Women in American history

---

Dr. James Barry (1789(?) –1865) was born Margaret Ann Bulkley around 1789 in County Cork, Ireland, at a time when women were barred from most formal education, and were not allowed to practice medicine. As Dr. James Barry, Margaret was a skilled military surgeon who rose to the rank of Inspector General in charge of military hospitals, the second-highest medical office in the British Army.

Barry’s journey began when Margaret’s mother Mary Ann’s brother James Barry died in 1806.

In 1809, Margaret Bulkley donned an overcoat, 3-inch high shoe inserts and began identifying herself as James Barry. Moving to Edinburgh, Barry enrolled in medical school and altered his age to match his young look. Despite some calling Barry’s age into question,  Barry received a degree in medicine at the age of 22. 

Barry began his military career in 1813 as a Hospital Assistant in the British Army, and was soon promoted to Assistant Staff Surgeon. He served in Cape Town, South Africa, for 10 years where he befriended the governor, Lord Charles Somerset. Some believe Somerset knew Barry’s secret. 

Barry was a skilled surgeon, performing the first recorded caesarean section by a European in Africa in which both the mother and child survived the surgery. Barry was also dedicated to social reform, speaking out against the unsanitary conditions and mismanagement of barracks, prisons and asylums. During his 10-year stay, he arranged for a better water system for Cape Town. As a doctor, he treated the rich and the poor, the colonists and the slaves.

Barry continued to climb the ranks as he traveled the world. In 1857, he reached the rank of Inspector General in charge of military hospitals. In that position, he continued his fight for proper sanitation, also arguing for better food and proper medical care for prisoners and lepers, as well as soldiers and their families.

Dr. James Barry died from dysentery on July 25, 1865. Barry’s last wishes were to be buried in the clothes he died in, without his body being washed—wishes that were not followed. When the nurse undressed the body to prepare it for burial, she discovered two things: female anatomy and tell-tale stretch marks from pregnancy.

The secret was made public after letters between the General Register Office and Barry’s doctor, Major D. R. McKinnon, were leaked. In these letters, Major McKinnon, who signed the death certificate, said it was “none of my business” whether Dr. James Barry was male or female.

  Elizabeth Blackwell (February 3, 1821 – May 31, 1910) was an English-American physician.

On January 23, 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to graduate from medical school and become a  doctor in the United States. She graduated  from Geneva College, NY with the highest grades in her entire  class. 

She went on to start the New York Infirmary for  Women and Children with her sister Dr. Emily Blackwell and colleague Dr.  Marie Zakrzewska, whose mission included providing positions for women  physicians. During the Civil War, she and her sister trained nurses  for Union hospitals. 

In 1868, Blackwell opened a medical  college in New York City and in 1875, she became a  professor of gynecology at the new London School of Medicine for Women.

  Margaret Knight (Feb. 14, 1838 - Oct. 12, 1914) was an American inventor.

When she was working at a textile mill as a young teenager, she invented a shuttle restraint system to prevent worker injuries.

Her safety device became a standard fixture on looms across the country. At the time she was unaware of the patent system and did not receive any compensation or recognition for her invention. 

In 1867, Knight began working at the Columbia Paper Bag Co. in Springfield, Massachusett. She wondered if she could devise a way to automate the bag-making process. She began building a machine that would automatically feed, cut, and fold the paper as well as form the squared bottom of the bag.

Just one year later, in 1868, Knight’s machine was fully operational and had significantly improved both the company’s output and the uniformity of its paper bags.

This time she knew Knight knew she needed to apply for a patent on her machine. However, Charles Annan, a man who worked in the machine shop that manufactured it, attempted to steal her design.

In court, Annan claimed that as a woman, Knight “could not possibly understand the mechanical complexities of the machine.” Knight quickly disproved his argument by providing the original blueprints of the machine’s design. She won the case and received a patent on her invention in 1871.

Knight co-founded the Eastern Paper Bag Co. in Hartford, Connecticut. She continued to invent throughout her life, and by the time she passed away in 1914, she had patented 26 inventions, ranging from a window frame to a sole-cutting machine for shoemaking, to a compound rotary engine. 

Susan La Flesche Picotte (June 17, 1865 – September 18, 1915) was the first Indigenous woman, to earn a medical degree.

She spent her life caring for her Omaha tribal community, serving more than 1,200 patients in the Omaha Reservation area.

She worked to improve the public health of the community, advocated for the interests of indigenous people, and helping other Omaha receive the money owed to them for the sale of their land. 

She also founded the first private hospital on reservation land in Walthill, Nebraska . 

 Hallie M. Dagget (December 19, 1878 – October 19, 1964) was the first woman employed by the Forest Service as a lookout. She started work at Eddy's Gulch Lookout Station atop Klamath Peak (Klamath National Forest) in the summer of 1913. She continued to work as lookout for 14 years.

"Some of the Service men predicted that after a few days of life on the peak she would telephone that she was frightened by the loneliness and the danger, but she was full of pluck and high spirit...[and] she grew more and more in love with the work. Even when the telephone wires were broken and when for a long time she was cut off from communication with the world below she did not lose heart. She not only filled the place with all the skill which a trained man could have shown but she desires to be reappointed when the fire season opens this year." (American Forestry 1914)

    Edith Clarke (February 10, 1883 – October 29, 1959) was an American engineer and academic. She was the first woman to be professionally employed as an electrical engineer in the United States, and the first female professor of electrical engineering in the country.

She worked as a “computer,” someone who performed difficult mathematical calculations before modern-day computers and calculators were invented. Clarke struggled to find work as a female engineer instead of the ‘usual’ jobs allowed for women of her time, but became the first professionally employed female electrical engineer in the United States in 1922. She paved the way for women in STEM and engineering and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2015.

  Eloise Gerry (January 12, 1885 – 1970) was an influential research scientist whose work contributed greatly to the study of southern pine trees and turpentine production. 

Gerry was the first woman appointed to the professional staff of the U.S. Forest Service at the Forest Products Laboratory in 1910, and one of the first women in the United States to specialize in forest products research.

 During World War II, Gerry wrote wartime publications on defects in  wood used for trainer aircraft and gliders.  Following 44 years with the  U.S. Forest Service, Gerry retired in 1954.  Gerry died in 1970 at the  age of 85.  

  Beulah Louise Henry (September 28, 1887 – February 1, 1973) was an American inventor.

Henry held 49 patents and developed over 110 inventions, advancing technology and breaking gender barriers.

Henry submitted her first patent, for a vacuum ice cream freezer, while still a college student in 1912. In 1924 she moved to New York City to found two companies to sell her many inventions.

One of Henry's most famous inventions is the "Double Chain Stitch Sewing Machine", a sewing machine that wouldn’t tangle the thread. Her invention doubled the speed of the typical sewing machine and allowed for the use of smaller threads while still making a strong stitch.

She also invented a "protograph," a typewriter that created four identical copies of a document without carbon paper. 

At the time she was registering her patents, only 2% of all patents were registered by women. She is still considered one of the most successful female inventors of all time. Henry was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2006.

Gerty Theresa Cori (August 15, 1896 – October 26, 1957) was a Bohemian-Austrian and American biochemist. In 1947 she became the third woman to win a Nobel Prize in science, and the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, for her role in the "discovery of the course of the catalytic conversion of glycogen".

 Image from the Becker Medical Library, Washington University School of Medicine 

 Dorothy Klenke Nash (October 24, 1898 – March 5, 1976) was the first American woman to become a neurosurgeon, and the only American woman neurosurgeon from 1928 to 1960.

She became senior surgeon and head of neurology at St. Margaret's Hospital in Pittsburgh in 1942, and served on the staffs of the Western Pennsylvania Hospital and the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. She taught neurosurgery at the University of Pittsburgh, and served as a delegate to the state medical society, representing the Allegheny County Medical Society. She was president of the Pittsburgh Neuropsychiatric Society in 1957 and 1958. 

Maria Goeppert Mayer ( June 28, 1906 – February 20, 1972)  was a German-American theoretical physicist . She became the first American woman to receive a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963. She shared the prize with J. Hans D. Jensen "for their discoveries concerning nuclear shell structure” and Eugene Paul Wigner "for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry principles". 

Mollie Orshansky (January 9, 1915 – December 18, 2006) was an American economist and statistician. Her work on poverty thresholds pioneered the way the U.S. Government defines poverty. 

During the years 1963–65, she developed the Orshansky Poverty Thresholds, which are used in the United States as a measure of the income that a household must not exceed to be counted as poor.

She used the cost of a nutritionally adequate diet as the basis for a cost-of-living estimate, and to calculate a cost of living for families of different sizes and composition.

Her work provided a way to assess the impact of new policies on poor populations, which to this day remains a standard measure of new policies.

Abigail Adams (November 22, 1744 – October 28, 1818) was the wife and closest advisor of John Adams, the second president of the United States, and the mother of John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States.

On March 31, 1776, Abigail Adams wrote the following in a letter to her husband, founding father John Adams.

"I long to hear that you have declared an independency -- and by the way in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the  Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If perticuliar care and attention is not paid to the Laidies we are determined to foment a Rebelion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.

That your Sex are Naturally Tyrannical is a Truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute, but such of you as wish to be happy willingly give up the harsh title of Master for the more tender and endearing one  of Friend. Why then, not put it out of the power of the vicious and the Lawless to use us with cruelty and indignity with impunity.  Men of Sense in all Ages abhor those customs which treat us only as the vassals of your Sex. Regard us then as Beings placed by providence under your protection and in immitation of the Supreem Being make use of that power only for our happiness." 

 Elizabeth (Bet) Freeman (1744(?) – December 28, 1829) was one of the first enslaved African Americans to file and win a freedom suit in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in Freeman's favor and found slavery to be in violation of the 1780 Constitution of Massachusetts. Her suit was later cited in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court review of another freedom suit by Quock Walker. When the court upheld Walker's freedom under the state's constitution, this ruling essentially ended slavery in Massachusetts.

Freeman was illiterate and left no written records of her life. What is known of her history has been pieced together from historical records and those who wrote down her story. 

Freeman was born on April 4th 1744, enslaved by Pieter Hogeboom on his farm in Claverack, New York, and called Bet. When his daughter Hannah married John Ashley of Sheffield, Massachusetts, Hogeboom gave Bet, then around seven years old, to Hannah and her husband. Freeman remained with them until 1781, when she had a child, Little Bet. She is said to have married, though no marriage record has been located. It is said that her husband never returned from service in the American Revolutionary War.

Throughout her life, Bet exhibited a strong spirit and sense of self. In 1780, Bet prevented Hannah from striking a servant girl with a heated shovel; Bet shielded the girl and received a deep wound in her arm. According to Catharine Sedgwick’s account, Freeman said that "Madam never again laid her hand on Lizzy. I had a bad arm all winter, but Madam had the worst of it. I never covered the wound, and when people said to me, before Madam,—'Why, Betty! what ails your arm?' I only answered—'ask missis!' Which was the slave and which was the real mistress?"

John Ashley’s house was the site of many political discussions and the probable location of the signing of the Sheffield Declaration, which predated the United States Declaration of Independence.

In 1780, Freeman either heard the newly ratified Massachusetts Constitution read at a public gathering in Sheffield or overheard her enslaver talking at events in the home, in particular the following statement:

:All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness."

Having heard this, she approached lawyer Theodore Sedgwick to help her sue for freedom in court. According to Catherine Sedgwick's account, she told him: "I heard that paper read yesterday, that says, all men are created equal, and that every man has a right to freedom. I'm not a dumb critter; won't the law give me my freedom?" After much deliberation, Sedgwick accepted her case, as well as that of Brom, another of Ashley’s slaves. Brom, an enslaved male, was probably added to the case to strengthen it as women had very limited legal rights at the time. 

Sedgwick enlisted the aid of another lawyer, Tapping Reeve. 

The case of Brom and Bett v. Ashley was heard in August 1781 by the County Court of Common Pleas in Great Barrington. Sedgwick and Reeve asserted that the constitutional provision that "all men are born free and equal" effectively abolished slavery in the state. It is notable that while arguing for his right to own Brom and Bett in court, Ashley described them as his “servants for life”, rather than slaves. When the jury ruled in Bett's favor, she became the first African-American woman set free under the Massachusetts state constitution.

The jury found that "Brom & Bett are not, nor were they at the time of the purchase of the original writ the legal Negro of the said John Ashley." The court assessed damages of thirty shillings and awarded both plaintiffs compensation for their labor. Ashley initially appealed the decision but a month later dropped his appeal.

After the ruling, Bet took the name Elizabeth Freeman. Although Ashley asked her to return to his house and work for wages, she chose to work in Sedgwick's household. She worked for his family until 1808 as a senior servant and governess to the Sedgwick children. She had a close relationship with the children and one of the children, Catharine Sedgwick, later wrote an account of her governess's life. 

After the Sedgwick children were grown, Freeman moved into her own house on Cherry Hill in Stockbridge, near her daughter, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

Freeman died in December 1829 and was buried in the Sedgwick family plot in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Freeman remains the only non-Sedgwick buried in the Sedgwick plot. 

Sybil Ludington (April 5, 1761 – February 26, 1839) was an American woman who rode to muster militia troops during the American Revolutionary War at the age of 16. On the night of April 26, 1777, Sybil Ludington rode 40 miles to muster local militia troops in response to a British attack on the town of Danbury, Connecticut. 

She traveled twice the distance that Paul Revere rode during his famous ride and alerted nearly the entire regiment of 400 Colonial troops. Following the battle, General George Washington personally thanked Sybil for her service and bravery. 

Sybil was the oldest of Colonel Ludington's twelve children. His militia troops had disbanded for the planting season when he heard that British troops were marching towards Danbury, Connecticut. Sybil volunteered to ride to rally the militia to be at his house by daybreak.

At 9 pm and in the middle of heavy rain, she mounted her horse, Star, and set off. She rode from her family's farm in Kent, south to the village of Carmel, down to Mahopac, then west to Mahopac Falls, north to Kent Cliffs and Farmers Mills, and north to Stormville before returning south to the farm. She used a stick to bang on the shutters of homes, yelling "The British are burning Danbury!" By the time she returned home, most of the four hundred soldiers were on their way.

While her father’s troops were not able to save Danbury from being burned, they were able to join the Continental Army at the Battle of Ridgefield the following day to drive General William Tryon back to the British fleet at Long Island Sound. The British raid also led to a surge of support for the Patriot cause, and 3,000 local residents joined up.

Mary Ellen Pleasant (August 19, 1814 – January 11, 1904) was an American entrepreneur, financier, real estate magnate and abolitionist. She was the first self-made millionaire of African-American heritage.

She identified herself as "a capitalist by profession" in the 1890 United States census. Her aim was to earn as much money as she was able to help as many people as she could. With her riches she was able to provide transportation, housing, and food for survival. She trained people how to stay safe, succeed, carry themselves, and more. The "one woman social agency" served African Americans before and during the Civil War, as well as meeting a different set of needs after Emancipation.

She worked on the Underground Railroad and expanded it westward during the California Gold Rush era. She was a friend and financial supporter of John Brown and was well known among abolitionists. 

Pleasant’s wealth allowed her to give generously to her community. She contributed to the Athenaeum Building, a library and meeting place for the city’s Black population; she also supported the Black press and the American Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. 

She also fought civil rights battles. After a streetcar driver refused to stop for her, even though there was room in the car and she already had tickets, she sued the streetcar company for denying service to Black citizens. The case went all the way to the California Supreme Court, which declared segregation on streetcars to be unconstitutional. 

Realizing that she was in a tenuous position as a black woman,she sought ways to blend in to the culture of the times. Long after she became wealthy, she portrayed herself as just a housekeeper and a cook, using these roles to get to know wealthy citizens and gain information for her investments. In the 1870s, she met Thomas Bell, a wealthy banker and capitalist. She built a large mansion that was portrayed as the Bells' residence and she assumed the role of housekeeper for the Bells, but actually ran the household.

At her request, her tombstone describes her as “a friend of John Brown.”

 Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) was born in Massachusetts and was raised a Quaker. One of the main beliefs of the Quakers is “the equality of all people before God”.

During her life, she fought for the abolition of slavery and for women's rights.  


Her family home in Rochester, New York, served as a meetinghouse almost every  Sunday, and abolitionists such as  Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison often attended these meetings.  

In 1863, Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucy Stone formed the Women’s Loyal National League to press for an amendment to abolish slavery. This goal was finally realized with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865.

In 1851, Anthony met Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the two suffragists worked to gain independence and equality for women fo the rest of their lives. She traveled around the country advocating for women’s rights and lobbied Congress every year until her death.

In 1856, she served as an American Anti-Slavery Society agent, making speeches, organizing meetings, and distributing pamphlets.

In 1868 the suffrage movement divided over race.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Anthony believed educated white women deserved to vote before Black women. Though Anthony had previously lobbied for the abolition of slavery, she still adopted the racist positions used by many other white women at that time to support her goal of women’s suffrage.

She died in 1906, fourteen years before women were given the right to vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment.

  Victoria Claflin Woodhull (September 23, 1838 – June 9, 1927), was an American leader of the women's suffrage movement who ran for president of the United States in the 1872 election. While historians and authors agree that Woodhull was the first woman to run for the presidency, some do not call it a true candidacy because according to the Constitution she would have been too young to be President if elected.

Woodhull believed in free love and that women should have the right to divorce without being ostracized by society. Woodhull also fought against the hypocrisy of society's tolerating married men who had mistresses and engaged in other sexual dalliances, while stigmatizing women for the same actions.

Woodhull, with sister Tennessee (Tennie) Claflin, became the first female stockbrokers and in 1870 they opened a brokerage firm on Wall Street, Woodhull, Claflin & Company, with the assistance of the wealthy Cornelius Vanderbilt.

Woodhull made a fortune on the New York Stock Exchange by advising clients like Vanderbilt. On one occasion he sold some shares short for 150 cents per stock, based on her advice, and earned millions on the deal.

In 1870, Woodhull and Claflin used the money they had made from their brokerage to found a newspaper, the Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly, which at its height had a national circulation of 20,000. Its primary purpose was to support Victoria Claflin Woodhull for President of the United States. It ran for six years, becoming notorious for publishing controversial opinions on sex education, free love, women's suffrage, short skirts, spiritualism, vegetarianism, and licensed prostitution.

In 1872, the Weekly published a story exposing the adultery of Henry Ward Beecher, a renowned preacher of Brooklyn's Plymouth Church. For publishing this scandalous story, Woodhull, Claflin and Col. Blood were arrested and charged with publishing an obscene newspaper and circulating it through the United States Postal Service. It was this arrest and Woodhull's acquittal that propelled Congress to pass the 1873 Comstock Laws, a series of provisions in Federal law that criminalize the involvement of the United States Postal Service, its officers, or a common carrier in conveying obscene matter, crime-inciting matter, or certain abortion-related matter.

Woodhull learned how to infiltrate the all-male domain of national politics and arranged to testify on women's suffrage before the House Judiciary Committee. In December 1870, she submitted a memorial in support of the New Departure to the House Committee. She read the memorial aloud to the Committee, arguing that women already had the right to vote, since the 14th and 15th Amendments guaranteed the protection of that right for all citizens. The logic of her argument impressed some committee members. Suffrage leaders postponed the opening of the 1871 National Woman Suffrage Association's third annual convention in Washington in order to attend the committee hearing. Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Isabella Beecher Hooker, saw Woodhull as the newest champion of their cause. 

In 1871, Woodhull announced her intention to run for president. She also spoke against the government being all male and proposed the development of a new constitution and the creation of a new government.

Woodhull was nominated for president of the United States by the newly formed Equal Rights Party on May 10, 1872, at Apollo Hall, New York City. Her nomination was ratified at the convention on June 6, 1872, making her the first woman candidate.

Woodhull's campaign was also notable because Frederick Douglass was nominated as its vice-presidential candidate, even though he did not take part in the convention, acknowledge his nomination and did not play any active role in the campaign.

The Equal Rights Party hoped to use the nominations to reunite suffragists with African-American civil rights activists, because the exclusion of female suffrage from the Fifteenth Amendment two years earlier had caused a substantial rift between the groups.

Woodhull received no electoral votes in the election of 1872, and a negligible, but unknown, percentage of the popular vote. 

Woodhull again tried to gain nominations for the presidency in 1884 and 1892.

She moved to Great Britain in 1877 where she lectured, published a magazine, and became a champion for education reform in English village schools.

She was active in the pioneering days of female motorists, and was said to have been the first woman to drive a car in Hyde Park, London and in the English country roads.

 On February 14, 1870, Seraph Young became, according to many accounts, the first woman in the United States to vote under a women’s equal suffrage law. Two days earlier, Utah (then a U.S. territory) had passed legislation granting women the right to vote. Young, a schoolteacher and the grand-niece of Brigham Young, president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) and Utah’s first governor, became the first woman to cast a ballot when she exercised her newly-granted franchise in a Salt Lake City local election. A few months later in August 1870 during Utah’s general election, approximately 2,000 women voted.

 In 1872, two years after she voted for the first time, Seraph Young married Seth L. Ford, who had fought for the U.S. Army during the Civil War. He is buried alongside his wife (Section 13, Grave 89-A) in Arlington National Cemetery.

 Helen Hamilton Gardener, a prominent suffragist, was once the highest-ranking woman in the U.S. government. In April 1920, President Woodrow Wilson appointed her as one of three U.S. Civil Service Commissioners, responsible for overseeing nearly 700,000 federal employees. Still, it would be four more months before women gained the right to vote, when Congress certified the 19th Amendment on August 26, 1920. 

Gardener had previously served as a vice president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, and she was said to have persuaded President Wilson to support women’s voting rights. She also wrote several books and lectured widely on gender equality and other social issues. Gardener, a well-connected resident of Washington, D.C., played a key role in preserving documents and artifacts from the suffrage movement. These items remain in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History.

She is interred at Arlington National Cemetery,  Section 3, Grave 4072.

Pioneering journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett  (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931)  battled sexism, racism, and violence, shedding light on the conditions of African Americans and crusading against lynching. 

At 22, Ida bought a first-class ticket on a train from  Memphis to Holly Springs and took a seat in the ladies’ car. When the  conductor told her to move. Ida resisted, and when he tried to drag her  from her seat, she bit his hand.

She sued the railroad for damages and won, but the railroad won on appeal.  

In 1886, when she was 24, Ida lost her teaching job after criticizing conditions in the Memphis schools. She decided to become a full-time journalist. Three years later, she became a shareholder in the newspaper Memphis Free Speech and Headlight and its editor. She was the first female co-owner and editor of a Black newspaper in the US. 

After she wrote a series of anti-lynching editorials, including one suggesting that white women could find black men appealing, threats were made against her and her family and her newspaper offices were burned.

She relocated to the North and documented 728 lynching cases that occurred between 1884 and 1892, using research by the Chicago Tribune. 

She also supported women's right to vote and co-founded the Alpha Suffrage Club in Chicago in 1913, the largest Black women’s suffrage organization in Illinois.

She famously spoke before British temperance advocates on May 9, 1894, taking on Frances E. Willard, a leader in the women's suffragette movement who made racist statements in a previous interview. Despite backlash, she persisted and helped Londoners establish the London Anti-Lynching Committee.

Ida marched in the 1913 suffrage parade in Washington, DC, refusing to be segregated in the parade.  She was also one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).      

Rosalie Barrow Edge (November 3, 1877 – November 30, 1962) was an American environmentalist.

In 1915 Edge began birdwatching as a way to bond with her husband and her son. After reading of the slaughter of 70,000 bald eagles in the Alaska Territory, she felt it her duty to act. 

In 1929, Edge founded the Emergency Conservation Committee (ECC), running it until she died. The ECC emphasized the need to protect all species of birds and animals.

That same year, Edge learned that in order to preserve songbirds, Audubon sanctuaries were killing birds of prey, trapping small mammals and selling their pelts and furs. Edge successfully filed a suit in 1931 against the NAAS to obtain its membership mailing list in order to inform them about the society’s actions.

Edge learned about a ridge on Hawk Mountain in the Appalachian Mountains that hosted an annual shoot targeting hawks and eagles. Edge signed a contract to lease about 1,340 acres of the land in June 1934. That year, Edge and her family traveled to the area on weekends and hired caretakers and an armed former police officer to protect the land, which became Hawk Mountain Sanctuary. Edge eventually purchased it with her own money and funds raised by the ECC, later transferring ownership to the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary Association. 

Edge also led grassroots campaigns to create Olympic National Park (1938) and Kings Canyon National Park (1940). She influenced founders of The Wilderness Society, The Nature Conservancy, and Environmental Defense Fund, along with other major wildlife protection and environmental organizations.

Eunice Mary Kennedy Shriver (July 10, 1921 – August 11, 2009) was an American social worker, philanthropist, and founder of the Special Olympics. She was the sister of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, U.S. Senators Robert F. Kennedy and Edward Kennedy, and U.S. Ambassador to Ireland Jean Kennedy Smith.

She graduated from Stanford University in 1943 with a Bachelor of Science degree in sociology. After her graduation, she worked with the U.S. Justice Department as executive secretary for a project dealing with juvenile delinquency. Kennedy then served as a social worker at the Federal Industrial Institution for Women for one year before moving to Chicago in 1951 to work with the House of the Good Shepherd women's shelter and Chicago Juvenile Court.

Shriver became executive vice president of the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation in 1957 and shifted the organization's focus to research on the causes and treatments of intellectual disabilities.

Shriver championed the creation of the President's Panel on Mental Retardation in 1961, which was significant in the movement from institutionalization to community integration in the U.S. and throughout the world. Shriver was a key founder of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), a part of the National Institutes of Health in 1962.

In 1962, Shriver founded Camp Shriver, a summer day camp which allowed children and adults with intellectual disabilities to participate in a variety of sports and physical activities. From that camp came the concept of Special Olympics. In 1968 the First International Special Olympics Summer Games was held in Chicago's Soldier Field where 1,000 athletes from 26 states and Canada competed. In her speech at the opening ceremony, Shriver said, "The Chicago Special Olympics prove a very fundamental fact, the fact that exceptional children — mentally disabled children — can be exceptional athletes, the fact that through sports they can realize their potential for growth." Since that time, nearly three million athletes have participated.

Shriver was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1984 by President Ronald Reagan for her work on behalf of persons with disabilities. 

For her work in nationalizing the Special Olympics, Shriver received the Civitan International World Citizenship Award. She is the only woman to appear on a U.S. coin while still living. Her portrait is on the 1995 commemorative silver dollar honoring the Special Olympics. 

In 1998, Shriver was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

Although Shriver was a Democrat, she was a vocal supporter of the anti-abortion movement, supporting several anti-abortion organizations, Feminists for Life of America, the Susan B. Anthony List, and Democrats for Life of America.

          Johnnie Lacy (1937–2010)  was a Black activist for the independent living movement. 

Lacy contacted polio and was paralyzed at 19 while attending nursing school. She applied to San Francisco State University to study  speech-language pathology, but was blocked from the program due to her disability. 

She was eventually admitted after advocating for her rights, but was not allowed to participate in the graduation ceremony or officially be part of the school.

In  1981, Lacy helped found the Center for Independent Living in Berkeley,  California — one of the first organizations in the country to empower people with disabilities to lead independent lives. She later served as  director of the Community Resources for Independent Living (CRIL), which  connects individuals with disabilities to resources like  transportation, housing assistance, and advocacy services. 

Lacy’s efforts helped pave the way for the Americans with Disabilities Act,which affirms and protects the rights of individuals with disabilities. 

Marsha P. Johnson (August 24, 1945 – July 6, 1992) was an American gay liberation activist and drag queen. She was one of the prominent figures in the Stonewall uprising of 1969.

Johnson was a member of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) and co-founded the activist group Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR). Johnson was known as the "mayor of Christopher Street" for being a welcoming presence in Greenwich Village. Beginning in 1987, she was an AIDS activist with ACT UP.

Johnson's body was found in the Hudson River in 1992. While initially ruled a suicide by the New York City Police Department (NYPD), controversy and protest followed the case, resulting in it eventually being re-opened as a possible homicide.

Judith Ellen "Judy" Heumann (December 18, 1947 – March 4, 2023) was an American disability rights activist  activist, known as the "Mother of the Disability Rights Movement". Heumann was a lifelong civil rights advocate for people with disabilities.

Heumann and several friends founded Disabled in Action (DIA), an organization focused on securing the protection of people with disabilities under civil rights laws through political protest.

Heumann helped develop legislation that became the Individual with Disabilities Education Act while she was serving as a legislative assistant to the chairperson of the U.S Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare.

 In 1977, U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Joseph Califano  refused to sign meaningful regulations for Section504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the first U.S. federal civil rights protection for people with disabilities.

Demonstrations took place in ten U.S. cities on April 5, 1977, including a sit-in at the San Francisco office of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare. This sit-in, which was led by Heumann and organized by Kitty Cone, lasted 28 days, with about 125 to 150 people refusing to leave.  

Califano signed both the Education of All Handicapped Children regulations and the Section 504 regulations on April 28, 1977.

 Heumann served as Assistant Secretary of the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services at the United States Department of Education from 1993 to 2001. 

From 2002 to 2006, Heumann served as the World Bank Group's first Advisor on Disability and Development .

 In 2010, Heumann became the Special Advisor on International Disability Rights for the U.S. State Department. She was the first person to hold this role, and served from 2010 to 2017. 

From September 2017 to April 2019, Heumann was a Senior Fellow at the Ford Foundation.

 Jazzie Collins  (September 24, 1958 – July 11, 2013) was a Black trans woman activist who fought for transgender rights, disability rights and economic equality in San Francisco.

 Collins transitioned in  her late 40s.

In 2002, Collins became a vocal advocate for minorities including  seniors, people with disabilities, and members of the LGBTQ+ community. 

Collins  served on the Lesbian Gay Transgender Senior Disabled Housing Task  Force. She was also an organizer for Senior and Disability  Action, an organization that helps seniors and people with disabilities to fight for affordable housing, health care, and transit.  

Collins worked to help raise the minimum  wage in San Francisco to $8.50 in 2003 — the highest minimum wage in the  country at the time.  

 The first homeless shelter in the United States built specifically for the adult LGBT community was opened in 2015 in San Francisco and named Jazzie's Place in honor of Collins.

Anna Maria Lane (1755–1810) dressed as a man to fight with the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War alongside her husband. She was later awarded a pension for her courage in the Battle of Germantown. 

Lane and her husband John joined the Continental Army in 1776, fighting in campaigns in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. On October 3, 1777, they both served under George Washington in the Battle of Germantown, where Anna Maria was severely wounded, leaving her lame for life. 

Anna Maria continued fighting alongside her husband in the Virginia Light Dragoons and was with him when he was wounded in the Siege of Savannah in 1779. They both served until 1781.

In 1808, Governor William H. Cabell asked the General Assembly to give pensions to disabled male soldiers, as well as a few women. Cabell specifically mentioned Anna Maria Lane, writing that she was "very infirm, having been disabled by a severe wound which she received while fighting as a common soldier, in one of our Revolutionary battles, from which she never has recovered, and perhaps never will recover." Anna Maria Lane was given a pension of $100 a year for life in recognition of the fact that she, "in the Revolutionary War, performed extraordinary military services at the Battle of Germantown, in the garb, and with the courage of a soldier."

  For her service as a U.S. Army nurse in the Civil War, Anna Etheridge was one of only two women to earn the Kearny Cross, awarded to Union soldiers who had displayed meritorious, heroic or distinguished acts while in the face of an enemy force. 

She participated in 32 battles, including First and Second Bull Run, Williamsburg, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. She was noted for removing wounded men from combat. 

She is interred at Arlington National Cemetery, Section 15, Grave 710.

Albert D. J. Cashier (December 25, 1843 – October 10, 1915), born Jennie Irene Hodgers, was an Irish-born American soldier who served in the Union Army during the American Civil War. Cashier adopted the identity of a man before enlisting, and maintained it until death. Cashier was one of at least 250 soldiers who were assigned female at birth and enlisted as men to fight in the Civil War. 

According to later investigation by the administrator of Cashier's estate, Albert Cashier was born Jennie Hodgers in County Louth, Ireland, on December 25, 1843. Even before the advent of the war, Hodgers adopted the identity of Albert Cashier in order to live independently. Sallie Hodgers, Cashier's mother, was known to have died prior to 1862, by which time Albert had traveled as a stowaway to Belvidere, Illinois, and was working as a farmhand to a man named Avery.

On August 6, 1862, the eighteen-year-old enlisted in the 95th Illinois Infantry for a three-year term using the name "Albert D.J. Cashier" and was assigned to Company G. Cashier easily passed the medical examination because it consisted of showing one's hands and feet. Cashier's fellow soldiers recalled that Cashier was reserved and preferred not to share a tent.

After being shipped out to Confederate strongholds in Columbus, Kentucky and Jackson, Tennessee, the 95th was ordered to Grand Junction where the regiment became part of the Army of the Tennessee under General Ulysses S. Grant.

The regiment fought in approximately forty battles, including the Siege of Vicksburg. During this campaign, Cashier was captured while performing reconnaissance, but managed to escape and return to the regiment.

Cashier fought with the regiment until honorably discharged on August 17, 1865, when all the soldiers were mustered out.

After the war, Cashier continued to live and work as a man.

For over forty years, Cashier lived in Saunemin, IL and was a church janitor, cemetery worker, and street lamplighter. Living as a man allowed Cashier to vote in elections and claim a veteran's pension under the same name. Pension payments started in 1907.

In later years, Cashier was friends with the Lannon family. The Lannons discovered their friend's sex when Cashier fell ill, but did not to make their discovery public.

In 1911, Cashier, who was working for State Senator Ira Lish at the time, was hit by the senator's car, resulting in a broken leg. A physician found out Cashier's secret in the hospital, but said nothing. No longer able to work, Cashier was moved to the Soldiers and Sailors home in Quincy, Illinois, where many friends and fellow soldiers from the Ninety-fifth Regiment visited. Cashier lived there until their mind began to deteriorate, and was moved to the Watertown State Hospital for the Insane in East Moline, Illinois, in 1914. Attendants at the Watertown State Hospital discovered Cashier's sex, at which point Cashier was made to wear women's clothes again. In 1914, Cashier was investigated for fraud by the veterans' pension board; the board decided that payments should continue for life former after comrades confirmed that Cashier was the person who had fought in the Civil War.

Albert Cashier died on October 10, 1915, and was buried in uniform with an official Grand Army of the Republic funerary service, with full military honors, under a small tombstone inscribed with ”Albert D. J. Cashier, Co. G, 95 Ill. Inf.”. In 1977 local residents erected a larger second headstone, inscribed with both names, on the same plot.

Namahyoke Curtis, known as Namah, was a prominent African American nurse in late-19th-century Washington, D.C. 

During the Spanish-American War (1898), the Surgeon General assigned her to recruit other Black women to serve as U.S. Army contract nurses. She recruited as many as 32 Black nurses for the war effort. Curtis was of African American, European and American Indian descent, and she married Dr. Austin Curtis, a leading Black physician and the superintendent of Freedmen’s Hospital in D.C. 

She is interred at Arlington National Cemetery, Section 21, Grave 15999-A-1. She is buried in the “Nurses' Section,” which contains the gravesites of many military nurses and the Spanish-American War Nurses Memorial.

A distant relative of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jane Delano served as superintendent of the U.S. Army Nurse Corps from 1909 to 1912, and in 1909 founded the American Red Cross Nursing Service. 

By the outbreak of World War I, the American Red Cross Nursing Service had more than 8,000 registered and trained nurses ready for emergency response. Delano was on a Red Cross mission in France when she died in 1919; her last words reportedly were, "I must get back to my work." She was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Medal and reinterred a year later in the "Nurses' Section" of Arlington National Cemetery.

She is interred at Arlington National Cemetery, Section 21, Grave 6. 

Dr. Anita McGee received her medical degree from Columbian College (now George Washington University) in 1892. 

Her organizing ability led to her appointment, during the Spanish-American War of 1898, as the only woman acting assistant surgeon in the Army, placed in charge of the Army's nurses. She strongly advocated a permanent nursing corps, and in 1901 Congress authorized the creation of the Army Nurse Corps. 

Dr. McGee also led efforts to erect the Spanish-American War Nurses Monument at Arlington National Cemetery, dedicated in 1905.

She is interred at Arlington National Cemetery,  Section 1, Grave 526B.

After earning an M.D. from Boston University Medical School, Ollie Josephine Prescott Baird (later Baird Bennett, following her 1934 marriage) signed a contract with the Army Medical Corps in 1918. 

At the time, women physicians could serve with the Medical Corps only as contract surgeons—civilians who worked for the Army but were not in the Army, received lower salaries, no military benefits, and no formal rank or commission. Like many other women contract physicians during the World War I era, Baird served as an anesthetist. She supervised two operating rooms at Fort McClellan (Alabama) and trained women in the Army Nurse Corps, as well as Army enlisted men. She was also appointed to the War Industries Board as supervisor of health for more than 1,000 female employees. During the interwar years, Baird Bennett opened a private medical practice in Washington, D.C. In March 1943, she testified before Congress to support commissioning female physicians in the Army and Navy. The efforts of Baird Bennett and other advocates proved effective. 

On April 16, 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Sparkman-Johnson Bill, which formally allowed women to earn commissions in the Army and Navy Medical Corps.

She is interred at Arlington National Cemetery, Section 10, Grave 10938-LH.

Elizebeth Smith Friedman was one of the leading cryptologists of the 20th century — and one of the first women employed as a U.S. government codebreaker. 

After graduating from Hillsdale College with a degree in English literature, she was working at the Newberry Research Library in Chicago when she was recruited to work at Riverbank, a private think tank that served as the U.S. government's unofficial cryptologic laboratory during World War I. At Riverbank, she met her husband, William F. Friedman, also known for his work in cryptology. 

During the 1920s through 1940s, she worked for numerous U.S. government agencies, including the Treasury Department, where she cracked the codes of international alcohol and drug smugglers' messages during Prohibition. In the 1950s, she applied her cryptanalytic skills to the work of William Shakespeare, authoring the award-winning book "The Shakespeare Ciphers Examined." Elizebeth and William Friedman are buried together; their epitaph states, "Knowledge is power." 

She is interred at Arlington National Cemetery, Section 8, Grave 6379-A.

  Captain Joy Bright Hancock’s service was instrumental to expanding women’s opportunities in the military. 

During World War I, Hancock enlisted in the Navy as a yeoman (F) first class; she served as a courier at the U.S. Naval Air Station in Cape May, New Jersey. She left the military when the war ended, but worked as a civilian for the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics. During World War II, after President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized creation of the Navy Women’s Reserve, or WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service), in 1942, Hancock was commissioned as a lieutenant and served as a liaison between the Bureau of Aeronautics and the WAVES. She became director of the WAVES in 1946. 

Hancock also played an important role in getting Congress to pass the Women Armed Services Integration Act of 1948, which secured women a permanent place in the military during peacetime. That year, she became one of the first six women sworn into the regular Navy. 

In 1972, Captain Hancock published her autobiography, “Lady in the Navy,” recounting her own experiences as well as the history of women in the Navy. She is buried with her husband, U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Ralph A. Ofstie.

She is interred at Arlington National Cemetery,  Section 30, Grave 2138-RH.

  Cmdr. Beatrice Ball served as a senior officer in SPAR, the U.S. Coast Guard women's reserve, created in November 1942 to help alleviate manpower shortages during World War II. She was the first SPAR member assigned to intelligence work. The name of the unit is a contraction of the Coast Guard motto, "Semper Paratus — Always Ready." 

She is interred at Arlington National Cemetery, Section 8, Grave 115-RH.

  Rear Admiral Grace Hopper (December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992) was an American computer scientist, mathematician, and United States Navy rear admiral. She was the first to devise the theory of machine-independent programming languages, and used this theory to develop the FLOW-MATIC programming language and COBOL, an early high-level programming language still in use today.

In 1943, during World War II, she joined the United States Naval Reserves. She was assigned to the Bureau of Ordinance Computation Project. There she became the third programmer of the world’s first large-scale computer called the Mark I. She mastered the Mark I, Mark II, and Mark III. During her career she mastered the UNIVAC I, the first large-scale electronic computer, and created a program that translated symbolic math codes into machine language. This breakthrough allowed programmers to store codes on magnetic tape and re-call them when they were needed — essentially the first compiler.

In 1966, Hopper retired from the Naval Reserves as a Commander, but was called back to active duty one year later at the Navy’s request, to help standardize its computer programs and their languages. She was promoted to Captain in 1973 by Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, Jr., Chief of Naval Operations. And in 1977, she was appointed special advisor to Commander, Naval Data Automation Command (NAVDAC), where she stayed until she retired. At the age of 76, she was promoted to Commodore by special Presidential appointment. Her rank was elevated to rear admiral in November 1985, making her one of few women admirals in the history of the United States Navy.

By the time of her death in 1992, Hopper was renowned as a mentor and a giant in her field, with honoree doctorates from over 30 universities. She was laid to rest with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery.

During World War II, Lt. Col. Juanita Hipps served as a U.S. Army nurse in the Philippines and chronicled her experiences in a bestselling book, "I Served on Bataan" (1943). Reaching the rank of lieutenant colonel, Hipps also helped to establish the Army Air Corps flight nurse program. 

She is interred at Arlington National Cemetery,  Section 21, Grave 769-1.

 On December 7, 1941, Catherine Murray decided to enlist in the military after hearing President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s radio announcement of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

 She served with a motor transport unit in the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve. After World War II, Murray was one of 50 women who continued to actively serve in the Marines. For the next two decades, she served at 15 duty stations and assumed a wide range of responsibilities. While stationed at Quantico, she wrote the manuals used to train future female Marines. In 1962, Murray became the first enlisted female Marine to retire from active duty, at the rank of master sergeant. She died in 2017 at the age of 100. 

She is interred at Arlington National Cemetery,  Section 60, Grave 1170.

 Betty Jane “BJ” Williams was a pioneering pilot, educator and promoter of aviation. She earned her private pilot’s license in 1941, and during World War II, she served in the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) as an engineering test pilot.

 After the WASP was disbanded in December 1944, Williams continued her aviation career as a commercial pilot, flight instructor and aerospace engineering technical writer. 

Commissioned as an Air Force officer during the Korean War, she produced training and motivational programs as part of the Air Force’s first video production squadron. She then served in the Air Force Reserves as a public affairs officer, retiring in 1979 with the rank of lieutenant colonel.

She is interred at Arlington National Cemetery,    Section 54, Grave 2972.

   During World War II, Ruth Lucas enlisted in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) and became one of the few Black women to attend what is now the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia. She transferred from the Army to the Air Force in 1947, where she stayed for the remainder of her military career. 

While stationed in Tokyo, Japan as chief of the Air Force Awards Division (1951-1954), she spent much of her free time teaching English to Japanese students. Upon returning to the United States, she earned a graduate degree in educational psychology from Columbia University. She was then transferred to Washington, D.C. to develop educational programs for service members. In 1968, she became the first Black woman promoted to colonel in the Air Force. She also received the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, awarded for outstanding non-combat service.

She is interred at Arlington National Cemetery,   Section 64, Grave 6031.

  The first woman to serve as a major general in the U.S. armed forces, Maj. Gen. Holm had a long and distinguished career in the Air Force. She enlisted in the Army in 1942, soon after the establishment of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC). 

She transferred to the Air Force in 1949 and was appointed director of Women in the Air Force (WAF) in 1965. During her tenure as director, policies affecting women were updated, WAF strength more than doubled and job and assignment opportunities greatly expanded. Her awards include the Distinguished Service Medal and the Legion of Merit. 

She is interred at Arlington National Cemetery,  Section 45, Grave 245.

 Ragland served in the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the only all-Black, all-female Women’s Army Corps (WAC) unit to serve overseas during World War II. Raised in Wilmington, Delaware, she enlisted in the U.S. Army right out of high school. After basic training, she sailed with her unit to England, arriving in Birmingham in March 1945. 

Ragland worked as a clerk for the 6888th, whose mission was to clear a two-year backlog of mail sent to U.S. service members fighting in Europe. She helped the unit complete its mission, which was expected to take six months, in only three months. When the war in Europe ended in May 1945, she traveled with her unit to Rouen, France, where they processed another two-year backlog of mail in three months. 

She later said of her service, “We represented our country, our organization and ourselves. We were so proud.”

She is interred at Arlington National Cemetery,   Columbarium Court 7, Section PP, Column 2, Niche 5.

 Helen Warren Langley edited the National Basic Intelligence Factbook, published by and for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). She is buried with her husband, Lt. Col. Robert E. Langley, a U.S. Army World War II veteran who served in the CIA for 34 years. 

She is interred at Arlington National Cemetery,  Section 59, Grave 2598.

  The first African American woman general in the U.S. Army, Hazel W. Johnson-Brown became chief of the Army Nurse Corps, and received a promotion to brigadier general, in 1979. 

She joined the Army as a nurse in 1955, and served as a staff nurse in Japan and chief nurse in South Korea. From 1976 to 1978, she directed the Walter Reed Army Institute of Nursing. 

She is interred at Arlington National Cemetery,  Section 60, Grave 9836.

 Command Sgt. Maj. Mildred C. Kelly (January 24, 1928 – January 27, 2003 ) served in the U.S. Army from March 1947 to April 1976.  

 She graduated from Knoxville College in Tennessee with a degree in chemistry. After  graduation, she taught high school before deciding to join the  Army. In 1972, she became the first Black female Sergeant Major in the  U.S. Army. In 1974, she became the first Black  female command sergeant major at Aberdeen Proving Ground. This made her  the first Black woman to hold the highest enlisted position at a major  Army installation whose population was predominantly male. 

After retirement, she continued to serve in a different capacity by remaining  active on various boards such as the Women in Military Service for  America Memorial Foundation, Maryland Veterans Commission and the  Veterans Advisory Board. Command Sgt. Maj. Mildred C. Kelly passed away  from cancer in 2003. 

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933–2020) — The first Jewish woman appointed to the Supreme Court, and the second female justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg served on the nation’s highest court from August 10, 1993 until her death from metastatic pancreatic cancer on September 18, 2020. 

Born in Brooklyn, New York, to working-class Jewish parents (her father immigrated from Russia as a child, and her mother was the daughter of Polish immigrants), Ginsburg attended Cornell University, Harvard Law School and Columbia Law School, graduating first in her class from the latter in 1959. Prior to her appointment on the Supreme Court, she taught law at Rutgers University and Columbia University (where she became the first female law professor to earn tenure); co-founded and directed the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Women’s Rights Project, winning five of six cases that she argued before the Supreme Court; and served on the U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia.

 Described by Chief Justice John Roberts as “a tireless and resolute champion of justice,” Ginsburg steadfastly advocated for the equal rights of all U.S. citizens regardless of gender, race or religion—informed, in part, by her personal experiences with discrimination throughout her career. 

As the Court became increasingly conservative, Ginsburg became known for her forceful dissenting opinions, often articulated in impassioned oral arguments. “The Notorious RBG”—as supporters affectionately dubbed her—became a feminist icon who inspired multiple generations of Americans. Justice Ginsburg is buried alongside her husband Martin, an Army veteran and distinguished tax attorney.

She is interred at Arlington National Cemetery,  Section 5, Grave 7016-1.

 The first woman pilot in the Navy, Lt. Cmdr. Rainey was commissioned in 1970 and accepted into flight training school in 1974. She resigned her commission in November 1977, while pregnant with her first daughter, but remained active in the Naval Reserves. 

She was recalled to duty as a flight instructor in 1981. On July 13, 1982, she was killed in an aircraft accident while training another pilot.

She is interred at Arlington National Cemetery,   Section 6, Grave 5813-A-7.

  During the Persian Gulf War (1990-1991), Maj. Rossi became the first American female combat commander to fly into battle.

 A helicopter pilot, she commanded a CH-47 Chinook helicopter company deployed to Saudi Arabia. She was killed in a helicopter crash on March 1, 1991, the day after a ceasefire agreement ended Operation Desert Storm. 

She is interred at Arlington National Cemetery,  Section 8, Grave 9872.

  Lt. Kara Spears Hultgreen was the first female carrier-based fighter pilot in the U.S. Navy, and the first woman to qualify as an F-14 combat pilot. She died on October 25, 1994 when her F-14 Tomcat crashed into the Pacific Ocean while making a final approach to the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. 

She is interred at Arlington National Cemetery,  Section 60, Grave 7710.

Mary Randolph was the first recorded person buried on the grounds that became Arlington National Cemetery. 

Her cousin George Washington Parke Custis, the step-grandson of George Washington, owned the property and built Arlington House. Randolph was born in 1762 on a plantation in Chesterfield County, Virginia. She married her cousin, David Meade Randolph, and their Richmond home became a center of Federalist Party social activity.

In 1824, Randolph compiled her culinary and housekeeping expertise into a book, "The Virginia House-Wife," which became an immediate success and went through many editions. "The Virginia House-Wife" has been described as the first truly American cookbook, which popularized the use of several dozen native vegetables. But, reflecting the demographics of 19th-century Virginia, its recipes also showed influences from African, American Indian and European cultures. Randolph was revising the book for the third time at the time of her death. 

She is interred at Arlington National Cemetery,

Section 2, Grave S-6.

Thocmentony ("Shell Flower")  Winnemucca (1844 – October 17, 1891)  was a Northern Paiute activist, writer,  and teacher who was the daughter of the war chief Winnemucca.

She wrote the book Life Among the Paiutes: Their Wrongs and Claims (1883), the first autobiography written by a Native American woman. 

She  lectured on Native American  rights, and established a school in Nevada to preserve and teach the  Paiute language and culture.  This school was closed by the US government in 1887, moving the students to state-sponsored boarding schools that forced assimilation and the  rejection of native language and traditions.

 In 1866, sculptor Lavinia "Vinnie" Ream received a commission to design a sculpture of Abraham Lincoln for the U.S. Capitol Rotunda — becoming, at the age of 18, the youngest artist, and the first woman artist, to receive a commission from the U.S. government. The Lincoln statue was unveiled in 1871. 

Ream's artistic career stalled after she married U.S. Army Lt. Richard Hoxie in 1878; he reportedly did not approve of her working as a sculptor. 

Later in her life, however, she received commissions to create two additional works which now stand in the Capitol: a statue of Iowa Senator Samuel Jordan Kirkwood and a statue of Sequoyah, creator of the Cherokee alphabet. The bronze statue of Admiral David G. Farragut in Washington, D.C.'s Farragut Square is also a Ream sculpture. 

A replica of her statue of the Greek poet Sappho stands atop her gravesite. 

She is interred at Arlington National Cemetery,Section 3, Grave 1876.

One of the first female American war correspondents, Mary Roberts Rinehart reported from the Belgian front during World War I. She also wrote dozens of novels, plays and short stories. 

Sometimes called the "American Agatha Christie," she is best known for her mystery novels, including "The Circular Staircase" (1908), "The Bat" (1926) and "The Door" (1930). 

At the time of her death, Rinehart's books had sold more than 10 million copies. She is interred with her husband, Maj. Stanley Marshall Rinehart, U.S. Army. 

She is interred at Arlington National Cemetery, Section 3, Grave 4269-B.

Zitkála-Ša (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin) was one of the most important American Indian activists and writers of the 20th century. A member of the Yankton Dakota Sioux, Zitkála-Ša was born on the Yankton Reservation in South Dakota in 1876. Her formative experiences at Indian boarding schools, where she was forced to adopt a European name, shaped her political and cultural consciousness. 

As an adult, she returned to the Yankton Reservation and began collecting and publishing traditional Dakota stories. While working as a clerk for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, she met and married U.S. Army Captain Raymond Talefase Bonnin, who was also of Dakota descent. In 1910, Zitkála-Ša wrote the libretto for the first American Indian opera, “The Sun Dance Opera,” based on a sacred Sioux ritual. She also frequently wrote about American Indian issues for high-profile national magazines. 

Her co-authored 1924 article in The Atlantic, "Oklahoma’s Poor Rich Indians, an Orgy of Graft and Exploitation of the Five Civilized Tribes, Legalized Robbery," led to federal investigations and legislative reforms that gave tribal governments greater sovereignty over their lands. 

In 1925, the Bonnins purchased a home in Arlington’s Lyon Park neighborhood — where a park was dedicated in her name in 2021.

She is interred at Arlington National Cemetery,  Section 2, Grave 4703.

   Marian Anderson (February 27, 1897-April 8, 1993) was an American contralto. She performed a wide range of music, from opera to spirituals and performed with renowned orchestras in major venues throughout the United States and Europe between 1925 and 1965. Anderson became the first African American singer to perform at the Metropolitan Opera on January 7, 1955. 

In 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution denied permission to allow Anderson to sing to an integrated audience in Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. 

In the ensuing furor, thousands of DAR members, including First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, resigned from the organization. Roosevelt wrote to the DAR: "I am in complete disagreement with the attitude taken in refusing Constitution Hall to a great artist ... You had an opportunity to lead in an enlightened way and it seems to me that your organization has failed."

The American press overwhelmingly supported Anderson's right to sing. The Philadelphia Tribune wrote, "A group of tottering old ladies, who don't know the difference between patriotism and putridism, have compelled the gracious First Lady to apologize for their national rudeness." The Richmond Times-Dispatch wrote, "In these days of racial intolerance so crudely expressed in the Third Reich, an action such as the D.A.R.'s ban ... seems all the more deplorable."

With the aid of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and her husband, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Anderson performed a critically acclaimed open-air concert on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939, on the Lincoln Memorial steps in the capital. She sang before an integrated crowd of more than 75,000 people and a radio audience in the millions.

She was a delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Committee and a Goodwill Ambassador for the United States Department of State, giving concerts all over the world. 

She sang at the Civil Rights March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. 

Anderson was awarded the first Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963, the Congressional Gold Medal in 1977, the Kennedy Center Honors in 1978, the National Medal of Arts in 1986, and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1991.

  Ann Cole Lowe (December 14, 1898 – February 25, 1981) was an American fashion designer. She was the first African American to become a noted fashion designer, however she was often given no credit for her designs. Lowe's designs were popular among upper-class women for five decades from the 1920s through the 1960s.

During the 1950s and 1960s, she worked on commission for Henri Bendel, Montaldo's, I. Magnin, Chez Sonia, Neiman Marcus, and Saks Fifth Avenue. In 1946, she designed the dress that Olivia de Havilland wore to accept the Academy Award for Best Actress, although the name on the dress was Sonia Rosenberg.

In 1953 Lowe was hired to design the dress for Jacqueline Bouvier, and the dresses for her bridal attendants for her wedding to then-Senator John F. Kennedy. The dress, which cost $500 (approximately $6,000 today), was described in detail in The New York Times's coverage of the wedding. While the wedding was a highly publicized event, Lowe did not receive any public credit for her work until after the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

A collection of five of Ann Lowe's designs are held at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Three are on display at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC.

 Zelda Barbour Wynn Valdes (June 28, 1905 - September 26, 2001) was an American fashion designer and costumer. 

In 1948, Valdes opened her studio "Zelda Wynn" on Broadway. Valdes said that her shop was the first black-owned business on Broadway. She sold dresses to Dorothy Dandridge, Jessye Norman, Josephine Baker, Mae West, Ella Fitzgerald, Eartha Kitt, Marian Anderson, Constance Bennet, Diahann Carroll, Ruby Dee, Aretha Franklin, and Gladys Knight. Valdes dressed the entire bridal party for the 1948 wedding of Marie Ellington and Nat King Cole. Valdes also created a new sexier image for singer Joyce Bryant who LIFE Magazine dubbed "the Black Marilyn Monroe." 

She was president of the National Association of Fashion and Accessory Designers. The organization, jointly founded by Mary McLeod Butane, was made up of Black designers dedicated to providing opportunities for networking, professional development, and funding for young designers and their endeavors. They also worked to bridge the divide between the black fashion world and the mainstream fashion industry.

In the 1950s, she moved "Chez Zelda" to Midtown. She had a staff of nine dressmakers and charged almost $1,000 per couture gown. 

In 1958 Hugh Hefner hired Zelda to design the first Playboy Bunny costume which debuted in February 1960 during the opening of the first Playboy Club.

Zelda Wynn Valdes directed the Fashion and Design Workshop of the Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited and Associated Community Teams (HARYOU-ACT). Valdes taught costume designing skills and facilitated fabric donations to the student workshops.

In 1970, Arthur Mitchell asked Valdes to design costumes for his new company, the Dance Theatre of Harlem. She continued to work with the company until her death in 2001 at the age of 100. During this time, she worked on a total of 82 ballets productions in over 22 countries.

 Gladys Alberta Bentley (August 12, 1907 – January 18, 1960) was an American blues singer, pianist, and entertainer during the Harlem Renaissance. She was a black, lesbian, cross-dressing performer.

Her career skyrocketed when she appeared at Harry Hansberry's Clam House, a well-known gay speakeasy in New York City in the 1920s. In the early 1930s she headlined at Harlem's Ubangi Club, where she was backed up by a chorus line of drag queens. She dressed in a man’s tail coat and top hat, played piano, and sang her own raunchy lyrics to popular tunes of the day in a deep, growling voice while flirting with women in the audience.

With the decline of the Harlem speakeasies due to the repeal of Prohibition, she relocated to southern California. She continued her musical career but never matched her earlier success. 

Bentley was openly lesbian early in her career, but during the McCarthy Era she started wearing dresses and married, claiming to have been "cured" by taking female hormones.

Christine Jorgensen (May 30, 1926 – May 3, 1989), was an American actress, singer, recording artist, and transgender activist. 

A trans woman, she was the first person to become widely known in the United States  for having sex reassignment surgery. 

In Copenhagen, Denmark, she obtained special permission to undergo a series of operations beginning in 1952.

When she returned to the United States in the early 1950s, her transition was front page news and she became an instant celebrity.

In August 1953 she began a nightclub act that established her as a star over the next three decades.

She was discriminated against, reporters and columnists often misgendered her outright or made jokes at her expense.  A Washington D.C. police officer once threatened her with arrest if she dared to use a women’s public restroom, she was denied a marriage license because her birth certificate listed her as male, and she was banned several times from  entertaining troops in U.S. Armed Forces clubs.

She later replaced her nightclub act with a speaking tour, telling her story.

Her 1967 autobiography Christine Jorgensen: A Personal Autobiography sold almost 450,000 copies.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Marguerite Higgins covered World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. 

One of the first reporters in Korea after hostilities broke out in 1950, and the only woman reporter on the front lines, she received the Pulitzer for international reporting in 1951. Born to expatriates in Hong Kong, Higgins graduated from the University of California, Berkeley and then received a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University. 

From 1942 to 1963, she was an international correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune, interviewing numerous world leaders and receiving an award for her coverage of the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp in 1945. She also wrote a syndicated column for Newsday and several books. While in Vietnam in 1965, Higgins contracted a parasitic disease and died on January 3, 1966, at age 45. 

She is buried with her second husband, Lt. Gen. William Evens Hall, U.S. Air Force in Arlington National Cemetery in Section 2, Grave 4705-B.

Audre Lorde (February 18, 1934–November 17, 1992) was an American writer, professor, philosopher, intersectional feminist, poet and civil rights activist. She was a self-described "Black, lesbian, feminist, socialist, mother, warrior, poet" who dedicated her life and talents to confronting different forms of injustice. She wrote numerous essays and books of poetry addressing issues of feminism, racism and sexuality.

Lorde taught at several colleges throughout the 60s, 70s, and 70s, such as Lehman College, John Jay College of Criminal Justice (where she fought for the creation of a black studies department), and Hunter College.

In 1980, she co-founded Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, the first U.S. publisher for women of color.

In 1981, Lorde helped to found the Women's Coalition of St. Croix, an organization assisting women who survived sexual abuse and intimate partner violence. In the late 1980s, she also helped establish Sisterhood in Support of Sisters in South Africa for black women who were affected by apartheid and other forms of injustice.

In 1984, Lorde became a visiting professor at the Free University of Berlin. During her time in Germany, Lorde became an influential part of the budding Afro-German movement.

Lorde was State Poet of New York from 1991 to 1992.

In June 2019, Lorde was one of the inaugural fifty  inducted on the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor within the Stonewall National Monument in New York City's Stonewall Inn.

In 2014, Lorde was inducted into the Legacy Walk, an outdoor public display in Chicago, Illinois, that celebrates LGBTQ history and people.

"We can sit in our corners mute forever while our sisters and ourselves are wasted, while our children are distorted and destroyed, while our earth is poisoned; we can sit in our safe corners mute as bottles, and we will still be no less afraid."

Anne Moody (September 15, 1940 – February 5, 2015) was civil rights activist and an American author who wrote about her experiences growing up poor and black in rural Mississippi, and her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement in her book “Coming of Age in Mississippi”. 

While attending Tougaloo College, Moody became involved with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). After graduation, Moody became a full-time worker in the civil rights movement, participating in a variety of different protests such as marches and sit-ins. Moody participated in a sit-in at a Woolworth's lunch counter in Jackson, when a mob attacked her, fellow student Joan Trumpauer, and Tougaloo professor John Salter, Jr. Anne Moody was arrested in Jackson, Mississippi for attempting to protest inside of a post office with 13 others, including Joan Trumpauer, Doris Erskine, Jeanette King, and Lois Chaffee.

  Mildred Ella "Babe" Didrikson Zaharias (June 26, 1911 – September 27, 1956) was an American athlete who excelled in golf, basketball, baseball, and track and field. She won two gold medals and a silver in track and field at the 1932 Summer Olympics, and 10 LPGA major championships in golf.

While Didrikson was an excellent athlete, it is important to note that according to multiple reports, she was also racist.

Before the 1932 Olympic games, Didrikson threw water on  fellow Olympic athletes Tidye Pickett and Louise Stokes, who both were Black, because she didn't like having African-American athletes on the team. Pickett and Stokes were later removed from the team, and replaced by white athletes who had qualified with slower times from the trials.

    Louise Mae Stokes Fraser (October 27, 1913 – March 25, 1978) was an American track and field athlete.

In 1931, at the age of seventeen she set a New England record in the 100 yard dash, capturing the Curley Cup at Fenway Park, while later that year she tied the world record in the standing broad jump.

The following year she traveled to Northwestern University. where she finished third in the 100 at the Olympic Trials, which earned her a place on the women’s 4 x 100 relay team. One of her teammates was fellow African-American Tidye Pickett, with whom she roomed. They were both outcasts on a squad dominated by the hostile presence of star performer Babe Didrikson.

At the 1932 United States Olympic Trials, she competed in the 100 meters where she placed fourth, earning her a spot in the 4 × 100 meter relay pool and making her and Tidye Pickett the first African-American Women to be selected for the Olympics.

Before the 1932 Olympic games, Babe Didrikson threw water on Louise Stokes and her fellow Olympic athlete Tidye Pickett while they slept on the train, because she didn't like having African-American athletes on the team. Pickett and Stokes were later removed from the team, and replaced by white athletes who had qualified with slower times from the trials.

Stokes continued running, and at the 1936 United States Olympic Trials, she again competed in the 100 meters, winning both her heat and her semi-final. She was leading the final until a costly error pushed her back to fifth. She became a part of the 4 x 100 meter relay pool. Stokes' hometown of Malden raised $680to cover the $500 she needed to compete in Berlin. 

She and Pickett were reunited on a team that also included Jesse Owens.

Pickett made history as the first African-American female Olympic competitor in the 80-meter hurdles, however, she hit the second hurdle, breaking her foot and didn’t finish the race.

On her return to Malden, a ticker tape parade of six thousand greeted her though family members acknowledge she carried the hurt until her death at the age of 64 in 1978.

Stokes was going to compete at the 1940 Olympics before they were canceled due to World War II. 

In 1941, she founded the Colored Women's Bowling League, and for the next three decades won many awards.

In 2016, after President Barack Obama was made aware that a White House reception for the members of the 1936 US Olympic team had excluded African-American team members he extended an invitation to the families of those who’d been ostracized. Among the guests were Stokes’s only son, Wilfred Fraser, Jr., who stood next to Michelle Obama in the official White House portrait of the gathering.

Toni Stone (July 17, 1921 – November 2, 1996) was a Black American female professional baseball player who played in predominantly male leagues. 

Although there was a baseball league for women at the time, the All American Girls Professional Baseball League, it was unofficially segregated, claiming that only White women met their exacting beauty standards.

In 1953, she became the first woman to play as a regular on an American major-level professional baseball team when she joined the Indianapolis Clowns in the previously all-male Negro leagues. She played 50 games in her season with the Clowns, batting .243. 

Most of the male ball players shunned her and gave her a hard time. Stone was proud of the fact that the male players were out to get her. She would show off the scars on her left wrist and talk about how she had been spiked by a runner trying to take her out on second base. "He was out," she recalled.

She also played for the San Francisco Sea Lions, the New Orleans Creoles, and the Kansas City Monarchs 

She was not allowed to change in the team’s locker room, sometimes being allowed to use the umpire's locker room. Once, Stone was asked to wear a skirt while playing for sex appeal, but she would not do it. While playing for the Kansas City Monarchs, she spent most of the game on the bench, next to the men who hated her. "It was hell," she said.

She retired from baseball in 1954. 

  Tidye Pickett (November 3, 1914 – November 17, 1986) was an American track and field athlete. She represented the United States in the 80-meter hurdles at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, becoming the first African-American woman to compete in the Olympic Games.

At the 1932 United States Olympic Trials Pickett competed in the 100-meter dash, winning her heat and placing third in her semi-final; she qualified for the final, where she placed sixth. Pickett was named to the American Olympic team as part of the eight-woman 4 × 100 meter relay pool. she and Louise Stokes, who was also part of the relay pool, were the first African-American women to be selected for the Olympic Games.

Before the 1932 Olympic games, Babe Didrikson threw water on Tidye Pickett  and her fellow Olympic athlete Louise Stokes while they slept on the train, because she didn't like having African-American athletes on the team. Pickett and Stokes were later removed from the team, and replaced by white athletes who had qualified with slower times from the trials.

At the 1936 United States Olympic Trials she competed in the 80-meter hurdles, placing second and qualifying for the Olympics in Berlin. At the Olympics, Pickett went out in the semi-finals, falling at the second hurdle and injuring herself. She was the first African-American woman, as well as the first Illinois State University athlete, to compete in the Olympic Games.

   Alice Marie Coachman Davis (November 9, 1923 – July 14, 2014) was an American athlete. She specialized in high jump and was the first black woman to win an Olympic gold medal.

Coachman began competing barefoot. Her unusual jumping style was a combination of straight jumping and western roll techniques.

Coachman dominated the Amateur Athletic Union's (AAU) outdoor high jump championship from 1939 through 1948, winning ten national championships in a row. She also won national championships in the 50-meter dash, the 100-meter dash and with the 400-meter relay team as a student at the Tuskegee Institute. During the same period, Coachman won three conference championships playing as a guard on the Tuskegee women's basketball team. 

Coachman was unable to compete in the 1940 and 1944 Olympic Games as they were canceled because of World War II. In the opinion of sportswriter Eric Williams, "Had she competed in those canceled Olympics, we would probably be talking about her as the No. 1 female athlete of all time."

Coachman qualified for the 1948 US Olympic team with a high jump of 5 feet 4 inches (1.63 m) breaking the previous 16-year-old record by 3⁄4 in (19 mm). In the high jump finals of the 1948 Summer Olympics, Coachman leaped 1.68 m (5 ft 6 in) on her first try. Her nearest rival, Great Britain's Dorothy Tyler, matched Coachman's jump, but only on her second try. Coachman was the only American woman to win an Olympic gold medal in athletics in 1948. Her medal was presented by King George VI.

When she returned home after the Olympics, Coachman was a celebrity. She met President Harry Truman and former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, she was honored with parades from Atlanta to Albany and Count Basie threw her a party. In 1952 she became the first African-American woman to endorse an international product when she was signed as a spokesperson by the Coca-Cola Company and was featured prominently on billboards alongside 1936 Olympic winner Jesse Owens. 

Coachman was inducted to the USA Track and Field Hall of fame in 1975 and the United States Olympic Hall of Fame in 2004.

    Wilma Glodean Rudolph (June 23, 1940 – November 12, 1994) was an American sprinter who overcame childhood polio and went on to become a world-record-holding Olympic champion and international sports icon in track and field. 

Rudolph won a bronze medal in the 4 × 100-meter relay at the 1956 Summer Olympics at Melbourne, Australia. She won three gold medals, in the 100- and 200-meter individual events and the 4 x 100-meter relay at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, Italy. She was the first American woman to win three gold medals in track and field during a single Olympic Games.

Rudolph was acclaimed as the fastest woman in the world in the 1960s.

 Rudolph was as a civil rights and women's rights pioneer.  As an Olympic champion in the early 1960s, Rudolph was among the most highly visible black women in America and abroad. She became a role model for black and female athletes, and  her Olympic successes helped  elevate women's track and field in the United States. 

  Florence Delorez Griffith Joyner (December 21, 1959 – September 21, 1998), also known as Flo-Jo, was an American track and field athlete and the fastest woman ever recorded. Griffith Joyner set world records in 1988 for the 100 m and 200 m.

While still in college, she qualified for the 100 m 1980 Olympics but did not compete due to the U.S. boycott. 

She won a silver medal in the 200 meter at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. 

In the first race of the quarterfinals of the 1988 U.S. Olympic Trials, she sprinted 100 meters in 10.49 seconds, a new world record by a margin of 0.27s over the previous record. Over the two-day trials, Griffith Joyner recorded the three fastest times for a woman at 100 meters: 10.49 in the quarter-final, 10.70 in the semifinal, and 10.61 in the final. At the same Olympic trials, she also set an American record at the 200-meter distance with a time of 21.77 seconds. 

In the 100-meter final, she ran a 10.54, beating her nearest rival to the world record by 0.30 seconds. In the 200 meter semifinal, she set the world record of 21.56 seconds and went on to break this record in the final by with a time of 21.34 seconds. Like her 100-meter world record, this mark still stands.

She went on to win four Olympic medals, three gold and one silver. At the time, this was the second most for female track and field athlete in history, behind Fanny Blankers-Koen who won four gold medals in 1948.

Her 100-meter record was by far the largest improvement in the world record time since the advent of electronic timing, and still stands. Scientific studies commissioned have since found there was an illegal tailwind of between 5 m/s – 7 m/s at the time. The IAAF has not annulled the result, but since 1997 the International Athletics Annual of the Association of Track and Field Statisticians has listed it as "probably strongly wind assisted, but recognized as a world record." The fastest non-wind-assisted performance would then be Griffith Joyner's 10.61s in the final the next day. This time was not beaten until August 2021.