by Jill Tietjen | Jun 1, 2019 | In The News, Newsletters
Until the mid-1800s, people were not able to purchase clothing commercially or in sizes to fit them. Maternity clothing would not be commercially available until the early 1900s. Two women who contributed enormously to advances in dressmaking and clothing are Ellen Curtis Demorest and Lena Bryant. Let’s learn more about these two groundbreaking fashionistas.
Ellen Curtis Demorest is widely credited for being the first woman to create paper patterns for making clothing. She worked in a millinery shop after completing her schooling.
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by Jill Tietjen | May 1, 2019 | In The News, Newsletters
It’s springtime and for many sports fans, thoughts turn to baseball. In a previous ENewsletter, we profiled two amazing women in baseball – Effa Manley and Linda Alvarado. Effa Manley was the first woman elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame (2006); she managed and co-owned the Newark Eagles of the Negro Baseball League. In 1946, her team won the Negro League World Series. Linda Alvarado is the current co-owner of the Colorado Rockies. She is an inductee into the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame and the National Women’s Hall of Fame. This month, we profile two other baseball pioneers – Edith Houghton and Nancy Lotsey.
Edith Houghton’s father played semiprofessional baseball and taught her to play at a young age. By age 10, she was the starting shortstop for the Philadelphia Bobbies. During the 1920’s and 1930’s, she played for the New York Bloomer Girls and the Boston team.
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by Jill Tietjen | Apr 1, 2019 | In The News, Newsletters
The National Women’s Hall of Fame announced its 2019 Inductees in early March. They include AIDS researcher Flossie Wong-Staal, who was profiled in our July 2017 ENewsletter, Jane Fonda and Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Let’s discover more about Jane Fonda and Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
The winner of two Academy Awards, actress, political activist, fitness guru, writer and producer Jane Fonda received her first Oscar nomination for the movie They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
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by Amy Land | Mar 1, 2019 | In The News, Newsletters
Women have started businesses for centuries both in order to earn money to support their families and to satisfy their own economic objectives. This month we profile two entrepreneurs: Polly Bemis and Linda Alvarado.
Polly Bemis’s resilience and unquenchable spirit led her to become the foremost pioneer on central Idaho’s Salmon River. Born in China, Bemis in 1872 was sold by her family for bags of seed during a famine. She ended up in Warrens (today Warren), Idaho as either a prostitute, concubine, or in some other form of sexual slavery. There she worked in a saloon, learned English and somehow managed to maintain her self-respect and dignity. After she obtained her freedom, she married Charlie Bemis, who ran the saloon next to a dance hall, and ran a boarding house in Warrens.
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by Amy Land | Feb 1, 2019 | In The News, Newsletters
The recent movies RBG and On the Basis of Sex demonstrate some of the hurdles U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had to overcome. In this month’s ENewsletter, we profile two other legal pioneers: Florence Allen and Constance Baker Motley.
A woman of many firsts, Florence Allen did her undergraduate work (Phi Beta Kappa) at Case Western University. Since the law school at Case Western did not admit women, she began her law education at the University of Chicago in 1909, the only woman in a class of 100 students. Having to pay for her education, she moved to New York City, worked with immigrants and as a lecturer before enrolling at the New York University Law School. Although second in her class when she graduated in 1913, she did not receive any job offers from the New York legal firms (the same situation faced decades later by RBG) so she moved back to Cleveland, Ohio.
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