Josefina Guerrero was a Filipina spy during World War II who was responsible for saving the lives of thousands of American soldiers. She spied undetected on behalf of the Allied forces for years and was so effective because of her particular affliction: leprosy. She used her illness, which had caused her so much trauma and grief since her diagnosis, to save countless lives and help turn the tide of the war, and for that, she must be celebrated.
Read MoreThough there's not much known about her, Maria Andreu has the auspicious honor of being the first Hispanic woman to serve in the US Coast Guard. As a lighthouse keeper hailing from the United States' oldest settlement, St. Augustine, Florida, Maria Andreu kept the beacons lit and tended to wounded sailors, an important job that kept people ships from dashing to pieces on the rocks. Did we mention she got the job at the ripe age of 58 in the year 1859? This week, Deanna tells us about Maria Andreu and the history of lighthouses and their keepers in the US!
Read MoreMaría Jesús Alvarado Rivera was a Peruvian journalist and feminist at the turn of the 20th century. She was inspired by her own childhood teacher and went on to speak about the importance of full equality for women in Peru. The most incredible thing about Maria was her dedication to achieving full equality for women - not only the vote, which was the primary feminist topic of the time. Later on, she got her message across through her work in the arts and the theater and though she lived long enough to see women achieve the right to vote in Peru, the victory was bittersweet because women's equality is still out of reach today. Maria was a seriously good witch, and we're honored to feature her during Hispanic/Latinx Heritage Month.
Read MoreCarmen Contreras-Bozak was the first Puerto Rican woman to go overseas as a codebreaker for the army in WW2. She joined at a time when women's contributions to the war were not seen as military, and they were therefore not entitled to the same benefits as male soldiers, such as access to VA hospitals or overseas payment. Carmen was a patriot in the truest sense - a young American woman born in the territory of Puerto Rico who found a life she loved in the mainland, and volunteered without hesitation to defend it.
Read MoreDuring World War 2, scientists developed a machine called THE ENIAC that they thought might be able to take the burden of computing intricate ballistics computations off of the human "computers", usually women, hired for the task. The problem was, they needed someone to program the machine, and that had never been done before. Enter the ENIAC programmers - six women computers hired to take on the task of programming the very first machine computer. Little did they know the impact this job would have on society, and the pure fact that a group of six women quite literally invented computer programming was lost to history - until now. Their names are: Kathleen McNulty Mauchly Antonelli, Jean Jennings Bartik, Frances Snyder Holberton, Marlyn Wescoff Meltzer, Frances Bilas Spence, and Ruth Lichterman Teitelbaum.
Read MoreThe Chevaliere D'Eon was a woman in 18th century France (historically known as Chevalier d'Eon) who, born as a man, was a soldier, a lawyer, and a spy for King Louis XV for many years before publicly declaring herself a woman, which was accepted as truth by the public. She acquired feminist works and did swordplay demonstrations in her heavy dresses. She lived as a woman for thirty three years in post-revolutionary France.
Read MoreChristine Jorgensen was born George Jorgensen and the first American woman to undergo sex reassignment surgery. She went as far as Europe to receive confirmation from doctors there that her belief she was a woman was not a psychiatric disorder. She got it - and the surgery - and came back to the US a celebrity.
Read MoreAnna May Wong is considered Hollywood's first Asian American movie star. Despite being forced to portray racist roles in the films Hollywood was peddling at the time, Anna was persistent about pursuing roles that could satiate her desire to play three dimensional Asian characters on the screen, traveling across Europe and China in an effort to find herself and roles she might actually enjoy playing. Anna May Wong was and is an inspiration to some of the best actresses and filmmakers working today, including Lucy Liu, who received her own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame next to Anna May Wong's on May 1, 2019, making her the second Asian actor on the Walk.
Read MoreElizabeth Bentley was a communist spy turned American spy and informant in the 1930’s – 40’s – she spent enough time as a communist spy that when she defected from the party, Russian spying in the US effectively ceased for years, so vast was her damaging knowledge. While she was neither a good witch nor a bad bitch, spending much more time in the gray area, it can’t be disputed that without Elizabeth Bentley, we wouldn’t have background checks, an oath of allegiance for government officials when they are sworn in, and McCarthyism might not have been the movement that it came to be.
Read MoreTammy Duckworth, a former US Army Lieutenant Colonel who lost bother her legs in battle, was the first Asian-American Woman elected to congress. She currently serves as a Senator for the state of Illinois.
Read MoreThe story of Russian sniper and bad bitch, Lyudmila Pavlichenko, and how she basically won World War II.
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