January 14

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Women peacemakers born today

  • 1858 Hannah Greenebaum Solomon born Chicago, IL (d. 1942). Social reformer; associate of Jane Addams; member of WILPF. Organized World's Parliament of Religions, 1890; delegate to International Council of Women, 1904.

  • 1872 Kerstin Hesselgren born Torsåker, Sweden (d. 1962). Called "Kerstin the First": first woman elected to upper house of Swedish parliament, 1922. Delegate to ILO, 1919; Swedish delegate to the League of Nations; opposed Italy's war on Ethiopia, 1935; member of first international committee on status of women, 1937.

  • 1872 Eugenie Meller-Miskolczy born Budapest, Hungary (d. 1944/5). Hungarian Jewish feminist leader; suffragist; writer; pacifist; opposed WWI; active in WILPF. Arrested and sent to Kistarcsa concentration camp, July 1944. Denounced the Council of the League of Nations as ineffective and "[A]n imperialist corporation of the Great Powers."

  • 1938 Dorothy Zellner born New York, NY. Feminist; peace advocate; civil rights activist; actively opposed Israeli occupation and Gaza War. Ran New England Regional Office of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC); co-editor of its newsletter Student Voice; arrested at CORE demonstration in Miami, 1960; SNCC staff member in Mississippi, summer 1964.

  • 1941 Mahnaz Afkhami born Kerman, Iran. Human rights activist; Iran's first Minister of Women's Affairs, 1976-78. Founded Women's Learning Partnership for Rights, Development, and Peace (WLP), 2000.

  • 1942 Carol Bellamy born Plainfield, NJ. Director of Peace Corps, 1993; Executive Director of UNICEF, 1995; first president of Lawyers Committee to End the War.

  • 1972 Immaculée Ilibagiza born Mataba, Kibuye, Rwanda. Tutsi survivor of genocide 1994; stared down man with machete; forgave mother’s and brothers’ killers; Gandhi Award for Reconciliation and Peace 2007.

Women's peacemaking on this day

  • 1918 Emma Goldman fined and sentenced to two years prison for obstruction of the draft.

  • 1968 Jeanette Rankin Brigade began meetings, kickstarting women's peace activism.

  • 1991 200 women on the Women's Ship for Peace brought aid to Iraq. Iowa City council member Karen Kuby arrested for Gulf War protest.

  • 2004 Joan Wile began weekly protest against Iraq War at Rockefeller Center, beginning the Granny Peace Brigade.