Read about the woman who was instrumental in shaping women’s (and basic human) rights in Japan–even as an outsider/expatriate, and at age 22.

Beate Sirota Gordon grew up in Tokyo, the daughter of a Ukrainian expatriate teacher. She observed the period in Japan when wives walked behind their husbands. When she became the only woman (at age 22) assigned to work on the post-World War II Japanese Constitution on General MacArthur’s committee, she saw an opportunity to make a difference.

Knowing the traditional family values and women’s point of view of Japan, as well as the struggles that Western women had been facing for the previous few decades, Ms. Gordon used her influence to write portions of articles into the Constitution in order to secure Japanese women’s rights and equality.

Two of the articles she drafted survived in the new Constitution: Article 24 and Article 14 (1).

Article 24:

1. Marriage shall be based only on the mutual consent of both sexes and it
shall be maintained through mutual cooperation with the equal rights of
husband and wife as a basis.

2. With regard to choice of spouse, property rights, inheritance, choice of
domicile, divorce and other matters pertaining to marriage and the family,
laws shall be enacted from the standpoint of individual dignity and the
essential equality of the sexes.

Article 14:

1. All of the people are equal under the law and there shall be no
discrimination in political, economic or social relations because of race,
creed, sex, social status or family origin.

Despite the growing number of “career women” in Japan, traditional values still hold strong. I went to one of the nation’s best single sex schools in Tokyo, and always felt that we were ready to stand up to boys in the society. But I have seen my friend become a stay-at-home mom after completing her
studies at medical school because it was assumed by her family that the mother should stay home and take care of the child. (And some older and more conservative people may assume that the husband doesn’t make enough money to support his family if the wife works outside of home.) Another friend of mine had a hard time getting married to the man she chose, because of the families’ class distinctions.

We Japanese are still struggling to balance old customs, traditions and values with human rights and new responsibilities. It’s clear that Ms. Gordon’s effort and contribution became the basis for the laws for women’s equal rights that were later written. I truly appreciate her passion, and respect her as a visionary leader. - Chie Witt

Beate Sirota Gordon, author of the memoir “The Only Woman in the Room” spoke at Middlebury College in 2007:

More about Sirota-Gordon:
Beate Sirota Gordon spent many decades of her life in new york city, working for both the Asia Society and the Japan Society.

* Great Bio on Sirota’s works.
* Article on Sirota
* Documentary about Sirota, “The Gift from Beate”
* Article on Sirota’s influence on Japanese Society

In 1957, Minnijean Brown Trickey was one of nine African-American students who broke the color barrier at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Read an interview with Trickey about her experiences as a member of the ‘Little Rock Nine,’ and her work as a social activist today.

Minnijean Brown Trickey was only fifteen years old when she gained her place in American history. On September 25, 1957, she and eight other African-American students faced down an angry mob to desegregate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. This trial by fire was just Minnijean’s first step on the path of social and political activism; she’s gone on to fight for minority rights and environmental justice both here and in Canada. Today, she inspires countless people with her story, urging them to put themselves on the line in the fight against social, economic and racial injustice. I spoke with Minnijean about her experiences in Little Rock, and her work since then.

Watch a clip about Minnijean and the Little Rock Nine from Little Rock Central: 50 Years Later.

So what happened on that first day of school at Central High?

What happened, for me, was really unexpected. There was a mob. The governor made an announcement on Labor Day that he was going to call in the National Guard, so they were there too. We thought that the National Guard was there to keep the peace, and protect us. So on the first day it was pretty shocking to get there and find out that the Guard were stopping us from going into school. We were sandwiched between the Arkansas National Guard and the mob, so it was quite brutal. I remember shaking. That’s the main thing I remember. I remember feeling very scared. And people were screaming obscenities, like ‘Go back to Africa’ and ‘Integration is Communism,’ and all kinds of crazy stuff like that. I was totally shocked. I had been a girl of the U.S. who had done all the anthems, songs and pledges, and then I hit that mess and I thought ‘Oh my God, this is what it’s really like.’ In a segregated society you’re safe, because you don’t do what you’re not supposed to do. You didn’t do stuff that was against the law, and everything was against the law – buses, trying on clothes, water fountains, restaurants, hotels, swimming pools. So you stayed in your place.

So what happened when you got inside the school?

First of all, when we got in on the 24th of September, the mob was quite big, and we were told we had to leave for our own safety. We were taken out secretly through the basement, and it was just scary. So we sat at home for almost 3 weeks, waiting. And we had to go to a federal court, because the school board filed an injunction to delay integration because of the mob and the danger. So we learned quite a lot in that period. Our lawyers were Constance Baker Motley, Thurgood Marshall, and a number of young lawyers in Arkansas. We did all kinds of press conferences. That three weeks was the preparation for what was to happen. By the time we started the first full day at school, we were pretty smart and clear and ready, and we were protected by the 101st Airborne. Lots of things that were to happen later when the 101st left didn’t happen on that first day – phone threats, bomb threats in our homes. So we spent those three weeks getting ready for all those crazy people who were behaving as badly as they possible could in every possible way.

What kids of things did other students do to you, and were the soldiers really able to protect you?

The 101st did protect us, but they couldn’t go into the classrooms. I remember walking into the classroom on day one and all these boys had their feet across the aisles. Of course, we were supposed to sit in the back. And I went out to get my guard and the teacher said to him ‘No, you don’t come in here.’ It was just a whole weird experience. They couldn’t protect us in the bathroom, so you’d get pushed around in the girls’ restroom, in gym – everyone has an incident with hot water in showers and glass on the floor during physical education. So the nine of us just figured, “This will be rough, let’s just go with it.”

How long did you have to “just go with it”?

The abuse actually escalated over time because the 101st left, and it never ever calmed down. It didn’t suddenly become nice, it didn’t suddenly become pleasant; it was constant. Former students who have done oral histories say they went home every night and practiced what they were going to do the next day to us. I don’t think we were protected. In some ways we were better off then than now, because no one thought to kill us right then and there. Although I’m sure they thought about it.

I guess you could say I was a troublemaker, because I tried to say that I should be in the Christmas program, even though we were told we couldn’t participate in any activities, other than going to school. That was considered trouble. We were supposed to know our place and act appropriately. So I’m not sure if I was targeted because of that. I have no idea because we [the black students] didn’t tell each other what was happening. When you’re in the middle of something — I call it “American terrorism at its finest” – you’re not sure if you’re crazy. We were kids; we weren’t sure if things were happening to each other, or if there was some kind of personality flaw that was causing us to be particularly targeted. We were lost in that, just lost in abuse. They threw soup on me a couple of times, and students got up on the lunch table and gave 15 “rahs” for the boy who did it the first time. So for me the abuse was constant, and I have no idea if it was for anyone else.

So how did you get expelled from Central High?

There was a group of 3-5 girls that followed me, stepped on my heels, called me names, spitting at me, just a whole range of harassment. As I was going in my homeroom one morning, these girls threw a purse at me, and I picked it up, and it had six combination locks in it. And I stupidly just dropped it onto the floor and said “Leave me alone, white trash.” I didn’t keep the purse, so I didn’t have any evidence of what happened. That was a good excuse to get rid of me. And after that someone sent around a card that said “One down, eight to go.”

Do you regret going to Central High?

No, not at all. That’s what we had to do. We figured out really quickly that this experience was not just about us, it was for everyone, because of the letters we got from around the world. We had to let everyone know that we were not going to live these isolated and segregated lives. It wasn’t pleasant, but it had to be done. I don’t regret it.

Minnijean Brown Trickey lecture, from 2006:

The number, and breadth of the songs and hits that session bassist Carol Kaye worked on is almost inconceivable. Kaye was at the center of both the pop and movie soundtrack world of Los Angeles for more than a decade; yet she’s still virtually unknown.

Even though you probably haven’t heard her name before, there’s a very good chance you have heard the work of veteran bassist and guitarist Carol Kaye. In the 1960s, this studio musician performed on numerous recordings, including many famous pop hits: the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations”; the Righteous Brothers’ “You Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” and “Soul and Inspiration”; Sonny and Cher’s “The Beat Goes On” and “I Got You Babe”; Joe Cocker’s “Feelin’ Alright”; and “Scarborough Fair/Canticle” by Simon and Garfunkel. In addition, Kaye has also performed music for TV and film, including the theme for Mission Impossible.

Kaye performed on so many recordings and worked with great producers such as Quincy Jones, Brian Wilson, and Phil Spector. She was the only female instrumentalist in the studio working with a legendary group of top-notch L.A. session musicians that included drummers Earl Palmer and Hal Blaine, and guitarists Tommy Tedesco and Barney Kessel.

“It wasn’t that [I was a woman] that made me want to play,” Kaye says in a phone interview. “I had to play because I was a poor kid that stuttered. As soon I could start playing music, I could put food on the table. I found something that I was really great at.”

Born in 1935, Kaye grew up in a poor household in Wilmington, California and worked to help out her mother. Her introduction to the guitar began at the age of 13, when her mother saved some money for lessons. “A friend of mine was taking guitar lessons from a man named Horace Hatchett in Long Beach,” she recalls, “so I went along with my friend. I brought my steel guitar and he said ‘Play it for me.’ He must have seen something because he said, ‘I’ll give you lessons for free if you come work for me.’”

A few months later she was a professional jazz guitarist by the age of 14. She did the jazz club circuit and then in 1957 met Bumps Blackwell, who was the manager of Little Richard and producer for Sam Cooke. This led to some early studio gigs with Cooke and Ritchie Valens, particularly on the latter’s “La Bamba.” Kaye saw security in studio work because it paid well enough for her to support her mom and her own two kids.

“I was working a day job in the daytime and playing every night too,” she says. “And so I went into studio work and I did five years on guitar. Then the bass player didn’t show up [for a session] and I thought I would have a lot more fun playing bass than guitar.”

Playing bass gave Kaye the ability to invent and play her own lines, and she became the number one bassist for session work by 1964. “At first I didn’t want to do studio work,” she says, because I knew that you get in there, you get locked in there [and] you can never get out. But the jazz clubs started to get shut down and reopened as rock clubs, so the handwriting was on the wall.”

Kaye was involved in many of the greatest pop songs of all time via the producers behind them. One of those was Phil Spector, who produced the Ronettes and the Righteous Brothers. “Phil was a bit odd at times,” she remembers. “Sometimes it got a little rough. He picked on me one time: ‘Okay, you got the part down Carol?’ ‘F— off Phil!’ I don’t know why I did that. He was a genius.”

She also played bass on the Beach Boys’ single “Good Vibrations, ”and the group’s classic 1966 album Pet Sounds. “When I first met [Brian Wilson],” she says, “it was just simple rock and roll, and he got better. I think we trained him accidentally and he knew that we liked him because he had a lot of talent and he was nice to work for, although it got boring to work on one tune for three hours.”

A favorite session of hers was recording on Barbara Streisand’s 1973 song “The Way We Were.” Initially Kaye was told not to invent her own bass lines, as the long session ran for 33 takes. “If we keep going like this, I’ll never make my film call in the morning,” Kaye remembers. “So I started inventing the note. The whole band just started grooving and that’s the take that you hear. Unfortunately I was never called by that guy again, which is kind of funny because he got a big hit out of it.”

For a session Kaye and her colleagues worked long in the studio. “We didn’t sleep past five or six hours a night,” she says, “and that’s why we sat and drank coffee all the time. Guys had to crack jokes to keep from killing each other because you were so tired from the lack of sleep and then playing the same old rock and roll sometimes.”

There was a camaraderie between Kaye and the instrumentalists. “We were all pulling together with the feeling of ‘We better make this a hit so we can keep working next year.’ The guys didn’t think of me as a woman at all. I was just one of the guys, which is fine.”

Kaye took time off in 1969 and wrote a book on playing bass; a year later she returned back to the studio but wouldn’t do any more rock and roll dates. These days she focuses her energies as a music instructor and takes part in seminars. On a few occasions she’ll still do some session work. Currently Kaye is penning a book about her work, which is gaining a new appreciation. She would like the public to know that there were other people behind those hit records too.

“The only thing we cared about was getting the check,” she says. “Back in those days, the musicians were not recognized. Who would have thought that record companies would have put our names anyway—a bunch of white people and black people working together with one blonde chick on bass at a time when they had race riots.”

She continues: “A lot of our group has died without being recognized by the public. It’s not that we want the recognition but let’s get the truth out. I think the kids ought to know about us. I think it’s important they know the truth in back of those hit records, and what it took.”

Kaye is modest, however, about being regarded as a pioneer for women musicians in contemporary pop. “I don’t put myself to be the leading in that field,” she says. “I just happened to be at the right place at the right time. It’s good that they know that I did that. That’s what you do when you’re older—you pass along what you learned. It’s a joy to show people the stuff.”

More about Carol Kaye
Kaye’s official web site
Wiki page (with incredible discography–and it’s an ABRIDGED discography)

Watch a segment from a documentary made for YLE Finland about Kaye:

The original title for this 1975 video, containing an interview conducted by Studs Terkel, is “Texas Maverick”. Farenthold, a Texas lawyer and legislator, was the first woman to be seriously floated as a VP candidate in 1972. Though she didn’t win, she’s had an admirable career and has been an outspoken critic of government on the local and national level.

In this post:
* Video, from the mid-70s WNET series “Assignment America”: a biographical profile and interview of the first woman seriously considered for VP of a major party in the United States. Farenthold garnered 13% of the delegates’ vote for VP at the 1972 Democratic Convention, where she was bested by Terry Eagleton, who became George McGovern’s running mate. Includes an interview conducted by the late Studs Terkel. 30 minutes. (Originally aired: 1975)

* Interview with Farenthold, who is now 82, from Feb. 2009, below the video.

Interview with Frances ‘Sissy’ Farenthold, February 2009:

(our interview with Ms. Farenthold is long, but covers a lot of ground.)
She speaks to:
* her experiences running for office in 1960s Texas
* the need for campaign finance reform with regards to the media
* her anti-war stance and criticism of the military complex
* much more

You were born in 1926. And early on, you went to Vassar?
I went into a war work program in 1943, you could finish in 3 years if you wanted to. The idea was to get us through in 3 years so we would be available for the war. Well, the war stopped in 1945. And then I went to law school and then I married and had 5 children.

And then you went directly to law school?
I was a month short of 20 when I went. And I was one of 3 women in a class of 800.

You must’ve been one of few women in the law at that time.
Very, very few. You were almost a freak. And then, I started into politics after I had twins and I lost one when he was 3, in 1960. I’d always been involved in politics. I was familiar with it because my father worked in it. So in 1968 I was asked to run for the legislature. I was then legal aid director of Nueces County.

You were an ACLU field lawyer?
Yes, later, in the sixties, during the time of the farm worker’s strike. Then i worked for Legal Aid.

How did a Ramada sign get you jump-started in politics?
I got a call asking me to go down to city council to represent the local museum—which I think I was on the board of—objecting to a sign going up that was illegal under our local ordinances, blocking people’s views. And so then my husband said “well, don’t get too involved.” And that started a whole chain reaction.

How did your legal projects stand with your husband?
He encouraged me in the beginning. Which was unlike what you would have found in a traditional household at that time. Sometimes I’d take my kids, ages 3-8, to city council meetings with me. And sometimes at night meetings, someone would say, “you should be home with your children.”

How did you decide to run for the Texas House of Representatives?
I had a phone call one night, the last night of the filing for candidacy, from a friend of mine who I had known in law school. He called and asked me if I would run. And in a very traditional way, I asked my husband and I asked my cousin—who served in the legislature—what they thought. And they said go on and run. So I did.

What did you think you could accomplish by running?
Well, that was the whole thing. I had spent two years at Legal Aid, and it was a soul-searing experience. I saw a part of my town that I’d grown up in that I hadn’t been aware of. I’d seen poverty before, but not as a systemic problem like I saw it at Legal Aid. I always said the scapegoats of our society were unskilled women, and children. I saw so much, and so much of it was state policy. I hadn’t thought about running, because I thought it would be years before a woman would be elected to the Texas legislature. I mean I thought it would 10 years at a minimum.
But when I was asked, I felt I was, to put it mildly, up to the job.

I was outraged at what I saw. I realized that all of the oratory about taking care of people, was bunk. People weren’t being taken care of. And so much was done to penalize poor people. Poor people were short-changed in trying to buy houses. They had something called contract-to-sale, where you don’t even get an equity in your house. And during the war on poverty—as it was called under Johnson—we learned that the three poorest cities per capita in the country were Corpus Christi, Laredo, and El Paso, TX. Texas is just always ranked at the bottom as far as social safety nets are concerned. And it continues to this day.

Texas at that point still voted Democratic?
Yeah, it was a one-party state. The Republicans were just beginning and much stronger than the Republicans was George Wallace.

Even despite the fact that it was one-party state, there wasn’t a social safety net?
No, because what happened, there were factions within the Democratic party, and I was always to the left of that. It broke down to either you were a John Connally supporter, who later became a Republican, or you were a Ralph Garber supporter, and those were the more liberal Democrats out there.

When you got elected in 1968, you were the only woman out of 150 representatives. And then 30 of you rebelled against the speaker 3 years later?
That’s right. After seeing how things in the Texas legislature operated, I had to object.

Did you just hit the ground running on poverty issues?
I remember calling in the head of the the welfare office, asking him to come to my office so I could go over the issues. And I tried to put a bill on establishing a state Legal Aid, so we would have broader coverage for the whole state. But none of those things came to fruition. That was not the way Texas operated.

That’s what led you to want to reform the whole operation?
Yeah, it was much bigger than just reforming welfare. And again, it’s just an incremental thing – you go into a situation, and you see and you learn and you react. And then I only ended up spending 2 terms as a Representative, because I ran for Governor.

Why did you decide to leave the legislature for a try at the governorship?
I thought we had the makings of a reform movement, and we did, but it didn’t last. People won office on this whole ‘30-rebels’ thing. It was a phenomenon down here. And I only ran for governor because no one else in our group would. They saw how insurmountable it was.

I ran for Governor twice. But I lost the element of surprise the second time. No one paid attention to me. And all reporters wanted to know was “was I raising any money?” I saw that the money-raising was absolutely essential if you wanted to win.

What do you think about campaign finance reform today?
I think we need it. Obama did a great job, not quite enough, by a long shot. Someone told me that unlike Obama’s funds being 100% from the usual political financial sources, it was more like 50%. I don’t think what he did was a true phenomenon, and it didn’t take the underpinnings of the usual campaign financial structures away by a long shot.

What do you think would be the perfect situation for campaign finance?
Here’s one place the reform could happen: the media airways are owned by the public. And what candidates find is that much of their funds end up going directly to TV and other media. If we had real public debate, we wouldn’t need to fund political commercials. But you aren’t going to hear about that kind of campaign finance reform from the TV and media networks. They’re making money off the commercials, big, big money. I knew a woman that ran for Judge–that’s a local race here –she said: “I struggled and struggled to raise the money, and then it all went to TV.”

When you were running, did you spend a lot of time raising money?
Nothing like they do now. Congresspeople have to campaign the whole time, even when they’re in office, because the races are only two years apart.

So before you finished with the running for Governor, you started the Women’s Political Caucus?
I was the first national chair, but I did not start it. I was in the legislature when that took place.
When I first ran for the legislature, I tried to find other women legislators. I called the Democratic National Committee and they couldn’t tell me anything. So when I saw in 1970 that this group had been organized in Washington, I said to myself—because no one had contacted me—”this is wonderful.” When I was elected chair of the National Caucus, I was criticized. You have to remember this is 1973 in Texas. People were not used to women in politics. For example, when we had campaign fundraisers, we found no private homes open to us to hold them in.

It was very pronounced in Texas, about women being in their place, so to speak. I mean, when the Caucus was here, the hotel where the activities were held even had a policy that women were not to be paged.

It seemed like you had a lot of male support to run for these positions, though?
No question about it, I was a big exception.

You definitely alluded to having to face a lot of sexism, what was the worst of it?
Honestly, I’ve tried to just push it out of my mind. I’m not interested in repeating, you know, what they call ‘war stories’.

So then you ran for Vice-President.
Back in 1972. Well it was very interesting, and it came about because Shirley Chisholm, who’d run for President, decided she didn’t want to run for Vice-President. So, it was a combination of some young men that had been in my campaign plus the National Women’s Political Caucus: they asked me if I’d put my name in. I came in second.

Did you think that Shirley Chisholm would’ve had a shot at VP?
I don’t know. I mean, no, because these things were all settled in the inner rooms where we never were. And that was a year that was supposed to be an open convention. And a lot of people ran for VP that year—7 or 8.

What did you think of Hillary Clinton’s run at President? Or Sarah Palin running for VP?
The less I say about Palin the better. She’s very telegenic. I will give her credit for that, if that’s credit. She’s very attractive and that goes a long way in the television era.

And how about Clinton?
She was a very strong candidate. I didn’t support her– I was for Obama from the beginning, but that didn’t take away from her ability. She ran a hard race. There are a lot of people who feel that as a female politician, that you should support Hillary. But I wasn’t going to support anyone in the beginning who supported the Iraq war. That took it off the table for me. I had Holbrook tell me that he didn’t believe in litmus tests, well, that’s one I believed in. And actually, Obama and Richardson—the two candidates who weren’t in the Senate at the time—were the two that spoke up against it. I was the same way with Kerry. I didn’t support him in the primaries because of his vote on the Iraq War.

Do you think women should be better represented? Are you satisfied with how they’re represented now?
They should be much better represented. After all, we’re over 50% of the population. And it’s certainly true no woman speaks for all women. The proponents of the second woman’s movement—which was the ’60s and ’70s (the first being in the early 20th century, suffragists and the right to vote) thought we would be able to bring a great variety of women together. But there was a backlash to that hoped convergence, some of it based on religion. For instance, the Equal Rights Amendment was defeated principally by the Mormon Church and the insurance companies. And the choice issue divides women as well.

So which politicians do you admire?
Officeholders? I wouldn’t make a list. I mean, there are some people I have confidence in. I do in Feingold, for example, but he couldn’t get anyplace with a mere censure of Bush, no impeachment, just a censure.

But his torture bill went through … with McCain?
The McCain torture bill passed with two amendments. I made a study of them when I was looking at the Military Commission Act, the history of those Supreme Court cases. The two amendments weakened that torture bill. It wasn’t publicized. I only know it because I had to go back and look the thing up.

You said in the 1975 Studs Terkel interview (video above), that “Texas has a private government.” Do you think that’s changed at all?
No, it’s even more so, today.

What do you mean by private government?
The government is operated by interests that, whether oil business, chemical industry—rather than operated for the public good. It’s not that much different from when I ran. As a state, Texas is right at the bottom on education, on all kinds of social and economic matters. For instance, the private prisons, they always get their way. All of the so-called social welfare organizations — they’re not for clients. They drain people.

We don’t look at what’s really happening. I mean, as far back as I can remember, I was a little kid and going with my father to 4th of July events. And everyone had a canned Constitution speech. Year after year, I’d hear the same thing. I have a very difficult time hearing the words of the Star Spangled Banner, because everyone sings the line about ‘the bombs bursting in air’? Where are those bombs coming from now? They’re coming from our war planes.

These are subjects that make people uncomfortable. And you don’t want to make people uncomfortable when you’re running for office. Even Obama saying that things were going to get worse before they get better wasn’t what we wanted to hear. I remember a wonderful thing that happened with a cousin of mine that had a radio station: I was on the air, talking about subjects that probably made people uncomfortable. And he said to me, “Sissy, just talk about the weather today.”

It seems like most of your life, you’ve fought for race and gender equality. Are those the most important issues to you? Or have things changed?
They continue to be, but I’m lately focused on some other issues: I just read this last week: In Eisenhower’s first draft of speech when he warned us of the growing military-industrial complex? In his first draft, it was “military-industrial-congressional complex.”

I spend what reading I can do on this whole military setup we have. I think much of it is for the benefit—or has been for the benefit—of our trade, or countries with natural resources we want. I remember reading some declassified Senate committee hearings at some point, about Mobuto Seseke, who recently just drained the Congo. He was our big buddy because we were getting uranium from him. And you never hear about that part of it, you only hear about his corruption. But we more than tolerated it for years. You’re put away to the fringe if you talk about empire. But we have one.

You’re very outspoken. Do you think that that’s changed as you’ve gotten older?
Well, only in that maybe I’ve learned, or my eyes have been opened to things I could never imagine. I was so conventional in my thinking long ago, that when the U2 was shot down in the Soviet Union, I thought it was a weather plane, exactly what Washington had told us.

And I’ve been in deep distress these past years with what has happened to our Constitution. The torture. And those memos that have come out, that there was no check on the so-called Commander-in-Chief.

You seem really busy. What have you been doing recently?
Last Monday, group of us went out to Gene Green’s office. He’s on Waxman’s committee that will be writing the global warming bill. And his little problem is that he’s got all the oil refineries in his district. So he needs to have his mind changed.

I’m doing research on the Unified Security Budget. I’m on the board at the Institute for Policy Studies and they have someone working on this along with Lawrence Korb, who used to be in the Pentagon during the Reagan Administration, but who’s taken a turn to the left.

What is not on any one of my resumes: I was recently an executive producer of a film that was shown at Sundance. It’s called Quest for Honor, and it’s about honor killing, which is on the increase in Kurdistan, which is in northern Iraq. It’s usually brothers, fathers, or male cousins who do the killings, but one of the new techniques—since it’s theoretically been outlawed—is to just send a young girl up with a gun.

And you won the first Molly Ivins Lifetime Achievement award.
Yes, from the ACLU.

It seems like you’re not quite done yet. (Farenthold is 82)
I’ve always said on the way to my funeral, if we passed a demonstration, I’ll probably jump out.

That’s pretty scary.
It’d scare everybody. I still have the capacity for anger, which I guess sort of wears the adrenaline down.

It’s more passion than anger, though, right?
Yeah, that’s right. We’ll stick with that. Thank you for the word.

More about Frances ‘Sissy’ Farenthold:
Wiki Entry
Bio at Texas Legacy
2006 interview from the National Organization of Women

Assignment America was a freeform newsmagazine airing on WNET/Thirteen in 1975, a production of WNET. The program had four, rotating hosts/presenters: Maya Angelou, Studs Terkel, Doris Kearns, and George Will.

Though born into wealth, Mrs. Bolton was a pioneer in Nursing Advocacy, kept 14 terms in the U.S. House of Representatives (1940-68), and was the first woman Representative to the U.N. Read more about her life and work.

Here are their choices…who is your unsung heroine? Let us know in the comments.

Bill Moyers from Moyers Journal, on Grace Lee Boggs

“One of America’s unsung heroines is 92-year-old community activist Grace Lee Boggs, who has spent a lifetime working for change from the bottom up. Boggs says: ‘These are the times to grow our souls. Each of us is called upon to embrace the conviction that despite the powers and principalities bent on commodifying all our human relationships, we have the power within us to create the world anew.’” Read more about Grace Lee Boggs, and watch her interview on Moyers Journal.

Maria Hinojosa, Senior Correspondent from NOW on PBS,
on Carissa Picard

“Carissa Picard is an inspiration. The wife of an army pilot and mother of two toddlers, she lives on a military base in Texas. She sees many military spouses on the base who feel powerless and lonely. But Carissa is a lawyer, so has taken her legal skills and created an organization–Military Spouses for Change (now Military Spouses for America)–to help the wives (and husbands) speak out and feel empowered enough to challenge one of the biggest and most powerful institutions in our country…the military. She helps women own their voices and their power to challenge authority.” Carissa was featured in the NOW Program “Fighting the Military“, you can watch it online.

Judy Woodruff, Senior Correspondent on NewsHour,
on Mary Woolley and Cindy Brownstein

“Mary Woolley, President of Research!America, has been an advocate for medical and health research for more than 30 years. She has worked tirelessly to raise awareness of the vital role that research plays, and to make the case – through her writing, lobbying and public speaking — for more funding for life-saving and life-lengthening medical research across a broad spectrum.”

“Cindy Brownstein, CEO of the Spina Bifida Association of America, has played a critical role at the head of this organization that advocates for individuals with spina bifida, the most commonly occurring disabling birth defect. Through her leadership and ceaseless efforts, she has helped increase public awareness and helped raise crucial funding to improve prevention and treatment of this too little-known disability.”

Martin Savidge, anchor on Worldfocus, on Wyn Savidge

“When I was a kid I put my mom through hell…As she would put it I was “accident prone”– a polite way of describing a child who was so frequently injuring himself that in the ER of the local hospital they knew me by my first name. Broken bones, concussions, bee stings by the swarm, I even managed to set myself on fire. My mom seemed to take it all really well, but then, she had been through hell before. She lived in London during World War II and the Blitz–when carrying a gas mask was normal just like running for the shelter of the subway at the sound of an air raid siren, wondering if your neighborhood would still be there when you emerged. For her, WWII began in the fall of ‘39, not December of ‘41. Back then she worried about my dad in the British Navy as he made six trips to rescue soldiers from the desperate beaches of Dunkirk, then 4 years later cleared the way for the landing craft to return to France on D-day. After I grew out of my ER phase I went on to become a journalist. And once again my mother worried about wars and this time whether I would return from places like Afghanistan, Iraq, East Timor, Kosovo, Gaza, Lebanon and many more distant datelines. Now my mother is 90. Dad passed away nearly a decade ago. She lives alone, still cleaning her home, still independent. She bakes for the church and cares for the shut-ins most younger than herself. My mom is my heroine — perhaps that‘s selfish, but it also happens to be true.”

Lidia Matticchio Bastianich, host of Lidia’s Italy, on Erminia Motika:

“Erminia, my mother, is my unsung hero, who at age of thirty-seven decided with her husband to take their two children, me Lidia (then 12) and Franco my brother (then 15), and flee communism. To achieve ethnic and religious freedom, she guided us, comforted us and worked cleaning jobs, even being an educated teacher, so we could have extra food and shoes during the two years we awaited our visa in a political refugee camp. We resided in a long hall where every family’s small square space was divided by sheets hanging from a line. Many a night, while she thought we were sleeping, my mother would cry and ask my father whether the choice they made was the right one. Coming to America sponsored by the Catholic Charities and being inserted in the American life, she represents many an immigrant mother who worked from early morning until late at night to create a new life of freedom and opportunity for her children. It was never about her. It was always about her family. Saluting her, I salute all the immigrant mothers that travel the world looking for freedom and opportunity for their children. Our family was ever so greatly blessed by arriving on American shores.”

Tom Stewart, the voice of Thirteen, on Dr. Connie Guion

“Dr. Connie Guion in 1946 was named the first woman professor of Clinical Medicine in the United States. She taught at Cornell University Medical College from 1929-1951. She is responsible for a Comprehensive Care Program for outpatients, which was studied worldwide. There is a building in the Cornell-New York Hospital campus which is named for her, but I don’t believe she is widely known. My awareness of Dr. Guion stems from my sister-in-law, a physician, who graduated from Cornell in the early ’60s.”

Paula Zahn, host of SundayArts, on Elizabeth Zahn

“I have had the privilege of meeting and interviewing some extraordinarily courageous and tenacious women. I don’t have to look very far though, to zero in on my ultimate unsung heroine. She is the one who’s been with me from the very beginning…my mother, Elizabeth Zahn. She is a woman of incredible strength, resilience and grace. She grew up in the shadows of a steel mill in West Aliquippa, Pennsylvania. She went onto earn her doctorate in Spanish literature and became Geneva College’s youngest tenured professor. Her life as she knew it would come to a screeching halt when she was severely injured in a car accident. Her doctors didn’t think she’d ever walk again nor be able to have children. My mother being the brave and determined woman she is, soldiered through a year of brutal rehabilitation and proved her pessimistic doctors glaringly wrong. She walked out of her rehabilitation center with no assistance and into the next chapter of her life. She eventually got married, had four children and worked part-time as a teacher. In addition to mastering the art of the car pool, she studied painting and became an accomplished watercolorist. Her greatest test came when both she and my father were diagnosed with cancer within weeks of each other. My father’s cancer was more advanced than my mother’s. While she cared for father, even as she fought for her own life, she never gave in to self-pity. When my father lost his battle against cancer, she remained positive and resolute. Those qualities served her well as she conquered breast cancer while coping with her loss. When she was again diagnosed with cancer after a thirteen-year reprieve, my mother never surrendered to rage or disappointment. I don’t remember her even once asking ‘Why me?’ She has always found negativism and pessimism corrosive and unproductive. So she did what she always did. She absorbed the news and then went to battle. I’m happy to say that today she is a healthy survivor living a very full and happy life. Throughout her painful journey, it was my mother’s love of family and her spirituality that kept her going. Today she plays a very important role in her children’s lives and her seven grandchildren’s. She maintains a vital faith, while continuing to examine its underpinnings. She has taught all of us to be open to many paths on the road to spiritual growth. But perhaps the most important lesson she’s imparted is the power of gratitude and optimism, especially during life’s greatest challenges. And that is why she is my ultimate heroine.”

Today 84-year-old Judith Ginsburg lives in Florida, not far from two of her four children. Originally from the city of Lida, which is now in present-day Belarus, Ginsburg is appreciative for what America has done for her. She admits that while she and her late husband were never rich, they have lived a good and normal life. Yet as a Holocaust survivor Ginsburg is haunted by what had happened to her over 60 years ago, a time when her family and thousands of other Jews perished.

“How I survived I don’t know,” she says. “But I survived with tremendous guilt. Why did I survive? Why not my family? It’s been sixty-something years and I still wake up with that guilt.”

Her personal story represents both the horrors of the Holocaust and the human will to survive. Despite tremendous obstacles and dangers Ginsburg ended up as a member of the Bielski partisans, a group of Jewish resistance fighters who rescued over 1,200 Jews during World War II. In the wake of the recent film Defiance, which tells the story of the Bielski brothers-led unit, Ginsburg is now sharing her memories from that time.

As a teenager Judith was living in Lida—which was under Soviet control—when events unfolded that would change her life. The first happened in June 1941 as the Germans bombed her city and then put the Jews in a ghetto. “We were camped into two streets,” she recalls. “It was very old homes…five families in a little apartment, and they started organizing the ghetto. They started to take us to work right away.”

The second devastating event happened on the morning of May 8, 1942, when the Germans ordered everybody out of their houses to start marching outside of the city. “We didn’t know what was going to happen,” Ginsburg says. “While [the soldiers] were walking us, they were beating us. They were killing people who couldn’t walk. They took children from their mother’s arms. It was just terrible.”

During the march, the German soldiers divided the Jews into two separate lines: to the right represented those who would die, and the left was made of up of those who would live. Ginsburg and her sister and brother-in-law were put on the right line, but Ginsburg’s brother, a tailor who made the soldiers’ uniforms, convinced the Germans to put them on the left. In the end, over 5,000 Jews were murdered that day.

“Some of them were not even killed,” says Ginsburg. “They were thrown into the ditches where they dug. They made them get undressed and they were shooting some of them. A lot of people were buried alive.”

The 1,800 survivors of the massacre returned back to the ghetto, but the disruption wasn’t over. On Sept. 22, 1943, the Nazis returned again and ordered the Jews to walk to the train station. “We knew they were going to kill us,” Ginsburg says. “We never heard of concentration camps.”

It was a scene similar to what happened the year before: there were beatings, shootings and killings during the journey. While walking alongside her sister, Ginsburg came to the attention of a German soldier who was sympathetic to her plight. “He said to me, ‘You’re so young and you’re pretty.’ Tears came out of his eyes. I knew he was probably feeling sorry for us. My sister [who was with her children] noticed it and she said that’s good. ‘Tell him you’re gonna run.’”

With another girl, Ginsburg plotted her escape as they were nearing the station. By that time children were screaming and yelling. “I said to the German, ‘I’m gonna run but you could shoot us,’”says Ginsburg. “’Please don’t catch us.’ We start running, and they start shooting. I don’t know if anybody was killed but they made a commotion so we could escape. We jumped [and] ran over to the street.”

After their escape, the two girls went to a village where they were taken in by a shoemaker and his wife. They provided bread and milk to the hungry escapees. “[He said,] ‘God sent you to me because the Jews were good to me, and I will help you as much as I can.’ We were crying, and he was crying with us.”

Ginsburg had already heard of the Bielski partisans, who were hiding in the forest. While waiting along with other survivors to be picked up by the partisans, she was approached by a man in a hearse from the Russian unit. “He said, ‘Who are you?’” says Ginsburg. “I told [him] who my father is. He said, ‘I knew your father very well and I will help you.’”

The man contacted the Russian commander, who in turn took in six survivors including Ginsburg. Eventually she joined the Bielski partisans, whose mission was to forage food to feed the Jews. “It wasn’t easy,” she recalls, “and people didn’t give you the food. You had to take the food. They didn’t rob—they took just for survival.”

Four months later Ginsburg and the others were liberated. She returned to her city and later married one of the partisans from the Russian unit. In 1949, the couple immigrated to the United States where Ginsburg’s husband became a cattle dealer. They settled in upstate New York, bought a farm and raised a family.

Ginsburg now resides in Florida—her husband passed away three years ago. She had always told her children what had happened during the war so they would never forget. “Every time when you talk it still hurts,” she says. “I had to do it for my children’s sake. They had to know what we went through.”

In looking back at her life, Ginsburg adds: “Time teaches you a lot. I’m not brave now and I wasn’t brave then, but I did what I had to do.”

More about Judith Ginsburg and the Bielski partisans

An interview with Ginsburg published on South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com
Background on the city of Lida
A history of the Bielski partisans from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Web site
Defiance movie Web site

We consider an ‘unsung heroine’ a woman whose work/life has been under-recognized. Unfortunately, that still means most women! But here are our picks for groundbreaking inventors, artists, scientists, and more, who go beyond the “first woman to…” role. (picture at right: Margaret Knight’s paper bag folding machine patent.)

Who is your Unsung Heroine? Here are some of ours:

• Joanne Bland is an activist who marched in the 1965 Selma Voting Rights March when she was just 11, and she’s the co-founder and director of the National Voting Rights Museum in Selma, Alabama. She’s been working for justice her whole life. - Wayne Taylor
• Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, one of the first computer programmers, and a military officer. Among her many accomplishments, the COBOL computer language is based on her programming ideas, and the term ‘computer bug’ is attributed to her. - David Hirmes
• Cristeta Comerford: The first female (and as a Filipina, the first minority) executive chef at the White House, appointed in 2005 during the GW Bush administration. - David Chiu
• Margaret Knight, the ‘mother of the grocery bag’–an inventor during the mid-1800s who was the first woman to receive a U.S. patent…she ‘bagged’ about 89 patents during her lifetime. - Nick Miller
• Dori Seda, underground cartoonist. Seda threw herself at life so hard it eventually kicked back, and she died very young. But not before she’d produced a small but impressive body of work that combines the overactive id of R. Crumb with the sensitivity and self-awareness of, well, Seda herself. - Robin Edgerton
• Nellie Bly, Investigative journalism pioneer who, in 1887, faked insanity to report on a mental asylum from within, and then the following year traveled around the world in 72 days. - Jeremy Chernikoff

Other resources for lists of under-recognized women:

• Gallery of Women Engineers, from the University of Illinois
• Encyclopedia Brittanica’s “300 Women Who Changed the World”
• Women Artists in History
• The CLARA database of women artists

So, in Jacobs’ case, she’s a sung heroine, but one whose tune is still too faint (IMO!). And it’s still a tragedy that NY Planner Robert Moses ended up destroying the character of many neighborhoods throughout the 5 boroughs–Jacobs voice was only loud enough to save one.

This video segment from New York Voices describes Jane Jacobs, the author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities. The book helped turn public opinion against the large government housing developments, urban renewal projects, and multi-lane highways that were rapidly obliterating older city neighborhoods. Jacobs disagreed with the notion that the city’s oldest neighborhoods should be demolished to make way for high-rise buildings, housing projects and six-lane highways (and yes, a highway was planned by Robert Moses to cut through Soho and Washington Square). Jacobs challenged builders to think about what neighborhoods meant to the everyday lives of the people who lived there. Her ideas changed the thoughts and future for millions of people.

Jane Jacobs passed away on April 25, 2006 at the age of 89.

NY Voices tribute to Jacobs (6 minutes), including clips of Jacobs speaking in the 1960s:

Thirteen Forum in tribute to Jacobs:
The Death and Life of Great American Cities, now considered a seminal work in the field of urban planning, was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, which established the Jane Jacobs Medal in 2007. The 2008 Jane Jacobs Medal winners—Peggy Shepard and Alexie Torres-Fleming—were honored at a dinner and ceremony held at New York’s Morgan Library and Museum. After an introduction from Rockefeller Foundation President Judith Rodin, Robert Caro (Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York) speaks about Jacobs’ epic struggles against the urban policies of the legendary builder Robert Moses, as well as the importance and influence of her work and legacy in the development of contemporary cities.