Abigail Adams said this to her husband John Adams in a letter when he was at the Constitutional Convention. It has become a rallying call for Women's Movement in America throughout the years!
Every year, March is designated Women’s History Month by presidential proclamation. The month is set aside to honor women’s contributions in American history.
Did You Know? Women’s History Month started as Women’s History Week . . .
Women’s History Month began as a local celebration in Santa Rosa, California. The Education Task Force of the Sonoma County (California) Commission on the Status of Women planned and executed a “Women’s History Week” celebration in 1978. The organizers selected the week of March 8 to correspond with International Women’s Day. The movement spread across the country as other communities initiated their own Women’s History Week celebrations the following year.
In 1980, a consortium of women’s groups and historians—led by the National Women’s History Project (now the National Women's History Alliance)—successfully lobbied for national recognition. In February 1980, President Jimmy Carter issued the first Presidential Proclamation declaring the Week of March 8th 1980 as National Women’s History Week.
Subsequent Presidents continued to proclaim a National Women’s History Week in March until 1987 when Congress passed Public Law 100-9, designating March as “Women’s History Month.” Between 1988 and 1994, Congress passed additional resolutions requesting and authorizing the President to proclaim March of each year as Women’s History Month. Since 1995, each president has issued an annual proclamations designating the month of March as “Women’s History Month.”
The National Women’s History Alliance selects and publishes the yearly theme. The theme for Women's History Month in 2021 captures the spirit of these challenging times. Since many of the women's suffrage centennial celebrations originally scheduled for 2020 were curtailed, the National Women's History Alliance is extending the annual theme for 2021 to "Valiant Women of the Vote: Refusing to Be Silenced.
Click here to download the NWHM 2021 Women's History Month Resource Toolkit, filled with links to biographies, events, and programming to celebrate this important month.
To learn more about the history of Women's History Month, please visit the Library of Congress.
Taken from: https://www.womenshistory.org/womens-history/womens-history-month
This is what it looks like when I get my Infusion. Just sit in this chair for a few hours! At least the seat is heated!!!!
Jazz pianist and composer Thelonious Monk was a giant of American music. On Feb. 28, 1964, he was featured on the cover of Time magazine, which also included a feature article titled "The Loneliest Monk."
Born on Oct. 17, 1917, in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, Monk at age four moved with his parents to New York City and began studying classical piano at age 11. He won so many amateur competitions at the famed Apollo Theater, biography.com reports, that he was ultimately banned from participating in the weekly contest. At 16, he left high school to pursue his passion.
Though critically acclaimed and respected among his peers, Monk, who's sound was "innovative, technically demanding, and extremely complex," did not achieve real success until he began recording and performing with the esteemed John Coltrane. In 1962, he got his first major label contract with Columbia Records and two years later was on the cover of Time.
"Monk's lifework of 57 compositions is a diabolical and witty self-portrait, a string of stark snapshots of his life in New York," wrote the magazine's music critic Barry Ferrell. "Changing meters, unique harmonics and oddly voiced chords create the effect of a desperate conversation in some other language, a fit of drunken laughter, a shout from a park at night."
Monk is believed to have struggled with mental illness. After several years in seclusion, he died from a stroke on Feb. 7, 1982. He was posthumously inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and has been featured on a postage stamp.
Four years after his death, the Monk family and the late musical philanthropist Maria Fisher created the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, which focuses on "identifying the music's new voices, honoring its present and past masters, and making the jazz aesthetic available and comprehensible in concert halls and classrooms around the world." In addition, the foundation hosts a prestigious international jazz competition each year.
Taken from: https://www.bet.com/article/fkt4i8/this-day-in-black-history-feb-28-1964
Marian Anderson, who became one of the most celebrated singers during the 20th century, was born on Feb. 27, 1897, in Philadelphia.
She began singing in church at 6 years old. Impressed by Anderson's dedication to perfecting her talents, her church choir raised money for her to take vocal lessons for two years. Anderson soon won a chance to perform at Lewisohn Stadium in New York, and more opportunities followed.
President Franklin Roosevelt and wife Eleanor invited her to perform at the White House in 1936. In 1939, she faced discrimination from the Daughters of the American Revolution, who did not want her to perform at D.C.'s Constitution Hall. When Eleanor Roosevelt heard of this, she invited Anderson to perform at the Lincoln Memorial.
The singer made history in 1955 as the first African-American to perform as a member of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963.
Anderson passed away at the age of 96 in 1993.
Taken from: https://www.bet.com/article/dbtuer/this-day-in-black-history-feb-27-1897
At the height of the civil rights movement, Andrew Brimmer became the first African-American governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on Feb. 26, 1966. He was appointed to the position by President Lyndon B. Johnson.
Before becoming a governor, Brimmer was a staff economist at the Federal Reserve, who had received his Ph.D. from Harvard Business School, and was deputy assistant secretary of commerce under President John F. Kennedy.
During his eight years at the Reserve, he spoke openly about economic conditions for African-Americans and researched racial disparities of wages and income. In 1974, he stepped down and became a professor at the Harvard Business School.
Brimmer passed away at the age of 86 on Oct. 7, 2012.
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Taken from: https://www.bet.com/article/gucbko/this-day-in-black-history-feb-26-1966#:~:text=At%20the%20height%20of%20the,Johnson.
Booker T. won the Regional Championship! One step closer to STATE!!!! GO HORNETS!!!!!
Hiram Rhodes Revels broke a color barrier in U.S. government when he became the first African-American senator on Feb. 25, 1870. Revels moved to Mississippi after the Civil War and was elected to one of the state's vacant U.S. Senate seats before they rejoined the Union.
Revels' credentials were not welcomed at first by some members of the Senate. They falsely claimed he had not been a citizen for the nine years required of all senators, and that Blacks were granted citizenship only four years earlier through the 1866 Civil Rights Act. But Revels was born to freed Blacks and was a registered voter in Ohio, many years before.
Revels also spoke out against a provision in legislation re-admitting Georgia to the Union, which would block Blacks from taking office in the state.
Revels' term ended on March 3, 1871. He went on to be president of Alcorn College in Mississippi.
Taken from: https://www.bet.com/article/7ki3uc/this-day-in-black-history-feb-25-1870
Widely known as Dr. J, Julius Erving, an NBA legend who changed the game with his own unique playing style consisting of spins and swirls in the air, was born in Roosevelt, New York, on Feb. 22, 1950.
Erving attended the University of Massachusetts and entered the American Basketball Association in 1971 as a player for the Virginia Squires.
After two seasons, he went on to play for the New York Nets until 1976 when he was picked up by the Philadelphia 76ers.
The team soon began to flourish with Erving's presence and the team took the NBA championship in 1983. Dr. J was also an 11 time NBA all-star and a two-time NBA All-Star Game MVP in 1977 and 1983. In 1987, Erving retired from the NBA and was considered one of the greatest dunkers of all time. He has scored 30,000 points in his professional career.
In 1993, Erving was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Since retiring he has worked as a sports analyst for NBC and pursued business opportunities within the league such as holding an executive position with the Orlando Magic.
Taken from: https://www.bet.com/article/zxrwn1/this-day-in-black-history-feb-22-1950
