On This Day in Herstory, January 21st 1895, Itō Noe (伊藤 野枝),  a Japanese anarchist, social critic, author and feminist, was was born on the island of Kyushu near Fukuoka, Japan.

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On This Day in Herstory, November 15th 1720, Anne Bonny and Mary Read, two pirates, were captured and brought to Spanish Town, Jamaica for trial.

Anne Bonny was born Anne Cormac c.1698, near Cork, Ireland; she is thought to be the illegitimate daughter of an Irish lawyer, and one of the maids who worked in his house. When her father’s wife found out about his affair he took Bonny and her mother, and the family emigrated to Charles Towne, South Carolina. When she was 13 her mother died, and shortly thereafter her father betrothed her to a local man, which she heavily opposed. In an act of rebellion in 1718 she ran off and married a sailor, called John Bonny, and the couple moved to the island of New Providence in the Bahamas, where her husband acted as an informant for the governor of the Bahamas. Bonny was less than thrilled by her new husband, and she became involved with pirate John “Calico Jack” Rackham, Calico Jack offered Bonny’s husband money for a divorce, but he refused.  

In August 1720 Bonny abandoned her husband and helped Calico Jack in commandeering a ship, and along with a crew of a dozen people the pair began pirating merchant ships along the coast of Jamaica. Bonny’s presence aboard the ship was unusual, as many people thought women on board brought bad luck; but she was fierce, one story said that in her youth she beat an attempted rapist so badly he was hospitalized. Bonny made no attempt to conceal her gender from her shipmates, but when pillaging she disguised herself as a man and participated in armed combat. At some point, it’s not known when, another pirate, called Mary Read joined Calico Jack and Bonny’s crew.

Mary Read was born c.1695 in England, and relatively little is known about their early life. Read’s mother was married to a sailor, and together they had a son; the sailor deserted the family and Read’s mother had an affair that resulted in Read’s birth. Not long after, Read’s half-brother Mark died, and their mother decided to pass Read off as Mark to continue to receive money from his paternal grandmother; and so from then, Read was known as Mark Read. When they were 13 the grandmother died, but they continued to live as Mark, and eventually joined the military. While in the military they met another soldier, and after revealing their sex to him they married, the couple moved to the Netherlands and opened an inn, but their husband quickly died. Following this, she went back to living as Mark, and found work as a sailor, and when the ship was seized by pirates they decided to become a buccaneer. In 1717 they sailed to the Bahamas, and at some point thereafter joined Calico Jack and Bonny, as a member of their crew. Read continued to live as Mark, though the crew soon realized their sex, and so they lived as Mary on-board the ship.  

Together Bonny and Read earned a reputation for ruthlessness, and were described as “very profligate, cursing and swearing much, and very ready and willing to do anything on board.” In September 1720 the governor of the Bahamas declared the pirate crew, and Bonny and Read specifically, as “Enemies to the Crown of Great Britain.” On November 15th 1720, law enforcement caught up to them at Negril Point, Jamaica. The entire crew except for Bonny and Read were drunk, entirely useless, and couldn’t help fight; so Bonny and Read fought until they were finally overwhelmed, and Calico Jack surrendered. The crew were captured and brought to Spanish Town, Jamaica for trial; Calico Jack and all other men from the crew were immediately found guilty and hung. On November 28th Bonny and Read were tried, found guilty, and sentenced to death; however, it was discovered that they were both pregnant, and this caused their executions to be postponed. In April 1721 Read died in prison after developing a fever, and was buried on April 28th 1721. Bonny, however, was released (probably due to her father’s influence) she returned to Charles Towne, she got married, had children, and died c.April 25th 1782, she was 84.

November 14th…Ruby Nell Bridges Hall

On This Day in Herstory, November 14th 1960, Ruby Nell Bridges Hall an American civil rights activist, became the first Black child to desegregate the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana during the New Orleans school desegregation crisis.

Ruby Nell Bridges Hall was born on September 8th 1954 in Tylertown, Mississippi, the eldest of Abon and Lucille Bridges’ five children. She was born at the height of the Civil Rights Movement; only three months before she was born Brown v. Board of Education was decided, declaring the process segregating schools unconstitutional. Despite this ruling many southern states were extremely resistant to integration. Even though it was a federal ruling, many southern state governments were not enforcing the new laws, and this allowed many white schools to remain segregated for years. Eventually, significant pressure from the federal government forced schools to integrate. 

When Ruby was four years old, she and her family moved to New Orleans, Louisiana. In 1959 she attended a segregated kindergarten, but at this time the Orleans Parish School Board was forced by the federal government to take steps towards integration. The school board administered an entrance exam to students at Ruby’s school with the intention to keep Black children out of their white schools. Ruby was one of the six Black children in New Orleans to pass the test, which determined they were eligible to attend the all-white William Frantz Elementary School. Initially Ruby’s father was reluctant to send her to the school, but her mother knew that this was a necessary step not just for Ruby’s education, but to “take this step forward…for all African-American children”.

The court order that the first day of integrated schools in New Orleans was on Monday, November 14, 1960. Two of the original six children decided to stay at their old school, and three children were transferred to McDonogh No. 19. So at just six years old, Ruby went to William Frantz Elementary all by herself. On her first day she was escorted by four federal marshals and her mother; the marshals were needed to escort Ruby for her first entire school year. She later described her first day saying, “Driving up I could see the crowd, but living in New Orleans, I actually thought it was Mardi Gras. There was a large crowd of people outside of the school. They were throwing things and shouting, and that sort of goes on in New Orleans at Mardi Gras.” One of her marshals later said, “She showed a lot of courage. She never cried. She didn’t whimper. She just marched along like a little soldier, and we’re all very very proud of her.” The same day that Ruby started at William Frantz Elementary, white parents pulled their children out of the school. All of the school’s teachers, with the exception of one person, refused to teach while a Black child was enrolled. Only Barbara Henry, from Boston, Massachusetts, agreed to teach Ruby, and for a year she taught her alone, “as if she were teaching a whole class.”

Eventually, the protests began to subside and the white children returned to school, despite this, Ruby remained the only child in her class, for an entire school year. Even though the protests wound down, for the entirety of her first year at William Frantz Elementary, every morning as she walked in one woman threatened to poison Ruby, while another woman held up a Black doll in a coffin. As a result, the marshals only allowed Ruby to eat the food she had brought from home. Unfortunately, Ruby’s entire family initially suffered for their role in the school’s integration; her father lost his job as a gas station attendant; the grocery store where they shopped no longer let them shop there; her grandparents, who were sharecroppers in Mississippi, were turned off their land; and her parents separated. However, many other people in their community showed support for the Bridges in other ways. Some white families continued to send their children to Frantz despite the protests, a neighbor provided her father with a new job, and local people babysat for Ruby’s siblings, watched the house as protectors, and walked behind the federal marshals’ car on the trips to school. Much later in life Ruby learned that even the immaculate clothing she wore to school in those first weeks were sent to her family by an acquaintance of the family.

Today, Ruby still lives in New Orleans with her husband, Malcolm Hall, and their four sons. After she graduated from a desegregated high school, she worked as a travel agent for 15 years and eventually became a stay-at-home parent. Now she is the chair of the Ruby Bridges Foundation, which she formed in 1999 to promote “the values of tolerance, respect, and appreciation of all differences”. She says the mission of the group is, “racism is a grown-up disease and we must stop using our children to spread it.”

Ruby is the subject of a 1964 painting, The Problem We All Live With by Norman Rockwell. Her book, Through My Eyes won the Carter G. Woodson Book Award in 2000. On January 8, 2001, she was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal by President Bill Clinton. Unfortunately, like many other, Ruby lost her home during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Katrina also greatly damaged William Frantz Elementary School, and Ruby was instrumental in fighting for the school to remain open. On July 15th 2011, she met with President Barack Obama at the White House. Together they viewed the Norman Rockwell painting of her on display, and he told her, “I think it’s fair to say that if it hadn’t been for you guys, I might not be here and we wouldn’t be looking at this together”. In 2014, a statue of Ruby was unveiled in the courtyard of William Frantz Elementary School.

On This Day in Herstory, November 11th 1886, Alice Huyler Ramsey, the first woman to drive across the United States from coast to coast, was born in New Barbadoes Township, New Jersey. 

Alice, born Alice Taylor Huyer, was the daughter of John Edwin Huyler, a lumber dealer, and Ada Mumford Farr. From 1903 to 1905 she attended Vassar College. In January 1906, she married John R. Ramsey, a congressman 24 years her senior, in Hackensack, New Jersey. Together the couple had two children. In 1908 John bought Alice a new Maxwell Runabout. That summer she drover more than 6,000 miles around the New England area. In September 1908, the same year she receiver her car, she drove one of the three Maxwells that were entered in that year’s American Automobile Association’s (AAA) Montauk Point endurance race. She was one of only two women to participate in the event. It was at the event that it was first proposed that Alice attempt a transcontinental journey by car, a fete never before accomplished by a woman. It was arranged that she would have the backing of Maxwell-Briscoe, who supplied her with a 1909 tour car and as many parts as she needed. This drive was originally organised as a publicity stunt for Maxwell-Briscoe, who marketed their cars specifically at women; who at the time were not often encouraged to drive. 

On June 9th 1909, at only 22 years old, Alice set off on a 3,800 mile car journey; she was accompanied by two of her sisters-in-law and one of her friends, none of whom knew how to drive. The women started from Hell Gate in Manhattan, New York, in a green, four-cylinder, 30-horsepower Maxwell DA. The trip took 59 days, and on August 7th they arrived in San Francisco, California to much fanfare, though the arrived about three weeks later than had originally been planned. The women navigated the entire journey themselves using a few maps, but mostly using telephone poles, following the poles with more wires with the hope it would lead to a town. Only 152 miles of the 3,800 mile trip was on paved road, which lead to several problems. Over the course of the trip Alice had to change 11 tires, clean all the spark plugs several times, repair a broken brake pedal, and sleep in the car whenever it got too stuck in the mud. Additionally, on their journey the women crossed the trail of a manhunt looking for a murderer in Nebraska, got bed bugs, and at one point found themselves driving in the middle of a Native American hunting party. 

Alice loved the adventure so much that between 1909 and 1975 she drove across the country over 30 times. In 1960 she was named the “Woman Motorist of the Century” by AAA, and in 1961 she wrote and published the story of her first trip, Veil, Duster, and Tire Iron. Alice went on to lead a very full life, when her husband died in 1933 she lived with Anna Graham Harris in New Jersey and later California until Anna’s death in 1953. Alice then lived with Elizabeth Elliott from 1968 until September 10th 1983, when Alice Huyler Ramsey died in Covina, California. On October 17th 2000, Alice became the first woman inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame.

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On This Day in Herstory November 10th 1293, Isabel de Forz, who inherited in her own right the earldom and feudal barony of Plymouth and the Lordship of the Isle of Wight, and the richest woman in England at the time, died at the age of 56.

Isabel de Forz or Isabel de Redvers, the eldest daughter of the 6th Earl of Devon, was born in July 1237; she spent the majority of her early life in Tidcombe, a small town in Devon. When she was 11 of 12 she became the second wife of William de Forz, 4th Earl of Albemarle; he held extensive land in Yorkshire and Cumberland, and was Count of Aumale in Normandy; the couple went on to have six children, two of them died before William, all of them died before Isabella. In 1260 William died, and all of their children were underage, so wardship to their heirs and estates were passed to King Henry III. One third of William’s estates were granted to Isabella, and she was granted custody of her two remaining sons; the remaining two thirds went to the crown.

In 1262 Isabella’s brother, the 7th Earl of Devon, died without any children, and so she inherited his lands in Devon, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, and Harewood in Yorkshire. From this point she used the titles “Countess of Aumale and of Devon” and “Lady of the Isle.” With the death of her father, husband, and brother, Isabella was the richest woman in England and she was only 25; at this point she became a very sought after wife. In 1264 the 6th Earl of Leicester was acquired the rights to her remarriage from the King and she hid from him; in 1268, the son of Henry III acquired the rights to her marriage as well, and when she objected he married her daughter instead. Her daughter Aveline married the King’s son in 1269, but she died 4 years later at age 15.

The monarchy had been after Isabella’s estates for some time, and in 1276 the King asked that she sell her lands in southern England that she inherited from her brother, she did not comply. After the death of her daughter, and last surviving heir, a man named John de Eston was found to be her next heir, and in 1278 John transferred her lands in the north to the crown. In 1293 while travelling from Canterbury, Isabella fell ill. One of the King’s servants rushed to her bedside and drafted a charter to confirm the sale of the Isle of Wight to the King, Isabella agreed; the sale of the Isle of Wight is contested to this day. She died in the early morning of November 10th 1293, at age 56.

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On This Day in Herstory, November 9th 1764, Mary Campbell, a ‘captive’ of the Lenape tribe during the French and Indian War, was turned over to British troops.

Mary Campbell was born c. 1747, and her family was Scotch-Irish immigrants to the American colonies. On May 21st 1758, when she was 10, Campbell was abducted from her town of Penn’s Creek, Pennsylvania. Her captors were a group of Lenape, a Native American tribe also known as the Delaware. During her captivity she stayed in the household of the principal chief of the Lenape.

During the French and Indian War, and other conflicts that arose between the colonists and the Native Americans some Native American tribes, specifically those living in the Midwest, would raid white settlements with some frequency. The Native people were looking to defend themselves against the violent Anglo-American encroachment of their land; and occasionally the result of raiding these colonial settlements was the taking of captives. Some of these captives were killed, but many of them were adopted into the tribe; it is now thought that the Native Americans may have done this to supplement their dwindling numbers. For decades the Natives Americans faced epidemics spread by the Europeans, and constant war with the colonists themselves, all of this culminated in a struggling population. Women and children were the most likely to be adopted into the tribe, because they were thought to be easier to assimilate to the traditional customs and lifestyles of the Native American; routinely, after several years in the tribe, they allowed their adoptive members to remain with the tribe, or return to their previous culture.

In 1764 British military pressure of the Native Americans in Ohio forced them to turn over their white captives. On November 9th 1764, Campbell was handed over to the troops, and she was one of 60 former captives who were handed over to the British, she would have been about 17 years old at the time having spent over 6 years with the Lenape. She was initially deeply distraught about being separated from her Native American family, and it is estimated that of the 60 people returned to the British at least half of them (probably including Campbell) tried to escape and return to the captors; this behaviour deeply confused and troubled the British troops.  

After her return to Pennsylvania, in 1770 Campbell married Joseph Willford, and together they had seven children: five sons and two daughter. Mary Campbell died in 1801.

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On This Day in Herstory, August 26th 1920, the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution is incorporated, giving women across the US the right to vote.

After more than a century of struggle and protest in America the Women’s Suffrage Movement finally won, and women across the country were granted the same voting rights as men. (This is legally speaking, but in practice women still struggled. Black women weren’t given equal voting rights until 1965 when the Voting Rights Act was passed.)

The Women’s Suffrage Movement officially began on a national level in the US in 1848 when Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott held the Seneca Falls Convention. Stanton, Mott, Susan B. Anthony, Virginia Minor, and countless other women fought to raise awareness of Women’s Suffrage, and on August 18th 1920, Tennessee ratified the bill granting women the vote, and became the final State needed to win a three-fourths majority.   

Just over a week later US Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified the law and so it became the 19th Amendment to the constitution. 

Women across the country were able to exercise their newly earned right, when on November 2nd 1920, 8 million women were allowed to vote in the US Presidential election. Finally, on March 22nd 1984, Mississippi became the final State to ratify the amendment. 

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On This Day in Herstory, August 25th 1804, at York Racecourse in York, England, Alicia Thornton became the first female jockey. 

Thornton was the first female jockey ever recorded, and she rode two races against men, both in the August Races at York Racecourse. The first race was on this day in 1804, and it was run over four miles with over 100,000 spectators. Thornton ran against Mr. Flint, who was allegedly her brother-in-law. She rode the race side-saddle and was in the lead for the first three miles of the race. In the final mile of the race Thornton’s horse fell lame, and Flint won the race very easily. 

The second race was run a year later, on August 24th 1805. This race was Alicia Thornton against Frank Buckle, and again Thornton rode side-saddle. Buckle was in the lead for the first few lengths of the race, but Thornton ultimately won by half a neck. Thornton’s win was hailed by the thousands of onlookers who gathered to watch her race again.

Even though the race was quite well covered for the time, there is not a lot known about Alicia Thornton, even her name is up for debate. In some reports she is listed as Alicia Meynell (often confused with the famous poet Alice Meynell), but she is also referred to as Mrs Thornton, Alicia Massingham, or Mrs T. In one report of the first race, Thornton is reported as being 22 years old, and as being the daughter of a Norwich watchmaker called Meynell. However, there is no record of any watchmaker in or around Norwich at the time. It can be assumed that Thornton is from near Yorkshire, and one report called Mr. Flint her brother-in-law. There is no evidence that anyone named Alicia was married to her reported husband Colonel Thornton, and Colonel Thornton was married in 1806 just one year after ‘Alicia Thornton’s’ second race. It is possible that Thornton died after her second race, which can be one of the reasons she fell out of the public eye, but surely someone of such notoriety would have earned an obituary. We may never know whoexactly the first female jockey was, but on this day, she made herstory.

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On This Day in Herstory, August 24th 1852, English inventor Sarah Guppy died at the age of 82.

Sarah Guppy was born in 1770, a time when the Industrial Revolution was sweeping through England, changing way of life from an agricultural focus to a industrial one. She befriended Isambard Kingdom Brunel, engineer responsible for the Clifton Suspension Bridge, and the Great Western Railway (among many other things), and Thomas Telford, who engineered inumerable roads and tunnels. 

She quickly became interested in engineering and inventing, a rarity among women at the time. During this time women could not own property in their own name, even intellectual property which included patents or anything else considered to have value. So in 1811, with the help of her husband, Guppy patented a “ New Mode of Constructing and Erecting Bridges and Railroads without Arches,” which proposed the building of a suspension bridge using piling.

Her idea was revolutionary; Brunel didn’t start work on his Clifton Suspension Bridge until 1831. Seven years after the patent of her design Telford started work on a suspension bridge over the Menai Strait; Guppy gave him her design to use free so her knowledge could benefit as many people as possible. 

In total Guppy took out ten patents, inducing devices that helped with the caulking of ships and the removal of barnacles from the hulls of ships; these inventions earned her a contract with the Royal Navy for £40,000 (£3m today). Guppy also invented things that had more to do with everyday life, including a bed with built in exercise equipment, a more efficient candle holder, tea makers, egg cookers, and plate warmers as well. 

On This Day in Herstory, August 22nd 1964, Fannie Lou Hamer, spoke at the US Democratic National Convention about her efforts to register to vote in Mississippi. Fannie Lou Hamer was a voting, Civil Rights, and women’s rights activist. As a result of her activism, she was threatened, shot at, and assaulted by white supremacists and police. Despite this, she helped thousands of Black people in Mississippi register to vote.