Bertha Palmer is selected as president of the Board of Lady Managers for the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Palmer and the board organize the Women’s Building.
Mary Kenney O’Sullivan is appointed by Samuel Gompers as the first woman general union organizer.
Ellis Island opens for immigration screening. Immigrants undergo inspections to determine if they have medical conditions or legal problems that would preclude their admission to the country.
Florence Bascom, pioneering geologist, becomes the first woman to receive a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. She is the first woman hired by the U.S. Geological Survey.
Hannah G. Solomon founds the National Council of Jewish Women, an important charitable and philanthropic organization.
Annie Laurie (Winifred Black) is a fearless reporter who goes to any lengths to get her story. She later disguises herself as a boy to report on the Galveston, Texas, flood of 1900.
Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin organizes the Woman’s Era Club, among the first of the Negro women’s civic associations. Ruffin says: “It is the women of America—black and white—who are to solve this race problem, and we do not ignore the duty of black women in the matter. They must arouse, educate, and advance themselves. The white woman has a duty in the matter also. She must no longer consent to be passive. We call upon her to take her stand.”
Born into the American theater’s “royal” family, actress Ethel Barrymore makes her stage debut at age fourteen in The Rivals. She earns her position of first lady of the American stage over the course of a career that includes appearances on the stage and in film. She wins an Academy Award and establishes the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in New York City, still in operation today.