Gender Archives

Code Cracker Extraordinaire Elizebeth Smith Friedman

A Cryptographic Sleuth Who Took Down Mobsters, Spies, and Nazis

Top secret Cryptoanalyst Elizebeth Smith Friedman cracked the Nazi military's Enigma code systems. — A driving force in the creation of the modern craft and science of cryptography, or code cracking, Elizebeth Smith Friedman spent a top secret career bringing down mobsters, spies and Nazi enemies.

Most people can’t name anyone whose career took them from searching for hidden messages in Shakespeare’s works to Nazi code busting to foiling Prohibition rum runners and sending mobsters to the slam. But that’s exactly how Elizebeth Smith Friedman liked it. She was perfectly happy working in the shadows as a complete unknown.

The SPUGGING of Christmas – Even The White House Supported It

At turn-of-the-century campaign to de-commercialize the holiday

New York Times story about the movement against the crass commercialization of Christmas. — The New York Times and other newspapers across the country made the SPUG movement a hot trend in the second decade of the 20th century.

If you think the war on Christmas is about Merry Christmas vs. Happy Holidays or a design on take-out coffee cups, these Wednesday’s Women would beg to differ. They were Spugs … members of the Society for the Prevention of Useless Giving, or SPUG. Continue reading “The SPUGGING of Christmas – Even The White House Supported It”

Jackie Ormes – First African American Female Cartoonist

Crusading Journalist Targeted by FBI during Joe McCarthy Era

Comic strip by Jackie Ormes — With the publication of her comic strip in the Pittsburgh Courier in 1937, Jackie Ormes became the first African American woman newspaper cartoonist. It was the beginning of a long career as a crusading journalist, artist and activist who used her pen as an instrument of protest and change.

Anyone remember riffling through the Sunday papers to get to the comics section? The Sunday funnies, a.k.a. the funny papers, were a family tradition for kids of all ages. They were so popular that, during a 1945 newspaper delivery strike, New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia took to the radio to read the comics so readers wouldn’t miss a week.

Against Lynchings and Jim Crow Laws: Mexican-American Activist Jovita Idár

Early 19th-Century Journalist and Feminist Founded League of Mexican Women

Jovita Idár and "No Mexicans Allowed" racist store sign — A teacher turned journalist who championed the rights of Mexican communities on both sides of the south Texas border, Jovita Idár’s achievements were little-known to the outside world until recent years.

One of eight children born to a family of Mexican-American journalists and social activists in Laredo Texas in 1885, Jovita Idár went on to make her mark as a crusader for civil and women’s rights in a border region notorious for the racist and misogynistic policies and practices of its ruling white culture.

America’s First Lady of the Air: Harriet Quimby

Pioneering the Path of Females in U.S. Aviation History

Aviatrix Harriet Quimby in front of her 1911 airplane. — Ablaze in fame as the country’s first licensed female pilot, Harriet Quimby flew to celebrity, mesmerizing international audiences with the airborne derring-do that paved the way for later women fliers like Amelia Earhart.

In August of 1911, 36-year-old Harriet Quimby became America’s first licensed female pilot. Dubbed “America’s First Lady of the Air,” she couldn’t know she had less than a year to revel in her title before falling from the sky to her death.

Namahyoke Sockum Curtis In The Spanish-American War

Recruited to Solve a Critical Shortage, She Helped Elevate the Status and Role of U.S. Military Nurses

Nurses at a U.S. Army field hospital in Havana during the Spanish-American War — The only known photo of Namahyoke Sockum Curtis against an 1898 image of a U.S. Army Field hospital in Havana, Cuba, during the Spanish American War. Daughter of an African-American/Native American family, and a Black socialite who raised funds to build hospitals for non-whites in Chicago, she was selected by the U.S. Surgeon General to head the recruitment of desperately needed war-time nurses. It was the first time nurses served in dedicated, quasi-military Army units, leading to the establishment of the Army Nurse Corps in 1901.

As wars go, the Spanish-American War gets very little attention. But black women hired as nurses during what some called the “splendid little war” get even less. So you’re excused if you’ve never heard of a woman with the unusual name Namahyoke “Namah” Sockum Curtis, and her role in the Spanish-American War.