---
title: "The Women Leaders WPLN Celebrates This Month: June Birthdays — Women's Public Leadership Network"
description: "This month, we're celebrating the birthdays of the following female trailblazers and leaders:     Hazel Dickens , bluegrass singer and songwriter (June 1)     Martha Washington , the inaugural First Lady of the United States (June 2)     Dorothy West , novelist and member of the Harlem Renaissance ("
---

[Blog – Women's Public Leadership Network ](https://womenspublicleadership.net/blog)

# [The Women Leaders WPLN Celebrates This Month: June Birthdays — Women's Public Leadership Network](https://womenspublicleadership.net/blog/2021/6/28/the-women-leaders-wpln-celebrates-this-month-june-birthdays)

 Written by [Sarah Quinlan](https://womenspublicleadership.net/blog/author/sarah-quinlan) | Jun 30, 2021 4:00:00 AM

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

- **Hazel Dickens**, bluegrass singer and songwriter (June 1)
- **Martha Washington**, the inaugural First Lady of the United States (June 2)
- **Dorothy West**, novelist and member of the Harlem Renaissance (June 2)
- **Josephine Baker**, performer and civil rights activist (June 3)
- **Barbara Bush**, former First Lady and one of only two women to be wife of one U.S. president and mother of another U.S. president (June 8)
- **Helen Marot**, writer and librarian who investigated child labor and working conditions (June 9)
- **Phyllis Ann Wallace**, economist who was the first woman to receive a doctorate of economics at Yale University and the first female tenured professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management (June 9)
- **Hattie McDaniel**, actress and the first Black American to win an Academy Award (June 10)
- **Jeannette Rankin**, politician from Montana who became the first woman elected to Congress in 1916 (June 11)
- **Eleanor Norton Holmes**, congresswoman representing the District of Columbia (June 13)
- **Harriet Beecher Stowe**, author whose anti-slavery novel *Uncle Tom's Cabin* was the best-selling novel of the 19th century (June 14)
- **Barbara McClintock**, scientist who received the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, the first woman to do so solo (June 16)
- **Mary Katharine Goddard**, publisher who was the second printer of the Declaration of Independence (June 16)
- **Marita Bonner**, essayist and playwright during the Harlem Renaissance (June 16)
- **Susan La Flesche Picotte**, doctor who is known as the first Native American to earn a medical degree (June 17)
- **Sylvia Porter**, economist, columnist, and author (June 18)
- **Katherine Dunham**, dancer, choreographer, and civil rights activist (June 22)
- **Octavia Butler**, science fiction writer and the first science fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship (June 22)
- **Helen Keller**, suffragist, speaker, and author who was the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree (June 27)
- **Lena Horne**, performer and civil rights activist (June 30)

[Click here to read the June newsletter in full](https://go.womenspublicleadership.net/june-2021-wpln-newsletter).

[View full post](https://womenspublicleadership.net/blog/2021/6/28/the-women-leaders-wpln-celebrates-this-month-june-birthdays)

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