The Women Leaders WPLN Celebrates This Month: August Birthdays

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

  • Jackie Ormes, first Black American woman cartoonist (August 1)

  • Maggie Kuhn, American social activist who founded the Gray Panthers and advocated nursing home reform (August 3)

  • Gertrude Rush, first Black American woman lawyer in Iowa and one of the founders of the Negro Bar Association (now known as the National Bar Association) (August 5)

  • Maggie Gee, American aviator who was one of two Chinese-American women pilots during World War II (August 5)

  • Florence Bailey, American ornithologist who wrote what is considered the first modern bird field guide (August 8)

  • Esther Hobart Morris, America's first woman justice of the peace (August 8)

  • Era Bell Thompson, American journalist who served as editor of Ebony magazine (August 10)

  • Dolores Alexander, American women's rights activist and lesbian feminist (August 10)

  • Lucy Stone, American abolitionist, suffragist, and women's rights leader who was the first woman from Massachusetts to earn a college degree (August 13)

  • Annie Oakley, American sharpshooter (August 13)

  • Gerty Cori, Austro-Hungarian-American biochemist who became the first American woman to win a Nobel Prize in science (August 15)

  • Marion Bauer, American composer and writer (August 15)

  • Bridget "Biddy" Mason, American nurse who was born enslaved, successfully challenged for her freedom, and became a businesswoman and real estate entrepreneur and later philanthropist (August 15)

  • Margaret "Mardy" Murie, American naturalist and conservationist who has been called the "Grandmother of the Conservation Movement" (August 15)

  • Dorothy Parker, American writer and satirist (August 22)

  • Sarah Frances Whiting, American physicist and astronomer (August 23)

  • Dorothea Tanning, American artist (August 25)

  • Althea Gibson, American tennis player and golfer, the first Black American to win a Grand Slam title, and the first Black American on the Women's Professional Golf Tour (August 25)

  • Elizebeth Smith Friedman, an American expert cryptanalyst who is believed to be the first American woman cryptanalyst (August 26)

  • Geraldine Ferraro, American politican who became the first woman vice-presidential nominee on an American major political party ticket (August 26)

  • Bertha Parker Cody, American archaeologist who is believed to be the first Native American woman archaeologist (August 30)

  • Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, American journalist, suffragist, and civil rights activist who edited the Woman's Era, the first national newspaper published by and for Black American women (August 31)

Click here to read the August newsletter in full.