Madeline Kahn

Today's AWU WOD is Madeline Kahn (1942–99), actress and singer. The bold, offbeat comedienne had dozens of different voices, all of them funny. She was born in Boston and educated at Hofstra University to teach speech therapy while she also prepared for an opera career. Her finest years came in Paper Moon (1973) with Ryan O'Neal, which was followed the next year by Mel Brooks's outrageous Blazing Saddles (1974) as Lili Von Shtupp, a cabaret singer who was obviously based on Marlene Dietrich's performance in Destry Rides Again (1939). She was so delightful in both that Madeline was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in both movies. She often appeared in 'Mel Brooks'' films. Tragically, on December 3, 1999, Madeline died of ovarian cancer in New York, a disease from which she suffered for about a year while she was a cast member of "Cosby" (1996). The accomplished stage and screen actress was just 57.

There is nothing better than laughter to get through difficult times, my dad taught me that. He exposed me to so many wonderful comedians and he was pretty funny himself, but he had a soft spot for Madeline. She was a comic genius and I never get tired of watching her! She died 6 months after my dad. I hope they are both laughing in Heaven celebrating his birthday. <3

Wilma Mankiller

Today's AWESOME WOMAN is Wilma Mankiller (November 18, 1945 – April 6, 2010), American Indian activist and chief of the Cherokee Nation from 1985 to 1995. Mankiller grew up with her 10 siblings on a land allotment in Oklahoma, in squalid poverty.

In the 1960s Mankiller lived in Oakland, California, with her husband, had two daughters, and attended college. In 1969 she joined the Native American activist movement and participated in the 19-month-long occupation of Alcatraz Island. The stated intention of the Occupation was to gain Indian control over the island for the purpose of building a center for Native American Studies, an American Indian spiritual center, an ecology center, and an American Indian Museum. After the occupation was forcibly ended by the U.S. Government, Mankiller volunteered for five years for the Pit River Tribe.

In 1977, Mankiller divorced her husband and moved back to Oklahoma with her daughters, in hopes of helping her own people and began an entry-level job for the Cherokee Nation. By 1983, she was elected deputy chief of the Cherokee Nation, and when the chief took a position in Washington D.C. in 1985, she became the first woman to assume the role of Chief of the Cherokees.

Contrary to the traditional inclusion of women in tribal leadership, the Cherokee nation at the time was a very male-dominated power structure. Wilma Mankiller worked within that structure to achieve great progress for the tribe. She spearheaded community development projects such as tribally owned horticultural operations, plants that got defense department contracts, and building a hydroelectric facility. She leveraged U.S. policies to gain every possible advantage for her tribe, and paved the way for the government-to-government relationship the Cherokee Nation has with the U.S. Federal government. During her 10-year stint as Chief, she created reasons for Cherokee people to rejoin their Nation, and increased the population from 55,000 to 156,000.


Mankiller lived through a near-fatal car accident and multiple grave health problems. Largely due to health reasons she resigned as Chief in 1995 and became a teacher at Dartmouth College. Upon her passing in April, 2010 from pancreatic cancer, President Obama said:


"I am deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Wilma Mankiller today. As the Cherokee Nation’s first female chief, she transformed the Nation-to-Nation relationship between the Cherokee Nation and the Federal Government, and served as an inspiration to women in Indian Country and across America. A recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, she was recognized for her vision and commitment to a brighter future for all Americans. Her legacy will continue to encourage and motivate all who carry on her work. Michelle and I offer our condolences to Wilma’s family, especially her husband Charlie and two daughters, Gina and Felicia, as well as the Cherokee Nation and all those who knew her and were touched by her good works."

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Gerda Lerner

Today's AWESOME WOMAN is GERDA LERNER (b. 1920), a founding pioneer of the fields of Women's History and African-American History. She is currently a professor emerita of history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a visiting scholar at Duke University. She wrote the screenplay for Carl Lerner’s film Black Like Me in 1966.

Prior to her work, women figured in history books and courses only for their ritual status as defined by a patriarchal society (wives of Presidents), as spoilers (witches of Salem), or for their sacrifices and caregiving (Florence Nightingale). Even when women who had contributed tremendously to society's advancement and consciousness-raising (Sojourner Truth, Jane Addams, Eleanor Roosevelt), the radical substance of their work was routinely ignored.

At graduate school at Columbia University in 1963, Lerner defied her mentor's objections and chose to write her dissertation on the Grimké sisters, 19-century Quaker educators and social activists. She taught what is considered to be the first women’s history course at the New School for Social Research in 1963, and helped to develop Women's History programs at Sarah Lawrence College, Columbia University and other institutes of higher learning.

Beyond developing the critically important fields of study of Women's and African-American History, Lerner also contributed a new, rich paradigm for researching history by organizing her work around principles that would illuminate the lives of her subjects, focussing on the experience of people as opposed to using the patriarchal historical framework of military actions, alliances, wars, and territorial domination. For example, for her 1972 book "Black Women in White America," Lerner traveled throughout the South, visiting churches, schools and families.

Gerda Lerner was born in Vienna, Austria and was forced by the Nazis to leave her country of birth for the United States. She had to learn English and held a series of "typical women's jobs" before moving along into her life of political and intellectual trail-blazing, and also of creativity. She married Carl Lerner, a Communist theater director, and in addition to her activism and scholarship she also collaborate with Eve Merriam a musical called "Singing of Women", and she wrote the screenplay for the important film "Black Like Me".

Lerner not only made an immediate difference in communities and politics, and not only established and legitimized the study of women's and blacks' experience, but she improved forever the way we look at history and raised the bar for authors and teachers who have come after her.

AWU post and comments at http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1649323473210&set=o.343338393054&type=1

Elizabeth Blackwell

...and today's AWESOME WOMAN is.... drum-roll please... first fully accredited American physician, Elizabeth Blackwell!

Elizabeth Blackwell and her family emigrated to America from England in 1832. Blackwell worked as a teacher, then decided to be a doctor. After being turned down by several schools, she was finally admitted to Geneva Medical College (now Hobart and William Smith Colleges) in New York. Blackwell graduated in 1849. Becoming a "guiding star . . . to rebellious women everywhere," Blackwell was the first fully accredited female doctor and an ardent reformer of medical and social mores.

Although considered ridiculous, even dangerous, for pursuing a medical degree in the 1840s, Elizabeth Blackwell forced open the gates of that profession. She graduated in 1849, becoming the first woman to earn a medical degree and worked in hospitals in Europe then returned to New York in 1851 where she opened the New York Infirmary for Women and Children, a clinic with an all-female staff. She later founded the first medical school for women, which resulted in both greater acceptance of female physicians and stricter standards for medical schools as a whole. By the time of her death in 1910, the number of female doctors in the United States had risen to over 7,000.

AWU post & comments at http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1179105374239&set=o.343338393054&type=1

Kate Mullany

TODAY'S AWESOME WOMAN is Kate Mullany (1845-1906), who founded the Collar Laundry Union in 1864. This was the first bona fide female union in the United States. Mullany had moved from Ireland to Troy, New York as a young girl, and at age 19 went to work in the local laundry after her father died. Compensation was $3 per week for 12-14 hour days, six days a week.

Only months after beginning her job, the young Mullany decided to stand up against the low wages and unsafe conditions. She organized 300 women into the union and led a successful strike that resulted in pay increase and an improved workplace.

The word about Kate got around, and in 1868, she was appointed as assistant secretary of the National Labor Union, making her the first female to hold a national labor position. Later, she led an effort to create worker-owned cooperative shops, which failed due to economic pressures but she remained a prominent labor union leader.

As such, she fought to improve the lives of working-class people in her country, while her generally more patrician sisters took up the fight for voting rights. Mullany recognized the ties between economic justice and political power, and she collaborated with suffragists such as Susan B. Anthony in order to further the interests of America's workers.

The Kate Mullany House, at 350 8th Street in Troy, was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1998, and became a National Historic Site in 2008. In 2000, Mullany was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. She has been honored by the New York State Senate, and her home is on the Women's Heritage Trail.

It is Labor Day today in the United States. Kate Mullany was one of the first of many women who, over many decades, risked their livelihood and even their lives to stand up and fight the exploitation of the country's workers.

Isabel Allende

It's the birthday of the novelist Isabel Allende, (books by this author) born in Lima, Peru (1942), the author of many books, including Eva Luna (1987) and Portrait in Sepia (2000).

 Her father's cousin, Salvador Allende, became Chile's first elected socialist president. But on September 11, 1973, a military coup led by General Pinochet overthrew the government and assassinated Salvador Allende. Isabel and all her family were put on a wanted list and received death threats, so they fled to Venezuela.

 While she was in Venezuela, Isabel Allende found out that her beloved grandfather was dying in Chile, and she couldn't go back to see him. So she started to write him a letter, to reassure him that she wouldn't forget all his stories and memories.

 It became her first novel, The House of the Spirits (1985), a novel of magical realism that tells the story of four generations of the Trueba family and their lives in Chile from the turn of the century through the coup.

 -The Writer's Almanac

Las Soldaderas of the Mexican Revolution

In honor of Cinco de Mayo, today's awesome women are the brilliant and courageous women of the Mexican revolution. The soldaderas (female soldiers), the comandantas (female commanders), and many important individual women like Dolores Jimenez y Muro and Hermila Galindo fought and thought on par to their male counterparts ...and were absolutely critical to the revolution. Their contributions have been played down for years as either seductresses (portrayed in the old westerns) or as passive maternal types who weren't really involved but this was far from the case in reality. Their stories are really amazing and we need to honor their memories as much as we can with the information that we have.

For a much more complete understanding of their contributions to the revolution and the building of the new Mexican government http://www.ic.arizona.edu/​ic/mcbride/ws200/mex-jand.​htm