By Reese Meister
Every year, Women’s History Month takes place in March to recognize women’s contributions to our country. The celebration developed from Women’s History Week, which was first celebrated in 1982, and changed to the entire month in 1987. In honor of Women’s History Month, here are six of many women who have made significant impacts in local history.
Biddy Mason
Biddy Mason was born a slave in Mississippi in 1818. She traveled to Salt Lake City, Utah with slave owner Robert Marion Smith in 1848 and three years later to San Bernardino, California, where slavery was illegal. Out of fear of losing his slaves, Smith attempted to move to Texas in 1855 but was stopped by a sheriff who was warned of his illegal slaveholding.
On January 21, 1856, a Los Angeles judge accepted Mason’s challenge for her and her family’s freedom. She then moved to Los Angeles, working as a midwife and nurse until she could buy about an acre of land for $250, now the Biddy Mason Memorial Park . She founded the First African Methodist Episcopal Church, the oldest African American church in Los Angeles. From there, she continued to acquire land and wealth, which she used to donate to charities, create an elementary school for black children and contribute to other philanthropic causes.
Charlotta Spears Bass
Charlotta Bass was born in Sumter, South Carolina in 1874. She later moved to Rhode Island and sold ads for the “Providence Watchman” before moving to Los Angeles in 1910, where she wrote for “The Eagle,” the oldest African American newspaper on the West Coast.
She bought “The Eagle” for $50 after the death of its former owner, making her the country’s first African American woman to own and operate a newspaper. She changed its name to “The California Eagle” and expanded its size, using it as a platform for civil rights advocacy.
Bass called for reform of police violence, exposed plots of the Ku Klux Klan and helped found the Home Owners Protective Association in 1945. She ran the newspaper until she moved to New York City to focus on her political career in 1951. Bass became the first black woman to be nominated for vice president of the United States in her 1952 campaign for the Progressive Party.
Katherine Cheung
Born in China in 1904, Katherine Cheung moved to the United States as a 17-year-old to study music and piano. In 1931, Cheung was inspired by her cousin to take flying lessons. She became the first licensed Asian-American female pilot in 1932 and joined the Women’s International Association of Aeronautics. At the time, there were only about 200 women in the country with a pilot’s license, nearly 1% of all licensed American pilots.
Cheung participated in aerobatics, air shows and races from 1933 to 1937 and became a member of the Ninety-Nines, the International Association of Women Pilots, where she befriended Amelia Earhart. She aspired to open a flying school in China after raising money to buy a plane, but quit flying completely in 1942 after Earhart’s disappearance and her cousin’s death by a plane crash. Cheung was later honored in the Women in Aviation International Pioneer Hall of Fame and with a medal from the Chinese Consul General of Los Angeles.
Miné Okubo
Artist Miné Okubo was born in 1912 in Riverside, California, the daughter of Japanese immigrants. President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued the Executive Order 9066 in 1942 in World War II, sending her to the Tanforan relocation center in San Bruno, California. Here, she helped found the Tanforan Art School and made works to reflect daily life and conditions.
Later, Okubo was transferred to the Topaz internment camp in Utah, where she similarly drew observations and began the Topaz Art School. She also illustrated for the “Topaz Times” and “Trek” magazines, allowing her to leave for New York City in 1944 to illustrate for a magazine.
After the war, Okubo compiled nearly 200 of her works from the internment camp into the book “Citizen 13660,” which became the first published account of an internee’s experience in 1946. It won the American Book Award and an award from the National Women’s Caucus of Art. In 1881, Okubo used her artwork to testify and help encourage Congress to create the Civil Liberties Act in 1988. As a result, Okubo and other former internees received $20,000 payments.
Sylvia Mendez
Sylvia Mendez was born in Santa Ana, California in 1936 and is famous for the 1947 court case Mendez vs. Westminster. In third grade, Mendez tried to enroll in the 17th Street School, a school nicer than her own, but was denied because she was Mexican-American. Her family fought back; her father gathered families from other districts and fought on behalf of the 5,000 Mexican-American children in Orange County school districts.
The Mendez family won the case on Feb. 18, 1946, and California created a bill two months later to become the first state to officially desegregate public schools. About seven years later, the case was used in Brown vs. Board of Education to ban school segregation nationwide.
Mendez later worked as a pediatric nurse until retiring and carrying on her family’s legacy by telling their story. In 2011, President Barack Obama awarded her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. According to NBC News, Mendez considers herself “the storyteller” of her family’s experience and still advocates for children’s education and civil rights.
Toypurina
Toypurina, a member of Southern California’s Kumivit tribe (today known as the Tongva), was born in 1760. She was nine years old when Spanish colonizers arrived in the Los Angeles Basin and 11 years old when they established Mission San Gabriel near her home.
The colonizers forcibly baptized and cruelly punished Kumivit people for practicing traditional beliefs and customs, so Toypurina decided to revolt. She used her reputation as a medicine woman and her knowledge of Tongva languages to reach out to other villages to organize an attack.
On Oct. 25, 1785, they attacked Mission San Gabriel, though the fight ended quickly. The missionaries had been warned and captured many of the revolutionaries, including Toypurina. When interrogated, she owned up to leading the revolt and faced over a year in prison.
Today, Toypurina stands as a symbol of persistence and the fight against oppression, despite her capture and her story inspires many Native American and Latinx artists. The website “Girlboss” comments on her reputation as the “Native Joan of Arc” and quotes Latino families in the San Gabriel Valley who refer to Toypurina as “the ultimate strength, the woman fighter.”
These six incredible women have made tremendous contributions to our history and have helped pave way for change in society. Their actions continue to influence younger generations today and inspire many to achieve their goals. Women’s History Month draws attention to the stories of these women and many others who have reshaped history.
