The daughter of former slaves, Madam C. J. Walker has become the richest woman in America through her hair and cosmetics business. She is cited by the Guinness Book of Records as the first female American self-made millionaire. Walker said: “I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. From there I was promoted to the washtub. From there I was promoted to the cook kitchen. And from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations…. I have built my own factory on my own ground.”
Fanny Bullock Workman is the first female mountaineer to reach an altitude of over twenty-three thousand feet (in the very long skirt of the time) when she climbs Nun Kun in the Himalayas.
Williamina Stevens Fleming is the first U.S. woman elected to the Royal Astronomical Society.
Singer and actress Sophie Tucker launches a show business career that spans sixty years.
More than twenty thousand Japanese and Korean “picture brides” come to the United States through Hawaii between 1907 and 1924. They are very young and often come only with a picture of their husband-to-be. Their lives are often difficult because of very hard work, language, and culture issues.
American Red Cross fund-raiser and leader in the fight against tuberculosis, Emily Bissell designs and prints the first Christmas seals.
Social reformer Edith Abbott begins work at Hull House; she writes more than a hundred books and articles about public welfare and social injustices.
Social activist Mary White Ovington is one of the founders of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and during the early years one of the organization’s few nonblack members.