Stephanie St. Clair: Harlem Renaissance by the Numbers

From the Slums of Martinique to the Top of Harlem’s Numbers Rackets

The vibrant streets of Harlem in the 1920s
Queen of the numbers rackets during Harlem’s Renaissance, Stephanie St. Clair was an outlaw as well as an entrepreneur and Civil Rights Advocate.

The Harlem Renaissance of the ‘20s and ‘30s was a hotbed of African American music, dance, art, fashion, literature, politics, and scholarship. It gave us luminaries like Langston Hughes, Josephine Baker, W.E.B. DuBois and Jessie Redmon Fauset. But for many, when it came to Black identity, community and the everyday experience of Black people, a woman named Stephanie St. Clair loomed large.

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Josephine Garis Cochrane — Mother of the Modern Dishwasher

From Kitchen Tinkerer to Acclaimed Inventor at the 1893 World’s Fair

Josephine Garis Cochrane with one of her dishwasher patents
In the late 19th-century world that offered little encouragement to female inventors, Josephine Garis Cochrane, against all odds, invented a machine that was a major hit at the 1893 World’s Fair — the first commercially viable mechanical dishwasher. It was the only device out of 10,000 displayed at that World Exposition invented by a woman, and it launched her corporate success.

“If you want something done right, do it yourself.” These were words Josephine Garis Cochrane lived by … except when it came to doing the dishes. Why had nobody invented a machine that could clean stacks of dirty dishes without chipping them? After all, it was the 19th century, when there were machines that sewed clothes and cut grass, so how hard could it be?

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The Women of the 1862 Allegheny Arsenal Explosion

71 Die in Worst Civilian Disaster of the Civil War

Civil War munitions being packed at a Union Army arsenal
In 1862, the Allegheny Arsenal was one of the largest producers of black powder munitions for the Union Army as the Civil War raged on. Female employees filled, hand rolled and packed the gun cartridges as shown in this period illustration by Winslow Homer. Below are actual paper-wrapped cartridges.

I’m sure Harriet Beecher Stowe meant well when, in 1861, she rallied American women to patriotism, writing, “We thank God for mothers that cheer on their sons, for young wives that have said ‘go’ to their husbands, for widows who have given their only sons.” But as the bloody Civil War dragged on, some women chose a more hands-on approach to support the war — they went to dangerous work in arsenals, helping build and fuel the machinery of war at places like the Allegheny Arsenal in Lawrenceville, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

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Mary Sears – Pioneering Oceanographer Who Helped Win World War II

Mary Sears and a World War II U.S. Naval landing craft
As head of the U.S. Navy’s Oceanographic Unit, Mary Sears played a major role in revolutionizing how massive World War II military amphibious assaults were planned.

Diminutive, quiet, and bespectacled, it was Mary Sears’ nature to let her research and prodigious body of work speak louder than any commendations or public recognition that came her way. Still, few would argue that she changed the course of oceanographic history, contributed to its growth as an internationally recognized science and, along the way, helped win World War II.

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Anne Hutchinson – A Forerunner of American Feminism

A Rebel Against a Virulently Misogynist Puritan Culture

Statue in front of the Massachusetts State House
A statue standing in front of the Massachusetts State House memorializes Anne Marbury Hutchinson who, nearly four centuries ago, was an opponent and victim and of the virulent misogyny that defined Massachusetts Bay Colony society.

Anne Hutchinson may well have been one of America’s first “nasty women.” A spiritual leader in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, she poked the hornet’s nest by challenging the patriarchy and upending gender roles, preaching to audiences of both sexes and daring to critique the Bible and Puritan laws.

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How Monopoly Inventor Elizabeth Magie Lost Her Game

A Story of Corporate Greed, Misogyny, and Patent Office Incompetence

The original, patented Monopoly game was created by Elizabeth Magie
Elizabeth Magie invented and patented the Monopoly game in 1903. It was bamboozled from her by an Atlantic City shyster and a greedy corporation, both of which generated millions of dollars of revenue from her creation at the same time they erased her from history.

You know the rules. Landlords get rich at the expense of tenants. Travel means shelling out for a railroad ticket. You can have utilities, but they’ll cost you. Run afoul of the landlord and go directly to jail — forget about passing GO and collecting $200. It’s the board game Monopoly, invented by a feisty, progressive feminist whose invention was stolen in the 1930s by a man named Charles Darrow.

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