International Women's Day

Yesterday we celebrated the 100th year anniversary of International Women's day. So to honor it, I thanked every woman in my life that is doing remarkable things and I told them that I appreciated all the work that they do. There are so many women out here who are doing work surrounding reproductive health access, HIV/Awareness, sex education, mentoring, blackgirlhood, and just advocacy and grassroot organizing in general on a daily bases. So I wanted to honor them yesterday with a simple thank you. Thank you for your time; thank you for your efforts; thank you for all the work that you do!

From another woman that's making a difference!

Women's Herstory

So it's women's herstory month! I just want to pay homage to the amazing women that I see making herstory everyday.

The women of the My Voice, My Choice leadership group! These ladies are doing something that has never been seen before. They are making their voices heard all around the country and at the same time staying employed, being single parents, students, and mentors. I know you all hear this alot, but I can't say it enough. You ladies are writing your own stories within the RJ movement. Without you alot more women would be deprived of their right to make a choice.

Thank you again for all you do and have an amazing weekend!

House Judiciary Committee Approves Bill Restricting Insurance Coverage of Abortion

March 4, 2011 — The House Judiciary Committee on Thursday voted 23-14 to approve a bill (HR 3) that would codify existing federal policies that prohibit federal funding of abortion in almost all cases, CQ Today reports (Weyl, CQ Today, 3/3).

The bill, titled the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act and introduced in January by Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), codifies current federal policies that prohibit federal funding for abortion except in cases of rape, incest or life endangerment. These restrictions, including the most sweeping provision known as the Hyde Amendment, have been attached each year in appropriations legislation. House Democrats have said that the bill removes tax breaks for small businesses who purchase insurance policies that include abortion coverage and prohibits individuals from receiving tax deductions for abortion care (Women's Health Policy Report, 2/9). The legislation also bans health care organizations that use their own funds for providing abortion care from receiving the use of U.S. foreign assistance and prohibits the District of Columbia from using local funds to pay for abortions.

The measure originally included an exemption for federal funding of an abortion in the case of a "forcible" rape. However, in light of criticism from women's groups, the Judiciary Committee adopted by voice vote a substitute amendment that removes the word "forcible" and modifies an exemption for abortions in the case of incest to exclude references to the woman being a minor. Democrats on the panel made several unsuccessful attempts to remove the tax-related provisions from the bill.

"This bill seeks to expand restrictions in current law and to impose an unprecedented penalty by use of the tax code on privately funded health care choices made by women and their families," Judiciary Committee ranking Democrat John Conyers (Mich.) said, adding, "Its goal, and effect if ever enacted, is to make abortion and coverage for abortion services completely unavailable" (CQ Today, 3/3).

Committee Chair Lamar Smith (R-Texas) said, "HR 3 does not ban abortion. It also does not restrict abortions, or abortion coverage in health care plans, as long as those abortions or plans use only private or state funds." He added that "now is the time for Congress to pass one piece of legislation that prohibits the federal funding of abortions and prohibits the use of fiscal policy to encourage or subsidize abortions" (Hooper, The Hill, 3/3).

Phenomenal woman #3

What Black woman refused to give up her seat to a White man in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955, thus sparking the civil rights movement of the following decade?

ROSA PARKS(1913-2005)

Rosa Parks was an African-American civil rights activist, whom the U.S. Congress called "the first lady of civil rights", and "the mother of the freedom movement".^[1]

On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks, age 42, refused to obey bus driver James Blake's order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger. Her action was not the first of its kind. Irene Morgan in 1946, and Sarah Louise Keys in 1955,^[2] had won rulings before the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Interstate Commerce Commission, respectively, in the area of interstate bus travel. Nine months before Parks refused to give up her seat, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin refused to move from her seat on the same bus system. In New York City, in 1854, Lizzie Jennings engaged in similar activity, leading to the desegregation of the horsecars and horse-drawn omnibuses of that city.^[3] But unlike these previous individual actions of civil disobedience, Parks' action sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Parks' act of defiance became an important symbol of the modern Civil Rights Movement and Parks became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation. She organized and collaborated with civil rights leaders, including boycott leader Martin Luther King, Jr., helping to launch him to national prominence in the civil rights movement.

At the time of her action, Parks was secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and had recently attended the Highlander Folk School, a Tennessee center for workers' rights and racial equality. Nonetheless, she took her action as a private citizen "tired of giving in". Although widely honored in later years for her action, she suffered for it, losing her job as a seamstress in a local department store. Eventually, she moved to Detroit, Michigan, where she found similar work. From 1965 to 1988 she served as secretary and receptionist to African-American U.S. Representative John Conyers. After retirement from this position, she wrote an autobiography and lived a largely private life in Detroit. In her final years she suffered from dementia and became involved in a lawsuit filed on her behalf against American hip-hop duo OutKast.

Parks eventually received many honors ranging from the 1979 Spingarn Medal to the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal and a posthumous statue in the United States Capitol's National Statuary Hall. Her death in 2005 was a major story in the United States' leading newspapers. She was granted the posthumous honor of lying in honor at the Capitol Rotunda.

Phenomenal Woman #2

What woman was the first African-American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature?

TONI MORRISON

Morrison began writing fiction as part of an informal group of poets and writers at Howard University who met to discuss their work. She went to one meeting with a short story about a black girl who longed to have blue eyes. The story later evolved into her first novel, The Bluest Eye (1970), which she wrote while raising two children and teaching at Howard.^[4] In 2000 it was chosen as a selection for Oprah's Book Club.^[6]

In 1975 her novel Sula (1973) was nominated for the National Book Award. Her third novel, Song of Solomon (1977), brought her national attention. The book was a main selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club, the first novel by a black writer to be so chosen since Richard Wright's Native Son in 1940. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award.

In 1987 Morrison's novel Beloved became a critical success. When the novel failed to win the National Book Award as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award, a number of writers protested over the omission.^[4][7] Shortly afterward, it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the American Book Award. Beloved was adapted into the 1998 film of the same name starring Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover. Morrison later used Margaret Garner's life story again in an opera, Margaret Garner, with music by Richard Danielpour. In May 2006, The New York Times Book Review named Beloved the best American novel published in the previous twenty-five years.

In 1993 Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her citation reads: Toni Morrison, "who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality." Shortly afterwards, a fire destroyed her Rockland County, New York home.^[2][8]

In 1996 the National Endowment for the Humanities selected Morrison for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities.^[9] Morrison's lecture, entitled "The Future of Time: Literature and Diminished Expectations,"^[10] began with the aphorism, "Time, it seems, has no future," and cautioned against misuse of history to diminish expectations of the future.^[11]

Morrison was honored with the 1996 National Book Foundation's Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, which is awarded to a writer "who has enriched our literary heritage over a life of service, or a corpus of work."^[12]

Although her novels typically concentrate on black women, Morrison does not identify her works as feminist.^[13] She has stated that she thinks "it's off-putting to some readers, who may feel that I'm involved in writing some kind of feminist tract. I don't subscribe to patriarchy, and I don't think it should be substituted with matriarchy. I think it's a question of equitable access, and opening doors to all sorts of things."^[13]

In addition to her novels, Morrison has also co-written books for children with her younger son, Slade Morrison, who works as a painter and musician.

Phenomenal Woman #1

Who founded Bethune-Cookman College, estabilished the National Council of Negro Women, and served as an advisor on minority affairs to President Franklin D. Roosevelt?

MARY McLEOD BETHUNE (1875-1955)

was an American educator and civil rights leader best known for starting a school for African-American students in Daytona Beach, Florida, that eventually became Bethune-Cookman University and for being an advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Born in South Carolina to parents who had been slaves and having to work in fields at age five, she took an early interest in her own education. With the help of benefactors, Bethune attended college hoping to become a missionary in Africa. When that did not materialize, she started a school for black girls in Daytona Beach. From six students it grew and merged with an institute for black boys and eventually became the Bethune-Cookman School. Its quality far surpassed the standards of education for black students, and rivaled those of white schools. Bethune worked tirelessly to ensure funding for the school, and used it as a showcase for tourists and donors, to exhibit what educated black people could do. She was president of the college from 1923 to 1942 and 1946 to 1947, one of the few women in the world who served as a college president at that time.

Bethune was also active in women's clubs, and her leadership in them allowed her to become nationally prominent. She worked for the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932, and became a member of Roosevelt's Black Cabinet, sharing the concerns of black people with the Roosevelt administration while spreading Roosevelt's message to blacks, who had been traditionally Republican voters. Upon her death, columnist Louis E. Martin said, "She gave out faith and hope as if they were pills and she some sort of doctor."^[1] Her home in Daytona Beach is a National Historic Landmark,^[2] her house in Washington, D.C. in Logan Circle is preserved by the National Park Service as a National Historic Site,^[3] and a sculpture of her is located in Lincoln Park in Washington, D.C.^[4]

Women's History Month Celebrates 100 years!!!

March is finally here!! This month is devoted to celebrating the works of the wonderful women who came before us; and who laid the foundation for the work that we do today. So I decided to give a little history on Women's History Month.

The event traces its beginnings back to the first International Women's Day in 1911.

In 1979, the school district of Sonoma, California, participated in Women's History Week, an event designed around the week of March 8 (International Women's Day).

In 1981, responding to the growing popularity of the event, Congress passed a resolution recognizing Women's History Week. This week was well received, and soon after, schools across the country began to have their own local celebrations. The next year, leaders from the California group shared their project at the Women's History Institute at Sarah Lawrence College. Other participants not only became determined to begin their own local Women's History Week projects, but also agreed to support an effort to have Congress declare a national Women's History Month.

Maryland, Pennsylvania, Alaska, New York, Oregon and other states developed and distributed curriculum materials in all of their public schools, which prompted educational events such as essay contests. Within a few years, thousands of schools and communities got on the bandwagon of National Women's History Week. They planned engaging and stimulating programs about women's roles in history and society, with support and encouragement from governors, city councils, school boards, and the U.S. Congress.

In 1987 Congress expanded the focus to a whole month. In 2001, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Rep. Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland) co-sponsored the first Joint Congressional Resolution proclaiming a "Women's History Month". Soon, other state departments of education began to encourage celebrations of National Women's History Week as a way to promote equality among the sexes in the classroom.

So Women's History Month 2011 marks 100 years of celebrating the accomplishments of women. So I will be posting a blog everyday about significant women figures that have impacted women's history. Be on the look out!!