Q: Who was the woman who led the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years and advised multiple U.S. presidents on Civil Rights issues?

A: Dorothy Height was an educator and social activist who was the president of the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years.  She also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal.  In addition to providing leadership in the community during the civil rights movement, Height advised First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, President Dwight D. Eisenhower and President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Height died on April 20, 2010 in Washington, DC at the age of 98 and is buried at Fort Lincoln Cemetery.

Q: Who was the first woman to become chief of a Native American nation?

A: Wilma Pearl Mankiller was the first woman to become Chief of the Cherokee Nation in 1985.  She was principal chief until 1995.  The Oklahoma native grew up in a destitute family that lived first in Oklahoma and then in California.  In 1983, she was elected deputy chief of the Cherokee Nation.  When Principal Chief Ross Swimmer left in 1985, to head the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Mankiller became chief.  She was freely elected in 1987 and re-elected in 1991, with 83 percent of the vote.

She said that prior to her election “young Cherokee girls would never have thought that they might grow up and become chief.”

Mankiller died of pancreatic cancer on April 6, 2010.

Q: Who was the former slave who became the first black woman in America to win a court case against a white man?  She sued to get back her five-year-old son who had been sold to a plantation owner in Alabama.  She later became an outspoken abolitionist, giving her most famous speech at the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention.

A: Born into slavery, Sojourner Truth escaped to freedom with her infant daughter in 1826.  After her escape, she learned that her five-year-old son, Peter, had been sold to a plantation owner in Alabama.  With the help of a family that took her in after her escape, Truth sued the man who’d sold Peter.  After months of legal proceedings, Peter was returned and Truth became one of the first black women to take a white man to court and win the case.

Later, Truth spoke out against equalities, giving her famous “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech at the 1851 Ohio Women’s Rights Convention.  Over the next decade, Truth spoke before many audiences.  Later, she recruited black troops for the Union Army during the Civil War and desegregated street cars in Washington, DC.

Q: Who was the first American postmistress?  Hint: she was also the first person to print the Declaration of Independence with the names of the signatories.

A: Mary Katherine Goddard became postmaster of the Baltimore post office in 1775.  The daughter of a postmaster, Goddard and her brother were both involved in the postal and printing businesses.  When the Continental Congress moved that the Declaration of Independence be widely distributed, Goddard was one of the first to offer up her printing press, even though the Declaration was considered a treasonous document by the British.

In 1789, Goddard was removed from the postmaster position by Postmaster General Samuel Osgood who said the position required more traveling than a woman could undertake.  Baltimore residents rallied behind Goddard, but their efforts to get her reinstated were unsuccessful and Osgood appointed one of his political allies to replace her.

Q: This woman was known both as “mother” and as “the most dangerous woman in America.”  She organized mine workers and their families and organized a children’s march in 1903 to protest weak child labor laws.

A: Mary Harris “Mother” Jones was an Irish immigrant who became prominent in the American labor movement and co-founded the Industrial Workers of the World.  She became involved with the labor movement after a series of tragedies in the late 1860s and early 70s claimed the lives of her husband, four young children and dress-making business.  She often led strikes and, as a union organizer, she led the wives and children of striking workers to demonstrate, too.

She got the nickname “Mother Jones” because she claimed to be older than she actually was and referred to male workers as “her boys.”

In 1903, she organized children who were working in mills and mines to participate in a “Children’s Crusade.”  The children, some of whom had injuries suffered on the job, marched 125 miles from Kensington, PA to Oyster Bay, NY, the home of President Theodore Roosevelt.  Though the president refused to meet with the marchers, the demonstration did bring attention to the issue of child labor.

Later in life, Mother Jones moved to Adelphi, MD, where she continued to speak on union issues almost until her death in 1930.

Q: Who was the first woman to run a print shop in America?

A: Anne Catherine Hoof Green became the first women to run a print shop in America.  She took over the Annapolis business after her husband died in 1767.  In addition to being Maryland’s official printer, Green also published the Maryland Gazette, the province’s principal news source.  The masthead of the newspaper read “Anne Catherine & Sons.”

Green was a supporter of colonial revolution early on and the newspaper often attacked British policy.  A single mother of six, Green also pushed for women to play a more active role in the community.

Q: Who was the first African American woman to serve as mayor of a major U.S. city?

A: Sharon Pratt became the first African American woman to serve as mayor of a major U.S. when she became mayor of Washington, D.C. in 1991.  A D.C. native, Pratt initially wanted pursue an acting career.  But after graduating from Howard University’s School of Law, she became an associate at her father’s law firm.  She went on to become the first woman and first African American to hold the Vice President of Public Policy position at PEPCO.  Pratt was an active member of the Democratic National Committee and became the first woman to be named Treasurer in the DNC.

Her first foray into public office was when she ran for mayor of D.C. with the campaign slogan “Clean House.”

Pratt currently owns Pratt Consulting, LLC, a management and technology consulting firm.

Q: Who was the first woman to run for President of the United States?

A: Victoria Woodhull became the first woman to run for President of the United States in 1872.  Newspapers at the time called her a leader of the women’s suffrage movement in the 19th Century and she was known for her views on spiritualism, business reform and free love.

Woodhull and her sister made a fortune as the first female Wall Street brokers and used their money to found a newspaper which became notorious for publishing opinions on topics like sex education, free love, vegetarianism, suffrage, spiritualism and licensed prostitution.

In 1871, she announced her intention to run for president and was nominated by the Equal Rights Party the next year. Frederick Douglass was nominated for Vice President, although he never acknowledged this.  In spite of her declaration, nomination and ratification as a nominee, many have questioned the legality of her run for a number of reasons, including: the government declined to print her name on the ballot, she was not 35, she did not receive any electoral votes and she was a woman.

She later moved to England, where she gave lectures and published a magazine with her daughter.

Q: A proponent of women’s suffrage and black civil rights, this woman is recognized for organizing the American Red Cross.

A: At the start of the Civil War, Clara Barton began tending to wounded soldiers.  After the First Battle of Bull run, she established an agency to collect and distribute supplies to wounded soldiers and later received permission to travel to the front lines and organize the hospitals there.  Barton also helped develop nursing as a skilled profession during the war.

In 1873, Barton started a movement to gain recognition for the International Committee of the Red Cross by the U.S. government.  She succeeded during the administration of President James Garfield and became president of the American branch of the society which was founded in 1881 in New York.

She died in Glen Echo, MD.  Her home is now the Clara Barton National Historic Site and was one of the first dedicated to the accomplishments of a woman.

Q: Who was the first American woman to go into space?

A: Dr. Sally Ride became the first American woman to go into space in 1983.  At the time, she was also the youngest person to go into space.  Ride joined NASA in 1978, after answering a newspaper ad seeking applicants for the space program.  She was preceded in space by two Soviet women. She is president and CEO of Sally Ride Science, a company she founded that creates science programs and publications for young people, with a focus on girls.