Gender Archives

Rose Mackenberg: Ghostbuster of Phantoms, Frauds and Flimflam Men

In the early 1900s, with the help of Brooklyn private detective Rose Mackenberg (above, right), escape artist and magician Harry Houdini (above, left) launched a national campaign to expose phony psychics and mediums who preyed on the emotionally distraught. Mackenberg’s colorful methods for ferreting out frauds made her a legend in her own right.

When it came to spiritualists and séances, Rose Mackenberg, a savvy, no-nonsense Brooklyn private eye, once said, “I smell a rat before I smell the incense.” In the early 20th century, she became a star investigator for escape artist and magician Harry Houdini, who spent the last portion of his own career debunking psychics and séances.

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First Native American Female Marine: Minnie Spotted Wolf of the Blackfeet Tribe

Memorializing a local legend seventy six years after her enlistment, the name of a stretch of Montana’s U.S. Highway 89 was changed to Minnie Spotted Wolf Memorial Highway. [Highway photo by John McGill of the Glacier Reporter]

It was “hard … but not too hard,” is how the 20-year-old woman who broke racial and gender barriers as the first Native American female Marine described boot camp at North Carolina’s Camp Lejeune in 1943. After all, growing up on her father’s rural Montana ranch, Minnie Spotted Wolf was used to doing the types of back-breaking physical jobs usually done by men — cutting fence posts, driving two-ton trucks, building bridges and fences, and rounding up and breaking horses while raising cattle and sheep.

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Barbara Hillary: Blazing a Trail to the Top (and Bottom) of the World

A 75-year-old cancer survivor’s Incredible journey

A retired nurse who survived two bouts of cancer, Barbara Hillary was the first African-American women to reach the North Pole, among other trekking adventures.

In terms of sheer persistence, Barbara Hillary’s is quite a story. Determined to do what no other woman like her had done before, Hillary became the first African-American woman to reach the North Pole. Even more noteworthy, she did it at the age of 75.

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Isabella Goodwin : NYPD’s First Female Police Detective

Forgoing dreams of an opera career to become a famed law enforcement sleuth

Isabella Goodwin made history within the turn-of-the-century New York City Police Department, paving the way for female officers of the future.

As a girl, Isabella Goodwin wanted to be an opera singer. So how did this wannabe diva wind up working with the New York Police Department to nab a motley crew of bank robbers and, in the process, become the Big Apple’s first female police detective?

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A Legend of the Appalachian Trail She Helped Save: Emma Gatewood

Her first effort to conquer the Appalachian Trail was a failure that taught her lessons that brought her success as the first woman to ever accomplish the feat.

When, one hot day in July of 1954, Emma Gatewood told her grown kids she was “going for a walk,” she left out a few details. She expected the walk would take her from Maine to Georgia, cover 2,108.5 miles and go through 14 states.

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Sister Rosetta Tharpe: Rock & Roll’s First Guitar Heroine

When Sister Rosetta Tharpe picked up her electric guitar in the 1940s and lit into “Strange Things Happening Every Day,” she didn’t know she was creating a musical style that would become an international sensation. But today, this audience-taunting, duck-walking, howling, stomping, gospel-singing black woman is known as the Mother of Rock and Roll.

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