Recognizing The Honorable Viola Baskerville And Celebrating Women’s History Month

The Farm Team would like to thank our friend, The Honorable Viola Baskerville, for her terrific series last month celebrating Black History Month. We should all be very proud of the Virginia African-American women she highlighted and their accomplishments. Secretary Baskerville herself, is someone whose accomplishments deserve recognition and I we are sure she is not done yet!

Today, we begin the month-long celebration of Women’s History Month. President Carter first issued a Presidential Proclamation declaring the week of March 8, 1980 as the first National Women’s History Week. In 1987, Congress expanding the week into a month, and March is now National Women’s History Month.

In the early 1980s, the topic of women’s history was limited to college curricula – less than 3% of the content of teacher training textbooks mentioned the contributions of women, and then usually as footnotes – thus, depriving students of viable female role models. Today, a search of the internet will show more than 40,500,000 citations!

March Highlights in US Women’s History

• March 1, 1978 – Women’s History Week is first observed in Sonoma County, California
• March 1, 1987 – A Congressional resolution designating March as Women’s History Month is passed
• March 4, 1917 – Jeannette Rankin (R-MT) took her seat as the first female member of Congress
• March 8 – International Women’s Day; its origins trace back to protests in US and Europe to honor and fight for the political rights for working women
• March 11, 1993 – Janet Reno is confirmed as the first woman U.S. Attorney General
• March 12, 1912 – Juliette Gordon Low assembled 18 girls together in Savannah, Georgia, for the first-ever Girl Scout meeting
• March 13, 1986 – Susan Butcher won the first of 3 straight and 4 total Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Races in Alaska
• March 17, 1910 – Camp Fire Girls is established as the first American interracial, non-sectarian organization for girls
• March 20, 1852 – Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” is published and becomes the best-selling book of the 19 th century
• March 21, 1986 – Debi Thomas becomes first African American woman to win the World Figure Skating Championship
• March 23, 1917 – Virginia Woolf establishes the Hogarth Press with her husband, Leonard Woolf
• Mar 31, 1888 – The National Council of Women of the U.S. is organized by Susan B. Anthony, Clara Barton, Julia Ward Howe, and Sojourner Truth, among others; it is the oldest non-sectarian women’s organization in U.S.
• Mar 31, 1776 – Abigail Adams writes to her husband John who is helping to frame the Declaration of Independence: “Remember the ladies…”

To learn more about women in history check out the National Women’s History Project http://www.nwhp.org