Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Pat Summitt


I am by no means a basketball fan, I never played the sport, I never watch the sport, and it just simply does not interest me. However, there are some people that just transcend their chosen sport. There are some people who can make a difference in others lives through the sport they love, those people are worth learning about. I had heard of this woman in the past, she intrigued me then and I am even more impressed by her now, so I would like to introduce you to her.

Today Tuesday April 24, 2012 the WOD is Pat Summitt born on June 14, 1952 in Clarksville, Tennessee. She is the all-time winningest coach in NCAA basketball history of either a men's or women's team in any division. You can not find another basketball coach who transformed and legitimized her sport more than Summitt. No other basketball coach whose legacy exceeds hers.

When Summitt was in high school, her family moved to nearby Henrietta, so she could play basketball in Cheatham County because Clarksville did not have a girls team. From there, Summitt went to University of Tennessee at Martin where she was a member of Chi Omegaand won All-American honors, playing for UT–Martin's first women's basketball coach, Nadine Gearin. In 1970, with the passage of Title IX still two years away, there were no athletic scholarships for women. Each of Summitt's brothers had gotten an athletic scholarship, but her parents had to pay her way to college. She later co-captained the first United States women's national basketball team as a player at the inaugural women's tournament at the 1976 Summer Olympics, winning the silver medal. Eight years later in 1984, she coached the U.S. women's team to an Olympic gold medal, becoming the first U.S. Olympian to win a basketball medal and coach a medal-winning team.

The winningest coach in college basketball history was diagnosed with early-stage dementia last year, but remained on the Lady Vols' sideline for one more season, leading the team to the Elite Eight.

You can make the argument -- without apology or hesitation -- that Pat Summitt is the greatest college basketball coach of our time. At the very least, she's in the starting five. And it's not because she won more games than any other Division I coach from A (Geno Auriemma) to K (Mike Krzyzewski) to W (John Wooden). Or that she has the same number of national championships as Krzyzewski and Adolph Rupp combined. Or that in the 31 years there's been an NCAA women's basketball tournament, her team has been in it every year -- and won eight times. Greatness isn't measured simply by victories. It is measured by the depth and width of a coach's impact on the sport itself, on the players, on the university they represent.

The winningest coach in college basketball history was diagnosed with early-stage dementia last year, but remained on the Lady Vols' sideline for one more season, leading the team to the Elite Eight. The legendary women's basketball coach stepped down Wednesday April 18th after 38 seasons at Tennessee. Summitt ends her brilliant career with a record of 1,098-208, winning eight national titles, and reaching 16 Final Fours. Her 1997-98 championship squad finished 39-0, and she led the 1984 US women's team to the Olympic gold medal.

Her son, Ross Tyler Summitt (b. 1990) has been hired as an assistant coach for the Marquette University women's team effective with the 2012–13 season. In what ESPN.com columnist Gene Wojciechowski called "a bittersweet irony", Tyler's hiring by Marquette was announced on the same day his mother announced her retirement.

"I've loved being the head coach at Tennessee for 38 years, but I recognize that the time has come to move into the future and to step into a new role," –Pat Summitt.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Barbara Ackerman

The Awesome Woman of the Day for Wednesday, April 18, 2012 is Barbara Ackerman, the first female mayor of Cambridge, MA.

Although Mayor Ackerman is still active in Massachusetts politics and fights for universal single-payer health care not far from where I live, I had never heard of her until I stumbled across a photo of her - from her city council days - on facebook yesterday.

I started researching her and found surprisingly little substantive information, especially considering that she ran - as a true progressive - against Michael Dukakis for governor back in 1978, advocating for, inter alia, alternative energy and health care reform http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1978/8/15/barbara-ackermanns-sophisticated-honest-humanitarian-lonely/.

This article from 1972 (which carefully avoids calling her a feminist - even while noting her support of Shirley Chisolm) describes her work to put libraries in schools (there weren't any), to establish drug treatment programs (again, there were none), to seek immediate and total withdrawal from the Vietnam War, and to keep the Commonwealth from running the interstate highway system right through Cambridge (Cambridge remains to this day a beautiful city with wonderful public transportation). http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1972/12/15/barbara-ackermann-not-your-typical-boss/

Her biography from the Cambridge, MA Historical Society website: Barbara (Hulley) Ackermann (b. March 1, 1925 in Stockholm Sweden)

First woman mayor of Cambridge The daughter of an American diplomat, Benjamin Mayham Hulley and his wife, Joan Carrington Hulley, Barbara was raised in France and Ireland and graduated from Smith College in 1948. She married Paul Kurt Ackermann in 1945 who became a Boston University professor of German. Beginning her political career in 1962, she was active in the Cambridge School Committee for six years and was a Cambridge city councilor for ten years. For two of those ten years she presided over both bodies as the first woman mayor (1972-1973). In 1972, she was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention from Massachusetts. In 1989, Ackermann wrote an account of her experiences as a Cambridge politician in a book entitled, “You the Mayor?”: The Education of a City Politician which offers insights into political life and the functioning of a city. In recent years, she has been active as chair of the Massachusetts non-profit organization, Universal Health Care Education Fund (UHCEF), part of MASS-CARE. /endquote

See also:
http://masscare.org/about-mass-care/coalition/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0865691789/thepoliticalg-20

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Jo Ann Gibson Robinson

In honor of what would have been her 100th birthday, Today Tuesday April 17, 2012 the WOD is Jo Ann Gibson Robinson. An instrumental figure in initiating and sustaining the Montgomery bus boycott, Jo Ann Robinson was an outspoken critic of the treatment of African Americans on public transportation. In his memoir, Stride Toward Freedom, Martin Luther King said of Robinson: ‘‘Apparently indefatigable, she, perhaps more than any other person, was active on every level of the protest’’ (King, 78).

Born on 17 April 1912, in Culloden, Georgia, Robinson was the youngest of 12 children. After her father’s death, her family sold their farm and moved to Macon, Georgia. Robinson graduated as valedictorian of her high school class and went on to earn her BS from Fort Valley State College, becoming the first person in her family to graduate from college. Robinson taught for five years in Macon’s public school system before moving to Atlanta, Georgia, to earn her MA in English from Atlanta University. Following a year of study at Columbia University, she taught briefly at Mary Allen College in Crockett, Texas, before moving to Montgomery in 1949 to teach English at Alabama State College.

In Montgomery Robinson was active in the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church and the Women’s Political Council (WPC). In 1949, Robinson suffered a humiliating experience on a nearly empty public bus, when the driver ordered her off for having sat in the fifth row. When she became WPC president in 1950, Robinson made the city’s segregated bus seating one of the top priorities of the organization. The WPC made repeated complaints about seating practices and driver conduct to the Montgomery City Commission. After the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, Robinson informed the city’s mayor that a bus boycott might ensue if bus service did not improve, but negotiations had yielded little success by late 1955.

On Thursday, December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to move to the back of the bus from the whites section on the bus. Mrs. Parks, a civil rights organizer, had intended to instigate a reaction from white citizens and authorities. With Mrs. Parks' permission, Robinson seized the opportunity to put the long-considered protest into motion. Late that night, she, two students, and John Cannon, chairman of the Business Department at Alabama State, mimeographed and distributed approximately 52,500 leaflets calling for a boycott of the Montgomery bus system. The boycott was initially planned to be for just the following Monday. She passed out the leaflets at a Friday afternoon meeting of AME Zionist clergy among other place and Reverend L. Roy Bennett told other ministers to themselves attend a meeting that Friday night and to urge their congregations to take part in the boycott. Reverend Ralph Abernathy then helped Robinson pass out the handbills to high school students leaving school that afternoon. He wanted to help her so that she would not be solely blamed.

After the success of the one-day boycott, black citizens decided to continue the boycott and established the Montgomery Improvement Association to focus on the boycott. The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was elected president. Jo Ann Robinson became a member of this group. Robinson chose not to accept an official MIA position for fear of jeopardizing her job at Alabama State College. However, she was named to the executive board. Because of her WPC position, King personally asked her to write and edit the weekly MIA Newsletter. Robinson purposely stayed out of the limelight even though she worked diligently with the MIA. Robinson and other WPC members also helped sustain the boycott by providing transportation for boycotters.

Despite Robinson’s efforts to work behind the scenes, she was the target of several acts of intimidation. In February 1956 a local police officers threw a stone through her window.

Two weeks later, a police officer poured acid on her car. Eventually, the governor ordered state police to guard the homes of boycott leaders.

The boycott lasted over a year because the bus company would not give into any of their demands for rights.

Robinson took great pride in the eventual success of the boycott. In her memoir, Robinson wrote: ‘‘An oppressed but brave people, whose pride and dignity rose to the occasion, conquered fear, and faced whatever perils had to be confronted. The boycott was the most beautiful memory that all of us who participated will carry to our final resting place’’.

Following the student sit-ins at Alabama State in early 1960, Robinson and other supporters of the students resigned their faculty positions rather than endure the tensions that Robinson called ‘‘a constant threat to our peace of mind’’. After teaching for a year at Grambling College in Louisiana, Robinson moved to Los Angeles, where she taught until her retirement in 1976., Her memoir, The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It, was published in 1987.

Monday, April 16, 2012

Samantha Joan Nutt


Dr. Samantha Joan Nutt born in 1969 is a co-founder and Executive Director of War Child Canada and my Awesome Woman of the Day.

She is a medical doctor with more than thirteen years of experience working in war zones. Since the beginning of her career, Dr. Nutt has focussed on providing assistance to war-affected women and children. While working at War Child Canada, the United Nations and several other non-governmental organizations, Dr. Nutt has travelled to some of the world’s most violent flashpoints including Iraq, Afghanistan, The Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Burundi, northern Uganda, Ethiopia and the Thai-Burmese border. She is also a motivational speaker and an author of two books, as well as having co-authored a third , "Young Activists" where she cites the passions that were the driving force for her social activism from an early age.

In addition to her position at War Child Canada, Dr. Nutt is also on staff at Women's College Hospital in Toronto and is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto in the Department of Family and Community Medicine.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Augusta Hunt


Today’s WOD is Augusta Hunt (1830-1920) a crusader for women's rights in the U.S. and happens to be the great-great-grandmother of Helen Hunt.

Augusta was the wife of George Hunt, who was a very successful businessman (importer/exporter). Augusta used her wealth and influence to do very productive things in her community. She helped start a daycare, she helped women get elected to school boards, and assisted in putting female guards in women’s prisons, she was also a prominent member of the temperance organization. Augusta promoted the temperance movement to deal with alcohol abuse in Maine. Prohibition was enacted there in 1851 due to rampant drinking.The temperance movement came about as a response to an increase in domestic abuse because of alcoholism.

Augusta was part of the group who gathered hundreds of signatures on petitions when the women’s movement first tried to get women the vote.

The struggle for woman suffrage in Maine began rather quietly in 1854 but eventually was characterized by heated debates, with strong leaders and powerful groups on both sides of the argument. Maine's pro-suffrage efforts began with visits from some of the celebrated suffragists of the day. Susan B. Anthony spoke in Bangor in 1854. Lucy Stone followed in 1855, giving speeches on equal rights for women in both Augusta and Cornish.

That same same year, women in Portland started a women's rights society, but their efforts were soon eclipsed by the movement to end slavery. These earliest efforts were not forgotten, and the struggle for women's voting rights resumed after the Civil War.

More than 1,000 people attended the founding meeting of the pro-suffrage group Maine Woman Suffrage Association in Augusta in 1873.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Maine suffragists were repeatedly defeated by a strong opposition in both the community and in the Legislature.

In 1872, for instance, the Maine Legislature rejected a bill for woman suffrage, and in the following years continued to vote down all other suffrage bills, including those limiting women's right to vote to municipal elections.

Early suffragists in Maine like Augusta Hunt had to find solid arguments to convince their neighbors that votes for women would benefit everyone they printed postcards with Images that illustrated the idea that women were the real experts on food, children and household management, and therefore the most qualified people to be voting on important policy decisions in these areas.

Maine became the third New England state to ratify the federal amendment.

It took a very long time, but she was alive when it finally passed in Maine and not only did Augusta live long enough to vote; a newspaper article about Augusta’s 90th birthday indicates that she did, in fact, vote and even got to pass the first ballot. Augusta died ten days after the article was published.

Sunday, April 8, 2012

Elizabeth Cochran, a.k.a. Nellie Bly

Nellie Bly c. 1890
Nellie Bly (1864 - 1922) was the pen name of pioneer female journalist Elizabeth Jane Cochran, who was first noticed and hired by a newspaper editor after she wrote a strong letter to the editor in response to a sexist article. According to Wikipedia, "The editor was so impressed with Cochran's earnestness and spirit that he asked the man who wrote the letter to join the paper. When he learned the man was Cochran he refused to give her the job, but she was a good talker and persuaded him. Female newspaper writers at that time customarily used pen names, and for Cochran the editor chose 'Nellie Bly', adopted from the title character in the popular song 'Nelly Bly' by Stephen Foster."

Bly, who lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania at the time, was naturally inclined to cover stories of working women and the labor conditions of female factory workers. In rebellion against the pressure from her employer to cover home-and-garden sort of topics, she quit her job and moved to Mexico to serve as a foreign correspondent to the newspaper. Never one to hold back, she wrote critically of the dictator Porfirio Díaz, and then had to move back to the U.S. after being threatened with arrest. She was once again assigned typical women's stories and in frustration left the newspaper and moved to New York City.

After a few months barely scraping by in New York, Bly found work doing an undercover investigative assignment for the New York World. As a groundbreaker in the field of investigative reporting, she was to feign insanity in order to be committed to the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island (now Roosevelt Island). The asylum had a reputation on the street for brutality and neglect, and Bly was to observe conditions first hand in the role of an inmate, and then write an exposé. The year was 1884, and she was now a mere 20 years old. Her work was first published in the World, and then she republished it as a book to satisfy the demand of a public who were asking for copies.

In order to ensure that she would gain entrance to the asylum, Bly practiced the behavior and mannerisms of insane persons. She then, continuing her strategy, checked into a working-class women's boarding house on lower Second Avenue (see footnote). There she conducted herself in such a way that the home's matron called the police, and Bly appeared before a judge and convinced him she was insane.

In her own words:
I took upon myself to enact the part of a poor, unfortunate crazy girl, and felt it my duty not to shirk any of the disagreeable results that should follow. I became one of the city's insane wards for that length of time, experienced much, and saw and heard more of the treatment accorded to this helpless class of our population, and when I had seen and heard enough, my release was promptly secured. I left the insane ward with pleasure and regret–pleasure that I was once more able to enjoy the free breath of heaven; regret that I could not have brought with me some of the unfortunate women who lived and suffered with me, and who, I am convinced, are just as sane as I was and am now myself. 
But here let me say one thing: From the moment I entered the insane ward on the Island, I made no attempt to keep up the assumed role of insanity. I talked and acted just as I do in ordinary life. Yet strange to say, the more sanely I talked and acted the crazier I was thought to be by all except one physician, whose kindness and gentle ways I shall not soon forget.
Her first stop was Bellevue Hospital where she was to be evaluated, and then was transported on a boat -- under awful conditions -- to the asylum on Blackwell's Island.  Both hospital and asylum were freezing cold, food for the patients was scant and atrocious, and nurses kept inmates awake all night by talking and clomping around in loud shoes. But most egregious of all was what seemed to be a common practice by doctors of declaring women insane who likely were only down on their luck, based upon only the most cursory verbal examinations. Bly was deemed "hopelessly insane," a diagnosis arrived at after a simple conversation a doctor held with her during which she did nothing in particular to "act insane." She reported that she overheard other patients being asked similar questions, answering as any normal person would, and also being deemed insane. Bly wrote, "After this, I began to have a smaller regard for the ability of doctors than I ever had before, and a greater one for myself."


Bly wrote up many details of the treatment and incidents she witnessed at the asylum, and her work "Ten Days in a Mad-House" can be read at http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/bly/madhouse/madhouse.html. With no special journalistic training, she had taken on a distasteful and even dangerous assignment and aced the tricky job of simultaneously pretending to be a real inmate while also staying aware and observant of others at all times. Her write-up makes an engrossing read and gives us tremendous insight to the status of women, particularly those in the working class, in the latter part of the 19th century.

And her work had tremendous impact. The public soaked it up and politicians were put in the hot seat. When she republished her work in book format she noted in an introduction:
SINCE my experiences in Blackwell's Island Insane Asylum were published in the World I have received hundreds of letters in regard to it. The edition containing my story long since ran out, and I have been prevailed upon to allow it to be published in book form, to satisfy the hundreds who are yet asking for copies.
I am happy to be able to state as a result of my visit to the asylum and the exposures consequent thereon, that the City of New York has appropriated $1,000,000 more per annum than ever before for the care of the insane. So I have at least the satisfaction of knowing that the poor unfortunates will be the better cared for because of my work.
...

In another major adventure, in 1890, Nellie Bly took on a challenge to compete against another female author to beat, for real, the fictional record set by Phileas Fogg in Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days -- and on the 73rd day after her departure she won the challenge by arriving back at her Hoboken, New Jersey starting-point after making her way around the planet almost completely unchaperoned.

In 1895 she married a man 40 years her senior, a wealthy industrialist, and after his death she became an industrialist and inventor (of the 55-gallon oil drum still in use) in her own right. But after being bankrupted by employee embezzlement, she returned to reporting, covering the women's suffrage movement, and the action on the Eastern front in World War I. She also had a continuing interest in the plight of the downtrodden in society, and adopted or looked after a number of orphaned children.

In 1922, at the age of 57, Nellie Bly died of pneumonia, but her spirit lives on and she set in motion a huge legacy of exposing greed and incompetence in order to better the circumstances of those "at the bottom" of society. In 1998 she was inducted into the Women's Hall of Fame, and in 2002 she was one of four female journalists honored with a U.S. postage stamp. A New York Press Club award bears her name, an amusement park is named after her, and a "4-D" film has been shown in the Annenberg Theater in Washington, D.C. dramatizing her experience in the asylum.

FOOTNOTE: The Temporary Home for Females was located at 84 Second Avenue. It was actually a web search for "84 Second Avenue" out of my interest in that building itself that led me to the story of Nellie Bly. The building at that address is only a few doors away from where I live and has been an object of my interest since I moved to my current location in 1977. Several people have written articles or blog posts about the place, and I do have more to add to what folks have thus far recorded, being one of very few people who have actually  been inside the building and talked to its present-day occupant. Another day I will take up that topic (and will try to remember to come back and add a link here).

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Kathrine Switzer


Today Tuesday April 3, 2012 The WOD is Kathrine Switzer the woman who challenged the all-male tradition of the Boston Marathon and became the first woman to officially enter and run the event. Her entry created an uproar and worldwide notoriety when a race official tried to forcibly remove her from the competition.

Switzer has dedicated her multi-faceted career to creating opportunities and equal sport status for women.

That career has included creating programs in 27 countries for over 1 million women that led to the inclusion of the women's marathon as an official event in the Olympic Games, changing forever the face of sports, health and opportunities for women around the world.

The "Boston Incident" also inspired Kathrine to become a good athlete: She has run 35 marathons, won the 1974 New York City Marathon, and ran her personal best of 2:51.33 by finishing 2nd in the 1975 Boston Marathon. At the time, this was the 6th best women's marathon time in the world, and 3rd in the U.S.A.