly
game.
7. 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion: The “Six
Triple Eight” was a group of 855 Black women who were tasked with solving a
mail crisis in England during World War II. The millions of pieces of
undelivered mail for troops & workers had a direct impact on their
performance – thus, the Six Triple Eight’s motto became “No Mail, Low Morale.”
The women successfully maneuvered out of the way of German U-Boats on their
travels to England, only to be placed in to an “unheated, rat-infested airplane
hangar.” Their living facilities, including housing, mess halls, and recreation
facilities, were all segregated by race and sex, forcing them to setup their
own operations, on top of dealing with ongoing interpersonal racism and sexism.
Despite all these barriers, the Six Triple Eight worked through the estimated
17 million pieces of mail in half of the time projected, an impressive three
months. The women were successful after their time, many of them becoming
“firsts” in their various fields, however their accomplishments went
uncelebrated for decades. The good news is that the last few years have seen
great strides in recognition – a monument was erected honoring them in 2018,
they were given the Meritorious Unit Commendation in 2019, a documentary, all
culminating with the receipt of the Congressional
Gold Medal in February of 2022.
8. Barbara Gittings: Barbara Gittings was one of the
many LGBTQ+ identified people who found themselves leaning into activism solely
because the support she needed wasn’t already available. In 1958, Gittings went
on to form an East Coast chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis,
the first lesbian-led and focused organization. She also went on to write for
their famed publication, the Ladder.
Through her activism, Gittings found herself picketing in front of the Whtie
House in 1965, and her sign now lives in the Smithsonian. Gittings also was
amongst those who helped successfully lobby the American Psychiatric
Association to remove
homosexuality from its list of mental disorders.
9. Maya Lin: Originally born in Athens, Ohio, Maya Lin is a first-generation
Chinese American designer and sculptor. After graduating from Athens High
School, Lin went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts from Yale University in 1981 and
her Master of Architecture in 1986. While in her undgrad at Yale University,
Maya won a public competition to design the Vietnam Veterans
Memorial. At just 21 years old, she was selected out of 1,422 submissions
in a blind judging to determine the winner. Her actual design drew some
controversy for a handful of reasons, but it was the public response to her
identity being revealed that was the most troublesome. Her age and Chinese
heritage were viewed as an “affront” by some – they couldn’t imagine how a
young Chinese American woman could design something to memorialize “men,
soldiers, and Americans.” The whole debacle sparked national dialogue and was
immediately politicized, despite her intention to stay neutral and simply
memorialize the soldiers. Lin did receive an outpouring of support from the
American people, which generated $8.4 million in donations so the memorial
could be built. In the end, Maya’s design was
defended in front of Congress until a compromise was reached; her design
would go on to be erected in October of 1982 and dedicated just one month
later. The compromise was that alongside her design, The Three Soldiers
monument, which was created by Frederick Hart,
was placed with an American flag. Though it took her years to discuss the pain
and hurt she experienced, in 2000 she penned an
essay about the entire process; Maya Lin has gone on to design other iconic
structures like the Civil
Rights Memorial and she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in
2016. Possibly the strangest part of the whole story is that despite being
selected by a panel of judges to design a national monument, she only received
a B for the assignment.
10. Eliza “Lyda” Conley: Eliza Lyda Conley was a born
member of the Wyandotte
Tribe and holds the unique honor of being only the
third woman and the first Indigenous American woman to speak in front of
the Supreme Court. Conley watched as Kansas City become more and more widely
desired property, and worried for the safety and sanctity of the Huron***
Indian Cemetery which was prime real estate. Concerned with the development
trajectory, Conley felt that no one could defend the land where her family and
community was buried better than she could. She entered and graduated from the
Kansas City School of Law, after attending Park College, and was admitted to
the Missouri Bar in 1902. Four years later, Congress approved
legislation to sell the land and move the bodies in order to begin development.
Conley filed a permanent injunction against the U.S. Secretary of the Interior
and Indian Commissioners in U.S. District Court to prevent the sale. Defending
her community in court was not enough for her, though; as a private citizen,
she built a shack known as “Fort
Conley” at the entrance of the cemetery, padlocked the gate, and hung a
sign against trespassers. As the case progressed, Conley and her sister guarded
their ancestors’ graves with a shotgun. Though she lost the legal battle, she
did ultimately win the long game. She gained the attention of Kansas state
senator Charles Curtis who wrote a law protecting the land from any future
development; after her untimely murder during a robbery in 1946, generations of
activists continued the fight until the cemetery was added to the National
Register of Historic Places in 1971. And as of 2017, the land has been
designated as a National
Historic Landmark, ensuring Conley and her ancestors would never be
displaced.
*‘Transexual’ is an outdated word used in
medical and psychological fields to describe transgender people and is
considered offensive. However, it was considered appropriate at the time and is
still used by some transgender people.
**Latine and Latinx are both
designations that seek to create a gender-neutral alternative to the binary
options of Latino and Latina. It also de-centers masculinity as the baseline,
as the “neutral” way to refer to people is the masculine Latino. Latinx gained
popularity early on, but the ‘x’ at the end can be clumsy or difficult, as not
many Spanish words do not end in ‘x.’ However, Latine is seen as a more usable
alternative as words ending in ‘e’ can
be seen in many gender-neutral words like ‘estudiante.’
***According to Wyandotte
Nation, “the term “Huron” was a somewhat derisive nickname
bestowed by the French. It is a reference to the traditional headdress worn by
Wendat (or Ouendat) people that reminded the French of the bristly hairs that
stood up on the back of a wild boar.” Wyandotte is an evolution of the original
name Wendat (or Ouendat,) which means ‘people of the islands’ and is in
reference to the origins on Lake Huron.
