Archive for category Women/ feminism

Women’s History Month: Focus on Josephine Baker and Lucille Ball

Posted by Amy Steele in Women/ feminism on March 4, 2010


Josephine Baker [1906-1975]

–Josephine Baker was born in St. Louis to an African-American mother and Jewish/Spanish father, who deserted the family.

–Baker grew up in poverty and became terrorized by a 1917 race riot.


–At age 19, she moved to Paris to join the dance company La Revue Negre and then became part of Follies Bergere. In France, there was no racial segregation. Baker became a French citizen in 1937.

–During WWI, Baker became a spy for the French Resistance,gathering information mingling among café society, and also entertained troops in North Africa and the Middle East.

–Baker married three times and adopted 12 children of different nationalities.

–Back in the United States, Baker joined the Civil Rights movement and marched on Washington in 1963.


Lucille Ball [1911-1989]

–Ball worked in the entertainment business for three decades before becoming extremely successful. She modeled and made some forgettable films.

–In 1940, Ball married musician Desi Arnaz and spent most of the 40s on tour with his band.

–Ball and Arnaz created Desilu Productions in 1950 and created the television comedy I Love Lucy based on their own lives. Ball and Arnaz divorced in 1960.

–She won four Emmy awards and was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1984.

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Women’s History Month: My Alma Mater

Posted by Amy Steele in Women/ feminism on March 2, 2010

My Alma Mater Boston University [I got my MS in journalism in 1995]:

BU Firsts:

Boston University was first university to open ALL divisions to female students in 1869.

Lelia Robinson Sawtelle (LAW 1881), first woman admitted to practice in all MA courts.

Boston University Medical College was the first coeducational medical college in the world (1873)

BU was the first American university to award a Ph.D. to a woman, classical scholar Helen Magil (1877)

Rebecca Lee, the first black woman to receive a medical degree in the U.S. (and perhaps the world), graduated in 1864 from the New England Female Medical College, which became a part of Boston University.

Harriet E. Richards Cooperative House, probably the first co-op house in the country, was founded in 1928 at 328 Bay State Road.

Emma Fall Schofield, LAW alumna, was the state’s first woman judge. Her father had four BU degrees; her mother, the state’s first woman lawyer in a jury case, had three.

Louise Bogan published poetry in 1915 as a freshman in the BU literary journal, The Beacon.

Many actresses such as Faye Dunaway, Geena Davis, and Olympia Dukakis are alumni of the College of Fine Arts. Many other notable alums and 20th century figures have donated their personal collections to the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center.

Many facts were gathered from BU’s info center.

BU College of Communication

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