Women's History Month - March 2023 - & Notable Women of Oklahoma

Updated: 3/11/2023

​I.  What is it? 

• Women’s History Month in the United States occurs in March of each year to:
  • celebrate the achievements women have made throughout American history
  • recognize all that remains to be done.

 
When did it start?  

• 1987.  The U.S. Congress designated March as “Women’s History Month.” Between 1988 and 1994, Congress passed successive resolutions requesting and authorizing the U.S. President to proclaim Women’s History Month.  Since 1995, presidents have issued annual proclamations of Women’s History Month.

​Antecedents.  The origin story of Women’s History Month, however, began far earlier in the labor protests carried out by women in the nation’s paid workforce.

• 1857.  Most notably, a one-day strike and march by hundreds of women from the textile and needles factories in New York City on March 8, 1857, made history.  
  • Fed up with life-threatening workplace conditions, low pay, and excruciating hours, the women took to the streets.  
  • Their day of action initiated a labor movement that, due to the obstruction by powerful business interests prioritizing profit over fairness, required decades of hard effort to create positive change.​

• 1909.  In the USA, the first Woman’s Day celebration took place in New York City. 
• 1980’s.  By the early 1980s, cities and states across the country were holding Women’s Day celebrations.
• 1980.  President Jimmy Carter proclaimed the week of March 8 as “Women’s History Week.”  
• 1981.  The U.S. Congress established the second week of March as “National Women’s History Week.” 
• 1987.  The U.S. Congress designated March as “Women’s History Month.”

The most common way people give up their power is thinking they don’t have any.”  
--Alice Walker (1944-  ) American writer, poet, and activist.

​II. Meanwhile…

• 1910.  The International Conference of Working Women in Copenhagen, Denmark, approved a proposal to create a Women’s Day that would be international in character.
• 1911.  A handful of western European nations are the first to act on the Conference’s proposal.  Over the years, the practice spreads around the globe.
• 1977.  The United Nations officially recognizes International Women’s Day.
• Today.  March 8—the date of the 1857 labor protest in New York City—is observed in many countries around the world as International Women’s Day.

Purple has become the symbolic color of International Women’s Day, along with green and white.

​Call to Action.  Whether you celebrate Women’s History Month and/or International Women’s Day, remember that the story began and continues in action to improve the lives of women.  

III.  Women of Oklahoma.  
 
Since two of my novels, Cloud County Persuasion and Cloud County Harvest, are set in Oklahoma, I’d like to mention a few notable Oklahoma women from a long list of high achievers. 

You'll find them in education, business, politics, arts and sciences…Many have become nationally and internationally famous.  You’re probably familiar with many of them.  

Do you recognize these names?

• Authors Rilla Askew, Billie Letts (1938-2014), and S.E. Hinton.
• Poet laureate and musician Joy Harjo, Muscogee (Creek).

• Country Singers Reba McEntire and Carrie Underwood.
• Civil rights activist, attorney, and academic Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher (1924-1995).
• Ballerinas Maria Tallchief, (1925-2013), Osage, and her sister Marjorie Tallchief, (1927-2021), Osage.
• Historian Angie Debo (1890-1988).

Three of the women mentioned above are pictured in the following three photos.  Can you match the photos with the correct name?

Photo #1

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Photo #2

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Photo #3

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Answers:  Photo #1 is Angie Debo.  Photo #2 is Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher.  Photo #3 is Maria Tallchief.   Can you think of any other notable Oklahoma women off the top of your head?

​​IV.  Augusta Metcalfe (November 10, 1881- May 9, 1971).
​
I’ll highlight an Oklahoman you might not know:  Augusta Isabella Corson Metcalfe, the “Sagebrush Artist." 

Augusta Metcalfe in her studio, 1950

In 1886, Augusta’s parents, Edward G. and Mary Davidson Corson, moved the family from Kansas to No Man’s Land in what is today the Panhandle of the state of Oklahoma.  
 
In 1893, they moved the family again to claim a 160-acre homestead along the Washita River in the newly-opened Cheyenne and Arapaho land in western Oklahoma.  Augusta lived and worked on the family farm, which grew to 640 acres, for the rest of her life.  After her mother's death, Augusta changed the name of the family home from Corson/Metcalfe to Break O'Day Farm.
 
Home-schooled by her mother, a former teacher, Augusta enjoyed the outdoor life of the farm as well as drawing.  Her parents were impressed with her talent and her maternal uncle—a professor in San Francisco, California—encouraged her interest by sending her supplies and critiquing her work.  She never received formal art lessons.

​Oils and watercolors were Augusta’s preferred media.  She loved the land and depicted her first-hand experience of ranch life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. 
 
The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture ​records many of her honors and major exhibits.
 
First Place Awards.  

• Oklahoma’s first state fair occurred in 1908 (the year following statehood in 1907), and Augusta won two first prizes for her paintings. 
• She took first-place again in the Oklahoma State Fairs of 1909 and 1910, and the Amarillo Tri-State Fairs of 1948, 1951, and 1952. 
• Other first-place winnings occurred in shows in Abilene, Texas (1928), and in the town of Canadian in Hemphill County, Texas (1927).

 
Exhibits. 
Her paintings sold well.  In time, her art could be viewed in exhibits across the country.

• Grand Central Station Art Galleries in New York.
• Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, Missouri.
• Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

In 1949, the Oklahoma Art Center in Oklahoma City showcased her work with a one-artist exhibit.  The following year, Life magazine--the nationally distributed and wildly popular weekly magazine--featured color reproductions from her collection in its July 17 issue.

Some critics saw too much detail in her paintings, but Augusta Metcalfe insisted on creating realistic images of the life she knew so well.  Admirers appreciated her steadfastness.  

​In 1968, she was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame, and in 1983, the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame.

"Moving to Hamburg," painting by Augusta Metcalfe. Image shared with permission of Break O'Day Farm & Metcalfe Museum.

The legacy of Augusta Corson Metcalfe's art speaks for itself.  Equally impressive is her determination to create art in difficult circumstances.  

​She was twenty-four years old when she married James Metcalf in December 1905.  In 1908, James left her, abandoning their infant son, Howard, and Augusta's widowed and invalid mother.   

Undeterred, Augusta carried on in a world with scant appreciation for divorced women.  She added an "e" to her surname "Metcalf" to separate herself even further from her former husband, and never married again.  Her physical strength and, perhaps most of all, sheer grit enabled her to keep her ranch and family together.  ​

Visit the Metcalfe museum online at www.metcalfemuseum.org and on their Facebook page www.facebook.com/MetcalfeGalleryandMuseum.  

​I haven't travelled yet to the Metcalfe Museum in Durham, Oklahoma, but it's on my list!

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Notes:

1. "Women's History Month, March 2023," February 14, 2023, https://www.census.gov/newsroom/facts-for-features/2023/womens-history-month.html (accessed March 1, 2023)

​2. "About International Women's Day," https://www.internationalwomensday.com/About (accessed March 1, 2023)

3. "Women in Oklahoma History," Oklahoma History Center, https://www.okhistory.org/learn/womenshistory (accessed March 1, 2023)

4.  Photo #1.  Angie Debo.  (2012.201.B0156.0263, Oklahoma Publishing Company Photography Collection, OHS)  Oklahoma Historical Society (accessed March 1, 2023)

5.  Photo #2.   Ada Sipuel Fisher signing the register of attorneys, 1952 (21412.M657.12, Z. P. Meyers/Barney Hillerman Photographic Collection, Oklahoma Historical Society (accessed March 1, 2023)

6. Photo #3.  "Maria Tallchief.  American Dancer," Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Maria-Tallchief (accessed March 2, 2023)

7. Metcalf Museum Incorporated, http://www.metcalfemuseum.org/home.html (accessed March 1, 2023)

8. "Metcalf, Augusta Isabella Corson (1881-1971)," Suzzanne Kelley, The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, Oklahoma Historical Society, https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=ME019 (accessed March 1, 2023).

​9.  Photo of Augusta Metcalfe in her studio, 1950. 

10. "Cowhand and the Lady," Life magazine, v.29, July 17, 1950, pp.70-72.

11.  "Moving to Hamburg," painting by Augusta Metcalfe.  Image shared with permission of Break O'Day Farm & Metcalfe Museum, 8647 N, 1795 RD, Durham, Oklahoma, 73642.

12.  Photo of woman farmer/rancher on horseback.