Women make history in NYC
By Hazel Shahgholi
So many extraordinary
women are woven into the
fabric of New York City’s history
and present that it would
require an encyclopedia to document
all of those forgotten
and then remembered — as is
the model for acknowledgment
of feminine history, blindspots
then reclamations.
So, in honor of Women’s
History Month, Schneps Media
has chosen to focus, in part,
on women from two
fields most pertinent to our
historical moment.
Let us first turn to the field
of medicine. Dr. Elizabeth
Blackwell (1821-1910) was the
very first female MD in the
US, and resided on University
Place. On account of her gender,
Blackwell did not attract
many patients. And so she did
what many great women do
— she got inventive, deciding
to treat patients in the squalid
tenements of Manhattan’s
Lower East Side. Just as her
peers had abandoned her,
these poor souls living in
Caribbean L 20 ife, MAR. 26-APR. 1, 2021
abject poverty had been
abandoned by society,
and received
care at Blackwell’s
dispensary.
Here she
treated immigrants, mostly
Irish and German, suffering
from a range of ailments from
cholera to typhoid. Blackwell
assembled an army of nurses.
They made deathbed house
calls to ease the sick into
the afterlife and educate the
area’s indigent about personal
hygiene.
As is so often the case, after
“proving herself,” powerful
male physicians and philanthropists
finally gave her the
time — and funds — to open
the New York Infirmary for
Indigent Women and Children
in 1857. In her writings of
1853, Dr. Blackwell remarked
on the difficulty of her chosen
path but of her, “high purpose,
to love against every species of
social opposition.”
As it so happens, the
backbones that
enabled the
modern day,
female, New York City political
powerhouses — Hillary
Clinton, Gale Brewer, Carolyn
Maloney, Rebecca Seawright,
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, just
to name but a few — dates
back to the 1820s when female
liberation movements began to
fight the patriarchy.
In mighty combination,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-
1902), and Susan B. Anthony
(1820-1906) joined forces and
embodied the word “trailblazer”
by dedicating four and a
half decades of their lives in
the fight for female emancipation
and the expansion of the
women’s rights in New York
City. Stanton was the strategist
and primary speech writer,
while Anthony was the “face”
and formidable speaker who
would spread her message
“wherever she could drum up
a crowd.”
Taunted and sneered at
by the men that surrounded
them, the pair launched “The
Revolution” newspaper, a pioneering
document in grass
roots activism eventually disseminated
worldwide, and
passed on as a mantle to their
fearless activist successors —
those Nasty Women we would
proudly become.
Neither woman lived to
cast a ballot when women
finally won the right to
vote in 1920, but in their
belief that men and
women were created
equal, they laid those
tracks.
And then we have
the “famed”: Emily
Warren Roebling
completed the
construction of
the Brooklyn
Bridge when
her engineer
husband fell ill;
Jackie Onassis
saved Grand Central Station
from demolition; Peggy
Guggenheim ensured our city’s
cultural richness through her
keen eye for modern art; Edith
Wharton was the first woman
to win the Pulitzer Prize for
fiction, and Billie Holiday sent
shockwaves through Harlem
nightclubs with her unique jazz
style infused with political messages
in the 30s and 40s, before
Debbie Harry and Patti Smith
rocked our worlds at CBGB’s
with their fellow New Wavers
and Punks.
In terms of sexual suppression
and abuse, Bronxite Tamara
Burke’s #MeToo global explosion
ushered in a new age that
allowed survivors to find their
voice, and is perhaps one of the
greatest contributions of social
media to humanity to date.
Peel back the identity of all
of the “well-known” New York
City heroes and you’ll find a
web of women whose incremental
efforts afforded them
their freedoms.
If you want a deep knowledge
of the women that helped
build, expand and save our
glorious city, you have a lot
of reading to do — there are
thousands of stories waiting to
be “unearthed.”
The New York Public Library
is running a month-long series
in honor of these stellar women
in arms. Visit www.nypl.org for
more information.
Influential Women of New York City
Rosie the Riveter (bottom)
is perhaps one of the most
well-known women in history.
Emily Roebling (above),
is lesser known, but led construction
on the Brooklyn
Bridge.
(Above) Charles-Émile-Auguste
Carolus-Duran
When it comes to great ladies, our cup runneth over
/www.nypl.org
/www.nypl.org
