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More Women's History

    Since this is Women's History Month, I've been trying to think of historical women, both American and worldwide.
My list is short. Betsy Ross, Pocahontas, Sacajawea, Dolly Madison, Martha Washington, Martha Jefferson, Jane Adams, Virginia Dare, Mary Lincoln, come to mind first. Then Annie Oakley, Calamity Jane, Eleanor Roosevelt, Susan B Anthony, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart, Clara Barton, Florence Nightingale (English), Lady Byrd Johnson, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Hillary Clinton, Rose Kennedy, Bella Abzug, Condaleeza Rice, Rosa Parks, Correta Scott King, Patty Hearst, and Sharon Tate. (It's not all positive.) And if you include performers, athletes, and artists who made history, you'd have to add Lucille Ball, Gracie Allen, Kate Smith, Mahalia Jackson, Pearl Bailey, Grandma Moses, Billie Jean King, Barbara Walters, Edith Wharton, Heda Hopper, Gertrude Stein, Whoopi, Dolly Parton, and Madonna. Emily Dickinson, Edna St Vincent Millay, Harper Lee. That's only a beginning.

    Now that I've started, I'm on a roll. Other outstanding women of history include the anonymous nurse on the front cover of a news magazine getting a kiss from a soldier returning from the war. And you'd have to include the wife of Governor Wallace. And the young black female student who was one of the first to integrate an all white school. And Helen Gurley Brown, a successful business woman who has influenced generations of women. Emily Post and the Vanderbilt women for reminding generations that we are a civilized people and that tradition is very good for us sometimes. And the phenomenon of Martha Stewart. And the fictional image of Betty Crocker. Oprah. Lottie Moon, missionary to China at turn of the century, for the way she revolutionized the financial support of missionaries. Mother Teresa! Madame Curie. Maggie Walker, the first woman banker, and black, too, to become nationally known. I've chipped up the ice of frozen memory.

    How could I have taken so long to recall Helen Keller? Or the roles played by Marilyn Monroe, Ingrid Bergman, Helen Hayes, or Nellie Bly? And there's Margaret Meade, Katherine Graham, Pearl Buck, Louisa May Alcott, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. And, of course, Sandra Day O'Connor, Janet Reno, Betty Friedan, and Gloria Steinheim. Ella Fitzgerald, Maria Callas, Gwendolyn Brooks, ingrid Bergman. Mary Cassatt, Georgia O'Keefe. And now we can add the governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin. Margaret Chase Smith.Geraldine Ferrara. Harriet Tubman. Beverly Sills. And Cher (Sure, she's historical. Besides entertaining troops, she bought protective helmets for the Iraqi engagement). In my community everyone knows well the name of Sally Hemmings, a favorite slave of the Jefferson family.

      We don't normally think of them as a separate category, but there are a lot of female figures in history. Catherine the Great (Russian), Marie Antoinette, Mary Queen of Scots, Queen Elizabeth 1 & II, Queen Victoria. Virginia Wolfe. Jane Austen. George Eliot (pen name). Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Eva Perone. Cleopatra. Golda Meir, Indira Ghandi. Princess Di, the Duchess of Windsor, Ann Boleyn, Joan of D'Arc. Alexandra, tragically slain by the Bolsheviks with her children. Helen of Troy (much of culture, classic literature is named in her honor).

      I know there are so many more worthwhile women to list, but there are two problems. My sometimer's disease blocks my ability to recall the name. And the role played by women isn't normally emphasized. So we don't remember stories about women architects, doctors, scientists, and educators. We remember artists, writers, musicians, because that's okay somehow. But in the fields normally reserved for men, women's roles are underplayed. I'm taking this as a challenge for the rest of March to learn about women in history.