April 1

1866: (Birthday) Sophonisba Preston Breckinridge born in Lexington, Kentucky. Breckinridge was the first woman to pass the bar exam in Kentucky. She was also a welfare worker who led the social work education movement in the United States favoring economic equality for women and blacks.

1872: (Birthday) Kerstin Hesselgren, Swedish sociologist, first woman factory inspector and first woman to be a member of both houses of the Swedish Riksdag (1921) born in Sweden. In 1931 when she introduced the subject of the legal status of women in the League of Nations, it “caused no little amusement among the men.” She prevailed, however, and the committee studied such things as women’s right to vote, education, access to professions as well as the state of a married woman’s right to her earnings, a separate name, ability to sign contracts - none of which were (and some of which are still not) universal.

1872: (Birthday) Aleksandra Mikhaylovna Kollontai, Soviet diplomat, born in St. Petersburg, Russia. Kollontai became the first woman to formally serve as a minister or ambassador to a foreign country. She was an original Bolshevik leader. Her public affairs with a several men caused the United States to formally refuse her passage through this country on her way to Mexico in the 1930’s.

1895: (Birthday) Alberta Hunter, one of the great ladies of the golden age of jazz, singer and composer, gave up a very successful career to become a nurse. She practiced for 20 years and then made a show business comeback at age 82 packing them into New York nightclubs.

1902: (Birthday) Gladys Anderson Emerson born in Caldwell, Kansas. Emerson isolated vitamin E from wheat germ oil, authority on vitamin E functions, pioneer explorer of relationship between nutrition and cancer.

1905: (Birthday) Clara Hale, social activist; known as Mother Hale at Harlem’s Hale House, born in Elizabeth City, North Carolina.

1931: (A First) Virne “Jackie” Mitchell signs to pitch for the Chattanooga Baseball Club in Tennessee, becoming the first woman with a professional baseball contract.

1940: (Birthday) Wangari Maathai, Kenyan human rights and enviornmental activist, born in Nyeri. Maathai organized victims of violence in the Kenyan war, organized the planting of trees in the Green Belt movement, first woman to earn a Ph.D. and chair a department at the University of Nairoba.

1986: In Washington State 35,000 employees in female dominated jobs began receiving $41 million in pay equity payments.

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