November 9

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Women peacemakers born today

  • 1805 Harriot Kezia Hunt born Boston, MA (d. 1875). First American female doctor; abolitionist; sponsor and speaker at Womens Rights Convention, 1840; suffragist tax refuser for 25 years.

  • 1865 Jessie Jack Hooper born Winneshiek, IA (d. 1935). Suffragist; peace orator; organized Conference on Cause and Cure of War, 1924; presented a million women's petition to disarmament conference, 1932.

  • 1877 Helen Crawfurd born Glasgow, Scotland (d. 1954). Scottish peace leader against World War I; internationalist; Socialist/Communist; organized famine relief in Russia, Germany and Ireland, 1920; arrested four times for suffrage protests, 1912-14, released after hunger strikes; founding conference of WILPF Hague; founded Women's Peace Crusade, 1916; arrested three times for antiwar activity; Commonwealth peace conference participant, 1939.

  • 1883 Te Puea Herangi born Whatiwhatihoe, North Island, New Zealand (d. 1952). Maori pacifist leader. Opposed Maori Wars.

  • 1896 Freda Mary Cook born Alvescott, Oxford (d. 1990). New Zealand's leader against Vietnam War, Apartheid and imperialism; Socialist.

  • 1905 Erika Mann born Munich, Bavaria, Germany (d. 1969). German actress and writer; pacifist organizer and speaker. Won lawsuit against Nazi newspaper for calling her “a flatfooted peace hyena.” Exiled, 1933; opposed drift to war, 1937.

  • 1912 Mary Metlay Kaufman born Atlanta, GA (d. 1995). Nuremberg War Crimes prosecutor; opposed Vietnam War and Cold War; defended civil disobedience protesters.

  • 1936 Mary Travers born Louisville, KY (d. 2009). Antiwar singer; member of Peter, Paul & Mary; marched with Martin Luther King, Jr.; arrested in Apartheid protest with her mother and daughter, 1984. Opposed US war in Central America.

  • 1944 Elizabeth Dowdeswell (née Patton) born Belfast, Northern Ireland. Canadian stateswoman; first woman head UN Environmental Program as Under Secretary 1992-8; professor environmental studies; Lt. Governor Ontario 2014.

  • 1947 Kate Clinton born Buffalo, NY. Comedienne; gay rights leader; antiwar voice.

  • 1957 Jody Dodd. WILPF leader; War Resisters League.

  • 1972 Corin Tucker born Eugene, OR. Antiwar singer-guitarist; formed alternative rock band Sleater-Kinney, 1994; protested Iraq War.

Women's peacemaking on this day

  • 1892 Bertha von Suttner co-founded German Peace Society, Berlin. 

  • 1909 Quaker suffragist Alice Paul interrupted Prime Minister Asquith at Guildhall, London, shouting, “What about votes for women?” Jailed one month in London's Holloway Prison; refusing to eat or dress, was force-fed after second day.

  • 1915 Women’s Peace Party asked President Wilson to call meeting of neutrals to end war.

  • 1983 Greenham women filed suit against President Reagan; 102 vigils held at US bases across UK.

  • 2003 “War and Pieces” by musician Mimi Stern Wolfe performed New York protesting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

  • 2005 Lana Jacobs fined $500 plus two years probation for digging graves at Missouri University ROTC to protest Iraq War.