Margaret Mead was a cultural anthropologist born on December 16, 1901 in Philadelphia. Between 1925 and 1939, she studied seven cultures in the South Pacific and Indonesia, focusing on the relationship between the individual and culture.
Ella Jane Fitzgerald was the most popular female jazz singer in the United States for more than half a century, mastered scat singing, had a love of cookbooks, won 13 Grammy Awards, sold over 40 million albums, and received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1967. Her audiences were rich and poor, made up of all races, all religions and all nationalities.
Frances Perkins was secretary of labor for the 12 years of Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency and the first woman to hold a Cabinet post. She helped forge the blueprint of legislation finally enacted as the Social Security Act.
Mary Riddle, also known as Kus-da-cha or Kingfisher, was born on April 22, 1902. She felt that public opinion was that women would never be successful pilots—she knew that she wanted to prove them wrong. She made her first solo flight on May 10, 1930 then earned her commercial pilot’s license in 1933.
Ever since journalist and screenwriter Harriet Quimby became the first American woman licensed as a pilot in 1911, many women have been breaking barriers to find their place in the sky. Ruth Elder was determined to become the female Charles Lindbergh, and the first woman to cross the Atlantic. She was a charter member of The Ninety-Nines, starred in Moran of the Marines (1928) and The Winged Horseman (1929), and took part in the Women's Air Derby which took place on August 18, 1929, along with twenty other women.
