My Binder Full of Women
(With apologies to Mitt Romney)
Today’s “International Women’s Day” and I didn’t know that until a listener named Alison asked me if I was going to bring it up on the show.
“After all, you recognized National Cereal Day yesterday,” she noted.
Flippantly, I responded, ” what should I do, list my favorite women?”
She thought I should. I liked the idea.
These are not the most obvious, or most famous, women on anyone’s list. It’s not “definitive”, to be sure. I’ve never met any of them. But, off the top of my head, I think these are eight really admirable American women everyone should at least know about.
1.) Condoleeza Rice: the scholar, Secretary of State 2005-2009, former National Security Advisor to President Bush and founding member of the College Football Playoff selection board. From her name, which means “with sweetness” in Italian, to her talent as a classical pianist, there’s a lot to love and admire here. She would’ve made a helluva president.
2.) Ayn Rand: Born in Russia, but one of the most incendiary authors of the 20th century, for books like “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged”. She has shaped my thinking about politics and the individual more than anyone I’ve ever encountered.
3) Dorothy Dix: Gotta throw in a Bostonian here. She did a lot, from modernizing nursing during the Civil War to reforming prisons and insane asylums across the country. It used to be very easy for a husband to commit his wife, for the flimsiest of reasons, and Dix helped stop that. She got a lot wrong, opposing abolition, for example, but worked tirelessly for what she did believe in.
4.) Harriet Tubman: One of the famous and gutsy “conductors” of the Underground Railroad.
5.) Harriet Beecher Stowe: Fought slavery in many ways, including writing “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, which was one of the first “national bestsellers” and so influenced President Abraham Lincoln that he invited her to the White House to enlighten him.
6.) Louisa May Alcott: As a young girl, she had to work hard to feed her family, but she also educated herself and wrote the famous “Little Women”.
7.) Barbara Jordan: Lawyer, teacher, civil rights leader and Texas congresswoman, whose 1976 keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention, along with Ronald Reagan’s concession speech at the GOP convention, have always been the two things that sparked my interest in politics.
8.) Mary McLeod Bethune: Read a book called “The Black Cabinet” to learn the inspirational story of this great 20th Century American woman, from founding the HBCU that bears her name, Bethune-Cookman University, to serving in the FDR administration and being his sounding board for how the New Deal affected many forgotten Americans. She was a powerful force who just bulled her way into the halls of power and wouldn’t be discouraged or dissuaded.