Women’s History Month 2021 Part 1
This is Part 1 of 2 blog posts celebrating amazing women for Women’s History Month. Part 2 will be posted March 15th, stay tuned!
March 1st marks the first day of Women’s History Month.
To celebrate, I thought I’d collect the stories of a few amazing women who have stood out to me throughout my life for being badass!
I’m highlighting women who I actually remember from my childhood in Texas growing up. Even though I’m in California now, I still hold a special place in my heart for those strong, hard-headed, fierce Texas women!
Angelina Eberly was born on July 2, 1798. She wasn’t from Texas (she was born in Sumner County, TN), but she was a Texas gal through and through. After all, as the saying goes though, “I wasn’t born in Texas but I got here as fast as I could.”
She owned more than 4 different inns and taverns over her lifetime and outlived 2 husbands. She seemed to be a woman who stood her ground on morals, her country and her values.
Sam Houston, president of the Republic of Texas, often dined at Angelina’s tavern in Austin, the capital of Texas, along with other predominant government officials. In December of 1842, Sam secretly ordered the removal of the archives of the Republic. Angelina was a strong supporter of the preservation of the Texan government, and she knew that the removal of the archives meant that the capital could potentially be moved to Houston.
So what did Angelina do? She fired a 6-pound cannon into the General Land Office Building alerting everyone to a “theft” in progress. This then led to a conflict called the Archive War. That’s right, kids, she started a damn war, but for good reason. Austinites won and were able to preserve the archives and keep them in Austin, the true capital of Texas.
There’s a super cool statue of Angelina Eberly in Austin, the same spot she stood to shoot that cannon. You can see it on Sixth and Congress in downtown Austin near the capital.
Bessie Coleman was born on January 26, 1892 in Atlanta, Texas. This woman was a fierce storm who blasted through every glass ceiling she encountered. When she set her mind on something, she saw it through.
The daughter of a Cherokee father and an African-American mother, Coleman faced a world of obstacles from the minute she was born. But she didn’t see it that way.
Her dream was to be a pilot, but women in the U.S. weren’t allowed to go to flight school at the time. So she set out to apply to flight school in France. There was just one problem: In order to apply to the flight school in France you had to submit your application in French. By day she worked to earn money to live and by night she studied French. In June of 1921, her hard work paid off when she received her international pilot’s license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale.
She began flying and performing famous tricks all over the world, eventually becoming internationally recognized.
Bessie worked to create change wherever she went. When she returned to Texas to perform in a show and saw two separate entrance lines for black and white people, she refused to perform. After much debate, the show runners gave in and created one entrance line.
Tragically, on April 30, 1926, Coleman took a test flight with a mechanic when something went wrong with the engine. She died that day, much too young, but her fighting spirit and efforts create opportunities for women and people of color lives on to this day.
This blog was written by Kristina Kury, Founder & CEO of Sprout Creative. We work with small business owners and entrepreneurs who are busy running their business, overwhelmed with marketing and whose growth has plateaued to turn their marketing into a more manageable, automated marketing machine.
You can follow her at @SproutCreativeLA on Facebook and Instagram.