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June 17

06-17 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS Event 06-17-1852: On this date the New York State Temperance Society met in Syracuse for its annual convention.       Susan B. Anthony, Gerrit Smith, and Amelia Bloomer were delegates appointed to the convention by the Woman's State Temperance Society, which Anthony had founded the previous April.       Because the convention refused to accept the credentials of the women delegates or allow them to speak, the women and their supporters adjourned to the Wesleyan Chapel where they held their own meeting.       Anthony delivered a speech, which was published in the July, 1852 issue of Stone' magazine The Lily. The address is one of the earliest given by Anthony who would become the most articulate spokesperson of the movement. B. 06-17-1865, Dr. Susan LaFlesche Picotte - Native American and U.S. physician.       Under the sponsorship of the Women's National Indian Association that was founded in 1880 by Mary L. Bonney and Amelia S. Quinton, SLP graduated a 3-year medical course in 2 years.       She finished at the head of her class not yet 24 years of age. She returned to practice medicine primarily with the Omaha tribe although her practice at times included almost as many whites as Indians.       It has been estimated that this remarkable woman who braved blizzards and dust storms treated every member of the Omaha tribe in the 25 years of her practice.       One of her sons was in the infamous Corrigador Death March in WWII. Her widely attended funeral was a proper Christian service that closed with prayers and chants in Omahan. Event 06-17-1941: in a secret test to prove a woman could do it, Jacqueline Cochran (with a male copilot and radio operator) secretly piloted a lend-lease bomber from Maine to Scotland in the first of what she hoped would become many such flights for the yet-to-be-formed Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs). Bullets were fired at the plane at night near mid-Atlantic but since Cochran was operating in complete radio silence with no weapons aboard the attacker never identified.       Even though Cochrane proved it could be easily done by a woman, transAtlantic flights were never approved for the WASPs. It would have freed male pilots for combat but those fearing combat scuttled the plan. | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE |