Veni Vidi Vivi

Yeah, I am not doing so well here with catching up. I'm finally feeling better, though!

Marian Wright Edelman is a woman doing a great deal of good work.

From http://www.childrensdefense.org/about-us/leadership-staff/marian-wright-edelman/:
Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children's Defense Fund (CDF), has been an advocate for disadvantaged Americans for her entire professional life. Under her leadership, CDF has become the nation's strongest voice for children and families. The Children's Defense Fund's Leave No Child Behind® mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start, and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities.

Mrs. Edelman, a graduate of Spelman College and Yale Law School, began her career in the mid-60s when, as the first black woman admitted to the Mississippi Bar, she directed the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund office in Jackson, Mississippi. In l968, she moved to Washington, D.C., as counsel for the Poor People's Campaign that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. began organizing before his death. She founded the Washington Research Project, a public interest law firm and the parent body of the Children's Defense Fund. For two years she served as the Director of the Center for Law and Education at Harvard University and in l973 began CDF.

She's a hero of mine.

A quote of hers I love: If you don't like the way the world is, you change it. You have an obligation to change it. You just do it one step at a time.

She is very quotable: http://womenshistory.about.com/od/quotes/a/marian_edelman.htm

After I'd collected the women I wanted to write about this month, I realized there was no one from Australia! So I went looking and found Edith Cowan. She did amazing work as a reformer.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Cowan:
Cowan became concerned with social issues and injustices in the legal system, especially with respect to women and children. In 1894 she helped found the Karrakatta Club, a group where women "educated themselves for the kind of life they believed they ought to be able to take". In time she became the club's president. The Karrakatta Club became involved in the campaign for women's suffrage, successfully gaining the vote for women in 1899.

After the turn of the century Cowan turned her eye to welfare issues. She was particularly concerned with women's health and the welfare of disadvantaged groups, such as disadvantaged children and prostitutes.

Cowan believed that children should not be tried as adults and, accordingly, founded the Children's Protection Society. The society had a major role in the subsequent introduction of children's courts. In 1915 she was appointed to the bench of the new court and continued on in this position for eighteen years. In 1920 Cowan became one of the first female Justices of the Peace.

In 1920 Western Australia passed legislation allowing women to stand for parliament. At the age of 59, Cowan stood as the Nationalist candidate for the Legislative Assembly seat of West Perth because she felt that domestic and social issues were not being given enough attention. She championed women's rights in parliament, pushing through legislation which allowed women to be involved in the legal profession. She succeeded in placing mothers in an equal position with fathers when their children died without having made a will, and was one of the first to promote sex education in schools.

Dr. May E. Chinn was born in 1896 and overcame a great deal of difficulty to succeed in a medical career.

From http://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/chinn.html:
Her work in cancer research helped in the development of the Pap smear, a test for early detection of cervical cancer. She was the first African-American woman to graduate from Bellevue Hospital Medical College, one of the first female African-American physicians in New York City, and the first African-American woman to intern at Harlem Hospital.

From http://www.nlm.nih.gov/changingthefaceofmedicine/physicians/biography_61.html:
Like all other black physicians in the New York area in the 1930s and 1940s, Dr. Chinn was barred from any association with the city's hospitals. She had tried to learn more about cancer after observing advanced stage terminal illness among her patients, but when she asked for research information about her patients from the city's hospital clinics, they refused. Chinn decided to accompany her patients to their clinic appointments, explaining that she was the patient's family physician. In so doing, she could learn more about biopsy techniques while securing a firm diagnosis for her patients. Such resourcefulness typified Chinn's approach to the barriers she faced during her career.

From 1928 to 1933, Chinn studied cytological methods for cancer detection with George Papanicolaou, noted for his work on the Pap smear test for cervical cancer, becoming an advocate for cancer screening to detect cancer at its earliest stages.

In 1944, Dr. Chinn was invited by Dr. Elise Strang L'Esperance, founder of the Strang Cancer Clinic at Memorial Hospital, to take a position in the Tuesday afternoon cancer clinic. Chinn accepted. The following year L'Esperance gave her a staff position at the Strang Clinic at the New York Infirmary, and Chinn stayed with the clinic until her retirement in 1974. While there, Chinn promoted cancer screening methods for non-symptomatic patients, routine Pap smears, and the use of family medical histories to predict cancer risk.

In 1954 Dr. May Edward Chinn became a member of the New York Academy of Sciences, and in 1957 she received a citation from the New York City Cancer Committee of the American Cancer Society. In 1980 Columbia University awarded her an honorary doctorate of science for her contributions to medicine.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tr%C6%B0ng_Sisters:
The Trưng Sisters (c. 12 - AD 43), known in Vietnamese as Hai Bà Trưng (literally "the two Trưng Ladies"), and individually as Trưng Trắc (Chinese: 徵側) and Trưng Nhị (Chinese: 徵貳), were two first century Vietnamese women leaders who successfully rebelled against Chinese Han-Dynasty rule for three years, and are regarded as national heroines of Vietnam.

And from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/607295/Trung-Sisters:
Trung Trac, the elder sister, was the widow of Thi Sach, lord of Chau Dien, in northern Vietnam, who had been assassinated by a Chinese general for plotting with other lords to overthrow the Chinese. Trung Trac thereupon assumed leadership of the movement. In ad 39 she, with her sister Trung Nhi and other members of the aristocracy, marched on Lien Lau, forcing the Chinese commander to flee. Within a year the sisters and their allies held 65 northern citadels. At Me Linh, in the lower Red River delta, the Trung Sisters jointly proclaimed themselves queens of an independent state (of unknown name) extending from southern China to the present site of Hue.

So they were up against the Chinese who were as crushing of rebellions then as they are now, so the sisters' story does not end happily. The ability to stand up to enemy forces against the odds is remarkable for anyone, though, really.

From http://www.powersource.com/gallery/people/wilma.html:
Wilma Mankiller was a former Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and lived on the land which was allotted to her paternal grandfather, John Mankiller, just after Oklahoma became a state in 1907. Surrounded by the Cherokee Hills and the Cookson Hills, she lived in a historically rich area where a person's worth is not determined by the size of their bank account or portfolio. Her family name "Mankiller", as far as they can determine, is an old military title that was given to the person in charge of protecting the village. As the leader of the Cherokee people she represented the second largest tribe in the United States, the largest being the Dine (Navajo) Tribe.

Mankiller was the first female in modern history to lead a major Native American tribe. With an enrolled population of over 140,000, and an annual budget of more than $75 million, and more than 1,200 employees spread over 7,000 square miles, her task may have been equaled to that of a chief executive officer of a major corporation.

Chief Mankiller was in office while I was at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, OK, which is the capitol of the western branch of the Cherokee Nation. She grew up in abject poverty, and she left quite the legacy.

Her official site: http://www.wilmamankiller.com/