Abigail Adams was the first woman to serve as Second Lady of United States and the second woman to serve as First Lady. She was also the mother of the sixth President, John Quincy Adams. In her most famous letter, she pleaded that the Founding Fathers “remember the ladies.” Adding, “Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they could.”
During her lifetime, Zora Neale Hurston published four novels; Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934), Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939), Seraph on the Suwanee (1948) and more than 50 published short stories, plays, and essays. Her most popular novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, was written in rented a house in Port-au-Prince, Haiti in September 1936 and completed in seven weeks.
Nationally, American contralto Marian Anderson broke barriers. Her first record featured spirituals “DeepRiver” and “My Way’s Cloudy.” She was the first African American to perform with the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, the first African American to perform at the Metropolitan Opera. Despite, she was still subject to racial bias.
Through her work as a teacher, Susan B. Anthony quickly became aware of the wage gap between men and women in the profession. In 1848, the first Women’s Rights Convention in the United States, launching the Suffrage movement. She died 14 years before the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920.
Indira Gandhi was India’s third prime minister and the first woman to lead the nation’s millions from 1966 to 1977 and from 1980 until her assassination in 1984. India’s Green Revolution was one of the important pieces of her term in office.
