The Women of New York 1920
The Women of NY1920
For International Women’s Day–Sunday, March 8th–we wanted to look back at the first two-plus months of our website and highlight some of the women who were making history and news in 1920, including activists, authors, educators, entertainers, and more.
“Girl employees” on strike outside Penn Station. The Daily News April 24, 1920. Newspapers.com
The stories of some of these women are rarely told. See below, and keep checking our daily posts! In the upcoming months we’ll be writing about Eva Tanguay, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Catherine Bosley, Louise Bryant, Fannie Hurst, Edith Wharton, Margaret Sanger, Jane Heap, Margaret Anderson, Rebecca Rankin, Eleanor Roosevelt, Lillian Wald, women workers on strike, the Harlem YWCA, and of course, the Nineteenth Amendment.
On January 10th, we featured Gertrude Elise MacDougald, who would become New York City’s first African American Woman principal.
On January 11th, we featured Dorothy Parker, meeting her editor for tea at the Plaza and getting fired from her job at Vanity Fair.
On January 18th, we featured Mary Pickford, "America's Sweetheart," starring in Pollyanna, her first release since forming United Artists.
On January 21st, we featured Rosa Ponselle of the Metropolitan Opera.
On January 24th, we featured Rose Weiss, attorney, fighting for the rights of political detainees.
On January 30th, we featured Amy Jacques, who was named secretary of the Negro Factories Corporation, having worked for U.N.I.A. since 1917.
On February 6th, we featured the solidarity of some women from Barnard college and their efforts to keep their campus free of snow and campaign for an endowment fund.
On February 10th, we featured the all-women jazz band from the Bronx that included Frances Smith on the drums, Dorothy Martin on percussion, Tessie Martin with the banjo, Dorothy Thattell on the piano, and Georgina Schroeder on the fiddle.
On February 11th and February 14, we featured Marnie Smith’s first recordings for Okeh Records, the first African American to record for a US company.
On February 12th, we featured Bertie Lee Hall and Jessie Redmon Fausset’s contributions to The Brownies Book, the monthly magazine for African American children.
On February 16th, we featured Sarah Elizabeth Frazier, the first African American to teach in an integrated school in New York, giving a speech about her experiences abroad.
On February 23rd, we featured vaudevillian Fanny Brice and her stalwart defense of her husband who was facing charges for suspected grand theft.
On February 27th, we featured Ethel and Eleanor Olson, two Norwegian Americans. Ethel was the composer of a spoken-word satire called “Det Nye Piano” and together the sisters published their songs in Norwegian Dialect Stories.
On March 1st, we featured Helen Keller, the civil rights activist embarking on a vaudeville career.
wRITTEN BY JONATHAN GOLDMAN. MARCH 8, 2020.
Tags: International Women’s Day