Weekly Reader Magazine - Women's History Month

Women's History Month

Sonia Sotomayor

Sonia Sotomayor's job rules! On Aug. 8, 2009, Sotomayor became an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is the highest court in the nation.

Sotomayor (soh-toh-migh-YOR) is the first Hispanic American to become a Supreme Court justice. She is also only the third woman to sit on the nation's top court.

The honor is not one Sotomayor takes lightly. Justices on the court can keep their jobs for life, and they make tough legal decisions that affect the entire country.

As a child, Sotomayor never even dreamed she would end up on the bench of the High Court. Her parents moved to New York City from Puerto Rico. They lived in a poor neighborhood. Sotomayor's father died when she was 9 years old. Her mother worked six days a week to support Sotomayor and her brother.

Sotomayor's parents taught her the value of a good education. She loved to read, and she worked hard in school. She graduated from college and law school at the top of her class, and she worked as a lawyer and a judge for more than three decades.

All her hard work paid off in May 2009. That's when President Barack Obama nominated, or picked, her to be a justice. The U.S. Senate approved his decision in August.

Sotomayor is the 111th person to sit on the bench since the Supreme Court held its first session more than 200 years ago. Nine justices sit on the Court—eight associate justices and one chief justice. The chief justice leads the Court.

The justices have some of the most important jobs in the country. They interpret, or explain, the U.S. Constitution. They decide whether laws obey the rules that are outlined in the document.

People send more than 10,000 cases each year to the Supreme Court. Most cases start at lower courts and work their way up to the Supreme Court. The justices typically hear and decide about 100 cases each session. They pick the cases that they think are the most important and will have the most impact, or effect, on the United States. Once the Supreme Court rules on a case, all lower courts must follow its decision.

Sonia Sotomayor made history just by serving on the court. "I am an ordinary person who has been blessed with extraordinary opportunities and experiences," Sotomayor says. "[This] is one of those experiences."

–From WR News, Senior Edition, Sept. 11, 2009

Peggy Whitson

Dr. Peggy Whitson is a NASA astronaut. Since her first space mission in 2002, she has spent more time in space than any other American astronaut. She has spent a total of 377 days outside of Earth's atmosphere, which ranks her 20th in the world for time spent in space. She has made six space walks in her career, totaling 39 hours and 46 minutes—more than any other woman.

Whitson first launched into space as a flight engineer with Expedition 5 on June 5, 2002. The shuttle docked two days later with the International Space Station, where she stayed for six months. During the mission she installed hardware systems both inside and outside the space station. She also performed many investigations in human life sciences and microgravity sciences.

Her second voyage was with Expedition 16 on Oct. 10, 2007, and lasted 192 days. As commander of the mission, she was in charge of expanding the working and living space at the International Space Station. She returned to Earth with her crew on April 19, 2008.

Whitson is now the chief of the astronaut corps and is preparing International Space Station crews for their future missions.

Rosalind Franklin

Dr. Rosalind Franklin (1920–1958) was involved in one of the most important scientific discoveries of the 21st century. She was a chemist who helped discover deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). That's the string of chemicals in our cells that contain genetic information. DNA "tells" our hair to be a certain color and determines how tall every person will grow, among many other things.

Unfortunately, Franklin did not get the credit she deserved for her work. Three scientists —James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins—won a Nobel Prize for the discovery in 1962. Franklin, who by that time had died, was not even mentioned.

Why was Franklin left out? In part, it's because she was a woman at a time when few women were working in science.

Franklin received her Ph.D. from Cambridge University in 1945. She went on to work as a researcher at King's College in London. It was there that Franklin first met Wilkins. They worked together, each examining different forms of DNA. Because DNA is so small and complex, scientists needed to find alternative ways to study it. Franklin was able to produce a very clear image of the structure of DNA using X-rays. Wilkins shared the new information with Watson and Crick, who were also looking at DNA patterns.

Unknown to Franklin, Watson and Crick published an article in a scientific journal using the information from Franklin's discovery. Franklin never found out that Watson and Crick used some of her findings. She died of cancer only five years later, in 1958.

Watson, Crick, and Wilkins all shared the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 1962. The prize cannot be awarded to someone who has died, so Franklin could not get credit for her work. Franklin's role in the discovery of DNA was not widely acknowledged for many years.

Oprah Winfrey

Most Americans instantly recognize the name Oprah. Oprah Winfrey is considered the most powerful woman in media and one of the United States' most influential people.

Born in Mississippi in 1954, Winfrey spent her early years living with her grandmother on a farm. She learned to read early and loved to perform recitations. Her broadcasting career began when she was only 19! That's when she was hired as the youngest-ever news anchor on WTVF-TV, a Nashville television station. In 1984, she moved to Chicago and started a morning talk show. In 1986, that show expanded into The Oprah Winfrey Show, a nationally broadcast talk show. It is the highest-rated talk show in television history.

Winfrey is also an accomplished actor, producer, magazine publisher, and radio producer. She is also a philanthropist, providing money and resources to support education, literacy, and basic needs for people around the world. "You get from the world what you give to the world," Winfrey has said. Her foundation, Oprah's Angel Network, has built schools for children in 12 countries, among many other works. It has also built or restored nearly 300 homes in areas devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005.

Marian Wright Edelman

Marian Wright Edelman has touched the lives of countless children through the organization that she founded, the Children's Defense Fund.

Edelman has been an advocate for equality, freedom, and civil rights for just about her entire life. The youngest of five children, she was born on June 6, 1939, in Bennettsville, South Carolina. As a child, she found a great role model in her father, a Baptist preacher who, by working to improve the lives of African-Americans in a segregated society, taught her about service and the power of positive action.

Edelman attended Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, in the late 1950s. During that time, she was greatly influenced by civil rights leaders and began to want to make her own contribution. To make this happen, she earned a law degree from Yale Law School in 1963. She moved to Mississippi and became the first African-American admitted to that state's bar. It was there that she witnessed the many disadvantages facing African- Americans—illiteracy, poverty, hunger, and lack of health care. She became a strong supporter of Head Start, a program with the goal of increasing the school readiness of young children in low-income families, and helped people become eligible for food stamps. She wanted to give back a sense of hope for the future back to people who had little in their lives.

Her Work

In 1968 Marian Wright Edelman married a civil rights lawyer, Peter Edelman. She moved to Washington, D.C. and served as counsel to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Poor People's Campaign. She also founded the Washington Research Project, a group that fought for child and family nutrition programs and the expansion of Head Start. In 1973, Marian Wright Edelman started the Children's Defense Fund (CDF), which provides a powerful voice for disadvantaged children in America. Over the past thirty-one years, the Children's Defense Fund has strongly advocated government funding for programs such as Head Start, that provide the basic necessities—health care, immunizations, nutritious food, and educational opportunities—to poor children and their families. It has also worked to reduce teen pregnancy, push Congress to support adoption, and protect abused, handicapped, and neglected children. Marian Wright Edelman has touched the lives of so many children. As a writer, lecturer, and advocate for children's rights, she has received many honorary degrees and awards. Her inspirational work represents hope and possibility for our future and serves as a reminder to all of what can be accomplished with compassion and a perseverance to right the wrongs. In her own words: "If you don't like the way the world is, you change it. You have an obligation to change it. You just do it one step at a time."

—from an article in Facts for Learning

Amelia Earhart

Spirited, determined, and seemingly fearless, Amelia Earhart was a pilot who captured the heart of the country in the early years of aviation. She proved that women could take to the skies just as men could. The first woman pilot to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a solo flight, she went on to accomplish numerous other flying firsts. And then she disappeared. On July 2, 1937, while trying to complete the final leg of a record-setting round-the-world flight, she vanished over the Pacific Ocean. Neither Earhart, her copilot, or their plane was ever found. To this day, no one knows what happened on that doomed flight. Its fate remains one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the 20th century.

Early Life

Amelia Earhart was born in Atchison, Kansas, on July 24, 1897. She and her younger sister, Muriel, had a difficult childhood. Their family moved from one city to another quite often. The girls frequently missed school, but still managed to excel academically throughout the hardships that they endured. They loved books, poetry, and sports. With the encouragement of their parents, they embraced new opportunities with much enthusiasm and tenacity.

After graduating from high school in 1915, Earhart planned to attend college, but those plans changed after a chance meeting with four wounded World War I veterans on the street. After hearing about their unfortunate situation, Earhart decided to study nursing. During the war, she worked as a military nurse in Canada. In 1919–20 she attended Columbia University, taking courses that prepared her for medical school. She moved to California in 1920 to join her family.

Earhart enjoyed watching airplane stunt shows, which were very popular during the 1920s. It was after visiting an airfield in California and being given a ride on a plane that she decided to learn how to fly. To earn the money for flying lessons, Amelia worked several odd jobs. She hired another female aviator, Neta Snook, as her teacher. On January 3, 1921, Earhart had her first flying lesson. After several hours of instruction, she was ready to fly all by herself. She made her first solo flight in 1921. Except for a poor landing, the flight was uneventful. The following year, Earhart got her pilot's license and had saved enough money to buy her very own plane, which she named Canary.

Young Air Pioneer

In April 1928, Earhart received a call from Captain Hilton H. Railey asking her if she would like to join two male pilots on a flight from America to England. Their idea was to have a woman fly across the Atlantic Ocean on May 20–21, 1928, exactly a year after Charles Lindbergh's historic solo flight from New York to France. The weather, however, postponed the trip for about a month. On June 17 in Nova Scotia, Earhart boarded a plane called Friendship and less than 21 hours later the plane landed in Wales, a country in Great Britain. Although she was not at the controls, Earhart was the first woman to cross the Atlantic by plane.

Her transatlantic flight brought her a lot of publicity. Upon her return, Earhart was greeted with a parade in New York and invited to a reception held by President Calvin Coolidge at the White House. In September of that same year, she became the first woman to fly solo roundtrip across the United States, setting the women's nonstop transcontinental speed record. On May 20–21, 1932—five years after Lindbergh's flight—Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. On January 11, 1935, Earhart became the first woman to successfully complete the hazardous flight from Hawaii to California.

A National Heroine with a Tragic End

As Earhart's 40th birthday approached, she had the yearning to do something truly monumental—to be the first woman to fly around the world. In June 1937, Earhart took what was to be her final flight. With navigator Fred Noonan, she set out in a twin-engine plane in an attempt to fly around the world. As the pair were flying the final leg of their journey over the Pacific Ocean, the U.S. Coast Guard lost contact with the plane.

The United States Navy led an extensive air and sea search for more than two weeks, but never found any trace of the aviators or the plane. In 1938, a lighthouse was constructed on Howland Island, which was Earhart's destination before contact was lost. The mysterious disappearance of Earhart and her plane has raised considerable speculation throughout the years. Some believe she and Noonan were captured by the Japanese; others speculate that she was sent on a special spy mission. However, none of those theories about her disappearance were ever confirmed, and have mostly been discarded. Today, many decades after her disappearance, investigators still search the tiny islands of the Pacific for clues.

"Decide ... whether or not the goal is worth the risks involved. If it is, stop worrying." Those are the telling words of Amelia Earhart, one of the world's most celebrated aviators, a woman who broke records and barriers, and who opened doors for women with courage and pride.

—from Facts for Learning