Dates in bold have a Tennessee connection....
Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec
January
- January 25, 1921 - Anna Lee Worley of is the first woman elected to the Tennessee State Legislature. She represented Sullivan and Hawkins Counties.
- January 5, 1925 - Nellie Tayloe Ross is inaugurated as the first woman governor in U.S. history (governor of Wyoming)
- January 29, 1926 - Violette Neatly Anderson is the first black woman to practice law before the U.S. Supreme Court
- January 12, 1932 - Hattie Wyatt Caraway (D-Arkansas) is the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate. She was the first woman to chair a Senate Committee and the first to serve as the Senate's presiding officer as well. Hattie Wyatt Caraway was born in Tennessee and graduated from Dickson Normal School in 1896.
- January 11, 1935 - Amelia Earhart Putnam makes the first solo flight from Hawaii to North America
- January 7, 1955 - Marian Anderson is the first African American woman to sing at the Metropolitan Opera
- January 20, 1986 - Coretta Scott King leads a march through Atlanta, GA, to honor her slain husband's birthday, celebrated the first time that year as a national holiday
- January 28, 1986 - The space shuttle Challenger explodes shortly after takeoff, claiming the lives of Astronaut Judith Resnick, who would have been the second U.S. woman astronaut to travel in space, and teacher Christa McAuliffe, who would have been the first civilian in space.
- January, 1990 - Thelma Harper of Nashville is the first African American woman to hold a seat in the Tennessee State Senate. Senator Harper still holds her seat in the Tennessee Senate.
February
- February 15, 1921 - The Suffrage Monument, depicting Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Lucretia Mott and carved by Adelaide Johnson, is dedicated in the nation's capitol
- February 27, 1922 - US Supreme Court upholds the 19th Amendment to the Constitution which guarantees women the right to vote
- February 12, 1962 - Eleanor Roosevelt becomes first chair of the President's Commission on the Status of Women
- February 6, 1973 - Government Printing Office rules that the prefix "Ms." is acceptable optional identifying label in government publications
- February 1, 1978 - First postage stamp to honor a black woman, Harriet Tubman, is issued in Washington, DC
- February 21, 1980 - AFL-CIO votes to reserve 2 seats on its 35 member executive team for a woman and a member of a minority group
March
- March is National Women's History Month
- March 30, 1888 - The National Council of Women of the US is organized by Susan B. Anthony, Clara Barton, Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- March 17, 1910 - Camp Fire Girls is established as the first American interracial, non-sectarian organization for girls
- March 12, 1912 - Juliette Gordon Low assembled 18 girls together in Savannah, Georgia, for the first-ever Girl Scout meeting
- March 6, 1934 - Eleanor Roosevelt becomes the first First lady to travel by air to a foreign country
- March 2, 1973 - Women begin pilot training for the US Navy
- March 1, 1987 - Congressional resolution naming Women's History Month is passed
- March 31, 1776 - Abigail Adams writes to husband John who is helping to frame the Declaration of Independence: "Remember the ladies..."
April
- April 26, 1777 - American Revolution heroine Sybil Ludington, 16, rides 40 miles by horseback from town to town during the night to warn the Connecticut countryside of invading British troops.
- April, 1781 - Charlotte Reeves Robertson is credited with saving Fort Nashboro in Tennessee from an Indian attack and is remembered as the Heroine of the Battle of the Bluffs
- April 7, 1805 - Sacagawea leads Lewis and Clark to the Pacific coast
- April 22, 1919 - Mary Cordelia Beasley-Hudson of Benton County, TN becomes the first woman in Tennessee to cast a vote in the Camden Municipal election - just 5 days after the governor of Tennessee signed a state limited suffrage act into law. This was a full year before the Federal Act was signed into law. .
- April 12, 1933 - Ruth Bryan Owens is the first woman to represent the U.S. as a foreign minister. She is appointed by President Roosevelt as envoy to Denmark and Iceland.
- April 14, 1977 - 18 women in the House of Representatives form the Congressional Caucus for Women's Issues
- April 28, 1993 - First "Take Our Daughters to Work" day, sponsored by the Ms. Foundation for women. (2003 will be the first "Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work" day)
May
- May 10, 1872 - Victoria Woodhull is nominated as the first woman candidate for U.S. president.
- May 8, 1914 - President Woodrow Wilson signed a Joint Resolution designating the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day
- May, 1914 - Anne Dallas Dudley of Nashville became the first woman in Tennessee to make an open-air speech, given after she led a march of 2000 women from downtown Nashville to Centennial Park - the first suffrage parade in the South
- May 21, 1932 - Amelia Earhart Putnam is the first woman to complete a solo transatlantic flight. She flew from Newfoundland to Ireland, a 2,026-mile trip, in just under 15 hours.
- May 1, 1950 - Gwendolyn Brooks is the first black woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for poetry; in May of 1976, she is the first black woman inducted into the National Institute of Arts and Letters.
- May 3, 1974 - Billie Jean King founds The Women's Sports Foundation
- May 29, 1977 - Janet Guthrie becomes the first woman to qualify for and complete the Indy 500
- May 7, 1980 - Shirley Hufstedler, former federal judge, becomes the first U.S. Secretary of Education.
June
- June 6, 1872 - Susan B. Anthony is arrested for leading a group of women to register and vote in Rochester, New York
- June 24, 1903 - Madame Marie Curie announces discovery of radium
- June 20, 1921 - Alice Robertson ((R-Oklahoma) becomes the first woman to chair the House of Representatives
- June 23, 1940 - The first women graduate from Harvard Medical School, founded in 1783
- June 9, 1949 - Georgia Neese Clark confirmed as the first woman treasurer of the United States
- June 10, 1963 - Equal Pay Act enacted: "To prohibit discrimination on account of sex in the payment of wages by employers engaged in commerce or in the; production of goods for commerce."
- June 18, 1983 - Dr. Sally Ride becomes the first American woman in space
July
- July 4, 1777 - Mary Katherine Goddard publishes the Declaration of Independence in Baltimore where she is the only printer.
- July 19-20, 1848 - Seneca Falls Convention, the country's first women's rights convention, is held in Seneca Falls, New York
- July 4, 1876 - Suffragist crash the Centennial Celebration in Independence Hall to challenge the Vice President about the fact that federal government of the United States opposed the right of women to vote.
- July 14, 1917 - The National Women's party starts picketing the White House for universal woman suffrage
- July 2, 1937 - Amelia Earhart's plane is lost in the Pacific Ocean, near Howland Island
- July 2, 1964 - President Lyndon Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act; Title VII prohibits sex discrimination.
- July 1, 1979 - the Susan B. Anthony dollar starts circulating
- July 7, 1981 - President Reagan nominates Sandra Day O'Connor as the first woman Supreme Court Justice
- July 12, 1984 - Representative Geraldine Ferraro (D-New York) is chosen to run for Vice-President of the United States on the Democratic Party ticket with Walter Mondale (D-Minnesota).
August
- August 26, 1920 - The 19th Amendment of the US Constitution is ratified in Nashville, Tennessee granting all women in the United States the right to vote
- August 28, 1963 - More than 250,000 gather for a march on Washington, DC and listen to Martin Luther King Jr's famous "I Have a Dream" speech
- August 6, 1965 Voting Rights Act outlaws the discriminatory literacy tests that had been used to prevent African Americans from voting. Woman Suffrage is finally fully extended to African American women.
- August 26, 1970 - Betty Friedan leads a nationwide protest called the Women's Strike for Equality in New York City on the fiftieth anniversary of woman's suffrage
- August 26, 1974 - Bella Abzug (D-NY) sponsors bill in Congress designating August 26 as "Women's Equality Day"
- August 26 - Women's Equality Day - Celebrating Women's Right to Vote
- August 9, 1995 - Roberta Cooper Ramo becomes the first woman to hold the office of president of the American Bar Association
September
- September 12, 1910 - Alice Stebbins Wells, a former social worker becomes the first woman police office in US (Los Angeles, CA)
- September 7, 1960 - In the 1960 Summer Olympic Games in Rome, Italy, Wilma Rudolph became the first American woman to win three gold medals in track and field during a single Olympic Games. She also set two world records in running. In 1980, she was named to the Women's Sports Hall of Fame, the first black woman to receive that honor.
- September 4, 1963 - Harvard Business School starts accepting women
- September 14, 1964 - Helen Keller receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom along with 4 other women including Dr. Lena Edwards, Lynn Fontanne, Dr. Helen Taussig, and Leontyne Price
- September 26, 1971 - Rep. Shirley Chisholm (D-New York) announces she will enter the Democratic presidential primaries
- September 20, 1973 - Billie Jean King defeats Bobby "No broad can beat me" Riggs in battle of the sexes tennis match.
- September 25, 1981 - Sandra Day O'Connor is sworn in as the first woman Supreme Court justice in the court's 191-year history
- September 2, 2008 - Janice Holder of Memphis is sworn in as the first female Chief Justice of the Tennessee Supreme Court
October
- October 23, 1910 - Blanche Stuart Scott is the first woman pilot to make a public flight.
- October 16, 1916 - Margaret Sanger opens the nation's first birth control clinic in Brooklyn, NY
- October 9, 1923 - Frankie J. Pierce, born to a house slave in Smith County, Tennessee, became the superintendent of the first vocational school for girls in Tennessee, a position she held until 1939.
- October 15, 1948 - Dr. Frances L. Willoughby is the first woman doctor in the regular U.S. Navy.
- October 4, 1976 - Barbara Walters becomes first woman co-anchor of evening news (at ABC)
- October 4, 1993 - Ruth Bader Ginsburg joins Supreme Court as second woman and 107th justice.
November
- November 1, 1848 - First medical school for women, the Boston Female Medical School, opens and eventually merges with Boston University to become one of the world's first coed medical schools.
- November 28, 1858 - The Young women's Christian Association (YWCA) is founded by 35 women
- November 28, 1881 - The American Association of University Women (AAUW) is founded
- November 14, 1889 - Journalist Elizabeth Cochran, aka Nellie Bly, sails around the world in 72 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes, and 14 seconds, beating the fictional record set by Phileas Fogg in Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days.
- November 8, 1910 - The state of Washington passes a constitutional amendment to permit woman suffrage.
- November 14, 1946 - Emily Greene Balch, co-founder of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
- November 11, 1979 - Bethune Museum and Archives is established in Washington DC as center for African-American women's history.
December
- December 10, 1869 - Wyoming is the first territory to give women the vote
- December 5, 1935 - Mary McLeod Bethune creates National Council of Negro Women in Washington, DC
- December 10, 1938 - Pearl S. Buck is the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature
- December 7, 1941 - Capt. Annie Fox receives the first Purple Heart awarded to a nurse for her service under attack at Pearl Harbor
- December 14, 1961 - President's Commission on the Status of Women established to examine discrimination against women and ways to eliminate it
- December 28, 1967 - Muriel Siebert becomes the first woman to own a seat on the NY Stock Exchange
- December 14, 1985 - Wilma Mankiller is sworn in as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma - the first woman in modern history to lead a major Native American tribe
- December 17, 1993 - Judith Rodin is named president of Univ. of Pennsylvania, the first woman to head an Ivy League institution
- December, 1993 - Judge Martha Craig Daughtrey of Nashville is sworn in as Justice for the Sixth U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals
Note: We will periodically update and add to this list as women continue to cross barriers meant to keep them from having an equal voice in the world we live in. Recommendations for Important Dates in Women's History can be sent to tn-wpc@hotmail.com. |
