Ferry County Business and Professional Women

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Since 1919, the National Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs has united working women through advocacy, leadership, and community. Clubs across the nation. A Virtual Club for everywhere else.

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Join us at nfbpwc.org. Link in bio.

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In 1933, Helen Keller wrote a letter to the N**i students who were about to burn her book in their bonfires. "History has taught you nothing," she told them, "if you think you can kill ideas. You can burn my books and the books of the best minds in Europe, but the ideas in them have seeped through a million channels and will continue to quicken other minds."

By then, Helen Keller -- pictured here with her friend Charlie Chaplin, who would go on to lampoon Hi**er in "The Great Dictator" -- was famous the world over as the deaf and blind girl who had learned to speak. But the N**is were not burning her childhood memoir. They were burning the work of a grown woman who had become one of the most outspoken political activists in America: a campaigner for labor rights, women's suffrage, and the rights of the disabled. She was an enemy of exactly the kind of power rising in Germany.

Helen Keller was born on this day in 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama, the daughter of a former Confederate officer, and lost her sight and hearing to a fever before she was two. The story of how her teacher, Anne Sullivan, reached her through the darkness -- spelling "water" into her palm at a backyard pump -- is one of the most famous in American life, told and retold in "The Miracle Worker." It usually stops there, with the triumphant child. It rarely follows her into the sixty years of work that came after.

For Keller never saw her own education as the happy ending of the story. She saw it as a debt. She had been lucky -- in her family, her teacher, her schooling -- and she knew that most blind and deaf children were not, shut away in institutions or written off entirely. She set out to change that, and she spent the rest of her life at it. She graduated from Radcliffe in 1904 as the first deafblind person ever to earn a bachelor's degree, and then used the fame that came with it as a tool.

She lectured in more than thirty countries. She pushed governments to build schools and libraries for the blind. As early as 1907 she campaigned to prevent infant blindness through a simple newborn eye treatment, a commonsense measure that, thanks in part to her, was widely adopted. For more than forty years she worked with the American Foundation for the Blind, and the organization she helped found in 1915 endures today as Helen Keller International, fighting blindness and malnutrition around the world.

What she refused to do was treat disability as a private misfortune. "The chief handicap of the blind is not blindness," she said, "but the attitude of seeing people towards them." Investigating why people went blind, she found that the poor lost their sight far more often than the rich -- to dangerous work, untreated illness, and the conditions poverty forced on them. The suffering she had been taught to see as fate, she came to see as a choice society made. In 1909 she joined the Socialist Party; in 1912 she joined the radical labor union known as the Wobblies; and she began to write and speak with the same ferocity she brought to everything.

She campaigned for Eugene Debs, marched for women's suffrage, and gave her money and her name to the NAACP when a white Southern woman doing so was rare and risky. She opposed the First World War as a slaughter staged for profit. In 1920 she helped found the American Civil Liberties Union. For decades, the FBI kept a file on her.

And as fascism rose in Europe, Keller saw it clearly and early. She denounced Hi**er the very month he took power, in 1933. When civil war broke out in Spain, she backed the Republic against Franco's fascists. In 1938, while powerful Americans were still praising the N**i regime and the United States was turning Jewish refugees away at its borders, she wrote to the New York Times pleading with the paper to stop minimizing N**i atrocities. She singled out the world's silence about the disabled people trapped in Germany, the very people the N**is would soon begin murdering.

The N**is knew that she was dangerous -- a global figure who used her celebrity to denounce them. They put her book on the pyre with Einstein's and Freud's and Marx's, and in doing so they took her seriously. Keller took them seriously in return. Her open letter did not beg; it warned. And buried in it was a line that showed how clearly she saw what the burning really meant, at a moment when many looked away: "Do not imagine," she wrote, "that your barbarities to the Jews are unknown here."

Helen Keller died in 1968, at eighty-seven, by then recast as a gentle symbol of perseverance, her politics quietly filed off. But the woman the N**is tried to burn was not only a symbol. She had spent her life insisting that the blind be educated, that the poor be protected, that the persecuted be defended -- and that no fire was big enough to burn an idea whose time had come.

"History has taught you nothing," she had told them, "if you think you can kill ideas."

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For two inspiring picture books about Helen Keller's extraordinary life, we highly recommend "Helen Keller: Little People, Big Dreams" (https://www.amightygirl.com/helen-keller-little-people) and "I Am Helen Keller" (https://www.amightygirl.com/i-am-helen-keller), both for ages 4 to 8

For more books to introduce kids to Helen Keller, we recommend the chapter book "Helen Keller: The World At Her Fingertips" for ages 4 to 7 (https://www.amightygirl.com/helen-keller-fingertips), the picture book "Helen's Big World: The Life of Helen Keller" for ages 6 to 9 (https://www.amightygirl.com/helen-s-world), and the classic children's biography for ages 7 to 12 (https://www.amightygirl.com/helen-keller)

We also recommend "Helen Keller: The Story of My Life," her autobiography for young readers 11 and up at https://www.amightygirl.com/helen-keller-the-story-of-my-life

For adult readers, we recommend the fascinating biography "After the Miracle: The Political Crusades of Helen Keller" (https://www.amightygirl.com/after-the-miracle) and "Helen Keller: A Life" (https://www.amightygirl.com/helen-keller-a-life)

For children's books that encourage understanding and acceptance of people with disabilities of all varieties, visit our blog post "Many Ways To Be Mighty: 35 Books Starring Mighty Girls with Disabilities" at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=12992

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For Alice Paul, securing women’s suffrage in 1920 was never the final destination, but rather the first step toward complete legal, social, and economic equality for women.

Instead of stepping back after this historic victory, Alice immediately pivoted to the broader fight for legal equality. In 1923, at the seventy-fifth anniversary of the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, Alice introduced the original draft of the Equal Rights Amendment, then known as the "Lucretia Mott Amendment," which stated that men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States.

In 1943, Alice rewrote the amendment modeling it directly after the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments. The current text reads: 1. Equality of Rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of s*x. Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification. It has been introduced in Congress every session since 1923. The ERA finally passed Congress in the above form in 1972, but was not ratified by the necessary thirty-eight states by the July 1982 deadline. It still gets reintroduced in Congress in every session but has yet to make it out to the general voting population again.

For more on Alice Paul: https://www.alicepaul.org/about-alice-paul/

For more on the Equal Rights Amendment: https://www.equalrightsamendment.org/

Photo: Wikimedia Commons https://tinyurl.com/bde52mwa

Intelligent Balance Spinal Care, a woman owned business, returns to Republic and Ferry County.

Stop by today’s open house to welcome them back ❤️‍🩹

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Don’t forget to stop by tomorrow (Wednesday) to say hi, have questions answered, or book an appointment!

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Judy Heumann was refused a place in public school as a child because, in the words of the school, she was a "fire hazard." She was denied a teacher's license as an adult because officials decided she could not evacuate a classroom in an emergency. She used a wheelchair after surviving polio at eighteen months old, and she spent her life turning that kind of exclusion into a movement -- one whose crowning achievement was the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the world's first comprehensive civil rights law for people with disabilities.

Signed on July 26, 1990, and celebrated today as National Disability Independence Day, that law exists in large part because of one person: Judy Heumann, the woman often called the "mother of the disability rights movement." As she once observed, “when other people see you as a third-class citizen, the first thing you need is a belief in yourself and the knowledge that you have rights. The next thing you need is a group of friends to fight back with.”

Pictured here as TIME's Women of the Year for 1977, Heumann was at the center of multiple battles for civil rights for people with disabilities, most famously the 504 Sit-In. Organized by Heumann, Kitty Cone, and Mary Jane Owen, over 150 other activists occupied the San Francisco Office of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare for 28 days in 1977 demanding the implementation of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, one of the first federal disability rights laws. The 504 Sit-In remains the longest sit-in ever at a U.S. federal building.

Equally importantly, Heumann helped change the narrative about disability, showing that the true burden of disabilities is how others respond to it: "Disability only becomes a tragedy when society fails to provide the things we need to lead our lives — job opportunities or barrier-free buildings, for example," she once said. "It is not a tragedy to me that I'm living in a wheelchair."

The exclusions that shaped her began early. As a child, when Heumann was refused admission to public school as a "fire hazard," she was offered two hours a week of in-home instruction instead. When New York denied her a teacher's license in 1970, on the grounds that she would not be able to evacuate her classroom in an emergency, she took the Department of Education to court -- and won, becoming the first wheelchair user to teach in the city's schools.

After the passage of the ADA in 1990, Heumann served as the U.S. assistant secretary of education, and took her advocacy global, traveling to more than 30 countries as they passed their own disability rights legislation. Until her last days, she kept up her fight for equality, noting how much progress still needs to be made.

"Change never happens at the pace we think it should," she once wrote. "Gradually, excruciatingly slowly, things start to happen, and then suddenly, seemingly out of the blue, something will tip."

Her incredible story is told in a captivating picture book biography "Fighting for YES! The Story of Disability Rights Activist Judith Heumann" for ages 6 to 9 at https://www.amightygirl.com/fighting-for-yes

Judith Heumann was also the author of a powerful memoir for adult readers, "Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist" at https://www.amightygirl.com/being-heumann

Her memoir was adapted into a young readers edition, "Rolling Warrior: The Incredible, Sometimes Awkward, True Story of a Girl on Wheels Who Helped Spark a Revolution" for ages 10 and up at https://www.amightygirl.com/rolling-warrior

For more books for children and teens starring Mighty Girls with disabilities of all varieties, visit our blog post "Many Ways To Be Mighty: 35 Books Starring Mighty Girls with Disabilities" at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=12992

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Althea Neale Gibson, born in Clarendon County, South Carolina and raised in Harlem was a powerhouse dual-sport athlete whose abilities and resilience shattered racial barriers at the highest levels of American sports.

After dominating the segregated American Tennis Association circuit, Gibson broke through the sport's strict color barrier to claim a series of historic firsts:

1950: The first Black player to compete at the U.S. National Championships.

1951: The first Black player invited to play at Wimbledon.

1956: The first Black athlete to win a Grand Slam title (French Open).

1957–1958: The first Black champion at both Wimbledon and the U.S. Nationals, winning back-to-back singles titles at both.

She retired from amateur tennis with 11 Grand Slam titles and back-to-back AP Female Athlete of the Year honors in 1957 & ‘58. At age 33, Gibson picked up golf and applied her fierce athleticism to the links. In 1964 she became the first Black woman to earn a tour card on the LPGA Tour. She competed in over 170 LPGA tournaments, breaking course barriers nationwide and laying the groundwork for future generations of Black athletes in both sports.

Did you know about Gibson's story? Let us know in the comments!

To learn more about women's history, go to the National Women's History Alliance at https://nationalwomenshistoryalliance.org!

Photo credits:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Althea_Gibson_-_El_Grafico_2033-crop.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Althea_Gibson_in_1956_by_Fred_Palumbo_(NYWTS).png

International Tennis Hall of Fame : https://tinyurl.com/4ujkvkx6

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Happy 91st birthday to surgeon and Olympian gold medalist Tenley Albright!

"In 1953, Tenley Albright, a 17-year-old from Boston, became the first American female to win the world figure skating championship. Three years later, at the Winter Olympics in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, Tenley became America's first female skating gold medalist. After the Olympics, she retired & attended Harvard Medical School—one of 5 women in a class of 135. Tenley, [who turns 90 today], became a noted surgeon. ⛸🥇-- WQED

For fun picture books about Mighty Girls who love to ice skate, we recommend "A Day for Skating" (https://www.amightygirl.com/a-day-for-skating), "Tallulah's Ice Skates" (https://www.amightygirl.com/tallulah-s-ice-skates), and "Mice Skating" (https://www.amightygirl.com/mice-skating), all for ages 3 to 7

To introduce kids to trailblazing women breaking athletic records throughout history, we recommend the picture book "She Persisted in Sports" for ages 5 to 9 (https://www.amightygirl.com/she-persisted-in-sports) and the illustrated biography "Women in Sports: 50 Fearless Athletes Who Played to Win" for ages 9 and up (https://www.amightygirl.com/women-in-sports)

For books to encourage Mighty Girls of all ages to pursue their own dreams, visit our blog post "Big Dreams for a New Year: 50 Books to Inspire Your Mighty Girl" at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog/?p=10834

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On the morning polio took her, Martha Lillard woke to sunlight, went to sit up, and could not lift her head from the pillow. She was five years old, and it was June of 1953. Within four days she had lost consciousness, and when she came back she could not move her arms or her legs or draw a breath on her own -- so a machine breathed for her instead, and it would go on breathing for her, in one form or another, for the next seventy-three years. Lillard died on June 26 at her home in Shawnee, Oklahoma, at the age of 78, the last American who still depended on an iron lung.

The vaccine was two years away. Jonas Salk's was licensed in April of 1955, but Martha was infected in the summer of 1953, a year after the worst polio epidemic in American history, when some 58,000 people fell ill, more than 21,000 were paralyzed, and over 3,000 died. It was the disease that frightened American parents above all others, in part because no one could tell them where it came from. "All the mothers were just terrified because people were just getting it right and left," she remembered. "They didn't know if it was a virus or bacteria or how you caught it."

For Martha, polio was devastating, and much of the damage was permanent. She was paralyzed from the neck down, and though therapy eventually restored the use of her legs and part of her left arm, her right arm never moved again. In the early years she lived inside the iron lung almost entirely, leaving it only for an hour or two a day; it would be years before she could spend her days outside it and return only to sleep.

She would recall the hospital wards of that era, rows of iron lungs with children inside them, and the storms that terrified everyone -- because if the power failed, the machines had to be cranked by hand, and there were never enough nurses. The wait was interminable, she said, because during it you simply were not breathing.

"You just laid there and you could feel your heart beating and it was just terrifying." Without air, the only sound a person can make is a click of the tongue, and so that dark room, full of children who could not call out, sounded to her like a barn full of clucking chickens.

The doctors told her family she would not live to see twenty, and she lived to seventy-eight, and she did not spend those years waiting. Her grandfather rebuilt the iron lung with a second motor so that she could open the hatch herself from the inside, which meant that from her teens onward she could get in and out of the machine alone -- and so she lived alone, cooked her own meals, and for a time drove a car. Her family built a childhood around the machine, hauling it to Missouri in a custom trailer while her father telephoned hotels ahead of them to ask whether the doors were wide enough to admit it. "To me, it was just normal," her younger sister, Cindy McVey, told the Associated Press.

Before she got sick, Martha had wanted to be a ballerina. It was her great wish, and she had started walking on her toes at the age of one. Afterward she painted, wrote poems, and composed music for the left hand; she volunteered at the Humane Society, at a daycare, and on a crisis line; she rescued dogs, and loved beagles above all. And the girl who had wanted to dance came to feel she had never entirely stopped. "I think now of my life as a ballet," she said. "I have to balance so many things."

Love arrived by an improbable road. After the attacks of September 11th she went online trying to understand what had happened, and in a chat room she met a man in Egypt named Baha Seleh. They talked for more than twenty years, and eventually he moved to Oklahoma to be with her. When a tornado cut the power to her iron lung, he breathed into her mouth until help arrived. They married this past February, four months before she died.

The last years were the hardest. She caught COVID twice and then developed long COVID, and a body already reduced to less than a quarter of its lung capacity had nothing to spare. For the final five years she could not leave the house, and for the final two she was inside the iron lung nearly around the clock.

The machine was failing as well -- an antique running on parts no one had manufactured in decades, with almost no one left alive who knew how to fix it -- and days before her death she let a local television reporter into her home because she was desperate to find someone who could. Over the years she had tried every modern ventilator that came along, and not one could reach the pressure she needed to breathe. "I tried all of them," she said. She was never sentimental about the thing that kept her alive; she would rather, she said, not have needed it at all.

Polio has not spread in the United States since 1979, and Martha Lillard was among the last Americans who remembered it firsthand. But it has not been eradicated. It remains endemic in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the World Health Organization still classes it as a global emergency, and the virus has lately surfaced in wastewater in London and in Hamburg. Meanwhile American children are being vaccinated against it at a lower rate than at any point in more than a decade, and vaccine exemptions have reached an all-time high.

Martha knew what those numbers meant, and she said it broke her heart to meet people campaigning against vaccines. "I would just do anything," she said, "to prevent somebody from having to go through what I have." And then she said the thing that should be the last word on it: "I mean, my mother, if she had the vaccine available, I would have had it in a heartbeat."

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To watch the final interview with Martha, visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GR_xkwI1_qY

Martha's family is running a GoFundMe campaign to help cover funeral and probate costs at https://www.gofundme.com/f/honoring-martha-ann-lillards-legacy

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For a Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the polio epidemic in America, we highly recommend "Polio: An American Story" at https://bookshop.org/a/8011/9780195307146 (Bookshop) and https://amzn.to/33ipYad (Amazon)

For children who have never seen what polio can do, we highly recommend "Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio," the true story of a twelve-year-old girl paralyzed in 1949 and the long year of her recovery, for ages 9 and up at https://www.amightygirl.com/small-steps

There's also an excellent story about a girl who contracts polio when an epidemic strikes her town, "Blue," for ages 9 and up at https://www.amightygirl.com/blue

For a powerful biography for adult readers about Judith Heumann, the famous disability rights leader who became paralyzed by polio as a toddler, we highly recommend at https://www.amightygirl.com/being-heumann -- her memoir is also available in a new Young Readers Edition for ages 10 to 15 at https://www.amightygirl.com/rolling-warrior

To introduce children to several extraordinary women whose lives were changed by polio, check out "Wilma Unlimited: How Wilma Rudolph Became The World's Fastest Woman" for ages 5 to 9 (https://www.amightygirl.com/wilma-unlimited), "Splash! Ethelda Bleibtrey Makes Waves of Change" for ages 5 to 9 (https://www.amightygirl.com/splash-bleibtrey), "Joni: The Lyrical Life of Joni Mitchell" for ages 6 to 9 (https://www.amightygirl.com/joni-the-lyrical-life), "Dorothea's Eyes: Dorothea Lange Photographs the Truth" for ages 6 to 10 (https://www.amightygirl.com/dorothea-s-eyes), and "Jubilee: The First Therapy Horse and an Olympic Dream" for ages 6 to 9 (https://www.amightygirl.com/jubilee-therapy-horse)