Showing posts with label WOC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WOC. Show all posts

April 26 - A Dressmaker's Invention

Posted on April 26, 2019



Born into slavery in North Carolina, Sarah Marshall Boone and her family went to Connecticut before the start of the Civil War. Boone worked as a dressmaker while raising eight children.

When you are working for pay AND raising eight children, you need all the labor-saving devices you can get. Boone noticed that a normal ironing board was almost impossible to use for women's sleeves, so she invented a narrow, curved ironing board that would work better.



And she even sought a patent for her invention. On this date in 1892, she received a U.S. patent for her improvements to the ironing board.

Not very many African American women of Sarah Boone's time became patent-holding inventors, for sure. Let's celebrate Boone today!!





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April 23 - Charlotte E. Ray

Posted on April 23, 2019

On this date in 1872, Charlotte E. Ray became the first black woman in the United States to be the admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia. Earlier that year, when she graduated from Howard University School of Law and was admitted to the D.C. bar, she became the first black woman to become a U.S. lawyer, period!

Ray opened a law office and advertised in a newspaper run by Frederick Douglass. 

There are accounts of Ray as an attorney: clear, authoritative, eloquent. She apparently had a great grasp of corporate law, and she once passionately argued on the behalf of an abused wife.

However, Ray had two huge flaws: she wasn't white, and she wasn't a man.

!


OF COURSE being black and female are NOT flaws! Of course those things shouldn't have mattered to people who needed a lawyer who knew the laws of the land and built good arguments...

...But it did matter, apparently. Because Ray faced a lot of prejudice from people who wouldn't trust a woman with their cases, wouldn't trust a black lawyer with their cases, and certainly wouldn't trust a black female lawyer!

Sigh.

Even though Charlotte Ray was an excellent lawyer, she couldn't make a living at it, and so she ended up moving to New York and becoming a teacher.

She also worked towards women's suffrage and Civil Rights for black people.

Nowadays, in the U.S., about one-third of all lawyers are women. And there are enough black female lawyers to have Black Women Lawyers' Associations...


...and to be snapping up judgeships in record numbers.




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April 1 - Happy Birthday, Wangari Maathai

Posted on April 1, 2019

She was the first African woman to ever win the Nobel Peace Prize. 

She was also the first environmentalist to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Born on this date in 1940, in Kenya, Wangari Maathai was educated in two universities in the U.S. as well as in the University of Nairobi in Kenya. She studied biology and veterinary science. Out of school, she married and had children, and she began to teach at the university level. 

For a while there, in every job Maathai held, she was the first woman to have held that job: first female senior lecturer in anatomy, first female chair of the Department of Veterinary Anatomy, first female associate professor...

In 1977, Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, an environmental organization that focused on planting trees, conserving the environment, and developing and safeguarding women's rights. 


Maathai was eventually elected a member of Parliament and served with an administration as an assistant minister for environmental resources. She even became part of the World Future Council.

Check out some of Maathai's wisdom:














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