The Atlanta Constitution from Atlanta, Georgia • 74

Cfruesday, March 1, 1994 The Atlanta Journal The Atlanta Constitution National Women's History Month Womem): Lives of sacrifice and courage The first woman to practice law in Savannah, Stella Akin (1897-1972) led a lifetime of firsts. In 1933 she was the first Southern woman appointed to President Roosevelt's "Little Cabinet," where she served for seven years as a special assistant to the attorney general. She was the first woman to argue a case before the Supreme Court of Georgia and the first woman in Georgia to be judge of a court of general jurisdiction the Municipal Court of Savannah. jc 1897 Alice McLellan Birney meets with 2,000 women at a "mother's congress" that eventually becomes the PTA. Alice Birney (1858-1907) of Marietta didn't have Dr.

Spock when she was raising her family; then, there was little published guidance available for young mothers. She began to study psychology and to talk to other women about organizing to pursue child-care studies and work more closely with teachers. When the Washington "mother's congress" led to the National Congress of Mothers, Alice Birney was its first president. In 1908 it became the PTA. 1918 Georgia Douglas Camp Johnson publishes her first book of poetry, "The Heart of a Woman," joining the Harlem Renaissance.

Langston Hughes and other prominent writers attended Georgia Johnson's (1877-1966) weekly salons in Washington in the 20s. But the Atlanta native's contribution to the revival of African-American arts was the focus, in her poetry and plays, on the life experience of black women. During her literary career of nearly half a century, she addressed such topics as miscegenation, motherhood, racism and rape. She wrote a weekly newspaper column from 1926 to 1932 which was syndicated to 20 newspapers. 1923 Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, the Mother of the Blues, records her first album one of the first by a professional female blues musician.

Ma Rainey's 35-year career touring with her husband, William "Pa" Rainey, and, briefly, with a young Bessie Smith, bridged the last days of traveling minstrel shows and the birth of classical blues. With her deep, emotional contralto voice, she pioneered a new kind of American music. Ma Rainey (1886-1939) debuted at 14 at the Springer Opera House in Columbus, her hometown. She is buried there. 1926 Berry College, the offspring of Martha McChesney Berry's commitment to education, begins classes.

Martha Berry (1866-1942) began teaching rural children in a log cabin on the grounds of her family's home in Rome. She started the Boys Industrial School in 1902 on family property, and seven years later, following the advice of Theodore Roosevelt, she opened Martha Berry School for Girls. Berry College became a four-year institu- WW -ft tion in 1930. Her fund-raising talent earned Berry Schools and College sig-' niflcant endowments, including $4 million from Henry Ford. In 1940, a Good Housekeeping poll listed her as one of the 12 greatest living American women.

1931 Janet Harmon Bragg helps found the Challenger Air'S Pilots Association, a nationals-: ganization of African-American pilots. "Birds learn to fly. Why can't you?" read the billboard that inspired Janet Bragg, (1907-1993) and then nearly everybody proceeded to tell why she couldn't. A Griffin native and Spelman graduate in nursing, Bragg was denied admission to aviation school in Chicago because of her race. When she found a flying school that would accept her, she was the only1; woman and the men refused to share tools in mechanics classes.

So she bought her own. By 1933, she bought her own plane. In 1943, she was accepted by the Women's Auxiliary Service Pilots and then turned away because she was black. She was denied a commercial license by an Alabama examiner because no black woman had ever held one. Janet Bragg per- sisted and has become recognized as a pioneering African-American aviator.

1934 Osceola Archer, African-American theatrical director and actress, debuts on Broadway in "Between Two Worlds." "I know only one race the hu- man race," said Osceola McCarthy Archer (1890-1983). And throughout her theatrical career she pounded on any barrier that challenged her A native Georgian, she joined the Howard Players at Howard Universi-1 ty. Thirty years later, she was directing plays at New York's American Negro Theater and teaching Sidney Poi-tier, Harry Belafonte and Ossie Davis their craft. 4 eoirgoa The profiles here offer a taste of the impact women have had and con-tinue. to have in Georgia.

The list was cfynpiled from nominations by reported and editors and from some digging ifljo local history by our research department A committee of editors tjjmmed the list jJThe goal was to represent the rSfcjge of women's contributions tljeughout Georgia's history in pgltycs, education, the arts, science, biflness and sports, in public life and dW to home, with a few familiar n6es and many surprises. The hard rgujivas deciding who to cut Omitted wfoEMargaret Mitchell, Alice Walker aijf Coretta Scott King, whose aijSjvements and connections to GcSrjgia are well known. They made CgPfbr such women as Georgia Doug-llOjhnson, a writer whose talent and cp5butions to the Harlem Renais-saai are less recognized, and Ruby HOgfey, who took to the trenches on bj35f of the NAACP during the '50s We expect every reader who meets ouf -women in history will know of many others who are equally deserving. Written by Bette Harrison and Kris Worrell; researched by Sherryl Fisher and'Pam Prouty; edited by Donna Lorenz. 1770s Nancy Morgan Hart dem onstrates that women make formidably warriors.

Georgia mountain woman, 6 feet tall and probably illiterate, Nancy Hart is the stuff of legend. There's no written record of her feats, but tradition has it that she fought beside her husband during the American Revolution, subdued a spy by throwing boiling lye in his face and was herself a spy. It's said that when five Tories broke into her home and demanded food, she fed them, got them drunk, took their weapons, killed one and held the rest captive until her husband and neighbors arrived. Hart County is the only one in Georgia named for a woman. 1863 Susie Baker King Taylor joins Clara Barton nursing Un-idtc'soldiers.

'-Susie Taylor (1848-1912) of Savannah was 14 when the Yankees came and' pressed her into service, first as a teacher of freed slave children and then as a nurse, working with Barton in the Sea Islands. She wrote a memoir '6f her wartime experiences that is the only such account by a black woman. 1865 Captain Nannie Morgan's all-female militia meets advancing Union troops in defense of LaGrange. Morgan (1836-1884) formed a company of the women of LaGrange to defend their community aftepthe men went to fight for the Confederacy. Called the Nancy Harts, for.

Jhe Revolutionary War hero, the troop of about 40 women drilled each Saturday. In April 1865, the first Wisconsin Cavalry advanced on La-Grange. The Union commander complimented the women on their courage and moved on to Macon, sparing LaQrange. 1883 Craft Laney opens fc ot Ueoma first public stftQbls for African Americans in we basement ot a church. 2 Jtmember of Atlanta University's fijsf graduating class in 1873, Lucy Iihfey (1854-1933) was born in Macon, but spent her life pioneering education for African Americans in During the early 1890s, she established at her school, the Haines Normal and Industrial Institution, the city-Is, first kindergarten and the first nurses' training department, which evojyed into University Hospital's scho6l of nursing.

Laney was among the first three African-American Georgians whose portraits were hung at tne State Capitol. 1. 1. Frances Bradley (1862-1949) of Fort Gaines was one of Georgia's first women doctors. Widowed in her 30s, she resolved to become a physician to provide for her four children.

The field was essentially closed to women, but Bradley studied with other women doctors at the Medical College of the New York Infirmary for Women and Children and went on to Cornell. She returned to Atlanta to practice, and became active in public health. She traveled with a mobile clinic in Appa-lachia for the United States Children's Bureau seeking, she said, "to save a life while it was new," and worked with refugee children in France during World War I. She eventually went west, treating Native Americans. 1905 Henrietta Cuttino Dozi- er is the first Southern woman admitted to the American Institute of Architects.

Atlanta-born "Harry" Dozier (1872-1947), an 1899 graduate of MIT, was Georgia's first female architect and the first Southern woman graduate of an accredited national architecture school. She helped found the Atlanta AIA chapter in 1906. In 1916, she went to Jacksonville as an associate architect for the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Jacksonville branch. 1908 Lugenia Burns Hope organizes the Neighborhood Union to promote social, moral and racial progress in Atlanta's poor African-American communities. Lugenia Hope (1871-1947) used her prestigious position as the wife of the president of Morehouse College and later Atlanta University to promote progress in the black community.

She founded, directed or assisted with medical clinics, settlement houses for the poor, the forerunner of the Morehouse School of Social Work, the African-American YWCA, the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching, hiring black policemen and many other causes. When she died, her ashes were scattered over the Morehouse campus. 1917 Stella Akin becomes the first woman to be admitted to the Georgia bar. 1890 Helen Augusta Howard founds the Georgia Woman Suffrage Association in Columbus, the first in the state and one of the first in the South. That her widowed mother had to pay taxes, but couldn't vote, raised Helen Howard's (1865-1934) ire and the organizational meeting of her suffragist group was held in her mother's antebellum mansion.

The original members were Howard, her mother and her four sisters. Howard went to a suffragist convention in Washington and invited the national group to hold its next convention in Atlanta, which had no woman's suffrage organization. One was formed in 1894, and the National American Woman Suffrage Association meeting in Atlanta was the South's first big meeting of women's rights activists. 1898 Lucy May Stanton opens her Atlanta studio, launching a career that wins her acclaim for her miniature paintings. Atlanta's Lucy Stanton (1875-1931) began studying art at age 7.

Studying and roaming through museums in Paris and in the United States, she developed a unique style that won her critical acclaim. She painted portraits and still lifes in oils, watercolor and pastels, but it was the fluent style of her miniatures that earned her a place in art history. Her work is exhibited in many museums, including the Smithsonian Institution. 1899 Frances Sage Bradley graduates from the first class to admit women at Cornell University School of Medicine. It- -v nif 1944 Lillian Eugenia Smith publishes "Strange Fruit," a best seller, about sin, sex and segregation in the South that was banned in Boston and the subject of a sensational censorship trial.

Lillian Smith (1897-1966) spent her 30-year career challenging Southern cut' ture's most sacred taboos race, sex and class. As an educator, writer, critic and lecturer, Smith railed against segregation not just of the races but of people 1 from one another. In 1937 she started a literary magazine called Pseudopodia, the first journal of its type in the South to publish the works of African-American writ; ers. During the 1950s and '60s, Smith lectured at Smith College, Yale and and received numerous awards for her literary and humanitarian achievements. 1.