Under the baobab: Recognizing the women who paved paths in our community, world

“Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! Ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man — when I could get it — and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman?”

— Sojourner Truth, 1851, Women’s Rights Convention.

Happy Women’s History Month.

March 8, 1911 was the first worldwide commemoration of International Women’s Day. Nine years later in 1920 the 19th Amendment was ratified, guarantying all American women the right to vote. In 1965 the Voting Rights Act was passed extending federal protection to everyone’s right to vote, which especially affected Black women. Since 1995, every U.S. President has marked March as Women’s History Month. This year the theme for WHM is “Gender Equality today for a sustainable tomorrow.”

The U.S. Soccer Federation recently honored our Championship women’s soccer team by pledging to equalize pay between the men’s and women’s national teams in all future competitions, including the World Cup. They also agreed to render $24 million in back payments, a tacit admission that compensation for the men’s and women’s teams had been unequal for years.

President Joe Biden followed through on his campaign promise to nominate an African American woman to the Supreme Court. If Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is confirmed she will make the fourth female justice sitting on the nine-member high court. In his cabinet of 23 heads of executive departments including Vice President Harris, 11 are women. Half of the first 10 people in line for the presidency are women.

Locally Neeli Bendapudi has been named the first woman president of Penn State University. She will also be the first person of color to sit in that seat. All five members of the Ferguson Township Board of Supervisors — Laura Dininni, Lisa Strickland, Tierra Williams, Hilary Caldwell and Patricia Stephens — are women. Pam Robb is head of the board of supervisors in Patton Township, where she is joined by Betsy Whitman. In the rest of the Council of Governments (COG), there are 31 council and supervisor reps, 10 are women.

In our community we all stand on the shoulders of many women who came before: Mary Godfrey, PSU’s first African American faculty member; Elizabeth Goreham, the first woman elected mayor of State College; Barbara Farmer, the first African American school principal; Grace Hampton, vice provost and head of two different departments in two different colleges, (and incidentally, my mentor); Thelma Price, mentor and “Mama” for hundreds of students; Rev. Dr. Donna King, pastor of St. Paul’s AME and supporter of the underground network historical project; Sue Paterno, philanthropist and proud booster; Barbara Palmer, supporter of the arts; Mimi Barash Coppersmith, publisher, community catalyst and Town & Gown founder; Cynthia Baldwin, a PSU alum who became the first African American woman to sit on the State of Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court and a member of the PSU Board of Trustees; Beverly Lindsay, one of the first Deans of International Programs and Studies at the University. The names on this incomplete list paved the roads that allow all of us to walk more easily.

My own list of phenomenal women begins with my teenage mother who birthed, raised and saved me, all the way to a beloved wife of over 50 years who is my lover, partner, comrade and best friend. In my life there have been hundreds of other women who have made our world not just better but possible. Thank you sisters, mothers, daughters and friends.

“That little man in back there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men, ‘cause Christ wasn’t a woman! Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with it.” — Sojourner Truth