In honor of March being Women's History Month, I have been celebrating women and just how superhuman we are. The more I think about it, the more I realize that until recently, the only historical women we heard about were the well-behaved ones, if we heard about historical women at all. But the super cool women in history are actually the ones that raised a little hell every now and then.
I comprised a list of these genuinely bad-ass women that I think you should know about and celebrate. So, here's to strong, bad-ass women. May we be them, may we raise them.
1. Elizabeth (Eliza) Schuyler- Hamilton
Eliza raised eight children while dealing with humiliation from her husband (Alexander Hamilton) before and after his death in 1804. She went on to live another 50 years and did not remarry.
Schuyler-Hamilton founded New York's first private orphanage in 1806. She also spent decades preserving the history of her late husband through his work and former comrades of war, understanding the importance of his contributions to America, no matter how misguided.
Schuyler-Hamilton helped create the Washington Monument and became a highly celebrated guest in the White House before she died at the age of 97.
2. Althea Gibson
Before Venus and Serena Williams, there was Althea Neale Gibson. Gibson was the first African American to play tennis at Wimbledon and would later go on to become the first black woman to play in the PGA Tour. On and off the court, the multi-sport athlete never cracked under pressure and was ready to let people know she wasn't scared.
3. Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz
She wrote many kinds of poetry, including somewhat erotic love poems. In her childhood, she taught herself a wide range of subjects using her grandfather's library. She eventually joined a convent in order to be left alone with her studies and poetry. She came to be "one of the world's most daring erotic writers" of her time and created quite an uproar in the Catholic Church.
4. Ida B. Wells-Barnett
Ida was an American journalist, suffragist, and anti-lynching campaigner. When three of her friends were lynched in 1892, she investigated the murders in her newspaper, The Free Speech.
In Chicago, she continued to write on the law and history of lynching, worked with multiple organizations for the advancement of African-American women, and marched in Washington, DC, in 1913 for universal suffrage. Along with others, she blocked the establishment of segregated schools in Chicago. She was also a co-founder of the NAACP.
5. Nancy Wake
Nancy was a spy, a journalist, and a war hero of the French Resistance. Nancy lived in Paris where she was a journalist and wasn't shy about her love for men there. When WWII broke she saved many allied soldiers and downed airmen by escorting them to safety in Spain. She later joined British Special Ops as a spy.
6. Madam CJ Walker
Born Sarah Breedlove, Madam Walker was America's first self-made female millionaire. She made millions creating a line of hair care products for African-American women.
7. Qutulun
Qutulun was a 13th-14th-century Mongol princess who "swore that she would only marry a man who could best her in a wrestling match" and demanded a hundred horses from any contestant who failed. She accrued a LOT of horses.
8. Patria, Minerva, and Maria Teresa Mirabal
These Dominican sisters boldly opposed the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo in the 1950s. The sisters, along with their husbands, participated in constant underground political actions against Trujillo's regime, and came to be regarded as symbols of resistance and feminist icons known as the "Butterflies".
They had multiple prison stays but still kept up the fight. Trujillo's government assassination of the sisters in 1960 was among the catalysts leading to Trujillo's assassination six months later.
