Famous American Woman

[betz]

1) Janet Reno

Janet Reno, the 78th attorney general of the United States and the first woman ever to hold the nation's top law enforcement job, was born on July 21, 1938, in Miami, Florida. With 15 years of experience as a state attorney in Florida, Reno sought new frontiers for the Justice Department, which is the most powerful department in the Cabinet in terms of effecting social change.

A product of the Dade County Public Schools, Reno attended Cornell University, where she earned an A.B. degree in Chemistry in 1960. Following graduation she enrolled at Harvard University Law School, becoming one of 16 women in a class of 500.

Thank you Janet Reno.

 

[Jenzebelle]

She is a pretty cool lady

 

[betz]

How About:

Christiane Amanpour is CNN's chief international correspondent.

Christiane Amanpour is CNN's chief international correspondent, based in London. Working in many of the world's most tense regions of the 1990s, her most recent assignments have sent her to Iran, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Haiti, Algeria and Rwanda. Amanpour's assignments have ranged from an exclusive interview with Iranian President Mohammed Khatami to covering the civil unrest and political crisis in Rwanda. As a result, she has received wide acclaim for her extensive reports on the conflict in the former Yugoslavia.

Amanpour began her CNN career in 1983 as an assistant on CNN's international assignment desk in Atlanta. Before joining CNN, she worked at WJAR-TV, Providence, R.I., as an electronic graphics designer. From 1981-1982, she worked as a reporter, anchor and producer for WBRU-Radio, also in Providence.

Amanpour earned a bachelor of arts degree in journalism from the University of Rhode Island,
graduating summa cum laude.

SIDEBAR: she was a close friend of John Kennedy Jr.

 

[betz]

How About ...
"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so smalthat they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world."

Eleanor Roosevelt

 

[caitycaity]

i really like eleanor roosevelt.

 

[EROS]

 

[Mermaid02]

How about Margaret Chase Smith??
Or Dorthea Dix??

 

[betz]

EROS, for being a 'smart man' I am amazed you are not catching on to the theme of this post.

 

[CathyCanada]

maybe he is, betz.

 

[betz]

On to:
Margaret Chase Smith was the first woman elected to both houses of Congress.

Senator Smith came to national attention on June 1, 1950, when she became the first member of the Senate to denounce the tactics used by colleague Joseph McCarthy in his anticommunist crusade. Following her "Declaration of Conscience" speech.
In 1964 at the Republican National Convention in San Francisco, where she became the first woman to have her name placed in nomination for the presidency by either of the two major parties. Smith came in second to Barry Goldwater.

"My creed is that public service must be more than doing a job efficiently and honestly. It must be a complete dedication to the people and to the nation with full recognition that every human being is entitled to courtesy and consideration, that constructive criticism is not only to be expected but sought, that smears are not only to be expected but fought, that honor is to be earned but not bought." Margaret Chase Smith

 

[fklhou]

Betz

Really cool thread. I like it.

 

[minniepumpernickel]

I always thought that Christiane Amanpour was an excellent reporter!
What about writers, or poets? Maya Angelou's poetry and prose is one of my favorites right now!

 

[gepetto]

Great topic

 

[betz]

I hope this is the right Dorothy Dix:


As the forerunner of today's popular advice columnists, Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer (1861 1951), writing under the pen name "Dorothy Dix," was America's highest paid and most widely read female journalist at the time of her death. Her advice on love and marriage was syndicated in newspapers around the world. One of her most famous columns was her Dictates for a Happy Life. With an estimated audience of 60 million readers, she became a popular and recognized figure on her travels abroad.

 

[honeywolf7]

Born on April 4, 1802, in Hampden, Maine (then still part of Massachusetts), Dorothea Dix left her unhappy home at age 12 to live and study in Boston with her grandmother. By age 14 she was teaching in a school for young girls in Worcester, Massachusetts, employing a curriculum of her own devising that stressed the natural sciences and the responsibilities of ethical living. In 1821 she opened a school for girls in Boston, where until the mid-1830s periods of intensive teaching were interrupted by periods of ill health. She eventually abandoned teaching and left Boston.

After nearly two years in England Dix returned to Boston, still a semi-invalid, and found to her amazement that she had inherited a sum of money sufficient to support her comfortably for life. But her Calvinist beliefs enjoined her from inactivity. Thus in 1841, when a young clergyman asked her to begin a Sunday school class in the East Cambridge (Massachusetts) House of Correction, she accepted the challenge. In the prison she first observed the inhumane treatment of insane and mentally disturbed persons, who were incarcerated with criminals, irrespective of age or sex. They were left unclothed, in darkness, without heat or sanitary facilities; some were chained to the walls and flogged. Profoundly shocked, Dix traveled for nearly two years throughout the state, observing similar conditions in each institution she examined. In January 1843 she submitted to the Massachusetts legislature a detailed report of her thoroughly documented findings. Her dignity, compassion, and determination were effective in helping to pass a bill for the enlargement of the Worcester Insane Asylum. Dix then moved on to Rhode Island and later New York.

In the next 40 years Dix inspired legislators in 15 U.S. states and in Canada to establish state hospitals for the mentally ill. Her unflagging efforts directly effected the building of 32 institutions in the United States. She carried on her work even while on a convalescent tour of Europe in 1854-56, notably in Italy, where she prevailed upon Pope Pius IX to inspect personally the atrocious conditions she had discovered. Where new institutions were not required, she fostered the reorganization, enlargement, and restaffing--with well-trained, intelligent personnel--of already existing hospitals.

In 1845 Dix published Remarks on Prisons and Prison Discipline in the United States to advocate reforms in the treatment of ordinary prisoners. In 1861 she was appointed superintendent of army nurses for Civil War service. She was ill-suited to administration, however, and had great difficulty with the post. After the war she returned to her work with hospitals. When she died on July 17, 1887, it was in a hospital in Trenton, New Jersey, that she had founded.

 

[honeywolf7]

The life of Juliette Gordon Low is the story of a woman who outgrew the tormenting superficialities of upper-class society to accomplish a major service to people of all classes and races: the founding of the Girl Scouts. She was born into the wealthy Gordon Family of Savannah on the eve of the Civil War. Her socialite mother was impatient with the trouble of bearing children and could not take seriously her husband’s loyalty to the Confederacy. The tension between social appearance and hard reality was felt by little Juliette from her earliest years. All through her childhood, she showed a rebellious, tomboyish streak that kept her from ever entirely fitting the conventional image of the aristocratic Southern Belle. An unhappy marriage to a wealthy and self-indulgent English gentleman left her determined to find a life of service.

At this point, she was fortunate to meet Sir Robert Baden-Powell, a popular hero of the Boer War. He was making good use of his heroic charisma to found and promote the Boy Scouts. Mrs. Low was thoroughly captivated by his values of self-discipline and personal honor and his success in communicating these values to the Boy Scouts. She was troubled, however, that he could not find much place for girls in his plans. Like others of his time, he could not see girls learning to live outdoors and be leaders, much less learning to follow careers outside the home. He would not permit girls’ groups to be called “scouts” at all, although he authorized a few troops of Girl Guides under the direction of his sister. Juliette Low did all she could with troops of the Girl Guides in England, but found the program too restricted for her high hopes.

In 1912, she returned to Savannah determined to put everything she had into those hopes. On the night of her return, she called an old friend and cousin and said, “I’ve got something for the girls of Savannah, and all America, and all the world, and we’re going to start it tonight!” On her own property and with her own wealth, she began Girl Scouts, U.S.A., with a group of eighteen Savannah girls. On a tennis court shielded by curtains, she put them in bloomers and put them through a physical fitness program. She trained them in the basics of independent living and service to others, preparation for careers as well as for home and family. She broke the traditional walls that restricted the life of the southern lady and prepared girls to compete and succeed in any endeavor they chose.

As the movement spread like wildfire across the country, she directed it into paths of community and national service. In World War I, she had Girl Scout troops working with the Red Cross, raising vegetables in their backyard gardens, and selling Liberty Bonds. Presidents and other national leaders showered her with honors. By the end of her life there were some 167,000 Girl Scouts in the United States and how, on their eightieth anniversary, the Girl Scouts have served an estimated fifty million members worldwide.

In the early days, Juliette Low shocked her fashionable contemporaries by decorating her hat with parsley and carrots. She would tell them proudly that she had put her whole fortune into the Girl Scouts. In later years, the Girl Scout uniform was her dress for all occasions. She lies buried in that uniform in Savannah. In her breast-pocket is a note from the head of the Girl Scouts, U.S.A. : “You are not only the first Girl Scout but the best Girl Scout of them all.”


Yes, I'm a former Girl Scout.

 

[honeywolf7]

And finally, one more heroine of mine:

Physician and the first woman in America to receive a medical degree. Born on February 3, 1821, in Bristol, England. Her parents emigrated with their nine children to New York City when Elizabeth was 12. Mr. Blackwell soon became an ardent abolitionist. In 1838 the Blackwells moved to Cincinnati, Ohio; within a few months Mr. Blackwell died and left his family without provision. The three oldest girls supported the family for several years by operating a boarding school for young women.
In 1842 Blackwell accepted a teaching position in Henderson, Kentucky, but local racial attitudes offended her strong abolitionist convictions, and she resigned at the end of the year. On her return to Cincinnati a friend who had undergone treatment for a gynecological disorder told Blackwell that if she could have been treated by a woman doctor she would have been spared an embarrassing ordeal, and she urged Elizabeth to study medicine. The following year Blackwell moved to Asheville, North Carolina, where she taught school and studied medicine in her spare time. Her next move, in 1846, was to a girls' school in Charleston, South Carolina, where she had more time to devote to her medical studies.

When her attempts to enroll in the medical schools of Philadelphia and New York City were rejected, she wrote to a number of small northern colleges and in 1847 was admitted to the Geneva, New York, Medical College. All eyes were upon the young woman whom many regarded as immoral or simply mad, but she soon proved herself an outstanding student. Her graduation in 1849 was highly publicized on both sides of the Atlantic. She then entered La Maternité Hospital for further study and practical experience. While working with the children, she contracted purulent conjunctivitis, which left her blind in one eye.

Handicapped by partial blindness, Dr. Blackwell gave up her ambition to become a surgeon and began practice at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London. In 1851 she returned to New York, where she applied for several positions as a physician, but was rejected because of her sex. She established private practice in a rented room, where her sister Emily, who had also pursued a medical career, soon joined her. Their modest dispensary later became the New York Infirmary and College for Women, operated by and for women. Dr. Blackwell also continued to fight for the admission of women to medical schools. During the Civil War she organized a unit of women nurses for field service.

In 1869 Dr. Blackwell set up practice in London and continued her efforts to open the medical profession to women. Her articles and her autobiography (1895) attracted widespread attention. From 1875 to 1907 she was professor of gynecology at the London School of Medicine for Women. She died at her home in Hastings.

 

[betz]

Next:

Maya Angelou is hailed as one of the great voices of contemporary literature and as a remarkable Renaissance woman. Being a poet, educator, historian, best-selling author, actress, playwright, civil-rights activist, producer and director, Dr. Angelou continues to travel the world making appearances, spreading her legendary wisdom.

In January 1993, she became only the second poet in U.S. History to have the honor of writing and reciting original work at the Presidential Inauguration.

When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this mote of matter
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor
And the body is quieted into awe
excerpt from
A Brave and Startling Truth
Maya Angelou

 

[EROS]

 

[betz]

Meeeeeeoooooow Eartha Kitt:

With an enduring career that has spanned theater, cabaret, television, and the recording industry, Eartha Kitt has become nothing less than a household name. An international star who has given new meaning to the word "versatility," she is one of only a handful of performers to be nominated twice for both a Tony Award and a Grammy Award as well as for an Emmy.

Ms. Kitt’s career came to a sudden about face in 1968 when at a White House luncheon hosted by Lady Bird Johnson, Kitt spoke out against the Vietnam War. For many years afterward, she would be blacklisted by many in the U.S. entertainment industry and would be forced to work abroad where her status remained undiminished. In 1974 she returned to the United States in an acclaimed Carnegie Hall concert and in 1978 received her second Tony Award nomination.