Mary Fields (a.k.a.  “Black Mary”), a former Tennessee slave, was independent, belligerent, six-feet tall, and a fighter.

She moved to Cascade, Montana, when she was in her fifties and there she made her name.  Mary was the second woman ever to drive a US mail coach.

She also hauled freight. With a cigar in her mouth, a rifle by her side, and whiskey nearby, she drove eight horses, pulling two heavy wagons at once.

Throughout her long and adventurous life, she fought wolves, shot a man who insulted her, and was the only woman to be permitted to drink in the town’s saloon.

She also had a warm side.  In fact, her restaurant, which she owned later in life, went belly-up because she couldn’t help feeding poverty-stricken travelers.  By the time Mary died, at a ripe old age, the town of Cascade so revered her that it closed its public schools on Mary’s birthday.

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According to Maori mythology, you can see her green eyes staring at you in the night when your time to die has come.

Hine-Nui-Te-Po, the goddess of death and decay, is black as the darkness of the earth.  A dying person is said to creep into her womb.

Maui, a great Maori hero, stalked the Sleeping Mother Death.  He knew his end was near and he intended to trick death.

His plan was simple:  he would creep through her body while she was sleeping and come out the other side.  In that way, he’d overcome death and begin life anew.  It didn’t work, of course.

You can’t cheat Mother Death, the Great Lady of the Night.  When he had almost succeeded, a songbird chattered and Hine-Nui-Te-Po awoke.

She closed her hips and Maui was caught.

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General George Custer perished during the Battle of the Little Big Horn, but his wife, the spirited and courageous “Libbie” Custer, who often rode with him, survived to ride again.

Libbie was out of the fort, riding with her sister, during the fatal attack.

This was indeed fortunate for her, as George had instructed his cavalry to shoot his wife, rather than let her be captured by Indians.

After her death, at the age of ninety-two and following a lifetime of adventures, she was buried beside George Custer in West Point’s military cemetery.

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Barbara Mikulski, elected to the US Senate in 1985, was the first Democratic woman to hold a Senate seat not previously held by a husband.

She is also the first Democratic woman to serve in both houses of Congress, the first woman to be elected to a Democratic leadership position in the Senate, and the first woman to win a statewide election in Maryland.

Senator Mikulski, a feisty advocate for the working class and for women, is the great-granddaughter of Polish immigrants who owned a bakery in Baltimore.  Born and raised in historic and ethnically rich East Baltimore where her parents ran a neighborhood grocery store, she began her political career by organizing neighbors to stop a 16-lane highway through the historic Fells Point area of Baltimore.  This highway not only threatened Fells Point, but would have cut through the first black home ownership neighborhood in the city.

Barbara Mikulski became known as the street fighter who beat the highway.  This led to a seat on the Baltimore City Council which then led to the US House of Representatives and now to the US Senate.

Senator Mikulski’s advocacy on behalf of women candidates has helped elect six new Democratic women to the United States Senate during her tenure, and has made her the unofficial “Dean of Senate Women.”

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In certain remote regions of Albania live “sworn virgins,” women who have elected to dress and act as men in order to live lives that are freer and less regimented than that of ordinary women.

Sworn virgins dress as men, crop their hair, socialize with men, and may even carry guns.  Unlike ordinary women from the same region, they are treated with the respect accorded to men, and are permitted to inherit and manage property and act as head of a household.

In some cases, they may even be raised to take on the male role by parents who lack male heirs.  The cost of becoming a sworn virgin is high, though.  They may never marry, have sex, or bear children.

For more information about “sworn virgins,” read Antonia Young’s “Women Who Become Men,” published by Berg, an imprint of Oxford International Publishers (2000).

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Julieanne Krone was the first woman in the world to win a top-ranked thoroughbred horse race.

This groundbreaking woman was 30 years old in 1993 (It took that long!)  when she rode her horse, Colonial Affair, to victory in the Belmont Stakes.

Julie loved horses early.  She was nine years old when her mother gave her an Arabian-Shetland filly and enrolled her in the Pony Club of America.

By the time she was a teenager, she told her Mom she was going to be a jockey.  Fortunately, she had a remarkably supportive mother who actually took Julie to Churchill Downs where both got jobs walking racehorses.

By age 17, Julie was riding horses as a pro.  Despite deliberate attempts by male jockeys to intimidate her, she has persevered, and fought back.  She once hit a male jockey over the head with a chair after he snapped his whip at her during a race.  It just goes to show what a little spunk and mother’s love can do for a girl!

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Atalanta was a very different sort of woman for her time period.  This mythical Greek heroine was athletic, independent, and skilled in boar hunting and other male sports.

When the time came for her to marry, she told her father that she would only marry the man who could beat her in a footrace.  Her intent, of course, was not to marry at all, as no man could run faster than she.

Suitors came from far away to compete for her hand in marriage, even though they understood that by doing so they were risking their lives.  The rules were simple:  win the race and win Atalanta.  Lose the race and lose your life.

Many men died.

One, however, was smart enough to pray for the assistance of Aphrodite, the goddess of love.  Aphrodite gave him three golden apples and each time Atalanta pulled far ahead of him in the race, he would throw one of the apples and she would stop to pick it up, feeling that she was so much faster that picking up the golden fruit wouldn’t matter.

It did.  She lost the race, but gained a husband that she secretly loved and admired.

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Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white man.  That simple action ignited a national controversy, including a bus boycott, and eventually resulted in a court ruling that said segregated seating was unconstitutional.

Rosa, returning home from a long day of work at a Montgomery, Alabama, department store, was seated on December 1, 1955 in the first row of the “black section” of a bus.  The first ten rows were reserved were whites and blacks sat in the back of the bus.  However, the tacit understanding was that no black persons should remain sitting if a white person was standing.

When the first ten rows of “white” seats were filled up, a white man was left standing in the aisle.  The bus driver yelled to the back of the bus for all four blacks in the first row of the “black section” to get up so the lone white man could have the row.

Rosa refused and the driver called the police.

Rosa’s courageous action had a profound effect on the Civil Rights Movement, but resulted in personal hardship for her and her family.  Both she and her husband lost their jobs and had to move to a new area and many personal threats were made on their lives.

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By today’s standards, Nancy Drew may not seem all that amazing.

But for several generations of young girls, this teen sleuth, who fearlessly solved every mystery that came her way (quite a few!)  was a feminist role model.

The Nancy Drew series of books, written under the name “Carolyn Keene,” was started in the 1930’s.  The author was Harriet Adams, who collaborated with Andrew Svenson and several ghostwriters on the series.

Nancy was a bit spoiled, it’s true (she belonged to the country club set and had her own spiffy car), but she was also quite the heroine who excelled in almost every field you can think of.

She was an expert swimmer, dancer, mechanic, artist, and marksman.

Moreover, she had the intelligence to crack every case from the “The Secret of the Old Clock” to “The Spider Sapphire Mystery.”

Competent, active, and courageous, Nancy was (and is) an inspiration to her young female readers.

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Russian-born Sofya Kovalevsky liked math.

Unfortunately, liking math was not a thing that her nineteenth century parents found appealing in their daughter.  They forbid her to study the subject and she had to surreptitiously work her math equations on the back of old wallpaper.

Her parents weren’t the only ones who felt math was inappropriate for the female gender.  When Sofya later applied to a university to pursue her love of numbers, she was denied admission.

Undaunted, she left Russia and went to Germany to study at the University at Heidelberg.

Before long, she was recognized as a top mathematician and was awarded a professorship in Stockholm as well as the Prix Bordin from the French Academy of Sciences.

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