The Women Leaders WPLN Celebrates This Month: November Birthdays

This month, we're celebrating the birthdays of the following women trailblazers and leaders:

  • Marion Jones Farquhar, tennis player who in 1900 became the first American woman to win an Olympic medal (November 2)

  • Rose Bird, jurist who was the first woman to serve in the California State Cabinet and the first woman Chief Justice of California (November 2)

  • Elizabeth P. Hoisington, a U.S. Army officer who was one of the first two women to attain the rank of brigadier general (November 3)

  • Evelyn "Mama Bird" Bryan Johnson, aviator who in 1991 passed her 50,000th hour of logged flight time and was named in the Guinness Book of World Records as having accumulated the most flying hours of any woman pilot (November 4)

  • Ida Tarbell, writer and investigative journalist (November 5)

  • Opal Kunz, aviator who in 1930 became the first woman pilot to race with men in an open competition (November 6)

  • Florence Sabin, medical scientist who in 1925 became the first woman elected to the National Academy of Sciences (November 9)

  • Hedy Lamarr, actress and inventor whose work is widely considered to have led to the eventual creation of Bluetooth and WiFi (November 9)

  • Lilly Pulitzer, entrepreneur and fashion designer (November 10)

  • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, suffragist and one of the most prominent leaders of the women's rights movement (November 12)

  • Condoleezza Rice, professor and diplomat who was the first woman to serve as National Security Advisor, the second woman Secretary of State, and the first Black woman Secretary of State (November 14)

  • Georgia O'Keeffe, artist (November 15)

  • Mary Margaret McBride, radio host who was called "the First Lady of Radio" (November 16)

  • Winson Hudson, civil rights activist (November 17)

  • Anna Pauline Murray, civil rights activist, lawyer, and Episcopal priest (November 20)

  • Lillian Copeland, track and field athlete who won Olympic gold medals for the discus throw (November 24)

  • Mary Edwards Walker, prisoner of war and civilian Army surgeon who became the first (and only) woman to receive the Medal of Honor for her efforts during the Civil War (November 26)

  • Sarah Grimké, abolitionist and suffragist (November 26)

  • Dora Strother, aviator and Woman Air Force Service Pilot (WASP) (November 27)

  • Helen Magill White, the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in America (November 28)

  • Louisa May Alcott, novelist whose novels included Little Women (November 29)

  • Nellie Tayloe Ross, politician and the first (and only) woman to have served as governor of Wyoming (November 29)

Click here to read our November newsletter in full.