Special Edition Newsletter

Special Edition

Women's History Month 2019

Women of Achievement Celebrates 35 Years

With Nine Honorees and a New Women’s History Trail

From left to right: Mary E. Mitchell, Maxine Starling Strawder, Carol Danehower,

Jane H. Hooker, Rachel Coats Greer, Mildred Richard-Edwards

Gabriela Salinas

Estelle Axton

Cornelia Crenshaw

For the 35 ^th year, Memphis and Shelby County women will be honored for changemaking leadership at the annual Women of Achievement awards and celebration of March National Women’s History Month.

Nine local women will be celebrated on March 24 at a reception at the Holiday Inn University of Memphis – 35 years after the first awards in 1984 at the New Daisy Theater on Beale Street.

WMC News anchor Kontji Anthony will host the awards ceremony.

The new Memphis Women’s History Trail also will be unveiled – featuring a printed guide, online historic content and soon a mobile app, all created by Women of Achievement historians.

The Women of Achievement honorees for 2019 are:

Courage - Mildred Richard-Edwards, HIV/AIDS advocate

Determination - Rachel Coats Greer, Binghamton community advocate,

and Mary E. Mitchell, Orange Mound community advocate

Heroism - Gabriela Salinas, cancer survivor, scientist, legislative candidate

Heritage - Estelle Axton, co-founder STAX recording studio,

and Cornelia Crenshaw, civil rights activist

Initiative - Maxine Starling Strawder, dancer

Steadfastness - Dr. Jane Hooker, women’s sports advocate

Vision - Dr. Carol Danehower, domestic violence researcher and educator

The celebration will be at the Holiday Inn University of Memphis with a 3 p.m. reception and 3:30 p.m. awards.

Celebrate women who stand up and speak out – on living with HIV/AIDS, on returning dignity and opportunity to neighborhoods, on equity in sports, the arts and the workplace.

Nominations for awards come from across the community. Since the first celebration in 1985, 248 individual women plus the Yellow Fever martyrs and local suffragists have been honored. A three-volume book series captures the biographical essays and photographs of the WA honorees thru 2004. In addition, all essays and images are archived on the Women of Achievement website .

Admission is $35 and should be paid in advance. To reserve your tickets, visit this link or mail checks to 2574 Sam Cooper Blvd., 38112, including names of persons who will attend.

A $60 donation includes the awards event, membership for WA for 2020 and inclusion in selection of 2020 honorees and other WA gatherings.

For more information, call 901-378-3866 or email dclubb@memphiswomen.org.

“Women of Achievement: 35 Years” continues in the lobby gallery,

Vasco A. Smith Jr. County Administration Building, 160 N. Main St. through March.

The Road to Suffrage: Memphis

American women celebrate 100 years of the right to vote in 2020. A special afternoon at the Pink Palace Museum will explore the long struggle for voting rights in a free symposium on March 30 from 1-4 p.m.

Three historians and their topics are:

1 p.m. - Dr. Nicole Etcheson, Alexander M. Bracken Professor of History, Ball State University, “When Women Do Military Duty”: Woman Suffrage in the Civil War Era

How the Civil War created, rather than removed, obstacles to woman suffrage.

2 p.m. - Dr. Sarah Wilkerson-Freeman, Professor of History, Arkansas State University, Charl Ormand Williams: A Career in Suffrage"

How Williams effectively exercised her personal influence in Shelby County, reputation among female educators and national woman suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt, and support of Tennessee’s Democratic political leaders in the final successful struggle for suffrage ratification and went on to national feminist leadership.

3 p.m. - Dr. Beverly Bond, Associate Professor of History, The University of Memphis, "'To Prepare Her for the Duties of Life': Envisioning Black Womanhood in Post-Emancipation Memphis"

How African American women negotiated boundaries of race, class, and gender in Memphis in the second half of the 19th century, a period of dramatic social, political and economic change.

The event is sponsored by Vincent Astor, Phyllis Petersen, Ericson Group, University of Memphis Libraries, and Middle Tennessee State University Center for Historic Preservation .

KWAM Radio: Tune In For More Women’s History

Memphis women’s history is the subject March 11 from 1-3 p.m. when KWAM Radio broadcasts live from the Pink Palace Museum.

The two-hour show will begin after “Women in Memphis History,” a Memphis bicentennial lecture by

Shelby County historian Jimmy Ogle in the Mansion Theater.

Seating for his presentation is filled.

On-air, Women of Achievement founders, honorees and local historians will talk about amazing local women, their leadership, creations and inventions.

KWAM Radio is AM990 and FM107.9.

LIKE, FOLLOW, AND SHARE the Women of Achievement Facebook page and keep up with our "35 Days of Women of Achievement."

Every day leading up to the 35th Women of Achievement Celebration we are highlighting a different Woman of Achievement.