#OnThisDay, 16 Jan 1970, Dilma Rousseff, a member of the Brazilian guerrilla movement against the military government, was arrested. She was labelled the “Joan of Arc” of the movement.
In 2011 she became the first woman to be president of Brazil.
“The simple act of walking through a schoolhouse door that had been barred to me, and all people of my color, by the governor of this state - that simple act represented an end to legal segregation in the American South.”
#OnThisDay, 11 June 1963, Vivian Malone defies the Governor of Alabama to become the first Black female student at the University of Alabama.
#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #AmericanHistory #Histodons
#OnThisDay, 11 Feb 1989, the Rev Barbara Harris is consecrated, the first woman to become a Bishop in the worldwide Anglican Communion. Due to death threats, she was advised to wear a bulletproof vest at the ceremony: she declined.
"I certainly don't want to be one of the boys. I want to offer my peculiar gifts as a black woman... a sensitivity and an awareness that comes out of more than a passing acquaintance with oppression."
#OnThisDay, 18 Mar 1979, the first National Black Women’s Conference started in Brixton, London, arranged by the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD). Over 300 women attended.
OWAAD was founded by Stella Dadzie and Olive Morris in 1978 to bring a black feminist perspective to political action.
Morris died in July 1979 of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. In 2024, she was recognised for her work with a blue plaque.
#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #BritishHistory #London #Histodons
“Once, with hand-grenades in my shopping bag, I travelled in a train so full that I had to stand against a German NCO.”
#OnThisDay, 18 Mar 1943, Francine Agazarian arrives in Nazi-occupied France to be a courier in the Special Operations Executive. The British SOE supported the French Resistance.
#WomenInHistory #WomensHistoryMonth #History #WorldWar2 #Histodons
