Category: resolute-women
-
Not worth a sixpence
Harriet Tubman, who soon will be featured on $20 bills, was born a slave. After she escaped to freedom, she returned to the South again and again to rescue more than 300 slaves. Author Isabel Wilkerson, interviewed on the Diane Rehm show on National Public Radio, reported that one master beat Tubman and then declared…
-
The brethren laughed heartily
In 1853, Sarah Grimke, abolitionist and feminist, was invited to sit in the chair of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. “As I took my place,” she said later, “I involuntarily exclaimed: ‘Who knows, but this chair may one day be occupied by a woman.’ The brethren laughed heartily.” In 1873, the Supreme Court…
-
Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s push-ups
During an MSNBC interview, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who is 83, was asked if she still does 20 push-ups every day. “Yes,” she replied, “but we do 10 at a time. And, then, I breathe for a bit, and do the second set.” Bryant Johnson, who has been Justice Ginsburg’s trainer for two…
-
When my mother was born
I’ve been thinking about the fact that, when my mother was born, women couldn’t vote in the United States. When I was born, women couldn’t serve on juries in Texas. Women finally were allowed to serve on juries in this state in 1954. Now, a woman is running for president as the candidate of one…
-
Flair and laughter
My friend Lynn received two cards with quotes from Maya Angelou and shared them with me. One says: “Determine to live life with flair and laughter.” I’ll share the second quote in our next blog post. –Joy
-
We all have felt other
“Writing in a younger voice allowed me to name the thing without a name,” explained Sandra Cisneros in the introduction to the 10th anniversary edition of her book The House on Mango Street. The book is the story of a young girl growing up in the Latino section of Chicago. The thing without a name…
-
Women’s soccer vs. men’s soccer
The U.S. women’s soccer team has won four Olympic gold medals. With one brief interruption, the team has been continuously ranked No. 1 in the world since March 2008. In contrast, the American men’s soccer team has never won an Olympic gold medal, and the team is ranked No. 30 in the world. Guess which…
-
When I’m 105
Elizabeth Sullivan, who is 105 years old, threw the first pitch at a Texas Rangers’ game on April 6. This Resolute Woman practiced throwing the ball overhand for a month before the game. “I was throwing underhand because that’s the way girls did when I was in school,” Sullivan told The Dallas Morning News. When…
-
A woman who had strife in her life
In 2003, the actress Patty Duke, who died March 29, 2016, played Aunt Eller in a Broadway revival of the musical “Oklahoma!” By then, the actress, wrote Frazier Moore for The Associated Press, “had spent a dozen years living in Idaho with her fourth husband,….seeking refuge from the clutter, noise and turmoil of the big…
-
A legacy of bluebonnets
Today, when Lady Bird Johnson’s name is mentioned, many Texans—like me—think first of the countless bluebonnets that blossom along the highways of our state every spring. In the years before she died in 2007, “those who remembered her only as the wife of an unpopular president may still have disparaged her Southern drawl, but closer…