by Michele Genthon | Sep 7, 2018 | FIRST WOMEN, Law and Law Enforcement, Politics and Government
Even though she was born in the middle of the nineteenth century, Clara Shortridge Foltz’s life may not have been dissimilar from some women today. She was a mother and career woman; she ignored barriers; and she had the courage to achieve in areas where there were no...
by Michele Genthon | Aug 31, 2018 | Arts, Entertainment, and Media, FIRST WOMEN
Many have paid tribute to Aretha Franklin but few have outlined all her achievements as a First Woman: –First Woman inducted into the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame (and second in the UK) –First Woman to have 100 titles...
by Michele Genthon | Aug 5, 2018 | FIRST WOMEN, Politics and Government
Montana has only one representative in the U.S. House of Representatives and yet it has the distinction of having elected the First Woman representative. Montana gave women the right to vote in 1914. In 1917, three years before the rest of the nation granted suffrage...
by Michele Genthon | Jul 22, 2018 | Business and Economics, FIRST WOMEN
One of my favorite Northwest First Women is Stagecoach Mary, the First African-American Woman mail carrier for the U.S. Postal Service. Mary was a slave born in Hickam County, Tennessee, where she lived for the first thirty years of her life. Her birth is not...
by Michele Genthon | Jul 1, 2018 | Arts, Entertainment, and Media, FIRST WOMEN
In 1931 the state of Washington named Ella Rhoads Higginson as its first poet laureate. Not its First Woman poet laureate, its first poet laureate, period. Higginson was known throughout the United States for her depictions, both in prose and poetry, of the Pacific...
by Michele Genthon | Jun 15, 2018 | FIRST WOMEN, Politics and Government
New Orleans, one of my two favorite cities in the United States, is celebrating its 300th birthday. Three hundred years of vibrant history, but also three hundred years without a woman mayor—until last month. LaToya Cantrell became the first female mayor of New...
