• Meet Daniella "Dani" Marshall: WWHP's New Web Designer
• Working Women’s History Project Celebrates Women’s History Month
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Working Women's History Project is deeply saddened by the loss of 8 people killed in Georgia this week. Soon Chung Park, Hyun Jung Grant, Suncha Kim, Yong Ae Yue, Delaina Ashley Yaun, Paul Andre Michels, Xiaojie Tan, and Daoyou Feng should not have lost their lives to senseless acts of gun violence. Most of those killed were Asian American women. The violence perpetrated against them brought into stark relief the intersection of racism and misogyny, neither of which can be tolerated in our country. WWHP stands with Asian Americans and all other communities of color against both. |
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MEET DANIELLIA “DANI” MARSHALL:
WWHP’s NEW WEB DESIGNER
by Sue Straus
WWHP Board Member, Vice President – Recruitment
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“Almost everyone has the ability to produce art, but not everyone gets the privilege of finding their preferred medium(s).” This is the encouragement Dani gives herself as she journeys through life while she pursues all of her creative outlets.
WWHP plans on launching our new website shortly, and we would like to introduce Dani, our new website designer to you. While Dani was attending Harold Washington College (HWC) in downtown Chicago her professor Amanda Loos suggested that she contact WWHP’s Jackie Kirley. After finding out what WWHP’s mission is, Dani was eager to get more experience as a web designer, and add it to her work portfolio while filling a need for an organization she believes in.
Dani is a self-taught freelance graphic designer and she is a member of Sputnik Press Cooperative; she fulfills her passion to volunteer, for philanthropy, outreach, and community service through creating logos and graphics for small minority owned businesses that would otherwise not be able to afford quality, eye-catching designs to promote their businesses.
Dani graduated from Whitney Young High School in 2011. She worked full time at an emergency dispatch center as she freelanced as a graphic designer. In 2018 Dani was able to pursue her degree full time. Then, as a first-generation college student, Dani took classes at both Malcolm X College, which was near her Austin community home and at Harold Washington College. At HWC Dani decided to pursue full time studies to obtain a degree in psychology and combine her interests in a career as an art therapist or a creative director.
During this time Dani used her skills as a social media and marketing intern as part of her work-study to land a paid internship with City Colleges partner and IT consulting firm SDI Presence in January of 2020. In May, 2020 Dani earned her Associate Degree in Psychology and a new title at work, Creative Director Intern. She was accepted at several four-year colleges: Howard University, School of the Art Institute, and University of Michigan. However, she decided to attend Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (MIAD).
COVID Pandemic changed her path. Dani put her education on hold, and she has taken on the role of caregiver to her 10-year-old nephew to free his mother, Dani’s sister, to continue to work. Keeping up with her nephew has been challenging, but it has been worth every second as it has provided a routine of making sure he pays attention to his virtual teacher.
Recently, Dani has become involved with Global United Diaspora, an organization for the advancement of African, Black, and Caribbean people worldwide, embracing and celebrating the diversity within the Diaspora.
In her spare time, Dani enjoys hobbies such as wood and linocut printmaking, screen printing, and other creative endeavors. She is also active in her church, singing in the choir, and as a member of the praise team, playing bass in the quartet group. In addition, she enjoys gaming, video and board games. This has led to another activist path, as she participates in a male dominated gaming world especially in her Dungeons and Dragons. So, Dani actively works with a group of people to push an initiative in the gaming culture for diversity in gender, sexuality and race.
Dani stated that besides the skills she has brought to Working Women’s History Project, updating the new WWHP website, the responsibility has given her the opportunity to gain more knowledge about her heroes such as Rev. Addie L. Wyatt.
Dani Marshall has been an important asset to WWHP and we are lucky to have benefitted from her expertise.
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Working Women’s History Project
Celebrates Women’s History Month
by Amy Laiken
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The background
Women’s History Month has antecedents in the long history of women’s involvement in the labor movement. On March 8, 1857, women from various factories protested poor working conditions. In subsequent decades, women took to the streets over and over again to call attention to the poor conditions that continued to plague working class women who were trying to support themselves and their families. On March 8, 1908, women rallied in New York to support women’s suffrage. In 1910, at an International Conference of Socialist Women held in 1910, women representing 17 countries voted to establish International Women’s Day. It has been observed on March 8th each year to commemorate women’s struggles and achievements.
Flash forward to 1978, when a task force of the Sonoma County Commission on the Status of Women in California planned and held a Women’s History Week event. According to the National Women’s History Museum, it was planned to coincide with March 8th, International Women’s Day. Other localities throughout the country planned their own celebrations the next year. Following public enthusiasm for the observance, President Jimmy Carter signed a proclamation in 1980, designating the week of March 8th as Women’s History Week. In 1981, Congress passed a resolution, declaring Women’s History Week a national observance. In the next few years, many states’ departments of education had implemented curricula on women’s history.
By 1986, many states were already celebrating Women’s History Month in March. The fact that these states were doing this led to the support of a national recognition. In 1987, Congress passed a resolution, establishing March as Women’s History Month.
Women’s History Month Today
The National Women’s History Alliance has for many years selected the theme for Women’s History Month, and this year’s is "Valiant Women of the Vote: Refusing to Be Silenced," as a continuation of last year’s theme observing the 100thanniversary of the 19th Amendment.
This theme gives us yet another opportunity to reflect on the struggles of women in earlier centuries to achieve voting rights, and the sacrifices they made along the way. 2020 was a year of enormous upheaval, and yet we did manage to observe the 100th anniversary of suffrage for women with events largely held virtually. We also increased our knowledge of the struggles of African American suffragists, whose voting rights were generally denied until the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Most people have heard of Ida B. Wells, but many other Black women whose names were not generally known, such as Mary Church Terrell, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Mary Ann Shadd Cary and many more, were involved in the fight for women’s suffrage. Many often underrecognized Latina, Asian-American and Native American women activists worked on suffrage as well, including Jovita Idar, Mabel Pin-Hua Lee, and Zitkála-Šá. We have profiled some of them in previous newsletters. Unfortunately, several state legislatures are passing bills that would narrow voting rights, and potentially have a greater negative impact on people of color. Yet many women are organizing against efforts to roll back those rights. Stacy Abrams’ name is widely known for having run for governor in Georgia and fighting back against voting restrictions, but we also need to recognize many other women such as LaTosha Brown, the founder of Black Voters Matter, Aimee Allison, who founded She the People, and Maria Teresa Kumar, founder of Voto Latino.
We continue to observe Women’s History Month as a way to study the connections between what women fought for and achieved in the past and the fights for justice of today. Of course, it’s not necessary to wait for March to study women’s history. But it does give us a dedicated time to expand our awareness of the stories of women in general, and of women in color in particular, whose contributions have frequently been trivialized or overlooked entirely. Women have made impressive strides in many areas including the workplace, the arts, civil rights, voting rights, and reproductive and environmental justice, but too many women have been left behind by a system that in many cases leaves them without a safe workplace, an adequate wage, affordable child care or health care. During Women’s History Month we have the opportunity to recognize those women who have fought and are fighting to defend rights already won, and to expand those rights so that all women can freely exercise them.
Some links for more information:
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This year marks the 110th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. On March 25, 1911, 146 workers at the factory either died in the fire or by jumping from windows to escape the flames. Although some men died in the fire, most of the workers who perished were young immigrant women.
Register for a commemoration (5 p.m. Central Time) with this link:
The above event would be at 5 p.m. Central Time.
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Working Women's History Project
Please contact us through Amy Laiken
312-402-4188
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