Quince Orchard High School Celebrates Diversity
People Around the World
Bimonthly Faculty Newsletter
Volume 2, Issue 3
April 2008
Remarkable Women in History
For Women’s History Month (March), students selected and wrote about women they
admire, those who were first to achieve something spectacular in American history.
Shirley
St.
Hill
Eleanor Roosevelt
Chisholm-
selected by Juliette Traore
(sophomore)
“I think she’s a
good person because she fought
against racism, and she got a
good education. I think she is
the best of African American
female!” Shirley was born on No- Juliette Traore
vember 30, 1924 in Brooklyn, New York. Her father
was from British Guiana and her mom was from Barbados. Shirley lived in Barbados with her grandmother and she later said the British school system
gave her a strong academic background. After graduating from Girls High School in Brooklyn, she went to
Brooklyn College and majored in sociology. There she
fought against racism by starting a new social club
when the College wouldn’t allow blacks in theirs. It
was difficult for black graduates to get a good job;
she was rejected by many companies. But she got a
job at the Mt. Calvary Childcare Center in Harlem.
In 1960, she started the Unity Democratic
Club. In 1964, she ran for and won a seat in the New
York General Assembly. She then ran
for New York's Twelfth Congressional
District. She won and became the
first African American woman
elected to Congress. In 1972 Shirley
ran for President of the United States.
She made this famous speech: "I am
not the candidate of black America,
although I am black and proud. I am
not the candidate of the women's movement of this
country, although I am a woman, and I am equally
proud of that. I am not the candidate of any political
bosses or special interests. I am the candidate of the
people." She served in the House of Representatives
until 1982. She died January 1, 2005. http://
www.essortment.com/all/shirleychisholm_ruol.htm
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Eleanor
Roosevelt-selected
Karim Kechrid (sophomore)
“I respect Eleanor Roosevelt
because she did a lot of things
for her country as she helped
women get rights, and Black
Americans too.”
by
was born in New York on October
11, 1984. Most famous as First Lady and wife of President Franklin Roosevelt, she was also the first woman
to speak in front of a national convention, and the
first to be a radio commentator. Also she was chairman
of the Human Rights Commission when the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights was written and adopted on
December 10, 1948. In her later days, she had a newspaper column “My Day”. http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/
erbio.html, http://ezinearticles.com/
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Elaine L. Chao-selected
by Yue
Wang (senior)
She is the Nation’s 24th Secretary of Labor and the first Asian
American woman appointed to be a
President's cabinet member. One of
her most important contributions was
the strengthening of overtime protection for American workers. She is successful and she has a truly amazing personality.
Born at Taipei, her family came from Shanghai,
China. In 1963, she came to US at the age of eight. When
she came to America she did not speak English. Her father had to work three jobs in order to support the family. Elaine went to a public school to start her education. She had to overcome many difficulties, including a
language barrier in her first few years. At school she
worked hard, and she graduated from college in 1979
with great grades. With Straight A’s, she got her masters
from Harvard University. In 1984-1986 she was International Financial Vice President for Commercial Bank of
San Francisco, United States. In 1988
she was the Chairman of the Federal
Maritime Commission. In 1989 she was
the Vice Minister of Communications.
Now as the Secretary of the Labor Department, she is promoting and protecting the health, safety, retirement security, and competitiveness of the nation's
workforce.
(Photo of Yue)
“Also as an immigrant, I share many aspects of
my life with Elaine Chao. I respect her as my
role model, since my English barrier and my
family situation are similar to hers. Her story
gives me direction, strength and hope.”
PAW links are LIVE when you view this online at http://esol.qohs.org/PAW/PAW.htm.
Amelia Earhart
selected by Liana
Parakesikova (senior)
Amelia Mary Earhart was born on July
24, 1897 in Atchison, Kansas. On May
20-21, 1932 Amelia became the first
woman to fly solo across the Atlantic
and she became the first woman to fly
solo nonstop coast to coast.
In her early years she was described as a
tomboy - climbing trees and hunting. After taking her
first ride in an airplane in 1920, she said "As soon as we
left the ground, I knew I myself had to fly." Within a few
days, she took her first flying lessons.
It is actually
very interesting how Earhart came to be the first woman
to fly across the Atlantic. Amy Guess, a wealthy American living in London wanted to fly across, but her family
didn’t let her so she decided to find another woman who
would. Through a New York publicist George Putnam
Amelia Earhart was selected because she could “take a
good picture”, she was “well-educated” and she wasn’t
a “gold-digger”. And she became the first woman to fly
across the Atlantic (more as a passenger). In August,
1932 she became the first woman to fly solo coast to
coast. She was also the First person to fly solo nonstop
from Mexico City to Newark. She was elected president
of the Ninety Nines, a new women's aviation club which
she helped to form. In 1937 she tried to make an
around-the-world flight. She almost made it, but crew
and plane disappeared somewhere in the Pacific between New Guinea and Hawaii.
http://
www.acepilots.com/earhart.html
“Amelia Earhart is one of many women who
have shown society that women can be equal
to men. I myself love airplanes and want to
get my license to fly one day. And thanks to
Amelia it is more acceptable for women to be
a pilot today.” Liana (pictured below)
Dr. Patricia Bath
selected by
Aissatou Barry (freshman)
“I respect her because she is
the first African-American to
invent something that helps
heal people,” says Aissatou.
Bath is an ophthalmologic
surgeon, inventor, and activist for
patients’ rights. She’s from Harlem,
New York and she was born in 1942. During her childhood, her parents always told her to focus on her education and believe in her dreams. She was chosen at
age 16 to participate in a program by the National Science Foundation at Yeshiva University. She won a 1960
Merit Award from Mademoiselle magazine. She finished
high school in just two and a half years then got her
B.A. in chemistry and physics from Hunter’s College.
Later she did a fellowship in ophthalmology at Columbia
University.
She worked at Harlem Hospital with the visually impaired and the blind. She got married and had a
child. In 1975 she became the first African-American
woman surgeon at the UCLA Medical Center. In 1976,
she co-founded the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness (AIPB), an organization that aims to
“protect, preserve, and restore the gift of sight” for all
persons, regardless of race, gender, age or income
level. She thought of an invention that became famous, the Laserphaco Probe, a surgical tool that uses
a laser to vaporize cataracts. Currently she has four
patents related to this invention. In 1993, she was
named Howard University Pioneer in Academic Medicine. http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/bath.html
Check out this slide show of
Famous Female Firsts which includes
short descriptions and photos.
http://lifestyle.msn.com/mindbodyandsoul/
womenintheworld/staticslideshow.aspx?cpdocumentid=3841668
Pictured left: Elizabeth Fuhrman (ESOL Teacher & Gay Straight
Alliance Sponsor) with Liana Parakesikova (QO’s GSA President)
at DC’s 5k Walk for the Homeless
Audre Lorde
selected by Elizabeth Fuhrman (ESOL
Teacher, Gay Straight Alliance Sponsor & Elected Faculty Rep.)
“Audre Lorde was one of the first published authors who wrote honestly and openly about lesbians of color. So I admire her
because she wasn’t afraid to speak up about identities and subcultures that
historically society has tried to hide and shame. Her struggle with breast cancer, during which she wrote ‘at a feverish pace’, also touches me since my mother recently traveled the same journey,” Elizabeth relays. Lorde called herself "a black feminist lesbian mother poet". Like
Ms. Bath (above), she graduated from Hunter College (in 1959), and she also worked for the National University of
Mexico. She got a Masters in Library Science from Columbia University. Some eleven volumes of her poetry have
been published, and she won the National Book Award for poetry in 1973 for From A Land Where Other People Live.
One of my favorite quotes, as a teacher of course, is this: “Seeing silence as a tool for separation and powerlessness, she understood the important function of her writing not only to free herself of the burden of the experience
but also to share her experiences so that others might learn. Survival, she wrote, is only part of the task; the other
part is teaching.” She died of cancer in 1992. http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/g_l/lorde/life.htm
For contributions, ideas and feedback, please contact Elizabeth Fuhrman (ESOL).
PAW issues are now available online at http://esol.qohs.org/PAW/PAW.htm.
A Quince Orchard High School ESOL Department Publication