Important Dates in Women's History
February

1853

The Una premiers in Providence, Rhode Island. It was edited by Paulina Kellogg Wright Davis. It's masthead read "A Paper Devoted to the Elevation of Woman," and it is acknowledged as the first newspaper of the woman's rights movement

February 1

Wives' Feast, Ireland. Women homemakers celebrate their work by sharing wonderful and elaborate feasts with one another.

February 3, 1821

Birth of Elizabeth Blackwell, first certified woman doctor.

February. 4, 1913

Birth of Rosa Parks, whose protest at giving up her seat on the bus simply because she was black, sparked the 1960s Civil Rights movement.

February 4, 1921

Birth of Betty Friedan, whose book The Feminine Mystique triggered the third wave of feminism in the US. February 6, 1917

In Great Britain, voting rights were granted to women over age 30

February 9, 1944

Birth of Alice Walker. She was an African American activist and Pulitzer Prize novelist.

February 11, 1858

The Virgin Mary appeared to the peasant girl Bernadette Soubirous in Lourdes, France.

February 11, 1911

Jeanette Rankin became the first woman to address the Montana legislature. Her topic was woman suffrage.

February 12, 1870

Women gain the vote in Utah Territory

February 13, 1870

Esther Morris became a Justice of the Peace - first woman to hold that position in the U.S.

February 13, 1959

The first Barbie Doll went on sale.

February 14.

St. Valentine's Day, festival of love, named after a Christian saint.

February 14, 1920

The League of Women Voters is founded as "a mighty experiment" at the Victory Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in Chicago, Illinois. At this time there were 33 states that had ratified the amendment.

February 15, 1820

Birth of Susan B. Anthony, who in 1850 helped lead the women's rights movement.

February 15, 1879

For the first time female attorneys would be permitted to argue cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, as a result of a bill signed this date by President Rutherford B. Hayes

February 16, 1883

The first issue of Ladies Home Journal was published

February 18, 1934

Birth of poet and essayist Audre Lorde.

February 20, 1805

Birth of abolitionist and writer Angelina Grimke Weld.

February 25, 1896

Birth of Ida Cox, jazz pioneer who wrote and sang "Wild Women Don't Have the Blues."

February 25, 1987

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Affirmative Action was legal in the landmark case U.S. v Paradise

Feb. 27, 1897

Birth of Marian Anderson, African American singer and humanitarian.

February 28, 1797

Birth of Mary Lyon, founder of the first women's college, Mt. Holyoke Female Seminary (1837)