This month, we're celebrating the birthdays of the following women:
Maya Angelou, poet and civil rights activist who authored the autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (April 4)
Janet Davison Rowley, human geneticist and cancer genetics pioneer (April 5)
Mildred Fay Jefferson, physician who was the first Black woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School and served as president of the National Right to Life Committee (April 6)
Rose Schneiderman, suffragist who urged safe workplace condition and worked for women's right to vote in New York (April 6)
Eleanora "Billie Holiday" Fagan, jazz singer (April 7)
Frances Perkins, who in 1933 became the first woman appointed to the U.S. Cabinet and therefore the first woman in the presidential line of succession (April 10)
Dolores Huerta, civil rights activist, recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the first Latina inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame (April 10)
Jane Matilda Bolin, the first Black woman to graduate from Yale Law School, join the New York City Bar Association and the New York City Law Department, and to serve as a judge in the United States (April 11)
Beverly Cleary, author and creator of Ramona Quimby (April 12)
Norma Merrick Sklarek, first Black woman to officially become an architect in New York and California, who was referred to as the "Rosa Parks of Architecture" (April 15)
Ella Fitzgerald, jazz singer (April 25)
Anita Loos, first female staff scriptwriter in Hollywood who was among the first to join the Lucy Stone League (April 26)
Coretta Scott King, civil rights leader and the wife of Martin Luther King, Jr (April 27)
Harper Lee, author who wrote To Kill a Mockingbird (April 28)
