What is Women’s History Month?
Educators in Santa Rosa, California, first celebrated Women’s History Week in March 1978 to increase awareness of women’s contributions to society. Organizers selected a week in early March to correspond with International Women’s Day on March 8. Over the next several years, other cities across the country joined Santa Rosa in celebrating Women’s History Week.
Who is honored in Women’s History Month?
All women but especially, Sacagawea, a Native American woman who helped make Lewis and Clark’s Expedition to map parts of the West in the early 19th century a success; Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, who fought for equality for women in the mid-19th century, more than 70 years before the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote in the United States in 1920; Harriet Tubman, a spy who led slaves to freedom during the Civil War; Amelia Earhart, one of the world’s first female pilots (she mysteriously disappeared over the Pacific Ocean in 1937); Madeleine Albright, who became the first female Secretary of State in 1996; and Misty Copeland, the first African- American woman to be named a principal dancer—the highest level—in the 75-year history of the American Ballet Theatre in 2015.
ccvirtualcommunity.com 