Women's History Month: Valiant Women of the Vote -- Fannie Lou Hamer

Following the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920, many women remained unable to exercise their right to vote due to systemic racism, voter suppression, and discriminatory laws and practices. Community organizer Fannie Lou Hamer’s work with both voting rights and the Freedom Farm Cooperative highlighted this continued fight for a more equitable society. 

 

In 1962, Hamer led seventeen volunteers to a local courthouse to register to vote. After being denied the vote on the grounds of a discriminatory literacy test, Hamer was fired by her employer and evicted from her home. Already involved in the Civil Rights Movement through her work with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Hamer’s experience drove her to advocate further for voting rights for African Americans in the South. In 1964, she helped organize Freedom Summer, a volunteer campaign to register Black voters in Mississippi. 

 

In addition to the vote, Hamer saw economics as a path towards racial equality. In 1968, she started a program called the “pig bank,” which provided pigs to Black farmers. This was the precursor to Hamer’s Freedom Farm Cooperative (FFC). She purchased 640 acres to allow African American families to collectively own and farm land. In addition to 200 units of housing, the cooperative also included businesses and services such as a garment factory, coop store, and pre-school Head Start program. At its peak, the cooperative was one of the largest employers in Sunflower County, Mississippi. 

 

Learn more about Fannie Lou Hamer’s work and legacy: http://bit.ly/3bYoDJQ 

#WomensHistoryMonth #ValiantWomenOfTheVote

Women's History Month: Valiant Women of the Vote -- Ellen Ochoa

In the century since the 19th Amendment was ratified, the stories of suffragists continue to inspire generations of women trailblazers. Inventor and astronaut Ellen Ochoa carried this legacy with her to the final frontier – space! 

 

An engineer, Ochoa holds several patents in the field of optical systems for information processing. Her inventions include a system that detects defects in a repeating pattern, an object recognition method, and a method for image noise removal. At @NASA, she led a group researching the use of optical technology for automated space exploration. 

 

In 1993, Ochoa became the first Hispanic woman to go into space when serving on the crew of the Space Shuttle Discovery, a mission tasked with studying the Earth’s ozone layer. On a subsequent mission six years later, Ochoa brought an original gold, white, and purple suffrage banner into orbit. Ochoa has been in space four times and logged over 1,000 space hours. She went on to serve as the 11th director of the Johnson Space Center and is a recipient of NASA’s Distinguished Service Medal. 

 

Learn more about Ochoa’s historic flight from the @National Archives: http://bit.ly/3rUmQe5 #WomensHistoryMonth #ValiantWomenOfTheVote

Women's History Month: Valiant Women of the Vote -- Zitkála-Šá

 

Writer, musician, and activist Zitkála-Šá showed the world how the arts can both preserve traditions and influence change. 

 

A member of the Yankton Dakota Sioux, Zitkála-Šá was born in South Dakota in 1876. She first learned to play the violin at a residential school, and discovered a passion for the instrument. Alarmed by the pressures Indigenous people faced to assimilate, she became an advocate for Indigenous people retaining their cultural practices and traditions. Zitkála-Šá used her music and her writing to disavow damaging stereotypes white Americans held about Native Americans. Her books, including “American Indian Stories” and “Old Indian Legends,” were some of the first texts to bring traditional Indigenous stories to a white English-speaking audience. Zitkála-Šá also wrote the libretto and contributed to the music for “The Sun Dance,” a groundbreaking opera that remains one of the few operas dealing exclusively with Native American themes. 

 

Zitkála-Šá advocated for full citizenship for Indigenous people in the United States, including the right to vote. In addition to her writings, she lectured across the country to promote tribal identities and encourage civic participation. Although the federal Indian Citizenship Act passed in 1924, the power to grant suffrage to Native Americans still rested with the states. In response, Zitkála-Šá and her husband founded the National Council of American Indians, and she served as the organization’s president until her death in 1938, encouraging those who were able to exercise the right to vote to participate in ways that benefitted all Indigenous people. 

 

Learn more about Zitkála-Šá’s writings, music, and legacy in health care and education: http://bit.ly/3vckucB 

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Women's History Month -- Valiant Women of the Vote: Bellie Bly

Investigative journalist Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman, better known by her pseudonym Nellie Bly, held two U.S. patents in manufacturing. 

 

Following her lauded expose on brutality and neglect in late nineteenth-century mental health asylums and her record-breaking seventy-two day trip around the world, Bly had a second career as an industrialist. With her husband’s health failing, Bly took over as the head of Iron Clad Manufacturing Co. around the turn of the twentieth century. Bly invented and received patents for a novel milk can (patent number 697,553) and a stacking garbage can (patent number 703,711). Although the company’s financial issues led to its eventual bankruptcy, Iron Clad’s lasting legacy can be seen in the 55-gallon oil drum still used widely today, modeled on a popular steel barrel manufactured during Bly’s tenure. 

 

Bly eventually returned to journalism. She covered the 1913 Women’s Suffrage Procession, the first suffrage parade in Washington, D.C. and the first large, organized political march on the nation’s capital. In her article, bluntly entitled “Suffragists Are Men’s Superiors,” she predicted correctly that it would be 1920 before women were able to vote in national elections. 

 

Learn more about Nellie Bly and her interdisciplinary career: http://bit.ly/30zOv8h #WomensHistoryMonth #ValiantWomenOfTheVote

 

 

U.S. Patent no. 697,553

Title: Milk Can

Patented: April 15, 1902

 

U.S. Patent no. 703,711

Title: Garbage or Refuse Can

Patented: July 1, 1902

Women's History Month -- Valiant Women of the Vote: Jovita Idár

In the early twentieth century, journalist and activist Jovita Idár wrote of the modern woman, “Science, industry, the workshop and even the home demand her best aptitudes, her perseverance and consistency in work, and her influence and assistance for all that is progress and advancement for humanity.” She founded La Liga Femenil Mexicanista to promote education and economic advancement for Mexican-American women. 

 

Born in Laredo, Texas in 1885, Idár experienced racism and danger throughout her life. The Mexican-American community in Texas frequently faced violence, and Idár’s family was active in the civil rights movement. She began writing articles for the newspaper her father founded, La Crónica, encouraging readers on both sides of the border to fight against racial and economic injustice. Idár supported the women’s suffrage movement, and encouraged women to vote through her writing. 

 

Understanding the role education had in economic and political success, Idár earned a teaching certificate in 1903. When she founded the La Liga Femenil Mexicanista (the League of Mexican Women), one of the first goals of the organization was to provide educational opportunities for Mexican American children. Idár wrote for the newspaper El Progreso until the newspaper was shut down by the Texas Rangers. She then took over the business of running La Crónica after her father’s death. 

 

Jovita Idár believed that “when you educate a woman, you educate a family.” She continued to advocate for education and equality for Mexican-Americans throughout her life.

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Women's History Month -- Valiant Women of the Vote: Blanche Ames

Artist, activist, and inventor Blanche Ames, well-known for her drawings and research in botanicals, held patents in three different fields of innovation.

Ames had a talent and a passion for art in a variety of mediums. In the early 1910s, she illustrated a number of her husband’s publications on botany, including pen and ink drawings of orchids. Around the same time, Ames and her brother developed an extensive color notation system that allowed artists to map out the most realistic colors for their paintings. The Ames siblings received U.S. patent number 1,612,791 in 1927.

Blanche Ames also used her artistic talents to promote the cause of women’s suffrage through a number of political cartoons. Born into a political family, Ames valued civic participation throughout her life. She lobbied extensively for women’s suffrage in her home state of Massachusetts, and was involved in a number of initiatives surrounding women’s health.

Ames also holds patents for an antipollution toilet design and a propeller snare that could trip up enemy planes, which she designed during World War II. 

Learn more about Ames: http://bit.ly/3sNDtbw #WomensHistoryMonth #ValiantWomenOfTheVote

 

U.S. Patent no. 1,612,791

Title: System of Color Standards

Patented: January 4, 1927

U.S. Patent no. 2,374,261

Title: Propeller Snare

Patented: April 24, 1945

 

U.S. Patent no. 3,488,780

Title: Apparatus for Antipollution of Sewage Systems at Toilet Source

Patented: January 13, 1970

 

Patents source from: https://brendapolendey.wordpress.com/cultural-research/4-technology-blanche-ames-inventions/