The Lady Who Crossed Three Centuries

"Alice was born a slave in 1686 and remained a slave throughout her one hundred and sixteen years of life.

When she died in 1802, with her died a good part of the memory of Africans in America. Alice did not know how to read or write, but she was filled to the brim with voices that told and retold legends from far away and events lived nearby. Some of those stories came from the slaves she helped to escape.

At the age of ninety, she went blind.

At one hundred and two, she recovered her sight. “It was God,” she said. “He wouldn’t let me down.”

They called her Alice of Dunks Ferry. Serving her master, she collected tolls on the ferry that carried passengers back and forth across the Delaware River.

When the passengers, all white, made fun of this ancient woman, she left them stuck on the other side of the river. They called to her, shouted at her, but she paid no heed. The woman who had been blind was deaf."

~Eduardo Galeano, Children of the Days

Another Woman Exiled

"At the end of 1919, two hundred and fifty “foreign undesirables” left the port of New York, forbidden to ever return to the United States.

Among those heading off into exile was the “highly dangerous foreigner” Emma Goldman, who had been arrested several times for opposing the draft, for promoting contraceptives, for organizing strikes and for other attacks on national security.

Some of Emma’s sayings:

“Prostitution is the greatest triumph of Puritanism.”

“Is there anything indeed more terrible, more criminal, than our glorified sacred function of motherhood?”

“Heaven must be an awfully dull place if the poor in spirit live there.”

“If voting changed anything, it would be illegal.”

“Every society has the criminals it deserves.”

“All wars are wars among thieves who are too cowardly to fight and therefore induce the young manhood of the whole world to do the fighting for them."

~Eduardo Galeano, Children of the Days

The Joy of Saying

This day could be any other day.
No days in Enheduanna’s life are known.
A few facts are: Enheduanna lived four thousand three hundred years ago in the kingdom where writing was invented, now called Iraq,
And she was the first woman writer, the first woman who signed her words,
Also the first woman who wrote laws,
And an astronomer, a sage of the stars,
That she suffered exile,
And in writing she sang to the moon goddess Inanna, her protector, and she celebrated the joy of writing, which is a fiesta:

like giving birth,
creating life,
conceiving the world."

~Eduardo Galeano, Children of the Days

10 Amazing Women Who Led Rebellions

"Male revolutionaries such as Che Guevara have gone down as heroes for leading rebellions against “the Man.” But forgotten by history are the women who took on far greater powers than Fulgencio Batista. Throughout the ages, women have led rebellions and revolutions which took on the might of the Roman Empire and the vast wealth of the British East India Company" ~Mark Pygas

Check out this awesome article on listverse.com

The International Museum of Women

The International Museum of Women is an online museum that inspires creativity, awareness and action on vital global issues for women.

The mission of the International Museum of Women is to inspire creativity, awareness and action on vital global issues for women.

IMOW was founded in 1997.  Visit their Facebook timeline to see women's history milestones since 1000 AD!

www.imow.org.

Exciting news!

This Wednesday, National Women's History Museum will testify at a Capitol Hearing on the establishment of a National Women’s History Museum! Reps. Carolyn Maloney and Marsha Blackburn, along with NWHM President & CEO Joan Wages, will testify about the need for the Museum.

Show your support by writing to your members of Congress: http://bit.ly/18bQ25Z

Danger: Bicycles!

“I think bicycling has done more the emancipate women than anything else in the world,” said Susan B. Anthony.

Her companion in the struggle, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, said, “Woman is riding to suffrage on a bicycle.”

Certain physicians, like Philippe Tissie, warned that the bicycle might provoke abortion and cause sterility, while their colleagues insisted that this indecent apparatus might leave to depravity because it gave women pleasure when they pressed their intimate parts against the seat.

The truth is the bicycle gave women mobility, allowed them to leave the house and enjoy a dangerous taste of freedom. And it was the bicycle that sent the pitiless corset, which impeded pedaling, out of the clothes closet and into the museum.

  

~Eduardo Galeano, Children of the Days