#whm2014

Since we started our Women's History Month on the 3rd and not on the first, it would be cool for everyone to participate with the following hashtags in the photo.

1. ‪#‎IAmMakingHistory‬: As a woman (or man), how are you making history? How are you contributing to the rights and causes of women?

The Civil Rights Movement in the United States had it's hero; the strong and forever remembered Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But beside him as he gave his famous speech were many other activists who had long been on the front lines fighting for the rights of African Americans, and in the case of Dorothy Height, for the rights of African American Women. 

A decades-long career with the Harlem YMCA, a former colleague of Eleanor Roosevelt, a woman just feet away during the "I Have a Dream" speech, proud receiver of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame, and former president of the National Council of Negro Women, Dorothy Height is someone who certainly shaped history.

Height's focus on civil rights began as a student at New York University where she led a group focused on ending lynching and working to desegregate public spaces and the military, and later worked with the movement which arose in the aftermath of the 1935 Harlem Riots. She then focused her movement, working with MLK Jr. and seeing through the passage of the Civil Rights Act. 

Upon securing these hard won rights, Height began organizing "Wednesdays in Mississippi" which aimed to help with women's education and open communication between women of different races and religions. Building off the event, Height founded the Women' Center for Education and Career Advancement in New York City, and traveled the country (and world) advocating for women's rights, including several programs organized in the 1980-90s surrounding traditional African American family values. 

Height is certainly not forgotten. The Smithsonian launched a travelling exhibit in 2010 (the same year Height passed away) entitled "Freedom's Sisters" which honours Height and 19 other influential women including history makers Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King and Harriet Tubman. Dorothy Height was also today's Google Doodle.

Undoubtedly one of the most well-known early modern feminist works of philosophy is A Vindication of the Rights of Women by the 18th Century writer Mary Wollstonecraft.

Here at the Tamiment, we have a copy printed in 1856 and donated in the first decade of the 20th Century in the years of the woman's suffrage movement.  Though this volume is widely available digitized and ready to read on the web, in a place like the Tamiment you can often find richness in the physical object itself. 

Our copy has been marked up on many pages by its suffrage-era owner.  Here is some of what she has to say:

"Doctors say that in Phila. 1900, there is no one young man in a hundred physically able to make a clean decent girl happy, for to beget healthy children."

Agatha Tiegel Hanson (1873 – 1959)   Educator, Author, and Advocate for Deaf Community Agatha Tiegel Hanson was a teacher, poet, and advocate for the deaf community. Unable to hear and blind in one eye from a childhood illness, she never allowed her disabilities to hold her back. She came of age at a time when most deaf people were denied access to education, and deaf women especially had few educational options. She was among the first women admitted to Gallaudet University, which is still the only college in America dedicated to the education of deaf and hard of hearing students. Graduating first in her class, her valedictorian speech argued for the recognition of the intellect of women, a cause she advocated throughout her life.

Chipeta (1843 – 1924) Indian Rights Advocate and Diplomat   Chipeta was a wise and outspoken advisor to her husband, a Ute Indian leader. Born into the Kiowa Apache tribe in the 1840s, Chipeta was raised by the Uncompahgre Ute tribe in what is now western Colorado. In her teens she wedded Ouray, who became a powerful Ute chief during the often violent and brutal times of western settlement. Chipeta was a peacemaker who did not consider all settlers to be the enemy, often giving food to starving white families. In 1879 when her tribe was about to start a war with settlers, Chipeta successfully convinved Chief Ouray to call off all fighting, arguing the war would be devastating to the Utes.