Blog – Women's Public Leadership Network

The Women Leaders WPLN Celebrates This Month: September Birthdays — Women's Public Leadership Network

Written by Sarah Quinlan | Sep 30, 2021 4:00:00 AM

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

  • Liliʻuokalani, the only queen regnant and the last sovereign monarch of the Hawaiian Kingdom (September 2)

  • Dixy Lee Ray, scientist and Washington state's first woman governor (September 3)

  • Mary Parker Follett, social worker and management consultant who has been called "the mother of modern management" (September 3)

  • Marguerite Higgins, reporter, war correspondent, and first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for Foreign Correspondence (September 3)

  • Amy Beach, composer and pianist who became the first American woman to compose and publish a symphony (September 5)

  • Jane Addams, reformer and social worker who co-founded Chicago's Hull House and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and became the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (September 6)

  • Catharine Beecher, educator and activist for female education (September 6)

  • Zelia Nuttall, archaeologist and anthropologist (September 6)

  • Louise Suggs, professional golfer who co-founded the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) (September 7)

  • Ruby Bridges, civil rights activist who was the first Black child to desegregate her elementary school in 1960 (September 8)

  • Delilah Leontium Beasley, historian and newspaper columnist who was the first Black American woman to publish a regular column in a major metropolitan newspaper (September 9)

  • Alice Brown Davis, the first woman Principal Chief of the Seminole Tribe of Oklahoma (September 10)

  • Mary Watson Whitney, astronomer (September 11)

  • Louise Boyd, explorer and the first woman to fly over the North Pole (September 16)

  • Sarah Delany, educator and civil rights activist (September 19)

  • Mabel Vernon, suffragist who helped organize the "Silent Sentinels" protests (September 19)

  • Victoria Woodhull, suffragist who ran for president in 1872 and is considered the first woman to run for the presidency (September 23)

  • Mary Church Terrell, suffragist and civil rights activist who helped found the National Association of Colored Women (September 23)

  • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, suffragist and civil rights activist who helped found the National Association of Colored Women and was among the first Black women to be published in the United States (September 24)

  • Christine Todd Whitman, first (and so far only) woman governor of New Jersey (September 26)

  • Janice Kay Brewer, fourth woman governor of Arizona (September 26)

  • Madeleine May Kunin, first (and so far only) woman governor of Vermont and the first Jewish woman to be elected governor in the United States (September 28)

  • Caroline Yale, educator and deaf education pioneer (September 29)

Click here to read the September newsletter in full.