Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts and is regarded as one of the most important figures in American poetry. Some time after her death, her sister Lavinia found a locked box containing more than 1,700 short poems. The original order of her poems was not restored until 1981, when Ralph W. Franklin used the physical evidence of the paper itself to restore her intended order.
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.