City Of Fort Worth: Women's History Month: Community Builders

Press release from City of Fort Worth:

March 09, 2022

Women’s History Month is a celebration of women’s contributions to history, culture and society and has been observed annually in March in the United States since 1987. In the spirit of that mission, each Wednesday this month, we’ll feature female history-makers from all walks of life in hopes that their stories will inspire you all year long to learn more about and celebrate the accomplishments of other women.

This week’s history-makers are women who led efforts to improve their communities.

Wangari Maathai was the founder of the Green Belt Movement and the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. She was born in Nyeri, a rural area of Kenya in Africa, and earned bachelor, master and doctorate degrees in science, making her the first woman in East and Central Africa to do so.

In 1976, while serving in the National Council of Women, Maathai introduced the idea of community-based tree planting and continued to develop this idea into a broad-based grassroots organization, the Green Belt Movement, whose main focus is poverty reduction and environmental conservation through tree planting. She also was internationally acknowledged for her activism for democracy, human rights and environmental conservation, addressing the United Nations on a number of occasions and speaking on behalf of women at special sessions of the General Assembly during the five-year review of the Earth Summit. She also served on the Commission for Global Governance and the Commission on the Future.

During the early 2000s, Maathai represented the Tetu constituency in Kenya’s parliament and served as assistant minister for environment and natural resources in Kenya’s ninth parliament. Before her death in 2011 from ovarian cancer, she founded the Wangari Maathai Institute for Peace and Environmental Studies to bring together academic research in land use, forestry, agriculture, resource-based conflicts and peace studies, with the Green Belt Movement approach.

Source: Green Belt Movement 

Claudia Jones was a feminist, political activist, visionary and pioneering journalist. Jones was born in Trinidad in 1915 but lived and worked in the United States, where she was an active member of the American Communist Party, which resulted in her exile to the United Kingdom in 1955.

In the U.K., Jones continued her lifelong fight against racial inequality and intolerance. She worked with activist organizations to campaign against housing injustices, discrimination in the workplace and racist immigration policies. Jones was also a staunch champion for women’s rights.

In 1958, Jones founded the West Indian Gazette, an anti-racist newspaper campaigning for social equality. This was Britain’s first commercial Black newspaper. The West Indian Gazette sought to unite West Indians in diaspora and to foster dialogue with Black internationalist freedom movements. The paper also highlighted patterns of anti-Black violence, racial harassment and prejudice in the U.K.

When violent riots broke out in Notting Hill in 1958, Jones helped to launch the Notting Hill Carnival the following year in an attempt to uplift Black British communities. The celebration of West Indian culture and heritage draws artists, activists and crowds that are eager to display unity and enjoy music, dance, calypso, steel drums, masquerade and food stalls and is now the second largest street gathering in the world.

Source: University of Bristol 

Sister Corita Kent was an artist, educator and advocate for social justice. She was born in Ford Dodge, Iowa, and at age 18, she entered the religious order Immaculate Heart of Mary, eventually teaching in and then heading up the art department at Immaculate Heart College. Her work evolved from figurative and religious to incorporating advertising images and slogans, popular song lyrics, biblical verses and literature.

Throughout the 1960s, her work became increasingly political, urging viewers to consider poverty, racism and injustice. Kent’s primary medium was silk screen, also known as serigraphy. She became self-taught after she sent away for a DIY silk screening kit. Her innovative methods pushed back the limitations of two-dimensional media of the times. Kent’s emphasis on printing was partially due to her wish for democratic outreach, as she wished for affordable art for the masses. Her artwork, with its messages of love and peace, was particularly popular during the social upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s.

In 1968, she left the order and moved to Boston. After 1970, her work evolved into a sparser, introspective style, influenced by living in a new environment, a secular life and her battles with cancer. She remained active in social causes until her death in 1986. At the time of her death, she had created almost 800 serigraph editions, thousands of watercolors and innumerable public and private commissions.

Source: Corita.org 

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This press release was produced by City of Fort Worth. The views expressed here are the author’s own.