Representative Yvonne Brathwaite Burke leaves Queen of Angels hospital with her 6-day-old daughter Autumn Roxann. Yvonne was the first member of Congress to give birth while in office.
Hillary Clinton’s Greatest Hits
And read Michael Tomasky’s current cover story: “The Most Powerful Woman In American History”
On January 28, 1942, Representative Edith Nourse Rogers (R-MA) introduced H.R. 6293, a bill to establish the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps for noncombat service with the U.S. Army. H.R. 6293 was signed into law on May 14, 1942. A year later the unit was renamed the Women’s Army Corps, and the servicewomen were granted official military status.
H.R. 6293, HR 77A-B5, 1/28/1942, Records of the U.S. House of Representatives (ARC 4397811)
Frances W. Munds, the first woman to serve in the Arizona legislature.
Frances built a diverse coalition including Mormons and miners in favor of women’s suffrage in Arizona. Twice women’s suffrage legislation was approved by the territorial legislature only to be vetoed by the governor. Frances’s coalition was instrumental in the eventual success of women’s suffrage in Arizona through a ballot initiative in 1912.
Frances was elected as a Arizona State Senator in 1915. She was the second woman in the US elected as state senator.
Edna Beard (1877-1928)
Edna was the first woman to serve in the Vermont legislature (1921). Her first act of legislation provided $2 a week in child support for women whose husbands were “incapacitated by an incurable disease.” After serving one term in the Vermont House, she moved on to the Vermont Senate where she chaired the Library Committee. Her first enacted bill in the Senate made it possible for county sheriffs to hire female deputies.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton returned to work today. She was presented with a gift from her staff: protective head gear - a football helmet with the State Department logo on the side as well as a football jersey with the number 112 on it, for the number of countries the secretary visited during her four-year tenure. (via NBC)
(Source: politicista, via thriftedsweaters)
Obit of the Day: “The Only Woman in the Room”
Beate (pronounced “bay-AH-tay”) Sirota Gordon was trying to find her parents. That was her goal. And while successful, Mrs. Gordon had a far greater influence on women’s rights in Japan, while helping to write its post-World War II constitution - at age of 22.
Mrs. Gordon was born in Vienna and moved to Japan when her father, noted pianist Leo Sirota, was invited to teach at the Imperial Academy of Music in Tokyo. Moving there when she was five, Mrs. Gordon would stay in Japan for over a decade before leaving for Mills College in California when she was just sixteen.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, contact with Japan became impossible and Mrs. Gordon had no idea whether he parents were safe. While she continued to worry, Mrs. Gordon volunteered for the war effort. Fluent in Japanese, she was assigned to the United States War Information Office in San Francisco to listen in on Japanese radio communications. (Mills College allowed her to skip classes and simply take exams.)
In May 1945, Mrs. Gordon became a U.S. citizen and also graduated from college. Her parents still unaccounted for, Mrs. Gordon flew to Washington, D.C. to volunteer as an interpreter. She was assigned to General Douglas MacArthur’s staff.
Setting foot in Japan for the first time in four years, Mrs. Gordon immediately set out to find her mother and father. They were being held in an internment camp and she was able to have them released and brought them back to Tokyo to nurse them back to health.
In February 1946, Mrs. Gordon and the rest of General MacArthur’s staff were ordered to write a new constitution for Japan. They had seven days. Even with no experience in law or politics Mrs. Gordon was asked to handle the sections dealing with women’s rights. Mrs. Gordon found herself wandering through the ruins of Tokyo looking for libraries with copies of constitutions from around the world.
When the constitution was finished she had written two articles:
Article 14
All of the people are equal under the law and there shall be no discrimination in political, economic or social relations because of race, creed, sex, social status or family origin.
and
Article 24
Marriage shall be based only on the mutual consent of the both sexes and it shall be maintained through mutual cooperation with equal rights of husband and wife as a basis. With regard to choice of spouse, property rights, inheritance, choice of domicile, divorce and other matters pertaining to marriage and the family, laws shall be enacted from the standpoint of individual dignity and the essential equalities of the sexes.
These two passages gave women an equality not seen in Japan’s history.
When the constitution was formally published in March 1946, Mrs. Gordon and the other Americans who wrote the document went unacknowledged. It was important for the new Japanese government that they be given the credit for the constitution. Later Mrs. Gordon felt that he age and gender would only fan flames as conservatives in Japan attacked aspects of the document.
She took her rightful place in Japanese history with the publication of her memoir, The Only Woman in the Room, in 1995. (It was published in the U.S. in 1997.) Mrs. Gordon detailed her involvement in the formation of the constitution and instead of outrage she was fêted and praised. The Japanese government awarded The Order of the Sacred Treasure in 1998 and she was the subject of a play and a documentary.
Beate Sirota Gordon passed away on December 30, 2012 at the age of 89. She was the last surviving member of the American group who wrote the constitution.
Sources: New York Times, Japan Times, and The Gift from Beate
(Image of Mrs. Gordon’s War Department identification is courtesy of www.shinyawatanabe.net)
"I think there is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women."
—
Madeleine Albright, 2006
On this day, December 5, 1996, President Bill Clinton nominated Madeleine Albright to become the first woman Secretary of State.
(via ourpresidents)
Martin Van Buren was born on December 5, 1782 (Happy Birthday Marty!). The eight President of the United States, he was the first president born a US citizen. Martin was born in a Dutch speaking area of New York State and he is the only US President to speak English as his second language. The National Park Service maintains Martin’s Kinderhook, NY home. You can tour the site virtually or visit in person from May to October.
“This is the first time since I’ve been in the White House that we have received a woman Chief of State. Add to this the particular alchemy of the Nehru name and the size of the Indian country as an Asian democracy and you have a day alive with drama.”
— Lady Bird Johnson, in A White House Diary, New York: Dell Books, 1971, pg 411. Photo: LBJ Library C1563-6, public domain. This photo was taken on the North Portico of the White House, at the State Dinner for Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on 3/28/1966.
June 13, 1922: Veterans Bureau employee Viola LaLonde and Census Bureau employee Elizabeth Van Tuyl pose beside a Ford automobile before making their cross-country drive from Washington, DC to San Francisco. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Keep in mind, these women crossed the country before the construction of a national highway system. Forget Econolodges and Denny’s restaurants, they packed their own fuel and food, sleeping in the car.
Eisenhower drove cross country on the Lincoln Highway in 1919 as part of an army convoy which took four months to cross the country. The contrast between that experience and his experience driving on the Autobahn during World War II led to Eisenhower’s proposal for a national highway system.
(via downlookingup)
Georgia Neese Clark Gray, 1949
A stage actress in her 20s, Georgia returned to Kansas to run her family’s bank and retail stores in her 30s. She became active in the Democratic Party and was elected to the Democratic National Committee in 1936. President Harry Truman appointed Georgia Treasurer of the United States in 1949. The US Treasurer advises the Mint and the Bureau of Printing and Engraving on matters relating to currency. The signature of the Treasurer at the time of printing can be seen on every dollar bill.
Since Georgia’s appointment as the first female Treasurer, every Treasurer has been a woman. Currently the US Treasurer is Rosa Gumataotao Rios, the sixth Mexican American woman to hold the position.
Belle Sherwin, President of the National League of Women Voters, holding a silver cup to be awarded to the state League showing the greatest increase in voting between 1920 and 1924.
I recently posted an image of Cleveland’s woman suffrage headquarters. An eagle eyed follower wondered whether the Belle Sherwin in that picture was any relation to the the paint company Sherwin-Williams which is headquartered in Cleveland. Turns out, Belle Sherwin is the daughter of Sherwin-Williams co-founder Henry Sherwin and his wife Frances Smith. Belle was an important figure in Cleveland and played a substantial role in several national and international organizations.
A short list of Belle’s accomplishments:
-Graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Wellesley
-Taught school in Boston and Connecticut
-Organized the Cleveland Consumers’ League
-Served on the board of the Visiting Nurse Association of Cleveland
-Served on the board of the National Urban League, a civil right organization
-President of the Woman Suffrage Party of Greater Cleveland
-Vice President, then President of the National League of Women Voters
-Led the US delegations at the 1926 and 1928 congresses for the International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal Citizenship
-Appointed by FDR to the Consumers’ Advisory Board of the National Recovery Administration and to the Federal Advisory Council of the US Employment Service
-Vice President of the National Municipal League
-Vice President for North America of the Inter-American Union of Women
-Received honorary degrees from Case Western Reserve, Denison, and Oberlin
A formal portrait of Susanna Madora Salter, 1860-1961, and her husband, Lew Salter in 1880, during the first year of their marriage.
In 1887, Susanna Salter was elected mayor of Argonia, Kansas. Not only was she first female mayor in the US, she was the first woman elected to any political office in the United States. Her nomination began as a joke from those who disagreed with her pro-temperance stance, but Susana ended up winning by a 2 to 1 majority. She served a one year term before declining to run for reelection.
Patsy Mink (1927-2002)
-The first woman of color in the US Congress
-The first Asian American to run for president (1972 Democratic primaries)
-Represented Hawaii for 12 terms
-Authored Title IX
-Served as Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs under Carter
-As a student at the University of Nebraska, mobilized a coalition to end segregated student housing
-Mother of social justice advocate Gwendolyn (Wendy) Mink
