#OnThisDay, 3 Apr 1979, Jane Byrne wins the Chicago mayoral election. She is the first woman to be mayor of the city and is sworn in on 16 April. She hires the first black woman to be a school superintendent in the city, and stops the police raiding gay bars.

Lori Lightfoot was the second woman to hold the post, from 2019 to 2023. She’s the first black woman and the first LGBT+ mayor since the post was created in 1837.

#OnThisDay, 3 Apr 1913, suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst is sentenced to three years' penal servitude, and announces she will go on hunger strike.

#OnThisDay, 2 Apr 1991, Rita Johnson becomes the first female premier of a Canadian province when she is elected by the political caucus.

#OnThisDay, 2 Apr 1917, Jeanette Rankin is sworn in, becoming the first woman to sit in the US Congress.

#OnThisDay, 1 April 1983, around 200 women dressed as teddy bears or Easter bunnies break into the Greenham Common airbase in the UK to stage a protest picnic against nuclear warfare. Greenham was due to house US nuclear missiles

A further 40,000 protestors, men and women, form a human chain linking #Greenham to #Aldermaston and Burghfield.

Women had established the peace camps at Greenham in 1981.

#OnThisDay, 1 Apr 1792, former spy Etta Palm-Aelders speaks to the revolutionary French parliament.

Her demands?

The right for women to be admitted to civilian and military positions.

The education of girls to be based on the same principles as those of boys.

That women could become adults at the age of 21, and could get divorced.

Her demands were refused.

#OnThisDay, 31 Mar 1988, Toni Morrison's 'Beloved' wins the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993.

“Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation."

#OnThisDay, 31 Mar 1776, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband, John Adams, who was drafting the Declaration of Independence. He declined her suggestions.

#OnThisDay, 30 Mar 1982, Bertha Wilson was sworn in to the Canadian Supreme Court. She is the first woman appointed to sit on it.

When she had started at law school in 1955, she was reportedly advised to 'take up crocheting' instead.

Her 1988 ruling decriminalised abortion in Canada.

#OnThisDay, 29 Mar 1993, Catherine Callbeck is elected as the premier of Prince Edward Island, Canada, in the general election. She is the first woman to be elected by the public to a premiership in Canada.

Other women had previously held premierships through party leadership elections.

#OnThisDay, 28 Mar 1900, Queen Yaa Asantewa leads an army of 5,000 to fight colonial Britain's attempts to rule the Asante region.

Read more: https://carvehername.org.uk/yaa-asantewaa/

#OnThisDay, 27 Mar 1997, Pamela Gordon becomes the first woman to be Premier of Bermuda, after winning a party leadership election. Her party, the United Bermuda Party, was centre-right.

#OnThisDay, 26 Mar 1974, Gaura Devi and 27 village women prevent the logging of trees in the village of Rini in the Himalayas. They confront armed men from the lumber company and hug the trees to stop them being felled.

https://carvehername.org.uk/women-fighting-deforestation-gaura-devi/

#WomensHistoryMonth #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory#Histodons

#OnThisDay, 25 Mar 1941, the first WRNS arrive at Bletchley Park in the UK. They operate the Bombe machines used for decoding German Enigma machine messages. Their work helps shorten World War 2.

#OnThisDay, 24 Mar 1944, Éliane Plewman is arrested by the Gestapo in Nazi-occupied France after six months operating as a courier for the Special Operations Executive. The British SOE supported the French resistance. A courier carried messages and equipment around their network.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #WorldWar2 #EuropeanHistory #SOE

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A German guard once asked Maureen O'Sullivan what was in her suitcase. She laughed. “A wireless, of course!”.

Very early #OnThisDay, 23 Mar 1944 , Maureen 'Paddy' O'Sullivan parachutes into occupied France to be a radio operator for the British Special Operations Executive.

The SOE supported the French Resistance. Radio operators were at the greatest risk of capture as their position could be triangulated. O’Sullivan was never captured.

#OnThisDay, 22 March 1982, around 250 people blockade Greenham Common airbase in the UK. 34 are arrested. It was the first mass non-violent protest by the Greenham Common peace women.

Photo: Paula Allen.

Read more: https://carvehername.org.uk/greenham-women-22-march-1982/

#OnThisDay, 21 Mar 1945, Hannie Schaft, an active member of the Dutch resistance known as "the girl with the red hair", is arrested at a German checkpoint in Haarlem.

She is later executed, allegedly saying "I shoot better" after the first attempt to shoot her missed.

#OnThisDay, 21 Mar 1944, Virginia Hall returns to Nazi-occupied France.

Previously with the British SOE, Hall returned with the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and trained 3 battalions of resistance fighters.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #WomensHistoryMonth #WW2 #AmericanHistory #Histodons

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