October 21

Women peacemakers born today

• 1867 Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence born Bristol, England (d. 1954). Suffragist leader. Early member Fellowship of Reconciliation. Founding member, Women's Peace Party and WILPF.

• 1918 Albertina Sisulu born Tsomo, Transkei, South Africa. Organized anti-Apartheid movement, 1954; jailed for treason; banned 18 years.

• 1929 Ursula Le Guin born Berkeley, CA (d. 2018). Novelist; organized protests against nuclear bomb and Vietnam War.

• 1955 Umida Tukhtamuradovna Akhmedova born Parkent, Uzbekistan, USSR. Uzbek photographer. Convicted of state slander, 2010. Awarded Havel Human rights Prize, 2016.

• 1983 Zainab al-Khawaja born Damascus. Bahraini human rights activist.

Women's peacemaking on this day

• 1835 Maria Weston Chapman organized Boston women to prevent the lynching of abolitionist George Thompson.

• 1913 Start of Indian women’s nonviolent resistance Satyagraha; Transvaal women sold goods without license Vereeniging, crossing Natal border; five Natal women cross into Transvaal; 11 Indian women arrested, sentenced to 3 months hard labor.

• 1913 International conference on traffic in women, Brussels.

• 1913 Eleven Indian women arrested in Gandhi's South African satyagraha civil resistance and sentenced to three months hard labor.

• 1975 200 Israeli women protest civil rights bill with mock funeral, Tel Aviv.

• 1983 First Southern Women's Peace Camp at Savannah River Plutonium Plant; 31 women arrested.

• 1985 Okinawan women organized 60,000-person protest of American soldier’s rape of 12-year-old.

• 1999 Three women acquitted of Plowshares Trident protest on basis of 1996 World Court opinion against nuclear weapons.

• 1999 Women, Peace, and Conflict conference at Univ. Wisconsin, Platteville.

• 2000 Trident Plowshares trio acquitted in charges of damage to Mayfair nuclear facility by sheriff's statement: "I have to conclude that the three. . . were justified in thinking that Great Britain in their use of Trident could be construed as a threat and as such is an infringement of international and customary law."

October 22

Women peacemakers born today

• 1845 Sarah Bernhardt born Paris, France (d. 1923). Actress.

• 1874 Thora Daugaard born Store Arden, Denmark (d. 1951). Editor; feminist; pacifist; founder WILPF, 1915; resolution for World War I ceasefire.

• 1919 Doris Lessing born Kermanshah, Iran (d. 2013). British novelist; awarded Nobel Literature Prize, 2007; banned from South Africa for anti-nuclear, anti-Apartheid stance; opposed World War I, in which her father lost a leg.

• 1930 Estela Barnes De Carlotto born Buenos Aires, Argentina. Recipient of UN Human Rights Award, 2004; president of Grandmothers of the Plaza of May.

• 1957 Alicia Cabezudo born Rosario, Argentina. Leading international peace educator; Italian professor in Argentina; vice president International Peace Bureau 2010-16.

Women's peacemaking on this day

• 1777 Ann Cooper Whitall, heroine of Battle of Red Bank, NJ, cared for wounded of both sides.

• 1914 Kathe Kollwitz's son Peter killed in Roggevelde, Flanders, inspiring the main theme of her antiwar art.

• 1967 Thich Nu Hue Lac, age 22, immolated herself in antiwar protest.

• 1968 The Paula Cooper Gallery in SoHo New York sponsored the first anti-Vietnam War show, curated by Lucy Lippard, for benefit of Student Mobe.

• 1977 Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, a group in protest of disappeared children, founded in Buenos Aires.

• 2009 In San Francisco, Code Pink member Rae Abileah led 22 people in an attempted citizens’s arrest of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for Gaza war crimes.

• 2014 Sandra Steingraber led We Are Seneca Lake anti-fracking civil disobedience campaign.

October 23

Women peacemakers born today

• 1924 Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse born Grenoble, France (d. 1999). American psychiatrist, professor at Southern Methodist University, and Episcopal priest. Keynote speaker on "Peace, the Universal Yearning: the Voices of Women” at the first International Women’s Peace Conference, Dallas, 1988. President of Peacemakers, 1988.

• 1942 Anita Roddick born Littlehampton, Sussex, England (d. 2007). Nonviolent human rights activist; organized protest against Iraq War, London, 2003; founded Body Shop, promoting human rights and environmental issues, 1976; founded Children on the Edge for East Asian orphans, 2000.

• 1952 Antjie Krog born Kroonstad, Orange Free State, South Africa. Anti-Apartheid poet; nonviolent philosopher.

• 1958 Kate Hudson. British peace leader; political science professor; former communist. Led opposition to Iraq War; against Trident missile; opposed Gaza bombing. Chair of Committee for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), 2003-10; overnighted at Trafalgar Square peace camp, 2005; co-founder and chair Left Unity Party, 2013; promoted Wool Against Weapons knitted scarf, 2014.

Women's peacemaking on this day

• 1850 First National Womens Rights Convention organized and keynote address delivered by Paulina Kellogg Wright Davis, Worcester, MA.

• 1906 First major imprisonment of suffragists, London; Mary Gawthorpe and Charlotte Despard arrested for House of Commons protest.

• 1916 Mildred Boissevain's last speech, Los Angeles, gave the battle cry, "Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty?"

• 2001 Katie Sierra denied student anarchist club. “Anarchism preaches to love all humans, not just of one country.”

• 2002 UN Security Council held third Arria Forum to hear Ugandan woman Angelina Atyam.

• 2008 Five members of Code Pink, including Rae Abileah, attempted a citizen’s arrest of Karl Rove, San Francisco. “Rove is under arrest for treason!”

• 2014 Four Cape Downwinder Grandmothers convicted of trespassing on Plymouth nuclear plant.

October 24

Women peacemakers born today

• 1788 Sarah Josepha Hale born Newport, NH (d. 1879). Poet; editor; teacher in Boston Ladies Peace Society; "Mother of Thanksgiving" for getting Lincoln to proclaim first holiday in appeal for truce in Civil War.

• 1830 Belva Ann Lockwood born Royalton, NY (d. 1917). Absolute pacifist; second female candidate for President, 1884, 1888; executive of Universal Peace Union; US delegate to Geneva conference on corrections, 1896; opposed Spanish-American war; advocated arbitration.

• 1838 Amanda Deyo born Clinton, NY (d. 1917). "The Peacemaker." Raised Quaker, became Universalist pastor; national peace speaker; delegate to international peace conferences, 1889.

• 1915 Marghanita Laski born Manchester, England (d. 1988). English novelist and playwright; radio journalist; leading contributor to OED. Active opponent of nuclear weapons through Committee for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). Authored play The Offshore Island about nuclear war survivors, 1959.

• 1923 Denise Levertov born Ilford, Essex, England. Poet; anti-Vietnam War; compiled and edited antiwar poetry anthology Out of the War Shadow, 1967.

• 1971 Anohni (née Antony Hegarty) born Chichester, West Sussex, England. Popular British singer of anti-war songs; War Child album 2005 benefit for Bosnian war children; protested fifth year of Iraq War 2008; 2016 album Hopelessness includes “Drone Bomb Me.”

Women's peacemaking on this day

• 1854 Florence Nightingale left for Crimea.

• 1950 One thousand women demanded peace at UN Lake Success.

• 1981 Pankow Peace Circle founded, advocating for nonviolent overthrow of East Germany and dismantling the Berlin Wall.

• 1983 2,000 women encircled Boeing plant; largest women's demonstration in Pacific Northwest, organized by Puget Sound Peace Camp.

• 2007 Desiree Fairooz arrested at Congressional hearing for calling Condoleezza Rice "war criminal."

• 2010 UN Peace Fair celebrating 10th anniversary of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security.

October 25

Women peacemakers born today

• 1872 Mary Sheepshanks born Bilton, Yorkshire, England (d. 1960). Socialist; pacifist; suffragist; feminist. Founding member, WILPF; WILPF International Secretary, 1927-31.

• 1910 Josephine Wertheim Pomerance born Manhattan, NY (d. 1980). Leader of WILPF; co-founder of SANE, 1957; served on American Association for the UN, 1959; leader of Citizens Committee for a Nuclear Test Ban, 1962.

• 1940 Barbara Gladysch born during bombing of Düsseldorf, Germany. Founded Mothers for Peace, 1981; founded Children of Chernobyl, 1986; offered aid to refugees of Balkan wars; peace mission to Chechnya, 1996; recipient of Sean MacBride Peace Award, 1999.

• 1971 Midori Goto born Osaka, Japan. Violinist; UN Messenger of Peace, 2007.

• 1973 Suheir Hammad born Amman, Jordan. Palestinian-American poet and playwright; Muslim pacifist.

Women's peacemaking on this day

• 1774 Edenton Tea Party. First organized American women's political action, in support of Boston protests.

• 1912 Olive Schreiner met Gandhi.

• 1918 Mollie Steimer given 15-year sentence for opposing World War I.

• 1955 Death of Sadako Sasaki from leukemia; focus of 1000 cranes for peace.

• 1975 90 percent of Icelandic women went on general strike in successful demand for equal rights.

• 1984 International Women's Peace Day declared by Women for Survival Conference, Adelaide.

• 1993 Marguerite Barankitse began rescuing children from Burundi civil war.

• 1998 Mothers Action for Peace protest at Oak Ridge nuclear plant; four women arrested for trespassing.

• 2000 Dutch woman Marjan Willemson and Briton Zoe Weir cut Faslane base fence and hung banner against Trident missiles.

• 2005 At London's Cenotaph war memorial, Maya Evans was arrested for reading the names of 97 British soldiers killed in Iraq.

• 2012 Judith Bello arrested for protest against drones at Hancock AFB; jailed eight days. Mary Anne Grady Flores arrested, leading to year in jail for repeated protests.

October 26

Women peacemakers born today

• 1888 Doris Stevens born Omaha, NE (d. 1963). Chronicler of American suffragists; Executive Secretary of the Congressional Union for Womens Suffrage; arrested 1917, sentenced to 60 days in Occoquan Prison but pardoned after 3 days; arrested picketing Metropolitan Opera house, 1919.

• 1911 Mahalia Jackson born Hearn, TX (d. 1972). Leading singer of protest songs; civil rights leader who bailed out Martin Luther King, Jr.

• 1989 Alaa Murabit born Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. Libyan physician; women’s rights leader. Founding president of Voice of Libyan Women, 2011; spearheaded Noor Campaign to promote Koran’s teachings of nonviolence, 2013.

Women's peacemaking on this day

• 1862 Eliza Gurney spoke truth to power to President Lincoln in White House.

• 2011 Hundreds of Yemeni women set fire to their makrama (full body veils) in Sana'a. "Who protects Yemeni women from the crimes of the thugs?"

October 27

Women peacemakers born today

• 1833 Priscilla Hannah Peckover born Wisbech, England (d. 1931). Quaker; absolute pacifist; pioneering British peace leader; founder of Women's Local Peace Association, 1879; founder of annual Peace Sunday. Learned 16 languages to communicate peace.

• 1917 Anna Langford born Springfield, OH (d. 2008). Civil rights lawyer; marched with Martin Luther King, Jr.; first woman on Chicago city council, 1971-91.

• 1922 Selma Brackman born Far Rockaway, NY (d. 2010). Organized Peace Worker Women's Strike for Peace, 1968; organized the National Teach-In on World Community, Columbia University, 1969; director of the First International Exhibit for Peace, 1971; founded War & Peace Foundation, 1981.

• 1922 Anna Aschenbach born Nanking, China (d. 2011). Tax resister; WILPF awardee; organizer; civil rights activist.

• 1923 Ruby Dee born Cleveland, OH. Actress; protested Vietnam War, nuclear tests, Iraq War; arrested for protest against police killing of Amadou Diallo by NYPD, 1999.

• 1931 Nawal El Saadawi born Kafr Tahla, Egypt. Psychiatrist; physician; novelist; leading feminist. UN adviser on women, 1979; imprisoned 1981, exiled 1988; led women's peace delegation to stop Gulf War, 1991; awarded North-South Prize, 2004.

• 1940 Maxine Hong Kingston born Stockton, CA. Author; peace activist. Arrested for White House antiwar protest, 2003.

• 1943 Karen Klimczak (d. 2006). Founded Buffalo Center for Nonviolence; murdered 2006.

• 1950 Lia Diskin (aka Leonor Beatriz Diskin Pawlowicz) born Buenos Aires, Argentina. Gandhian disciple and professor. Created Gandhi Network; began Gandhi Day Sao Paulo, 1982. Founded Palas Athena Association for a culture of peace, 1972. Received Jamnalal Bajaj Gandhi Award, 2010.

• 1950 Rosalind Marsden. British diplomat; ambassador to Afghanistan, 2003; ambassador to Iraq, 2006; first female representative of European Community to Sudan, 2010.

Women's peacemaking on this day

• 2002 Three thousand Senegalese women marched for peace, Zinguinchor.

• 2005 10th International Forum of Association of Women's Rights in Development (AWID), Bangkok.

• 2010 Topless Ukrainian university students FEMEN protested Vladimir Putin's visit to Kiev.

• 2011 10 women peacemakers spoke on UN panel on conflict prevention and peacebuilding.

October 28

Women peacemakers born today

• 1816 Malwida von Meysenbug born Kassel, Hesse, Germany (d. 1903). German writer; feminist and revolutionary. Friend of Wagner, Nietzsche, Mazzini, Rolland. Published Memories of an Idealist, 1869.

• 1816 Mary Frame Thomas born Montgomery County, Maryland (d. 1888). Quaker (later Methodist) doctor. Radical nonresistant abolitionist; prison reformer; suffragist. President, American Women's Suffrage Association, 1880-85.

• 1842 Anna Elizabeth Dickinson born Philadelphia, PA (d. 1932). "America's Joan of Arc"; Quaker; playwright and orator; Garrisonian abolitionist.

• 1867 Nivedita born Dungannon, Tyrone, Ireland (d. 1911). Teacher; author and orator; disciple of Vivekananda, 1898; nonviolent anarchist; militant Indian nationalist.

• 1876 Rosalie Slaughter Morton born Lynchburg, VA (d. 1968). Internationalist; doctor for hospitals and schools in Serbia; President of Zonta; founder of American Women's Hospitals, 1917.

• 1921 Peggy Terry born Haileyville, OK (d. 2004). Community organizer; civil rights activist in Montgomery bus boycott. Member of Women for Peace Chicago; SNCC activist, 1966; organizer Jobs or Income Now (JOIN). Peace & Freedom Party Vice-Presidential candidate, 1968.

• 1939 Jane Alexander born Boston, MA. Actress; leader of WAND; opposed Vietnam War.

• 1944 Caroline Moorehead born London. British human rights journalist and author. Chronicled tales of pacifists and war resisters in Troublesome People: The Warriors of Pacifism, 1987; wrote biographies of Bertrand Russell and Martha Gellhorn, told the stories of Magda Trocmé of Chambon, and French women resisters.

• 1962 Achta Djibrine Sy born Chad. Economist. Worked with Oxfam and women’s groups to facilitate recovery from civil war.

Women's peacemaking on this day

• 1908 Suffragist Muriel Matters interrupted House of Commons with protest.

• 1911 Belgian Alliance of Women for Peace through Education founded in Brussels.

• 1916 5,000 Australian women protested war and conscription, Melbourne.

• 1942 Mary Emma Woolley organized the first meeting of women on postwar peace, New York City.

• 1986 300 women occupied Statue of Liberty in "Women Take Liberty '86," first national event of Women Rising in Resistance.

• 1992 Belgrade Women in Black protest: "They have been ceaselessly killing, torturing and raping for a year and a half already. They have banished more than three million lives. They manipulate women. Blackmail men. They spread hate, destruction and death; we are left without words to express our horror and anger. . . People die by the minute."

• 2015 Women detainees at Don Hutto Detention Center in Texas began hunger strike for release.

October 29

Women peacemakers born today

• 1890 Claire Goll born Nuremberg, Germany (d. 1977). Franco-German pacifist; poet and novelist; journalist; opposed World War I.

• 1924 Danielle Mitterrand born Verdun, France (d. 2011). As French first lady, publicly supported human rights for Tibet, Sahrawi, Central America, Kurds, 1981-95. Awarded North South Prize, 1996.

• 1938 Ellen Johnson Sirleaf born Monrovia, Liberia. Director of UN Development Fund for Africa, 1992-7; leader in campaign against wartime violence against women; authored UN report on women in war, 2002; elected first female president of African country, 2005; awarded Nobel Peace Prize, 2011.

• 1967 Sanam Naraghi Anderlini born Iran. UN peacekeeping expert. Authority on conflict and gender. Published Women Building Peace What They Do, Why it Matters, 2007. Primary author of MIT report on UN Security Council Resolution 1325.

Women's peacemaking on this day

• 1904 French women hold auto-da-fe in Paris.

• 1983 Halloween protest: Greenham witches used bolt cutters to remove four miles of fence; 187 arrested.

• 2008 UN Security Council open debate on women and peace heard NGO on Women, Peace and Security.

• 2010 Conference on The Role of Women in Global Security, Copenhagen.

• 2010 One hundred women demonstrated at UN. "Put Peace Women at Peace Tables."

October 30

Women peacemakers born today

• 1815 Elizabeth Rous Comstock born Maidenhead, Berkshire, England (d. 1891). Quaker pacifist; minister; abolitionist; ran underground railroad in US; opposed Civil War.

• 1914 Anna Wing born Hackney, London, England. Quaker; actress; supporter of CND.

• 1915 Annabel Kreider Wolfson (d. 1983). Opposed Vietnam War by founding Interfaith Center for Draft Information, Worcester, 1969.

• 1986 Gulalai Ismail born Peshawar, India. Co-founded Aware Girls to assert women’s rights, 2002; founded Seeds of Peace to promote women’s promotion of peace, 2010.

Women's peacemaking on this day

• 1939 Ground broken for Nancy Brown Peace Carillon, Detroit.

• 1982 First public meeting for Puget Sound Peace Camp at "Feminine Resistance to Militarism" forum at Friends Center, Seattle.

• 2001: UN Security Council heard testimony of women from Timor, Kosovo and Afghanistan in second Arria forum.

• 2002 Elizabeth Rehn and Ellen Sirleaf delivered UNIFEM report on Effect of War on Women.

October 31

Women peacemakers born today

• 1874 Mary Swartz Rose born Newark, OH (d. 1941). PhD; pioneering nutritionist; served League of Nations Health Organization, 1935; founded American Institute of Nutrition, 1933.

• 1907 Jane Evans (d. 2004). Jewish feminist leader; pacifist; founded Jewish Peace Fellowship, 1941; supported conscientious objectors; active consultant for National Peace Conference at UN Charter, San Francisco.

• 1908 Muriel Duckworth born Austin, Quebec, Canada (d. 2009). Quaker; absolute pacifist; Canadian "Peace Movement's Best Friend"; president of VOW, 1967-72; opposed Vietnam War; awarded Pearson Peace Medal, 1991.

• 1944 Sally Kirkland born Manhattan, NY. Antiwar actress; marched in Hollywood parade for world peace, 2006.

• 1952 Helena Cobban born Abingdon, England. British journalist; Quaker pacifist. Expert on Middle East and postwar justice reporter on peace negotiations. Founded Just World Books, 2010.

• 1955 Susan Smith. Created Center for Nonviolence, Claremont, CA. Anti-war, anti-nuclear activist.

Women's peacemaking on this day

• 1917 Pacifist organization La Voix des Femmes founded.

• 1955 Picasso created Two Women and Dove.

• 1983 Halloween protest: Greenham witches use bolt cutters.

• 1983/84/85/86 Witch Trials by Women Rising in Resistance.

• 2000 UN Security Council Resolution 1325 requests greater use of women in peacemaking.

• 2013 In Alexandria, Egypt, following an early morning rally for ousted President Morsi, 21 women (including 7 juveniles) were arrested, beaten, and sentenced to 11-year prison terms for illegal assembly and vandalism.

• 2014 Women’s rights activist Ye Haiyan arrested for posting nude photo of herself with sign "Elimination of Discrimination Convention. Don’t you know?"

• 2018 Clare Farrell founded Extinction Rebellion, “an international movement that uses non-violent civil disobedience to achieve radical change in order to minimise the risk of human extinction and ecological collapse.”