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Things I like: suffragettes, war workers, factory girls, socialites who got stuff done, ladies who ruled countries, and women who changed the world, even if it was just a little bit. Click on photos for sources.

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"My grandmother and her fellow prisoners could choose from a variety of jobs: gardening, mowing, serving food, cleaning the restrooms and other public areas. There were even postal workers, doctors, police officers, and electricians. Refusing the work, they all understood, might be interpreted as defiance. Obaachan’s father warned them to be careful never to act in way that might be perceived as rebellion. He believed that if his family followed the rules and complied with all requests, they would be treated better. He did not seem troubled that he’d already complied with every single one of the government’s requests—-handing in his radio, following the stipulations of the Five-Mile Curfew back in Los Angeles—-yet he’s been forced out of his home anyway."

— Silver Like Dust by Kimi Cunningham Grant

"I would go to West Point again if I wasn’t in the first class of women, but if I were going to be in the first class again, I wouldn’t. It was too hard. It’s difficult to explain what all of us went through, unless you’re standing on our side of the fence… My fiancé loved it here, and when I try to explain to him how bad it was for me, it just flies by him. That is one of the tough, sticky points in our relationship. It’s so hard to get across to someone—even someone as close as he is to me—what it was like."

—

Brynnen Sheets, age 22, one of the first female graduates of West Point.

People Magazine, April 21, 1980.

(Source: people.com)

"By the eleventh minute of the fire—the sixth minute of the nightmare on the ninth floor—only two escape routes remained, and they, too, would be gone in thirty or sixty or ninety seconds more. To survive at this point required decisiveness, a sudden burst of action, and good luck, which was a vanishing commodity."

—

Triangle: The Fire That Changed America by David Von Drehle

Today is the 102nd anniversary of the Triangle Factory fire in which 146 women died.

"When I’m asked about the relevance to Black people of what I do, I take that as an affront. It presupposes that Black people have never been involved in exploring the heavens, but this is not so. Ancient African empires — Mali, Songhai, Egypt — had scientists, astronomers. The fact is that space and its resources belong to all of us, not to any one group."

— Mae Jemison, the first black woman in space.

(Source: books.google.com)

From Loose Women: Poems (Amazon)

From Loose Women: Poems (Amazon)

"At this moment, by an undeserved stroke of fortune, I am the direct voice of the poets of my race and the indirect voice for the noble Spanish and Portuguese tongues. Both rejoice to have been invited to this festival of Nordic life with its tradition of centuries of folklore and poetry."

— Gabriela Mistral accepting the Nobel Prize in Literature (1945).  She was the first Latin American to win the award.

(Source: nobelprize.org)

"People survived thanks to a short head start, or a seat assignment near an exit, or by following the right mad rush in one direction or another—or by ignoring the wrong mad rush. They survived by acting a bit more quickly, or boldly, or brutally. But the truth is most people working on the ninth floor that day did not survive at all."

— Triangle: The Fire That Changed America by David Von Drehle

"A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees. The greatest work that kindness does to others is that it makes them kind themselves."

— Amelia Earhart

(Source: womenshistory.about.com)

"I choose to study medicine because I realise only too well the moral impact one has as doctor on a female patient. While one soothes their physical suffering, women open their heart to you. I see medicine as a way to help women get out of their dull resignation, to get them to help each other and make them stronger so that they will demand that which they have a right to."

— Isala Van Diest (1842-1916), the first female physician in Belgium

(Source: flanderstoday.eu)

"The story of the Irish in America, of those millions of Americans who trace their ancestry back to the Emerald Isle, is typical of so many American immigrants, yet is also uniquely influenced by the rich culture of Ireland. Like so many of our forebears, they came to this land seeking a better future. In the process of becoming Americans, they changed themselves, changed America, and changed the world."

—

President Bill Clinton.  Proclamation 6533.  March 6, 1993

March is Irish-American Heritage Month!

(via ourpresidents)

"Something which we think is impossible now is not impossible in another decade."

— Constance Baker Motley

(Source: books.google.com)

"In general, females were buried with a wider variety and larger quantity of artifacts than males, and seven female graves contained iron swords or daggers, bronze arrowheads, and whetstones to sharpen the weapons. Some scholars have argued that weapons found in female burials served a purely ritual purpose, but the bones tell a different story. The bowed leg bones of one 13- or 14-year-old girl attest a life on horseback, and a bent arrowhead found in the body cavity of another woman suggested that she had been killed in battle. The Pokrovka women cannot have been the Amazons of Greek myth- who were said to have lived far to the west- but they may have been one of many similar nomadic tribes who occupied the Eurasian steppes in the Early Iron Age."

— Description of the Sarmatian burial mounds at Pokrovka, excavated by Russian and American archaeologists in 1992-95 

(Source: archaeology.org, via sagenundlegenden)

"Women have been called queens for a long time, but the kingdom given them isn’t worth ruling."

—

An Old-Fashioned Girl (1870)

Louisa May Alcott

(Source: en.wikiquote.org)

"The happiest days of my life were spent following the buffalo herds over our beautiful country. My mother and father and Goes Ahead, my man, were all kind, and we were so happy. Then when my children came I believed I had everything that was good on this world. There were always so many, many buffalo, plenty of good fat meat for everybody."

—

Pretty Shield (1856–1944)

Pretty-shield: Medicine woman of the Crows by Frank Bird Linderman

"I saw myself in the mirror; my whole face spattered with blood and hair… I wiped it off with Kleenex… I thought, no one really wants me there. Then one second later I thought, why did I wash the blood off? I should have left it there, let them see what they’ve done…"

—

Jackie Kennedy

The “Camelot” Interview with T.H. White, excerpts published in Life magazine

November 29, 1963

(Source: en.wikiquote.org)