For Pecos...Women who deserve more recognition...

MarciKS said:
Hold onto your hat there Graham. LOL!

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Rose Schneiderman (April 6, 1882 – August 11, 1972) was a Polish-born American socialist and feminist, and one of the most prominent female labor union leaders. As a member of the New York Women's Trade Union League, she drew attention to unsafe workplace conditions, following the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911, and as a suffragist she helped to pass the New York state referendum of 1917 that gave women the right to vote. Schneiderman was also a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union and served on the National Recovery Administration's Labor Advisory Board under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. She is credited with coining the phrase "Bread and Roses," to indicate a worker's right to something higher than subsistence living. (On Wiki)
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"Ginger Rogers", dancing in high heels, going backwards most of the time, does she deserve a place on the list, (though we think of her being a supporting act don't we?)? :whistle: .
 
grahamg said:
"Ginger Rogers", dancing in high heels, going backwards most of the time, does she deserve a place on the list, (though we think of her being a supporting act don't we?)? :whistle: .
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Do you feel she needs a place on the list? If so see if you can find some bio info on her so we can learn some things about her & her career. :)
 

Okay, serious contribution now!

I haven't got a bio for you, but a lady called Sue Ryder deserves a great deal of recognition, and not just for her charity work, (setting up "Sue Ryder homes", for all kinds of disadvantaged people in the UK).

I read her autobiography some years ago, and her activities trying to assist those everyone maybe wished to forget started after WWII, when she visited those in prison for serious offences across Europe, and tried to help them.

In later life she got together with another luminary from the charity sector here, Sir Leonard Cheshire, (he set up similar homes for disadvantaged people). Both were known for their intellect, breadth of understanding, and compassion.
 
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Victoria_Woodhull.jpg
Victoria Woodhull

Victoria Claflin Woodhull, later Victoria Woodhull Martin (September 23, 1838 – June 9, 1927), was an American leader of the women's suffrage movement. In 1872, she ran for President of the United States. While many historians and authors agree that Woodhull was the first woman to run for President of the United States, some have questioned that priority given issues with the legality of her run. They disagree with classifying it as a true candidacy because she was younger than the constitutionally mandated age of 35 (Woodhull's 35th birthday was in September 1873, seven months after the March inauguration). However, election coverage by contemporary newspapers does not suggest age was a significant issue; this may, however, be due to the fact that few took the candidacy seriously.

(You can read about her in Wikipedia)
 
Sometimes the thing that people become famous for overshadows their far more meaningful contribution in other areas. A classic case of this is the Actress Hedy Lamarr who was an invaluable intelligence asset to the Allies during WWII. She provided invaluable insight into the inner workings of the Nazis High Command where her presence was largely dismissed as simply another beautiful woman.

But she was a brilliant scientist and had numerous patents. Of particular interest to me as a career engineer was her central role in developing frequency hopping radio communications to foil German interception. Later she was a central figure in developing spread spectrum communication technology which requires understanding advanced knowledge well beyond calculus and differential equations. (I always struggled when I found myself in that arena) It is one thing to understand mathematics at that level, but quite another to apply it to an actual real world problem.
When you pick up your cell phone today, please think of Hedy Lamarr since your device uses both frequency hopping and spread spectrum technology.

Meet Hedy Lamarr, Spy, Scientist, and Actress:

https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/hedy-lamarr
 
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Ellen H. Swallow Richards
Ellen Swallow Richards (2).jpg
Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards (December 3, 1842 – March 30, 1911) was an industrial and safety engineer, environmental chemist, and university faculty member in the United States during the 19th century. Her pioneering work in sanitary engineering, and experimental research in domestic science, laid a foundation for the new science of home economics.[1][2] She was the founder of the home economics movement characterized by the application of science to the home, and the first to apply chemistry to the study of nutrition.[3]

Richards graduated from Westford Academy (second oldest secondary school in Massachusetts) in 1862. She was the first woman admitted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She graduated in 1873 and later became its first female instructor.[1][4] Mrs. Richards was the first woman in America accepted to any school of science and technology, and the first American woman to obtain a degree in chemistry, which she earned from Vassar College in 1870.[5][6][7]

Richards was a pragmatic feminist, as well as a founding ecofeminist, who believed that women's work within the home was a vital aspect of the economy.[8]
 
Just as an aside...I had no idea what ecofeminism was so if you're interested...I looked it up.

ecofeminism
[ˌēkōˈfemənizəm]

NOUN
ecofeminism (noun) · eco-feminism (noun)
  1. a philosophical and political movement that combines ecological concerns with feminist ones, regarding both as resulting from male domination of society.
 
One thing I'm noticing is that with the majority of these women they are not all made up with coiffed hairdo's & the whole nine yards. They are fairly simple women who appear to have been more focused on life than on their looks. Too bad today's women aren't more like that.
 
MarciKS said:
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Victoria Woodhull

Victoria Claflin Woodhull, later Victoria Woodhull Martin (September 23, 1838 – June 9, 1927), was an American leader of the women's suffrage movement. In 1872, she ran for President of the United States. While many historians and authors agree that Woodhull was the first woman to run for President of the United States, some have questioned that priority given issues with the legality of her run. They disagree with classifying it as a true candidacy because she was younger than the constitutionally mandated age of 35 (Woodhull's 35th birthday was in September 1873, seven months after the March inauguration). However, election coverage by contemporary newspapers does not suggest age was a significant issue; this may, however, be due to the fact that few took the candidacy seriously.

(You can read about her in Wikipedia)
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I think it's cool that this woman had the nerve to run for president back then.
 
Hedy Lamarr
From Wikipedia:
At the beginning of World War II, Lamarr and composer George Antheil developed a radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes, intended to use frequency-hopping spread spectrum technology to defeat the threat of jamming by the Axis powers. She also helped improve aviation designs for Howard Hughes while they dated during the war. Although the US Navy did not adopt Lamarr and Antheil's invention until 1957,various spread-spectrum techniques are incorporated into Bluetooth technology and are similar to methods used in legacy versions of Wi-Fi. Recognition of the value of their work resulted in the pair being posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014.

Hedy_Lamarr.jpg
 
toscaloby.jpgTosca.pmo.jpgtoscacollag.jpgtosca1.jpg

April 14, 1926 to August 17, 2002

I met Tosca Means in 1978 during my first job after college. I worked in Protective Services in the Children's Services Division for the State of Oregon. She was Director of Volunteer Services for the state and worked in the same office building.

I have to say she was my first positive roll model. She'd grown up poor and Italian in Reno, Nevada. At that time she said that Italians were treated as badly as many people of color are now. As a kid she had two choices - become involved in crime with the gangs or become involved in theater. She chose theater. She became Miss Nevada and became a semi-finalist & scholarship winner in the Miss America scholarship Pageant. That award enabled her to attend and graduate college. Tosca spent a number of years in Nevada where she was a school teacher. She founded the YWCA in Reno and became the executive director. She married and had two kids and also worked as a local television performer.

In 1970 her family moved to Bandon, Oregon, then Coos Bay a couple years later where Tosca served as director of the Coos County Office of the Oregon State Department of Human Resources Volunteer Program. Though her job kept her busy, she somehow always found the time to devote to her beloved On Broadway Theater.

She spent 70 years acting, directing, writing, and producing shows for radio, television, stage, and dinner theater.

Tosca always said, "The Show MUST go on!" Little did any of those who knew her know just how much those waters would be tested upon Tosca's passing. Those who sat in during what was to be her last performance, "Nuncrackers: The Nunsense Christmas Musical," in January 2002 will always remember her best as the character Reverend Mother, a role she cherished playing in all of the Nunsense musicals that have ever been staged at OBT.

She worked behind the scenes as well, painting sets, striking sets, running lights or sound, ushering folks to their seats, and cracking jokes from behind the Snack Bar in the OBT Lobby. Her first love was Children's Theater because she felt the performing arts could be such a strong positive influence on anyone, but especially kids. Tosca was instrumental in the establishment of The Bandon Playhouse, The Dolphin Players, the Playwrights American Conservatory Theater, The On Broadway Theater, and the On Broadway Thespians. She was also on the committee overseeing the creation of South Western Oregon Community College's Performing Arts Center.

The local newspaper, The World, once called her "Our Lady of Infinite Humor."

At one point she tried to talk me into trying out for the lead in a play. Trouble was, it required a nude r-rated love scene. In this little theater the audience was just a few feet away. I told her no way.

She encouraged me to follow my dreams, no matter what. She had wanted to teach birth control in China and didn't follow that dream because of her mother who was Catholic. She also told me to believe in myself. You can see from her picture that she was genuine to the core. I am so fortunate to have her as a friend.

I love her.
 
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What a set of lungs this one has!! Whoooooooo!

Big Mama Thornton
Thornton in the mid-late 1950s
Willie Mae Thornton (December 11, 1926 – July 25, 1984), better known as Big Mama Thornton, was an American rhythm-and-blues singer and songwriter. She was the first to record Leiber and Stoller's "Hound Dog", in 1952,[2] which became her biggest hit, staying seven weeks at number one on the Billboard R&B chart in 1953[3] and selling almost two million copies.[4] Thornton's other recordings included the original version of "Ball and Chain", which she wrote.

Thornton's birth certificate states that she was born in Ariton, Alabama,[5] but in an interview with Chris Strachwitz she claimed Montgomery, Alabama as her birthplace, probably because Montgomery was better known than Ariton.[6] She was introduced to music in a Baptist church, where her father was a minister and her mother a singer. She and her six siblings began to sing at early ages.[7] Her mother died young, and Willie Mae left school and got a job washing and cleaning spittoons in a local tavern. In 1940 she left home and, with the help of Diamond Teeth Mary, joined Sammy Green's Hot Harlem Revue and was soon billed as the "New Bessie Smith".[6] Her musical education started in the church but continued through her observation of the rhythm-and-blues singers Bessie Smith and Memphis Minnie, whom she deeply admired.[8]

Thornton's career began to take off when she moved to Houston in 1948. "A new kind of popular blues was coming out of the clubs in Texas and Los Angeles, full of brass horns, jumpy rhythms, and wisecracking lyrics."[9] In 1951 she signed a recording contract with Peacock Records and performed at the Apollo Theater in 1952. Also in 1952, while working with another Peacock artist Johnny Otis, she recorded "Hound Dog", the first record produced by its writers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. The pair were present at the recording,[10] with Leiber demonstrating the song in the vocal style they had envisioned;[11][12] "We wanted her to growl it," Stoller said, which she did. Otis played drums, after the original drummer was unable to play an adequate part. The record sold more than half a million copies, and went to number one on the R&B chart,[13] helping to bring in the dawn of rock 'n' roll.[14] Although the record made Thornton a star, she saw little of the profits.[15]

On Christmas Day 1954 in a theatre in Houston, Texas, she witnessed fellow performer Johnny Ace, also signed to Duke and Peacock record labels, accidentally shoot and kill himself while playing with a .22 pistol.[16] Thornton continued to record for Peacock until 1957 and performed in R&B package tours with Junior Parker and Esther Phillips.

Thornton's success with "Hound Dog" was followed three years later by Elvis Presley recording his hit version of the song.[10] His recording at first annoyed Leiber who wrote, "I have no idea what that rabbit business is all about. The song is not about a dog, it's about a man, a freeloading gigolo."[14] But Elvis' version sold ten million copies, so today few fans know that "Hound Dog" began as "an anthem of black female power."[14] Similarly, Thornton originally recorded her song "Ball 'n' Chain" for Bay-Tone Records in the early 1960s, "and though the label chose not to release the song... they did hold on to the copyright"—which meant that Thornton missed out on the publishing royalties when Janis Joplin recorded the song later in the decade.[8]

So at first I thought this was just because she was a woman. Am I wrong to assume that race obviously played a role in this for her as well? I was under the impression based on movies I've seen based on real life stories of artists whose work was given to the whites to perform because they weren't allowed on TV or something? I think that's a shame. In this case even more so.
 
Yesterday I posted a comment about the lack of statues honoring women. I still can't think of one. It is widely known when a soldier gets injured in combat the word most uttered is "Momma".
 

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