HISTORY: March is Women’s History Month, and these little known facts are from ywcaworks.org.

“When Susan La Flesche was a little girl on the Omaha reservation, she saw a white physician refuse the medical needs of a Native American woman. Witnessing this moved La Flesche to become a physician. In 1889, at the age of 24, La Flesche became the first Native American woman to earn a medical degree in the United States.

“An example of a young woman responding to the call of leadership, 18-year-old Jamie Margolin is a climate change activist and co-executive director of Zero Hour, a Seattle-based climate action organization. Named one of People Magazine’s 25 Women Changing the World at the age of 16, Margolin, who identifies as Jewish and Latinx, is an inspirational role model for the young women of those communities and beyond.

“Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson, born in 1918 to a teacher and a farmer in West Virginia, graduated high school at the age of 14 and headed to West Virginia State, graduating at the age of 18. Overcoming a ladder of racial struggle during her education, including being one of three Black students (and the only woman) selected to be the first to integrate the graduate program at West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia, Johnson eventually played a critical part in the success of NASA’s first crewed spaceflights. Her work ranged from calculating trajectories to the beginning of plans for a mission to Mars. In 2015, President Barack Obama awarded Johnson the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2019, one year before her death at the age of 101, she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.”

Inspirational.