July 9

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Women peacemakers born today

  • 1933 Judith Anne Cook (née Cushing) born Manchester, England (d. 2004). British anti-nuclear leader; historical fiction writer; led 400 pram-pushing mothers in protest at Russian embassy London Nov. 1962; founded Voice of Women Dec. 1962; Quaker attender.

  • 1935 Mercedes Sosa born Tucumán, Argentina (d. 2009). Pacifist folk singer; "the voice of Latin America"; opposed dictators; arrested and exiled 1979; UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador.

  • 1936 June Jordan born Harlem, NY (d. 2002). Black poet and professor who opposed Vietnam War and Gulf War. Freedom rider in civil rights movement.

  • 1956 Asha-Rose Migiro born Songea, Tanzania. UN Deputy Secretary General 2007; first woman Foreign Minister of Tanzania 2006; Professor of Law focusing on human rights and regional integration; presided on Great Lakes peace conference.

  • 1957 Rebecca Kanner born Cleveland, OH. Mechanical engineer. Arrested three times for protests against the School of the Americas, Columbus, GA, 1997, 1999, 2000; sentenced to 6 months prison; arrested again, 2014.

Women's peacemaking on this day

  • 1909 First celebration of Feast of Our Lady of Peace, Paris.

  • 1915 Jane Addams spoke at Carnegie Hall after mission to Europe. "This war was an old man's war; that the young men who were dying, the young men who were doing the fighting, were not the men who wanted the war."

  • 1915 Australian Women's Peace Army formed, declaring: "[W]ar is a crime against civilisation and humanity, and that it places the interests of property before those of human beings, that it brings personal degradation to vast masses of soldiers and women, and greater suffering and horrors to non-combatants."

  • 1917 Emma Goldman's famous address to the jury, New York. "We are but the atoms in the incessant human struggle towards the light that shines in the darkness—the Ideal of economic, political and spiritual liberation of mankind!"

  • 1980 Under the stewardship of Gabriela Ngirmang, the island nation of Palau passed by referendum the world's first nuclear-free constitution, banning the use, storage, and disposal of nuclear weaponry.

  • 1989 Women's Convoy to Central America arrived Nicaragua from Honduras.

  • 1991 Teresa Grady tried for protest at SAC base Westover Field, Mass.

  • 2011 Margaret Pestorius arrested Rockhampton, Australia for crashing into ball for US-Australian war games.