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Martin Duberman — biographer, historian, anti-racist playwright and pioneer of queer studies — was born on this date in 1930 in New York City. Duberman has been a tenured professor at Princeton and Lehman College and founded City University’s groundbreaking Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in 1991. His twenty books include a biography of Paul […]
Read MoreFeminist attorney, activist and Congresswoman Bella Abzug was born on this date in 1920. She was the second Jewish woman elected to Congress (in 1970) and earned a place on Richard Nixon’s “enemies list” for her outspoken opposition to the Vietnam War (Abzug was a co-founder of Women’s Strike for Peace). Abzug was a strong […]
Read MoreJohn M. Levy, a founder in 1845 of the town of La Crosse, Wisconsin, petitioned the U.S. government on this date in 1848 on behalf of the Winnebago Indians, urging that they not be compelled to move west of the Mississippi River. Levy was born in London in 1820 and arrived in the U.S. with […]
Read MoreRachelle Slobodinsky Yarros, the first woman admitted to the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Boston (1890), was born on this date in 1869 near Kiev. She was forced to flee the Russian Empire at age 18 because of her involvement in anarchist politics. Yarros became a physician in 1893 and practiced obstetrics and gynecology […]
Read MoreOn this date, in 1961, the first Freedom Riders — seven African-Americans and six whites — set out in two buses from Washington D.C., headed for New Orleans, to challenge segregationist transportation laws that the Supreme Court had declared unconstitutional. One group was viciously attacked on Mother’s Day by a Ku Klux Klan mob in […]
Read MoreLillian Wald co-founded what would become the Henry Street Settlement House on this day in 1893 — her 26th birthday. Wald was the greatest champion of public health services in New York City and helped to found the National Organization for Public Health Nursing and Columbia University’s School of Nursing, as well as the National […]
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