Celebrated in the United States and in various countries around the world, March is Women's History Month. Honoring women of the past while illuminating the many injustices women still face and raise awareness about gender inequality, the first “National Women's Day” was established on February 28, 1909.
In this post, you'll discover seven influential women who’ve left their mark in various frontiers.
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was born on October 11, 1884 to Elliott Roosevelt and Anna Hall. She worked on social, education, and cultural issues and in 1947 was elected head of the 18-nation U.N. Human Rights Commission. She even published her own newspaper column, called “My Day,” which ran in newspapers across the country, six days a week for nearly 30 years.
Carter G. Woodson, one of the first African-Americans to graduate from Harvard University with a doctorate degree, is credited with establishing Black History Week (then called “Negro History Week”) in 1926, designed to highlight and celebrate the Black experience. Since then, U.S. presidents have proclaimed February as National Black History Month.
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was an African American lecturer, poet, abolitionist, suffragist, and reformer born September 24, 1825 in Baltimore, Maryland. She authored Sketches of Southern Life" (1872), "The Martyr of Alabama and Other Poems" (1894), and her well-known novel "Iola Leroy", or Shadows Uplifted, one of the first novels published by a black woman in the United States (1892).
Maggie Lena Walker founded the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank, offering checking and savings accounts, mortgages, and loans to provide economic empowerment to women and help strengthen Richmond's emerging black middle class.
