Tag: 1850-1950

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Nellie Bly and the incognito ‘stunt girl’ reporters

A close up of the young Nellie Bly. She is wearing a high collar dress and has a short fringe. Text next to it reads "Nellie Bly goes around the world 25 January 1890"
Bly is wearing a travelling outfit of a dress with a long skirt and tight bodice. Over it is a floor length check coat. She has a bag in one hand a is raising her cap with the other.
Nellie Bly in her travelling clothes

On 25 January 1890, American journalist Nellie Bly stepped off a train in New York and into a huge crowd that was waiting for her. She had just become the first person to travel around the world in less than eighty days. Not only had she done it, she had beaten her rival, Elizabeth Bisland, by four days.

The 1890 race around the world reveals that Bly, perhaps the most famous newswoman then writing, was not unique. From 1887 through to the middle of the 1890s, the ‘stunt girls’ made front page news. They wrote it, and they became it.

So in this post we’re looking at the rise and fall of stunt journalism, and the women involved in it.

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Charlotte E Ray and 143 years of progress

A modern illustration of how Charlotte E Ray might have looked when she graduated. She is a Black woman with a mortar board on a piled up hairdo. Text reads Charlotte E Ray becomes a lawyer 23 April 1872.

The first African-American woman to be Attorney General of the USA, Loretta Lynch, was appointed on 23 April 2015 in Washington DC. The very same day, 143 years earlier in 1872, Charlotte E Ray became the first African-American woman admitted to practice law in the USA.

Sometimes history throws up these little co-incidences. This one gives us the opportunity to look at two very different law careers available to a Black woman in the USA.

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Eight famous women singers

Camilla Williams wearing a fur and holding flowers. She is a black woman with dark hair in a wave. Text reads "Camilla Williams debuts at the New York City Opera - May 1946".

On 15 May 1946, Camilla Williams made her debut as Cio-Cio San in the New York City Opera’s production of ‘Madame Butterfly’. She was the first black woman to sign a contract with a major US opera company. This month, we take a quick look at eight of the most iconic female singers in opera history.

First up, it’s worth noting that opera was hugely popular from the 1700s to the 1960s. These famous women singers were as popular in their time as Beyonce or Lizzo now. It’s also worth noting that opera singers were seen as disreputable and scandalous in the 1700s, and this social attitude continued into the 1800s. As ever, powerful, financially independent women using their voices had to be cast out in some way.

This month we’re focussing on female popular singers from the 1830 onwards. Maybe we’ll visit the Covent Garden of the 1700s another time…

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Bertha von Suttner wins the Nobel Peace Prize: 18 April 1906

Cropped photo of Bertha von Suttner in 1906

On 18 April 1906, Baroness Bertha von Suttner becomes the first woman to collect the Nobel Peace Prize. She had been instrumental in Albert Nobel creating a prize for peace at all.

Von Suttner was an international leader in the peace movement, and continued to campaign until her death, a few weeks before Franz Ferdinand’s assassination triggered the first World War she had sought to prevent.

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Marian Anderson sings in Washington: 9 April 1939

Contralto Marian Anderson sang at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, April 9, 1939, to an estimated crowd of 75,000 people.

On 9 April 1939, Marian Anderson stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC and sang “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee”. A crowd of 75,000 listened to her, and millions more tuned in on the radio. She sang where she did because she had been refused the use Constitution Hall by its owners. Marian was black, and the owners had a white-artists-only clause.

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Yaa Asantewaa: 28 March 1900

On 28 March 1900, Queen Yaa Asantewaa addressed the remnants of the Ashanti government in Kumasi, in modern-day Ghana.

I must say this: if you, the men of Asante will not go forward, then we will. We, the women, will. I shall call upon my fellow women. We will fight! We will fight till the last of us falls in the battlefields.

Her words galvanised the Ashanti Confederacy, starting their final war against British colonialism on the Gold Coast. The Ashanti leaders chose Yaa Asantewaa to be the war-leader, the first woman to hold the post, and an army of several thousand was placed at her command.

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