The Signal celebrates Women’s History Month 2020
March is Women’s History Month and while UHCL celebrates the month with events and activities, UHCL The Signal created a social media campaign on their Instagram to highlight individuals who have made contribution to business, science, humanities, sports, performing arts and civic engagement.
Linda Sarsour
Clara Barton
Clara Barton had a career of aiding who she could. After bringing supplies to multiple battlefields during the Civil War, she earned the nickname “angel of the battlefield”. Without any formal training, she tended to the wounded and became a head nurse in 1864. After a trip to Switzerland in 1869, she became determined to create a Red Cross Association for America. After being founded in 1881, Barton led the American Red Cross for 23 years.
Sylvia Riveria
Rachel Carson
Born in Springdale, Pennsylvania, Rachel Carson was an environmentalist, marine biologist, and author. Carson wrote several pamphlets on conservation and natural resources worked for the government until 1952, when she resigned to focus on her writing. After World War II, Carson began to write about the adverse effects of synthetic chemical pesticides. In 1962, she wrote a book that led to the ban of DDT nationwide, “Silent Spring”. Carson’s works also inspired the environmentalist movement resulting in the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970.
Jane Goodall
After earning her doctoral degree in ethology, Jane Goodall went into environmental and humanitarian work. Goodall is best known for her extensive research on chimpanzees. Though she has travelled across the world working to better understand them, her research in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania is most well-known. This is due to her proving that humans are not the only animals who make and use tools, chimpanzees are not vegetarians and gaining a better understanding of social hierarchies within toops. Of her many accolades, Goodall is an honorary member of the World Future Council and was named a UN Messenger of Peace.
Zora Neale Hurston
Born in 1891, Hurston’s studies in anthropology and ethnography led her to conduct field work in the southern United States collecting American American folklore. In 1925, she joined contemporaries and participated in what would be known as the Harlem Renaissance. Over her 30 plus years of experience, Hurston wrote several literary works with the most popular being “Their Eyes Were Watching God” (1937). Some of her works were published posthumously including “Barracoon: The Story of the Last ‘Black Cargo.” Though it was completed in 1931, publishers rejected it for use of vernacular. This book was published in 2018, almost 60 years after her death.
Jane Austen
Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775. An author known for her social commentary, character development and irony, Austen only finished writing six novels in her lifetime, including “Pride and Prejudice.” As a child, her father encouraged Austen to write, often providing Austen with writing paper, writing tools and large libraries of friends. Much of Austen’s life is unknown as her siblings burned most of her letters after she passed. It is known that she never married, though finances were strained after her father’s death, a sentiment that is often reverberated in her works. Her first novel, “Sense and Sensibility” was published in 1811 and six years later, at the age of 41, Austen died to an illness thought to be Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Angela Davis
Angela Davis is known for her activism that began in the 1960s and academia from the 70s to the present. She was was in the neighborhood where the 1963 church bombing occurred as a child and would later go on to participate with organizations like the Black Panthers and Communist Party of the United States of American as well as movements like second-wave feminist and Anti-Vietnam war. Davis’ work mostly covers class, feminism and the United States prison-industrial complex. Some of her books include “Women, Race & Class” (1981), “Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday” (1989) and “Are Prisons Obsolete?” (2003).
Nichelle Nichols
While Nichelle Nichols is most known for her groundbreaking role as “Star Trek’s” Lieutenant Nyota Uhuru, she has also found success as a singer and NASA recruiter. Born Grace Dell Nichols, Nichols got her start as a musical theatre performer before singing for Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton. She later starred in “Star Trek,” and became one of the first black women in a major television show. After the show, she continued to act as well as advocate for women and minorities in the STEM fields.
Masako “Katsy” Katsura
Masako Katsura or “the First Lady of Billiards” was a Japanese carom billiards player. Katsura was taught billiards by her brother-in-law and shortly became the only female billiards pro in Japan, cutting her way through professional billiards, a male dominated sport. In 1952, Katura was the first woman to play in a world billiards tournament. She played the World Three- Cushion Championship and won seventh place. Other than a few small appearances for non- professional tournaments, she left the spotlight after winning fourth and fifth place for the world Three-Cushion Crown in 1953 and 1954.
Billie Jean King
From a young age, Billie Jean King knew she wanted to be the best tennis player, despite standards for young men and women being different at the time. King became a pro player in 1959. She achieved her dream of being ranked #1 for women’s tennis in 1966. At the height of her competitive years, King fought for and succeeded to get equal prizes for men and women at the U.S. Open. In 1973, she played against Bobby Riggs after he said women’s tennis was substandard and won, going on to co-found WorldTeamTennis and starting Women’s Sports Foundation.
Amber Ruffin
Writer and comedian Amber Ruffin grew up in Omaha, Nebraska participating in performing arts like drama classes, choir and local theater. As an adult, Ruffin began performing stand up and improv both across the United States and Amsterdam before joining RobotDown in Los Angles in 2011. In 2014, Ruffin traveled to New York City to audition for SNL, but instead was offered a writing job by then SNL head writer Seth Meyers to write for his new late night show. When Ruffin joined, she became the first African-American woman to join a major network’s late-night writer’s room. Ruffin is also a recurring narrator on Comedy Central’s “Drunk History.”
Ada Lovelace
Ada Lovelace was born on December 10, 1815 as Augusta Ada Byron. Lovelace is most commonly known for her work on the computer algorithm, the foundation for computers. Not just a mathematician, Lovelace described herself as an analyst and metaphysician. Her work with Luigi Menabrea led Lovelace to create the first computer algorithm entitled “Notes.” Her work on computers went past the typical number crunching of her peers and allowed for a more societal and collaborative view.
Chien-Shiung Wu
After receiving her doctoral degree in physics, Chinese American scientist Chien-Shiung became the first and only Chinese person to join the Manhattan project at Columbia University in 1944. In 1957, Wu helped physicists Tsung Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang win the Nobel Prize in Physics with her experiment on beta decay and the law of conservation of parity. Throughout her career, Wu received many accolades including the National Medal of Science and, in 1975, was elected the first female president of the American Physical Society. Wu passed away on February 16, 1997 in New York City.
Winona LaDuke
Winona LaDuke is an American environmentalist, economist and writer. After getting her degrees from Harvard University and Antioch University, Winona went on to work on issues such as sustainable development and food systems. In 1985, LaDuke along with others, founded the Indigenous Women’s Network, working to publicize American forced sterilization of Native American women. In 1989, she also founded the non-profit White Earth Land Recovery Project. They are focused on recovering land for the Anishinaabeg people and developing programs for environmental preservation. LaDuke’s work continues today and includes activism such as the protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Vera Wang
New York born Veronica Ellen Wang, known as Vera Wang, was hired on to Vogue as an editor soon after graduating college, making her the youngest editor at Vogue Magazine. Wang worked for Vogue for 17 years until she left in 1989 for Ralph Lauren. At age 40, Wang resigned to become an independent bridal wear designer and went on to publish her book Vera Wang on Weddings in October 2001. Among her many achievements Wang earned number 34 on Forbes list of America’s Richest Self-Made Women in 2018.
