Caitlyn Jenner, 1949

Jenner in 2015. Photo credit - Wikipedia

An Olympic gold medal-winning decathlete, television presenter, socialite, and transgender rights activist.

Caitlyn Marie Jenner was born William Bruce Jenner in Mount Kisco, New York. As an undiagnosed dyslectic boy, Jenner struggled at school but found an outlet in sports. After high school’s sophomore year, Jenner’s family moved to Newtown, Connecticut, where he began his athletic career, playing basketball and gridiron football and practicing waterskiing independently, winning the East Coast all-over champion three times. After graduating, Jenner earned a football scholarship at Graceland College in Lamoni, Iowa, and studied physical education. A few months into freshman year, Jenner had a knee injury and was forced to stop playing football. His coach recognized his talent and encouraged him to switch to track.

In 1970, at the age of 21, Jenner debuted as a decathlete, reaching 5th place in the Drake Relays decathlon. Less than two years later, he participated in the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, West Germany, finishing in 10th place. In the next Olympics in Montreal, Canada, 27 years old Jenner won the gold medal in the decathlon and set a new world record with a score of 8,634 points.

Following his Olympic success, Jenner became a television sports commentator and a spokesperson for Wheaties breakfast cereal. In the next few decades, he made television commercials, starred in several television programs, published numerous books, became a motivational speaker, and headed the aircraft company Bruce Jenner Aviation. In 2007, Jenner’s fame renewed when he starred on the reality show Keeping Up with the Kardashians alongside his (then) wife Kris Kardashian and their children.

In 2015, at the age of 66, Jenner revealed that she identifies herself as a woman and adopts the name Caitlyn Marie Jenner. Her transition was documented in the reality series I Am Cait. Her coming out as a trans woman and her public gender reassignment process became a cultural milestone, breaking many stereotypes and prejudices for American people. Jenner became a transgender rights activist advocating for transgender rights.

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“When you have a voice, and you have an opportunity at the world level to be able to speak, it has to be right.”

“When you have a voice, and you have an opportunity at the world level to be able to speak, it has to be right.”

Fun Facts

  • She is of English, Scottish, Irish, Dutch, and Welsh descent.
  • She was married three times and has 6 biological children and 4 stepchildren.
  • After winning the gold medal at the 1976 Olympics, she was handed an American flag from a bystander, which she carried during the victory lap, starting a new tradition among winning athletes.
  • She wore the same pair of socks in every decathlon she participated in.
  • She published 7 books, including her memoir The Secrets of My Life.
  • She was the first transgender person to appear on the cover of Vanity Fair.
  • In April 2021, she announced that she was running for governor of California for the Republican party.

Awards

  • Olympic Gold Medal (1975)
  • Inducted into the US Olympic Hall of Fame (1986)
  • Inducted into the Graceland University Athletics Hall of Fame (1984)
  • The Arthur Ashe Award for Courage (2015)

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Category: Media and Sports
Tags: Athlete and LGBTQ

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Adrienne-Rich-WWP
Literature & Poetry

Adrienne Rich, 1929-2012

An award-winning American poet, essayist, and feminist thought influencer, who was called “one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century.”

During her long and productive career, Rich published more than 30 books of poetry and essays. In her writing, she explored issues of gender, racism, consumerism, class privilege, and politics. She was considered a radical figure in Second Wave Feminism, yet she was accepted by the institutions, won many awards, and is now considered a classic. The first one was for the collection of poetry, which she published at 22. The same year she graduated from Radcliffe College. Adrienne Cecile Rich was born in Baltimore, MD, and over the years she taught English, poetry, and creative writing at several institutions, including Swarthmore College, Columbia University, City College of New York, and Scripps College in Claremont. Among her most influential works, were two texts that dissected heterosexuality and motherhood as socially constructed institutions. In both cases, she provided a critical perspective toward every woman’s freedom to choose. In the case of Compulsory Heterosexuality, for example, she presented the notion of Lesbian Continuum as an alternative way of thinking about the variety of relationships between women. Both in her poetry and her non-fiction writing, the honestly spoke of taboos, like that of motherhood. In her book “Of Woman Born”, she points out to the difference between motherhood as an experience and an imposed political institution. Her mother was a concert pianist who put her career aside to raise her family, while her father developed his career as an academic. Rich embodied the feeling that she was the benefactor of her mother’s sacrifice. When awarded the 1973 National Book Award, she declared that she accepted it on behalf of all women and shared it with her fellow nominees, Alice Walker and Audre Lorde. In 1997 she refused the National Medal of Arts, she did so to express her critique of the Clinton administration. Her famous quote from the refusal letter stated: “art means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of the power which holds it hostage”. By her thirties, she was married and had three children. After her husband’s suicide, she had a relationship with novelist and poet Michelle Cliff. This post is also available in: Español Read more...
Alice Coachman WWP
Sports

Alice Coachman, 1923-2014

High jump athlete, the first African-American woman to win an Olympic gold medal.

Alice Coachman was born in Albany, Georgia. While in elementary school, her teacher and aunt noticed her athletic skills and encouraged her to practice sports despite her parents’ objections. As a girl in the segregated south, Coachman had no access to athletic training facilities or the opportunity to compete in organized sports events (due to color and gender). Determine to develop her natural talent, Coachman used everything available to her – running with no shoes in fields and dirt roads and making high jump crossbars out of rope and sticks. During high school, Coachman caught the attention of the boys’ track coach, who took her under his wings and coached her. Within a year, she was spotted by a recruiter from Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama, and at 15, she got a scholarship. Her unusual jumping style, combined western roll, and straight jumping techniques helped her win the national championships in the next nine years. In 1939, at the age of 16, she started her scholarship at the Tuskegee Preparatory School, which in addition to studying and practicing, required mending uniforms and cleaning the school’s sports facilities. During this period, she won high jumps companions and national championships in the 50-meter dash, 100-meter dash, and the 400-meter relay team. She also won three conference championships as a guard on the women’s basketball team. At 23, Coachman received her degree in dressmaking and continued her education at Albany State College, where she studied Home Economics and science. In her late teens and early 20s, the years that were supposed to be the pick of her career, the Olympic Games were canceled because of WW2. Her first global stage appearance was made possible at the 1948 Olympic Games in London. On her Olympic tryouts, Coachman qualified to the US team with a high jump of 5 feet 4 inches, breaking the previous record by ¾ inch. At the Olympics high jump finals, she reached first place with a leap of 5 feet and 6⅛ inches on her first try, becoming the first black woman to win the gold medal and the only American woman to win a gold medal at the 1948 Games. On her return to the US, Coachman became a celebrity, she met President Truman and former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and various parades were held in her honor. Following the Olympic Games, 24 years old Coachman retired from her athlete career, with 34 national titles under her belt. She finished her degree at Albany State College and became a teacher and track-and-field instructor. In 1952, at the age of 29, she made history again when she signed as Coca-Cola Company’s spokesperson, becoming the first African-American woman to endorse an international product. In 1994, at 71, she established the Alice Coachman Track and Field Foundation. This non-profit organization supports young athletes in starting their careers and helps Olympic veterans adjust to life after retainment. Coachman died at the age of 90 of cardiac arrest. This post is also available in: Español Read more...
Anne-Whitney-WWP
Arts

Anne Whitney, 1821-1915

A 19th century independent "New Woman", poet and a sculptress, known for statues that reflect her political and social views as an abolitionist and women’s rights advocate.

Born in Watertown, Massachusetts to a family of Unitarians and abolitionists. Her interest in the arts began in childhood, first as a poet and later on as a sculptress. At the age of 34, Whitney made her first portrait busts, and at 38, she published a collection of her poems but decided to focus mainly on sculpturing. To get a better understanding of the human body, Whitney moved to New York to study anatomy at Brooklyn Hospital, and then to Philadelphia to study drawing and modeling. When she was 46 years old, Whitney and her life partner, Abby Adeline Manning, moved to Rome to learn new sculpturing practices and creating art using nude male models (which was considered inappropriate in the US). At the age of 52, two years after she returned to the USA, Whitney started to work on her most famous work – a sculpture of Samuel Adams, located in the National Statuary Hall Collection in Washington, DC. As part of the ‘New Women’ Movement, Whitney believed that the best way to express her social and political viewpoint is via art. She created many statues, among them were of leading figures of the Suffrage Movement, such as Frances Willard and Lucy Stone, political figures such as the Haitian leader Toussaint Louverture, and the philanthropist Alice Tileston Hemenway. Whitney lived an unconventional and independent life, opened her own studios and traveled through Europe and the US. She was an abolitionist and fought for women’s rights. These days her art pieces are presented around the US, in museums and other public spaces. This post is also available in: Español Read more...
Barbara-Jordan-WWP
Politics & Leaders

Barbara Jordan, 1936-1996

A lawyer, educator, and politician. The first black US Congresswoman from the Deep South.

Barbara Charline Jordan was born in Houston, Texas, and grew up on an unpaved street “in the biggest ghetto in the biggest state.” Jordan graduated with a B.A. from Texas Southern University and later received a law degree from Boston University. After two failed attempts at running for the Texas House of Representatives, she won a seat in the 1966 Texas Senate, the first black woman in the position – among 30 white men. In 1972 she was the first black person elected to the National Congress from Texas since the Reconstruction era, after the Civil War. She served only six years due to ill health and spent the rest of her life teaching at the University of Texas in Austin. Barbara Jordan was a great orator, a skill that gained her national recognition when addressing the Judiciary Committee in 1974 on national television – she spoke in praise of the constitution when calling for the impeachment of President Nixon after the Watergate scandal. Her talent for speaking in public made her the first woman and the first black keynote speaker at a Democratic National Convention in 1976. At the same time, her nature as a politician was a pragmatic negotiator, which led to criticism from black and feminist activists. In Jordan’s last public service position, she was appointed Head of the Commission on Immigration Reform, for which she had to travel to Mexico and the Dominican Republic in a wheelchair. She died at the age of 59 from pneumonia. Her death made her the first African American woman buried in the Texas State Cemetery.   Dive deeper into the inspiring story of Barbara Jordan with our fun and engaging printable worksheet! Available now on Etsy and Teachers Pay Teachers. This post is also available in: Español Read more...
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