March marks Women’s History Month — a time to research remarkable gals from suffragettes to first ladies. Of course, Rebellious would be remiss not to list eight of our favorite women and their accomplishments.
8. Elizabeth Packard is the focus of “The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear” (2021). The book by bestselling author Kate Moore chronicles the hardships Packard endured in the mid-19th century when her husband unjustly committed her to an insane asylum for expressing her views. Spoiler alert: through spirit and perseverance, she eventually gained her freedom to become an advocate for women’s rights.
7. Basia Haszlakiewicz is among the unsung heroines who played full-tackle football for the National Women’s Football League (NWFL) from 1974 to 1988. Her stint with the Houston Herricanes in the 1970s would later inspire Olivia Kuan’s feminist sports documentary The Herricanes (2023).
6. When Chicago native Viola Spolin wasn’t teaching at the WPA ERA in the 1930s, founding the Young Actors Company in 1948, directing shows at the Playwrights Theatre Club in the 1950s, creating The Spolin Center in 1975 and forming Sills & Co. in the 1980s, she developed the art of improv in the 1960s. Her guide “Improvisation for the Theater” (1963) revolutionized the entertainment industry.
5. Considered the most successful living female artist today, Yayoi Kusama continues to display her minimalist work and pop art well into her 90s. The accomplished nonagenarian used drawings to cope with childhood trauma in the 1930s and was forced to sew WWII parachutes for the Japanese army in the 1940s before coming to America where she played a key role in the avant-garde art scene of the 1960s.
4.. Dubbed the “female Jackie Robinson,” professional baseball player Toni Stone became the first woman to compete in the Negro Leagues amid challenges on and off the field during the early 1950s. Stone was inducted into the Women’s Sports Hall of Fame and the International Women’s Sports Hall of Fame in 1993. By 2022, her legacy was commemorated with a Google Doodle.
3. Singer-songwriter, comedian and actress Hattie McDaniel was the first African American to win an Academy Award via her beloved performance in Gone with the Wind (1939). Yet due to racial segregation, she was not allowed to attend the movie’s premiere in Atlanta. During World War II, McDaniel joined the American Women’s Voluntary Services and served as chairman of the Negro Division of the Hollywood Victory Committee. She has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and was inducted posthumously into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame in 1975. In 2006, the late star became the first Black Oscar winner to be honored with a U.S. postage stamp.
2.-1. As a teacher for the blind, Anne Sullivan’s innovative instruction helped Helen Keller achieve unprecedented success. In addition to becoming the first deaf-blind person to earn a bachelor of arts degree in the U.S., Keller was an advocate for people with disabilities, an anti-war activist, a suffragette, writer and overall role model. She helped found the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. Both Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke won Oscars for their portrayals of Sullivan and Keller, respectively, for the film The Miracle Worker (1962). A U.S. postal stamp depicting Keller and Sullivan was issued in 1980. Nearly 100 years after publishing her autobiography “Light in My Darkness” (1927), Keller’s story inspired Thodos Dance Chicago to portray the enlightening dynamic between Sullivan and Keller through dance.
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This roundup is by Janet Arvia for Rebellious Magazine.
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