H Is For Dolores Huerta

Growing up on the South Side of Chicago, I was born into a union family. United Steel Workers was part and parcel of my childhood. How could I not choose a female labor leader for my A to Z list. I want to introduce you to Dolores Huerta, co-founder of United Farm Workers and a woman I admire greatly for her tireless work on behalf of the working poor, women and children.

Dolores was born in the mining town of Dawson, New Mexico and after her parents divorced, she moved to Stockton, California. She experienced activism from an early age through both of her parents. Her upbringing and early community work led her to a teaching career, which she left in 1955 because she knew she had a different calling. Huerta helped found the Stockton chapter of the CSO (Community Service Organization) not long after leaving her teaching position and in 1960 co-founded the Agricultural Workers Association. This organization helped set up voter registration and presses for barrio improvements.

Through this work she met Cesar Chavez. In 1962 they founded the National Farm Workers Association, which would later become United Farm Workers when they combined their organization with Larry Itliong's Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee. In 1966 she successfully negotiated a contract between UFW and the Schenley Wine Company, making this the first time that agricultural workers were able to bargain with an agricultural enterprise.

An activist and political leader, Dolores was drawing national attention. She stood with Robert F. Kennedy on that fateful June day in 1968 at the Ambassador Hotel and was mere yards away when he was shot. Her work has also been fraught with struggle. She has been arrested some 22 times for her protests and in September of 1988, she was severely beaten by San Francisco Police at a protest rally against then presidential candidate George Bush the Elder. The beating was caught on tape and Huerta won a large judgment against the SFPD. She used the money to aid farm workers. Following her recovery, she took a leave of absence from the union to concentrate on women's rights and worked to get more Latina women registered to vote.

Dolores has also received many accolades for her tireless work. In 1997 she was named one of the year's three most powerful women by Ms. Magazine. The next year she was the inaugural recipient of the Eleanor Roosevelt Award For Human Rights and Ladies' Home Journal recognized her as one of the Most Powerful Women of the Twentieth Century alongside such leaders as Mother Theresa and Indira Ghandi. In 2007, she was the co-recipient of the Community of Christ International Peace Award and in 2008 was awarded the Jane Addams Distinguished Leadership Award from United Neighborhood Centers of America.

At 81, she still continues to tirelessly campaign on behalf of the working poor and women. She created the Dolores Huerta Foundation in 2002 which helps grassroots organizations in poor communities, helping them develop leadership and policy advocacy strategies.

Dolores just blows me away. I should have a tenth of that drive and ambition at my age.

Fun Factoid

She has five elementary schools named for her. Four in California and one in Texas.

In the midst of all her political activism, Dolores also managed to birth eleven children and marry twice.

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G Is For Lillian Gish

Okay, so I'm cheating a bit and took yesterday off and am putting up G today. Ah well... Happy Easter and Happy Passover to all my friends out there who celebrate. This is a blessed day for me to be able to count all of you as friends. On with the letter G...

I just love this woman. Lillian Gish is truly one of America' s greatest cinematic treasures, a giant talent who started at the veritable dawn of cinema with her sister Dorothy, in D.W. Griffith's silent short An Unseen Enemy in 1912. However, she'd been acting on the stage since 1902, which means technically, her active acting career lasted an astounding 87 years. Her last film was The Whales of August with the incomparable Bette Davis and one of my favorite actors, the legendary Vincent Price in 1987. I loved that movie and highly recommend it.

She was the consummate actress, suffering for her craft under some extreme conditions like starvation and intense heat. At one point, during the run of the play A Good Little Devil, she collapsed on stage from anemia. Lillian gave her all in every part,and willingly adapted herself to each new era and technology. She transitioned to talkie films in 1930 and began to work in radio as well. In 1948 she made her television debut in The Late Christopher Bean.

At a time when most of her contemporaries had gone quietly into retirement, Lillian continued to reinvent herself and hone her craft. In 1969, she began lecturing on her career in the silent film era, introducing a new generation to the wonder of early film. She became a fierce advocate for the preservation of the silent films through her lectures and hosted a PBS series in 1975 called The Silent Years.

She never received an Academy Award, but was nominated in 1946 for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the western Duel in the Sun. She was awarded an honorary Oscar in 1970 for her "superlative artistry and for distinguished contribution to the progress of motion pictures." The Kennedy Center honored her in 1982 and in 1984 she was awarded the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award. Only the second woman to be so honored after Bette Davis. 

Lillian was a strong woman who definitely forged her own path in life and is someone to be admired for all that she accomplished. 


I thought I'd share a couple of my favorite quotes from her.


"You know, when I first went into the movies Lionel Barrymore played my grandfather. Later he played my father and finally he played my husband. If he had lived, I'm sure I would have played his mother." 

"Young man, if God had wanted you to see me that way, he would have put your eyes in your bellybutton." 



Fun Factoid


Lillian's godson is James MacArthur, Danno from the original Hawaii Five-O series. 


She was considered for the roles of both Ellen O'Hara and Belle Watling in Gone With The Wind. 

Thank you for stopping by during this awesome A to Z Challenge. To keep on visiting more of these truly incredible participants please click here.

F Is For Lita Ford

You know I could not have a blog about strong women and not have a rocker on here. I did a post last challenge about Joan Jett, so this year I'm going to talk about her band mate from The Runaways, Lita Ford.

Carmelita Rosanna Ford was born in Britain and moved to the States at age 4. At age 11, she picked up a guitar and that was it. By 16, Lita was a member of the seminal all girl rock band The Runaways along with Joan, Cherie Currie, and Sandy West, making her mark in the all boys' world of hard rock.

Her first solo album, Out For Blood, failed to chart in the U.S., but she didn't let that discourage her. She continued to tour, playing constantly in every place imaginable. Her second album, Dancin' on the Edge made moderate waves with singles like "Fire In My Heart" and "Gotta Let Go," which was a Number One hit and her biggest single to date. A follow up album, Bride Wore Black was never released because she hated the finished project and left her label Mercury, for RCA.

She didn't hit the charts again until 1988 with her self-titled album, Lita. Self-produced, this third album resulted in Lita's biggest commercial success  with hits like "Kiss Me Deadly," "Back to the Cave," "Falling In and Out of Love," co-written with Nikki Sixx of Motley Crue and the power ballad duet "Close My Eyes Forever" with Ozzy Osbourne. She followed this album up with Stiletto, Dangerous Curves (which featured her final charting single "Shot of Poison" and finally, Black. She basically disappeared for the remainder of the 90's.

In 2008, Lita formed a new band and released Wicked Wonderland in 2009. She continues to rock out wherever she can. Being a woman in a man's world like this meant she had to not only rock harder, but put up with a lot of sexist crap, including videos where some guy covered her guitar work while she was forced to scamper around in a barely there costume "seducing" the guitar and the "male" viewers. I respect her because she pushed through to find her own path, strumming her ax her way.

Here's a clip of Lita jamming with Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath on her pink B.C. Rich. Check out her skills...



Fun Factoid

Micki Steele from The Bangles once played bass guitar in The Runaways along side Lita and Joan.

Hope you are all enjoying the big A to Z. I thank you for stopping by and visiting. To check out my fellow awesome bloggers in this challenge please click here.

E Is For Sylvia Earle

Today I wanted to cover someone who made her mark in one of my fave fields, science. I often wish that I had a head for science, but the truth is I just never did well in the subject, though I loved it. I do think science is one area where we need to stir the interest of young girls. We do need more scientists of the female persuasion in my opinion.

So without further ado... My E is for Sylvia Earle, oceanographer and hero of mine. She lead the first team of all women aquanauts in 1970 during the Tektite II project,  a deep sea habitat program in which divers lived under the ocean for 10 to 20 days at a time and studied the effects on the human body as well the psychological effects of working in a closed environment.

In 1979, Sylvia made a JIM suit dive to the ocean floor near, Oahu, Hawaii, setting a woman's depth record at 381 meters (1250 ft.). She also owns the record for a woman's solo dive in a submersible at 1000 meters (3300 ft.).

She founded Deep Ocean Engineering with her husband, engineer and submersible designer, Graham Hawkes in 1985. The company designed and built the Deep Rover research submarine in 1987, which operates down to a depth of 3300 feet. She left the company in 1990 to accept an appointment as chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Seven years later she started DOER, Deep Ocean Exploration and  Research, a company that designs, builds and operates equipment for deep ocean environments. A company that is now run by her daughter, Elizabeth.In 1998 she named Time Magazine's first "hero for the planet."

She has lead more than 60 deep sea expeditions and served as the leader for the Sustainable Seas Expedition from 1998 to 2002, a five year program to study the United States National Marine Sanctuary. In 2009 she was awarded a TED grant and founded Mission Blue, a program that aims to create marine protected areas around the globe. So far they have established these so-called "hope spots" in Cuba, Belize, the Galapagos Islands and the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef off of the Yucatan Peninsula.

Fun Factoid

Sylvia is a Knight of the Netherlands' Order of the Golden Ark

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D Is For Christine De Pizan And Defiance

The A to Z is going strong and I hope you are all enjoying the many awesome bloggers out there. I know I am. So many cool themes and wonderful people. Today is also the first Wednesday in April and the Insecure Writers Support Group. So I am combining my strong women theme with IWSG.

My strong woman for today is a poet and writer from the Renaissance, Christine De Pizan. Married at 15 and widowed at 25, Christine faced a harsh life with two children, a mother and a niece to support and no income. This normally meant that one had to troll for another husband or start making a living as a prostitute. Not so with Christine. Her father, Thomas, had served Charles V as court astrologer, physician and alchemist. Because of this, she had the opportunity to pursue intellectual interests. And pursue she did, learning languages, art and writing.

She decided to take a chance and wrote some love poems. Her work caught the attention of a few very wealthy patrons and Christine was on her way. Between 1393 and 1412 she composed some three hundred ballads and shorter poems. But writing love poetry was not enough. In 1401-2, she wrote a treatise regarding the misogynistic treatment of women in one of the most popular literary works of the day, Jean du Meun's Romance of the Rose. This rebuke of du Meun cemented her as a leading intellectual and she continued to challenge the portrayal of women in literature. She went on to write The Book of the City of Ladies, which shows the importance of the contributions of women in society and The Book of the Three Virtues which teaches women how to counteract the misogyny they find.

In honor of Christine, my D word for the IWSG is DEFY. As writers we often are told to study markets, see what's popular. Publishers have guidelines for us to follow to make sure our book will fit. This is all well and good, but never lose your voice or be afraid to ignore the conventions out there. Write the book you want and don't let anyone tell you differently. DEFY current thinking, forge ahead. Your audience is out there.

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C Is For Edith Cavell

* A Note: I am in the midst of getting ready to move, so if I don't get to respond to the comments on here right away, I am very sorry. Please forgive the late responses.

Nurses are the most awesome people and one of the best, most courageous in my book is Edith Cavell. She stood firmly in her belief in helping others and never wavered. The daughter of an Anglican minister, she was always helping those less fortunate. Her call to nursing came later in life, a second career you might say. She entered the profession in 1905 at the age of forty and she took off from there. By 1907 she was the head of a newly established nursing school L'École Belge d’Infirmières Diplômées in Brussels. In 1910, she launched the nursing journal, L'infirmière. Just one year later, Edith was the training nurse for three hospitals, twenty-four schools and thirteen kindergartens.

World War I broke out in 1914, while Edith was home in England. She immediately headed back to Belgium. Here is where her courage and her unwavering belief in helping others rose to the fore and carried her into history. During the German occupation of Belgium, Edith gained a reputation for helping soldiers of both sides. It was during this time that she began helping Belgian soldiers trapped behind German lines to escape into The Netherlands, a neutral country at the time. She had been recruited by British SIS, but turned from her espionage activities in order to help soldiers escape. She helped some 200 soldiers before coming under suspicion by the German High Command. On August 3, 1915, she was arrested and sent to St. Gilles prison. She was held there for 10 weeks as she was court-martialled under German military law. A death sentence was handed down and in spite of massive protests, on October12, 1915 at 6:00AM, the sentence was carried out. Edith was executed by firing squad along with one of the men who helped her with the soldiers, Philippe Bauq, a Belgian architect.

Edith went to her death bravely, saying to Reverend Stirling Gahan, "Patriotism is not enough, I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone." The international furor over her death was enormous and she was used in many propaganda campaigns during the rest of the war. Many memorials were established in her honor, but one of the coolest comes from Canada. Mount Edith Cavell stands near Athabasca Pass in Jasper National Park in the Canadian Rockies. They named a mountain after her, how impressive is that?

Fun Female Factoid

One of the world's first novels, The Tale Genji, was written by a Japanese noblewoman, Murasaki Shikibu in 1000 AD.

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B Is For Pancho Barnes

We all know Amelia Earhart, queen of the skies, but one of the most badass women of the air was Florence Lowe "Pancho" Barnes. She came from aviation royalty, her grandfather was Thaddeus Lowe, who established the Union Army Balloon Corps during the American Civil War. Brash and confident, Barnes soloed her first plane after just six hours in the air. After that, it was on. Pancho ran a barnstorming show and competed in air races. She won the 1930 Women's Air Derby and broke the air speed record set by Earhart.

Pancho was wild and crazy, loved to smoke, drink and had her own way of looking at the world. In 1931 she moved to Hollywood where she worked as a stunt pilot on such films as Howard Hughes' Hell's Angels. She  formed the Associated Motion Picture Pilots, a union of stunt pilots who promoted flying safety and a standardized pay scale for aerial work.

In 1935 she left Hollywood and moved out to 180 acres in the Mojave desert. Here she established the first test pilots union and created the Happy Bottom Riding Club, a dude ranch/hang out for pilots. Her close friends and members of the club included some of the giants of aviation history like General Jimmy Doolittle, Chuck Yeager and Buzz Aldrin. Because her land was in such close proximity to Edwards Air Force Base, Pancho was also known as the "Mother of Edwards AFB."

What a fascinating woman, huh?

Fun Factoid

Edith Wharton was the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize. She was awarded in 1921 for her work, The Age of Innocence.

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