While a young teenager, singer Ella Fitzgerald wins a talent contest at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem. Known around the world as the “First Lady of Song,” Fitzgerald wins twelve Grammy Awards and is the favorite female vocalist of many musicians, including most jazzmen.
Journalist and broadcaster Mary Margaret McBride premieres on radio using the name Martha Deane and a down-home southern drawl. Her daily program offers advice for women.
Actress Rosalind Russell makes her screen debut.
Early corporate pioneer and leader Gertrude Tenderich charters the Tampax Sales Corporation after buying the patent; she serves as president of the company.
Ruth Benedict an early American anthropologist; she publishes Patterns of Culture, which details the impact of human culture on personality.
Popular gospel singer Mahalia Jackson releases her first album. She will sing at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral in 1968.
Muriel Rukeyser wins the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award at age twenty-one for her first book of poetry, Theory of Flight.
Children’s book writer and teacher Laura Ingalls Wilder publishes Little House on the Prairie, the best-known of a number of novels she writes detailing the pioneer life of early homesteaders. The books have been in print continuously since their publication and are considered classics of American children’s literature.
Electrical engineer Mabel MacFerran Rockwell is the only woman actively involved in designing and installing the power-generating machinery at the Hoover Dam. She later works on increasing aircraft efficiency at Lockheed Aircraft.
Mari Sandoz publishes Old Jules (after a previous rejection) and wins a $5,000 prize for the most interesting and distinctive work of nonfiction; the book is selected by the Book-of-the-Month Club.
Member of a distinguished and prominent family, lawyer Sadie Alexander is the second black woman to earn a doctorate; she and her husband test the state of Pennsylvania’s public accommodations law, which they had drafted.
Businesswoman Effa Manley, a co-owner of the former Newark Eagles baseball team of the Negro League, runs the business end of the team for more than a decade. In 2006, she becomes the first woman elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.