Famous American Woman

This thread teeters from amazingly great to amazingly moronic from post to post, but here is my contribution:

Baez, Joan (1941)
American folk and protest singer.

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Born in Staten Island, New York, into a cultured middle-class family, Joan began singing in local choirs, and after graduating from high school in Los Angeles attended Boston University, abandoning her studies to sing in coffee houses, and in Club 47, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her huge popularity began with her performances at the Newport Folk Festival in 1959 and 1960. In that year she recorded a traditional folk album, Joan Baez. She became closely associated with the song 'We shall overcome', which she sang at the great civil rights marches and rallies of the early 1960s. She also introduced the unknown protest singer Bob Dylan at her concerts and they lived together from 1963 to 1965.

During the 1960s Baez became increasingly politically committed. An active pacifist, she founded the Institute for the Study of Non-Violence in Carmel Valley in 1965 and protested widely against the Vietnam War. She married student leader David Harris in 1968, and during his imprisonment for draft evasion in (1969) produced her David's Album and One Day at a Time. They separated in 1971. After several other protest albums, she made the highly commercial Diamonds and Rust ( (1973)), and began touring on a large scale, rejoining Bob Dylan in his concerts in 1975. She toured Europe and the UK regularly in the 1970s and 1980s and opened the American section of the Live Aid Concert in 1986.

Joan Baez has been a member of the advisory council of Amnesty International since 1974, and visited Hanoi in 1975. She was co-founder of Humanitas, the International Human Rights Commission, in 1979, and in the same year conducted a fact-finding mission in refugee camps in South-East Asia. She also sang to Solidarnósc strikers in Poland and worked with the Mothers of the Disappeared in Argentina.


She's always been a favorite of mine. :) Thanks for starting this thread, Betz, the intent was a good one. :)
 
One of the women I have admired since I was a little girl :) :

Jane Goodall

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In the summer of 1960, 26-year-old Jane Goodall arrived on the shore of Lake Tanganyika in East Africa to study the area's chimpanzee population. Although it was unheard of for a woman to venture into the wilds of the African forest, the trip meant the fulfillment of Jane Goodall's childhood dream. Her work in Tanzania proved more successful than anyone had imagined. In 1965, Jane earned her Ph.D in Ethology from Cambridge University. Soon thereafter, she returned to Tanzania to continue research and to establish the Gombe Stream Research Centre Home.
Jane Goodall's profound scientific discoveries laid the foundation for all future primate studies.

The Jane Goodall Institute
In 1977, Jane founded the Jane Goodall Institute for Wildlife Research, Education and Conservation to provide ongoing support for field research on wild chimpanzees. Today, the mission of the Jane Goodall Institute is to advance the power of individuals to take informed and compassionate action to improve the environment of all living things.

Awards and achievements: As the recipient of numerous awards and the author of many publications, Jane Goodall is world-renowned and highly respected in both the scientific and lay communities. Jane was the international recipient of the 1996 Caring Award and Sigma Xi's 1996 William Proctor Prize for Scientific Achievement. In 1995, she received the National Geographic Society's prestigious Hubbard Medal "for her extraordinary study of wild chimpanzees and for tirelessly defending the natural world we share." She currently serves as a National Geographic Society Explorer-in-Residence. H.M. Queen Elizabeth II awarded Jane Goodall the CBE. In addition, she is the only non-Tanzanian to have received the Medal of Tanzania.

Additional honors include the Kyoto Prize, The Ark Trust Lifetime Achievement Award, the Encyclopedia Britannica Award and the Animal Welfare Institute's Albert Schweitzer Award. She has received honorary doctorates from Salisbury State University, Western Connecticut State University, University of North Carolina, Tufts University, University of Philadelphia, La Salle College, University of Southern California, Wesleyan College, Guelph University, University of Utrecht, Munich University, Edinburgh University and University of Dar Es Salaam. Most recently, Cornell University appointed Jane Goodall a distinguished Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large.

Today, Jane spends much of her time lecturing, sharing her message of hope for the future and encouraging young people to make a difference in their world.

An essay by Jane Goodall:

"Africa, the birthplace of humankind, provides a disturbing clue to our future. As I fly across areas that were forest just years ago and see them becoming desert, I worry. Too many people crowd this continent, so poor they strip the land for food and fuelwood. The subject of my life’s work and our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees and gorillas are slaughtered for food or captured for the live-animal trade. Pollution of air, land, and water abounds. Are we destroying our beautiful planet?

I do have hope—based on three factors. First, we have begun to understand and face up to the problems that threaten us and the survival of life on Earth as we know it. I trust we can use our intellects and willpower to live in ways more harmonious with nature. Second, hope lies in the tremendous enthusiasm and commitment of young people around the world. As they learn about the environmental and social problems that are part of their heritage, they fight to right the wrongs. Third, the indomitable human spirit still soars. There are countless people who have dreamed seemingly unattainable dreams and struggled to achieve their goals against all odds. So let’s move into the next millennium with hope, respect for all living things, understanding, compassion, and love."
 
Another woman I have admired since childhood. EROS showed us a picture of her earlier in the thread:

Audrey Hepburn

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Audrey Hepburn is best known as an actress, loved by all in her starring roles in movies such as Roman Holiday, Sabrina, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and My Fair Lady. However, her greatest role of all was as a humanitarian.

By the late 1980's Audrey's film career was coming to a close, her two sons were grown, and she was living in Switzerland with her companion Robert Wolders. Instead of settling down to a comfortable retirement, she began the job that would occupy the last five years of her life: Special Ambassador for the United Nations Children's Fund. As a starving child in Holland after Word War II, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, forerunner of UNICEF, brought her much-needed food, medicine, and clothing. "There is a moral obligation," she would say, "that those who have should give to those who don't."

Audrey Hepburn's love for children made her decision to become the Special Ambassador for the United Nations Children's Fund an easy one. "When I was little, I used to embarrass my mother by trying to pick babies out of prams at the market," she said. "The one thing I dreamed of in my life was to have children of my own. It always boils down to the same thing - of not only receiving love but wanting desperately to give it."

In the fall of 1987, Audrey was invited to dedicate an international music festival "to the world's children" in Macao, while on a tour of the Far East with Wolders. The money raised by that night's concert was to go to UNICEF. After the concert, Audrey wondered aloud: Wasn't there something more she could be doing for UNICEF?

"We didn't go to her," said Christa Roth, a UNICEF employee who became a close friend of Audrey's, "She came to us." She recalls, "At that time the World Philharmonic Orchestra was embarking on an enormous global tour." One was planned for Tokyo in March 1988.
We knew Audrey had an enormous following among the Japanese. We all decided she should appear there on our behalf, introducing the orchestra and speaking about our work. The numbers who attended exceeded our wildest expectations. It was like a national event. I think that experience decided Audrey: if she could lend her name and fame to UNICEF in such a way that it would help our work with children, she would. That was the beginning; that was how it all started. No one could have foreseen what it led to.
The announcement of Audrey's appointment as the Special Ambassador for UNICEF was made on March 8, 1988. Although UNICEF officials would have been content if Audrey had functioned merely as a figurehead, that was never the case. "From the moment she signed on, she went into the field, meeting with the starving children whose message of despair she hoped to carry to the rest of the world. Completely hands on in her approach, she raised the consciousness of millions of people about countries they never knew existed." However, hardship would be inevitable on some of the tours she would take to the impoverished Third World. Physical peril and medical risks in war-torn counties where disease was endemic were always a danger.


It had been less than a week since Audrey had enlisted with UNICEF when she and Wolders took off for Ethiopia, her first field-trip assignment. Ethiopia was among the poorest countries in the world. The trip was designed to bring attention to the dire conditions. She went to places with no sanitation, no heating, and no water. She visited hospitals, food distribution centers, and dam construction sites. "I'm glad I've got a name, because I'm using it for what it's worth. It's like a bonus that my career has given me," Audrey said later. "My first big mission for UNICEF in Ethiopia was just to attract attention, before it was too late, to conditions which threatened the whole country. My role was to inform the world, to make sure that the people of Ethiopia were not forgotten."

Audrey had always kept her distance from the press, and, despite her acting career, speaking in public "scare[d] the wits out of [her]." However, her new job required numerous speeches, press conferences, and interviews to effectively raise public awareness. As she had done for each film, Audrey put her all into doing the best job she possibly could. "Audrey did so much hard work - before as well as after," says Roth.
She called for all the information we could supply her with about a particular crisis spot. She not only went on her mission well briefed, but she could speak of particular problems - not just UNICEF ones - with a detail that convinced her listeners she had used her time well, and wasn't simply bringing back a sincere but rather superficial view of a country. She wanted, above all else, to be credible.
Roth says, "Her professionalism was terrific. She knew how a sentiment had to be boiled down into a phrase, a 'soundbite'. She was able to deliver it with all the force of her art." She got more coverage than any other UNICEF ambassador before or since.

The next trip planned was to Turkey, in August 1988. The priority in Turkey was immunization against the six main child-killing diseases: measles, tuberculosis, tetanus, whooping cough, diphtheria and polio. After they had notified the government that their infant mortality was very high, a total immunization program was planned. Audrey said, "The army gave us their trucks, the fishmongers gave us their wagons for the vaccines, and once the date was set, it took ten days to vaccinate the whole country. Not bad."

A few months later Audrey made a trip to South America, followed by a trip to Central America in February 1989. She studied projects designed to aid children living on the street. "Do you know how many street children there are in South America?" she later asked in New York. "All over the world?… But especially in South America and India? It's something like a hundred million who live and die in the streets."

On her tour of Central America she pleaded the case for children in a series of meetings with the chief executives of Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. The most cheerful of all her trips, she was welcomed with signs that read "¡Bienvenida Audrey Hepburn!" wherever she went. She gave a lovely message on breast-feeding to the television cameras, in flawless Spanish. "Soy Audrey Hepburn. Soy Madre. La leche maternal es el major regalo que una madre puede dar a su hijo. Es para toda la vida." (I'm Audrey Hepburn. I'm a mother. Mother's milk is the best gift that a mother can give to her child. It's for his whole life.)

In April 1989, Audrey and Wolders arrived in Sudan to watch the start of a miraculous UNICEF-sponsored relief effort called "Operation Lifeline." Its goal was to ferry food to southern Sudan, which was cut off from all aid because of the civil war. At a remote Sudanese refugee camp, Audrey saw a 14-year old boy lying on a dirt floor with acute anemia, respiratory problems and edema, due to malnutrition. Audrey later said, "That was exactly the same way I finished the war - at that age, with those three things. I thought, how strange to hear those same three things. But it was also a moment of glory for me, because just then a big UNICEF truck came by full of food and medicine."


Audrey's sixth journey was to Bangladesh in October. "Everyone was calling Bangladesh a basket case," says John Isaac, a veteran photographer for UNICEF who became close to Audrey and Wolders, "because of the constant mishaps they had with floods, famine - you name it. But when everybody else was throwing up their hands, Audrey said, 'I want to go there and be with them and promote their cause.' I thought that was amazing." Isaac recalls, "She traveled to every little corner. Often the kids would have flies all over them, but she would just go hug them. I had never seen that. Other people had a certain amount of hesitation, but she would just grab them. Children would just come up to hold her hand, touch her - she was like the Pied Piper."

As in Bangladesh, the main purpose of Audrey's next trip, to Vietnam in October 1990, was to get the government behind the UNICEF-supported immunization and water programs.
UNICEF's Jack Glattbach briefed her on Vietnam's unique 'structural adjustment' policies and asked if she would emphasize that in the documentary they were shooting. 'Oh, that's too complicated for me,' she replied. 'Really, if I don't understand it, I can't speak it.' Glattbach said fine, never mind. But soon after, he recalls, 'watched by a few hundred Vietnamese villagers and with absolutely no 'fluffs,' she spoke four minutes to camera and covered every point from the discussion she 'didn't understand.' It was one of the best summaries I ever heard. It got seven minutes on ABC prime-time news and incredible TV pickup around the world.
While there, she also met with General Vo Nguyan Giap, Vietnam's deputy prime minister and great war hero.


In addition to over fifty trips to Third World countries, every year between 1988 and 1992 Audrey hosted, with Roger Moore, the Danny Kaye International Children's Special, in Holland, which was broadcast worldwide and drew enormous donations. In 1990, she performed in a series of benefit concerts for UNICEF, reading selections from The Diary of Anne Frank, integrated with an original orchestral work by Michael Tilson Thomas. It toured five United States cities as well as London. Also in 1990, she co hosted Concert for Peace with Jimmy Carter, Francois Mitterand, and Nelson Mandela among the participants. She even drew a simple but beautiful sketch of an Ethiopian woman and baby that she donated to an auction to benefit UNICEF, which sold for $16,500 and was put on a UNICEF Christmas card.

On April 6, 1989, Audrey made the first of two congressional appearances, testifying before the House Select Subcommittee on Hunger. She told the congressmen, "Less than one-half of one percent of today's world economy would be the total required to alleviate the worst aspects of poverty and would meet basic human needs over the next ten years." In her second appearance, in June 1991, she urged a boost in aid for Africa.

Audrey's last journey was to war-torn Somalia, in September 1992. "I walked into a nightmare," she said. "I have seen famine in Ethiopia and Bangladesh, but I have seen nothing like this - so much worse than I could possibly have imagined. I wasn't prepared for this. It's so hard to talk about because it's unspeakable." Between the worst drought in history and a horrifying civil war that had destroyed the country; most of the population was starving to death. "There's nothing left," Audrey said. "The cattle are dead, the crops are gone, whatever there was has been looted. Anarchy. It's a country without a government." It was the first time in history that a country had been held together purely by relief workers, from organizations such as UNICEF, Save the Children, and Care. But there were too few of them.

At the feeding camp in Baidoa, "One of the first sights I saw" Audrey said, "was that they were loading the bodies of that night onto a truck, and most of them were very small. Just one night's dead. Around a hundred. Children were sitting around waiting to be fed, but they were beyond wanting food. Some of them had to be more or less force-fed with tiny spoonfuls. They are just totally spent." Her son Sean says:

She came back and said 'I've been to hell.' And every time she spoke about it, she had to relive it. Nothing ever prepared her for going to a camp and meeting a little kid and coming back the next day and he wasn't there anymore. You're supposed to go back to your hotel room and drink bottled water? Get on a plane and go back to your regular life? It throws your whole world out of balance.

The mission was followed by press conferences in London, Geneva, and Paris and numerous television appearances in the United States.


Not least of her skills was that she could speak with reporters in a variety of languages. More than any other, this round of interviews generated an unprecedented amount of international coverage and captivated the world. In all of them, she looks a bit tired but otherwise healthy, betraying no hint of the fact that she had just fifteen weeks to live.

When Audrey returned from Somalia, she descovered she had developed cancer in her appendix, which spread to her colon and then to her stomach. Speaking in New York after her trip, she said, "I'm filled with a rage at ourselves. I don't believe in collective guilt, but I do believe in collective responsibility."

"The work Audrey Hepburn did for UNICEF was imperative for us" said Lawrence E. Bruce, Jr., the president and CEO of the US Committee for UNICEF. In 1991, President George Bush gave Audrey the highest honor any individual can receive in the United States - the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She said, "I have been given the privilege of speaking for children who cannot speak for themselves, and my task is an easy one, because children have no political enemies. To save a child is a blessing: to save a million is a God-given opportunity."

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Amelia Earhart, 1897-1937

Amelia Earhart was born on 24 July 1897 in Atchison, Kansas. Her flying career began in Los Angeles in 1921 when, at age 24, she took flying lessons from Neta Snook and bought her first airplane-- a Kinner Airstar. Due to family problems, she sold her airplane in 1924 and moved back East, where she took employment as a social worker. Four years later, she returned to aviation bought an Avro Avian airplane and became the first woman to make a solo-return transcontinental flight. From then on, she continued to set and break her own speed and distance records, in competitive events, as well as personal stunts promoted by her husband George Palmer Putnam.


Earhart's name became a household word in 1932 when she became the first woman--and second person--to fly solo across the Atlantic, on the fifth anniversary of Charles Lindbergh's feat, flying a Lockheed Vega from Harbor Grace, Newfoundland to Londonderry, Ireland. That year, she received the Distinguished Flying Cross from the Congress, the Cross of Knight of the Legion of Honor from the French Government, and the Gold Medal of the National Geographic Society from President Hoover.


In January 1935 Earhart became the first person to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean from Honolulu to Oakland, California. Later that year she soloed from Los Angeles to Mexico City and back to Newark, N.J. In July 1936 she took delivery of a Lockheed 10E "Electra," financed by Purdue University, and started planning her round-the-world flight.


Earhart's flight would not be the first to circle the globe, but it would be the longest--29,000 miles, following an equatorial route. On March 17, 1937 she flew the first leg, from Oakland, California to Honolulu, Hawaii. As the flight resumed three days later, a tire blew on takeoff and Earhart ground-looped the plane. Severely damaged, the aircraft had to be shipped back to California for repairs, and the flight was called off. The second attempt would begin at Miami, this time to fly from West to East; Fred Noonan, a former Pan Am pilot, would be Earhart's navigator and sole companion in flight for the entire trip. They departed Miami on June 1, and after numerous stops in South America, Africa, the Subcontinent and Southeast Asia, they arrived at Lae, New Guinea on June 29. About 22,000 miles of the journey had been completed. The remaining 7,000 miles would all be over the Pacific Ocean.


On July 2, 1937 at 0000 GMT, Earhart and Noonan took off from Lae. Their intended destination was Howland Island, a tiny piece of land a few miles long, 20 feet high, and 2, 556 miles away. Their last positive position report and sighting were over the Nukumanu Islands, about 800 miles into the flight. The U.S. Coast Guard cutter USCGC Itasca was on station near Howland, assigned on short notice to communicate with Earhart's plane and guide her to the island once she arrived in the vicinity.


But it soon became evident that Earhart and Noonan had little practical knowledge of the use of radio navigation. The frequencies Earhart was using were not well suited to direction finding (in fact, she had left behind the lower-frequency reception and transmission equipment which might have enabled Itasca to locate her), and the reception quality of her transmissions was poor. After six hours of frustrating attempts at two-way communications, contact was lost.


A coordinated search by the Navy and Coast Guard was organized and no physical evidence of the flyers or their plane was ever found. Earhart and Noonan's fate has been the subject of many rumors and allegations which were never substantiated. Modern analysis indicates that after passing the Nukumanu Islands, Earhart began to vector off course, unwittingly heading for a point about 100 miles NNW of Howland. A few hours before their estimated arrival time Noonan calculated a "sun line," but without a successful, radio-frequency range calculation, a precise "fix" on the plane's location could not be established. Researchers generally believe that the plane ran out of fuel and that Earhart and Noonan perished at sea.


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Dorothy Day worked for almost 50 years among the poor and homeless, was an outspoken and often controversial proponent of peace and social justice, and broke bread with people as varied as Eugene O'Neill and Cesar Chavez. At the height of the Great Depression she founded the Catholic Worker movement, which continues to feed and house the poor in cities all over the world.

Day was often accused of being naive and simplistic. These charges were leveled at her primarily for two reasons. She was a pacifist no matter the context, and she refused to dismiss the poor as undeserving of unconditional love and mercy. While these values were at the core of her life's work, they both ran absolutely contrary to the twin ethic dominating American political discourse: that violence could be solved by greater violence, and that the poor were merely personal failures who were unwilling to pull on their own bootstraps.

Though she chose to work outside the limelight throughout her life, today she is known as the American Mother Teresa.
 
Oh! I just remembered that this thread is about great American women! I'm sorry I got off topic with my last twos posts, but I hope they can remain on the thread They are/were truly great women. :D You can have them deleted though if you'd like. I'd understand. :) So --------- back to great American women! Gotta love a woman with a strong desire for justice and equality for all and a love for big, funky hats!!

Bella Abzug

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Bella was "born yelling" in 1920. A daughter of Russian immigrants, she grew up poor in the Bronx. By the age of thirteen, she was already giving her first speeches and defying convention at her family's synagogue. At tuition free Hunter College Bella was student body president, and on scholarship at Columbia she was one of only a minuscule number of women law students across the nation.

Abzug then worked as a lawyer for the next twenty five years, specializing in labor and tenants’ rights, and civil rights and liberties cases. During the McCarthy era she was one of the few attorneys willing to fight against the House Un-American Activities Committee. While she ran her own practice, she was also raising two daughters together with her husband Martin.

In the 1960’s, Abzug helped start the nationwide Women Strike For Peace (WSP), in response to U.S.and Soviet nuclear testing, and soon became an important voice against the Vietnam War.

At the age of 50, Abzug ran for congress in Manhattan and won on a strong feminist and peace platform. She quickly became a nationally known legislator, one of only 12 women in the House. Her record of accomplishments in Congress continually demonstrated her unshakable convictions as an anti-war activist and as a fighter for social and economic justice.

After three terms in Congress, Abzug gave up her seat in 1976 to run for an all male Senate, but lost the democratic primary by less than one percent. In an increasingly conservative political climate, Abzug also lost later bids for city mayor and for Congress.

In 1977, she presided over the historic first National Women's Conference in Houston. She then headed President Carter's National Advisory Committee on Women until she was abruptly fired for criticizing the administration's economic policies in 1979.

In response, Abzug founded Women USA, a grassroots political action organization. At the same time, she was playing a major role at the UN International Women's Conferences, practicing law, publishing and lecturing. In 1986 she suffered the loss of her greatest supporter, her husband Martin.

In 1990, Bella moved on to co-found the Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO), an international activist and advocacy network. As WEDO president, Abzug became an influential leader at the United Nations and at UN world conferences, working to empower women around the globe.

Abzug gave her final public speech before the UN in March of 1998, and died soon after, at the age of 77. Her death is still being mourned in this country and around the world.
 
Andrea Yates meets the definition of famous to a "T"!!!
I made no mistake at all. The post started with janet reno and famous americans, since she is more famous for her negative actions(by the way her actions killed more kids than andrea yates) it is only fitting to list the negative with the postive as most seem apparently to believe the only famous american women as those that may have made postive contributions. Their are famous women who in america who are both known for postiive and negative and if you start with reno the line is made blurry from the get go. Now if we would have started with Martha Washington things would have been different!!
 
BOB, you went out on one of those DIS proverbial "limbs" by calling Andrea Yates "famous". (I actually see her as SICK, neither famous or infamous). However, your point is well taken.

Janet Reno will forever be known as the BUTCHER OF WACO for essentially executing 81 MEN,WOMEN,AND CHILDREN ; however, she was initially heralded in this thread as a "famous woman".

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Saint Katherine Drexel, of the famous Drexel family of Philadelphia

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Francis Anthony and Hannah Langstroth Drexel gave birth to their second daughter Katharine, on November 26, 1858. One month after Katharine's birth, Hannah passed away. For two years, Katharine and her older sister Elizabeth were cared for by their aunt and uncle, Mr. & Mrs. Anthony J. Drexel. In 1860, Katharine's father, a well known banker and philanthropist, married Emma Bouvier and in 1863 a daughter, Louise was born. The three children were raised in a home of deep faith and tender love.


In 1870, Mr. Drexel purchased a summer home, Saint Michel. in Torresdale, Pennsylvania. Elizabeth and Katharine taught at the Sunday School that Emma Drexel began for the children of employees and neighbors. They spent two afternoons a week helping their mother to service the poor. Their pastor was Reverend James O'Connor, formerly the rector of St. Charles Seminary, and later the bishop of Omaha, Nebraska. He became a cherished family friend, and Katharine's spiritual director. The girls were educated by tutors, and their parents took them on tours of the United States and Europe.
Back to Chapel History Page
(Below, Katharine Age 21)
1883 Call to Religious Life

When Katharine was twenty-one, her mother developed cancer, and Katharine nursed her through three years of intense suffering. During this time, the thought of religious life came to her constantly and forcibly. After her mother's death, she wrote for counsel to Bishop O'Connor. As to her call to the religious life itself, he advised her to "Think, pray, and wait."

(Below, Katharine's First Profession)
1885 Lay Apostolate

Mr. Drexel died in 1885. By the terms of his will Katharine and her sisters were, during their lifetime, beneficiaries of the income from his estate. Through the great Indian missionary, Monsignor Joseph Stephan and Katharine became acquainted with the sufferings of the American Indians. With her two sisters, she visited the reservations to see conditions and needs. She began to build schools on the reservations, supplying food, clothing, furnishings, and salaries for teachers. She also found priests to serve the spiritual needs of the people. As she became aware of the suffering of the Black people of the South and East, she extended her charity to them. Throughout her lifetime, through the Bureau of Colored and Indian Missions, she encouraged and financially supported missions throughout this country and abroad.

1891 The Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament

In 1889 Katharine obtained Bishop O'Connor's consent to become a religious. Her preference was for a cloistered life, but he encouraged her to found an institute to work for the Indians and Colored People. She hesitated at the idea of founding a religious institute but came to accept this as her vocation. On November 7, 1889, she received the religious habit and the name of Sister Mary Katharine. At Bishop O'Connor's death, Archbishop Patrick J. Ryan of Philadelphia became her spiritual guide.
Back to Chapel History Page
On February 12, 1891, Katharine Drexel pronounced her vows as the first Sister of the Blessed Sacrament. With thirteen companions, she returned to St. Michel.

In 1892 they moved to St. Elizabeth's Convent in Cornwell Heights, now Bensalem, Pennsylvania. The burden of administration and guidance of her congregation in the Eucharistic spirit, the total gift of self, rested on her for forty-four years.



Missionary work began with the opening of a boarding school for Black children, and then one among the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico. In 1902, St. Michael's School on the Navajo Indian reservation, was opened. As the years passed, boarding and day schools were opened in the East, the Midwest, and in the rural and urban areas of the South and Southwest. In 1917, a school to prepare teachers was established in New Orleans, which received a charter in 1925 as Xavier University of New Orleans.

In 1935, Saint Katharine suffered a severe heart attack, and for the next twenty years lived in prayerful retirement. Her interest and love for the missions deepened, until her death on March 3, 1955. She is interred in the crypt of the Motherhouse Chapel, the Saint Katharine Drexel Shrine.

In the opinion of her contemporaries, she was truly saintly. It was their belief that she was singled out by God's grace. She was a source of inspiration, a model for imitation.


St. Katharine established many ministries from 1891 until her death in 1955. She led a life devoted to uplifting the minds and spirits of Native and African American women, men, and children. Founding and staffing schools for both Native and African Americans throughout the country became a priority for St. Katharine and her congregation. During her lifetime, she opened, staffed, and directly supported nearly sixty schools and missions. St. Katharine also founded Xavier University of Louisiana, the only predominantly Black Catholic institution of higher learning in the United States.


St. Katharine's Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament have joyously and faithfully continued her work for Eucharistic social justice since her death in 1955, despite no longer having her financial resources. St. Katharine's inherited wealth was disbursed according to her father's will to various charities, not including the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament; the congregation was founded after her father's death.

1964 - Introduction of Cause of Canonization
The Cause for Canonization was formally opened in 1964 by John Cardinal Krol. Her Cause has advanced as of October 7, 1999. Regarding a healing under investigation, the Medical Board at the Vatican in Rome stated: "There is no natural cause for the cure attributed to St. Katharine Drexel." Katharine Drexel was canonized October 1, 2000.
 












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