Marjory Stoneman Douglas, 1890-1998

Stoneman during her college years. Photo credit - Wikipedia

Author, journalist, and conservationist who became known as the Mother of the Everglades.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. At 6, her parents separated, and she and her mother moved in with her maternal grandparents in Taunton, Massachusetts. While growing up, her mother was committed several times to a mental sanitarium.

From a young age, Douglas was an avid reader, and by her teens, she began to write. At 16, she contributed to the children’s publication St. Nicholas Magazine, and in the following year, won a prize for her story “An Early Morning Paddle.”

After graduating from Taunton High School, Douglas studied English at Wellesley College, where she edited the college literary magazine and joined the suffrage club. In 1912, the same year she received her degree, her mother died of cancer.

After working in various department stores, she met and married Kenneth Douglas, who was 30 years her senior. Soon, she discovered she married a con artist, who committed forgeries and theft crimes and tried to scam her father, whom she hadn’t been in touch with for 19 years. While her husband was in jail, Douglas’s father reconnected with her and persuaded her to file for divorce and reunite with him in Miami, Florida.

Douglas began to work at her father’s paper, which later became The Miami Herald, writing the society column, covering tea parties and social events. Not long after, she received the responsibility of the editorial page.

When the US entered WW1 in 1917, 27 years old Douglas took a writing assignment and became the first woman in Florida to enlist in the Naval Reserve. The following year, she joined the Red Cross and got stationed in Paris as a nurse.

On her return to the US, Douglas was appointed assistant editor at The Miami Herald; she wrote a daily column, The Galley, addressing social issues close to her heart, such as women’s suffrage, civil rights, and urban planning for the growing population.

In 1923, at 33, Douglas had a nervous breakdown and left her job in the newspaper. She began to work as a freelance writer, selling articles and short stories to various magazines, which enabled her to purchase a house in Coconut Grove. Douglas wrote about life events such as murders, fires, and hurricanes, and her own experiences, from WW1 to the life of the pioneers in South Florida. Between 1920 to 1990, she published over 100 stories and articles.

In addition to writing, Douglas also taught at the University of Miami, served on the editorial board of the University of Miami Press, was the book review editor of The Miami Herald, and wrote plays for the Miami Theater.

In 1942, Douglas was asked to write about the Miami River. During her research, she became aware of the threats of the demolition of the Everglades and wrote about it instead. In 1947, after five years of work, she published the book The Everglades: River of Grass, in which she discussed the construction of the Tamiami trail that was built around and through the Everglades and the construction of dams and canals that would drain the wetlands and destroy its wildlife and ecosystem.

The book became a best-seller and initiated Douglas’s second career as an activist and spokeswoman for conservation. She played a crucial role in defeating plans to construct an airstrip within the heart of the Everglades, alter the natural water flow within the grasslands, and promote initiatives to restore the natural ecosystem.

In 1969, at 79, Douglas founded the Friends of the Everglades, which enabled her to advocate for preserving the Everglades nationally and internationally. Thanks to her efforts, the Everglades was declared a National Park in 1947, an International Biosphere Preserve in 1976, a legislatively designated wilderness area in 1978, a Wetland of International Significance in 1986, and, in 1991, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Everglades Protection Act passed, which fund water treatment facilities in the area. She was awarded by President Clinton the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her tireless work in 1993.

All this time, Douglas never stopped writing; in 1951, she published her first novel, Road to the Sun, and in 1987, her autobiography, Voice of the River. Throughout her life, she published ten books and 20 short story collections.

She died at the age of 108.

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“You can't conserve what you haven't got.”

“You can't conserve what you haven't got.”

Fun Facts

  • Her groundbreaking book The Everglades: River of Grass was often compared to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in terms of impact and awakening of the public conscience.
  • She sold one of her first stories to the magazine Black Mask for $600, equivalent to approximal $10,310 today.
  • Her play Storm Warnings portrays the life of mobster Al Capone.
  • She gave Queen Elizabeth II a signed copy of The Everglades: River of Grass in 1991.
  • She chose trees over gifts and celebrations on her birthday, resulting in over 100,000 trees planted across the state. On the lawn of the governor's mansion, a bald cypress was planted as a special tribute.
  • Her ashes were scattered over the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Wilderness Area in the Everglades National Park.
  • Florida's Department of Environmental Protection building is named in her honor.
  • The National Parks Conservation Association's Marjory Stoneman Douglas Award is named in her honor.
  • Two South Florida public schools are named in her honor.
  • Her house in Miami is a National Historic Landmark.

Awards

  • The Wellesley College Alumnae Achievement Award (1977)
  • The Presidential Medal of Freedom (1993)
  • Inducted into the National Wildlife Federation Hall of Fame (1999)
  • Inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame (2000)

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Category: Activism & Feminism and Media
Tags: Author and Journalist

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Ada Louise Huxtable WWP
Arts

Ada Louise Huxtable, 1921-2013

An architecture critic and a writer. Received the first-ever Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.

Born Ada Louise Landman in NYC, an only child in a middle-class Jewish family. Growing up in Manhattan, Huxtable loved strolling along the streets, fascinated by its building, such as the Grand Central Terminal, the Metropolitan Museum, and the Museum of Natural History. She studied art at Hunter College, graduating magna cum laude, and then architectural history at NYU Institute of Fine Arts. At the time, she worked in Bloomingdale’s furnishings department, where she met her soon-to-be husband, Garth Huxtable. In 1946, at 25, Huxtable landed a job as an assistant curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art. After five years, she left her job to study Italian architecture in Italy for a year. Upon her return, she began writing as a contributing editor for various art and architectural journals. At the age of 37, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship, in which she examined the structural and design advances of American architecture. In 1963, 42 years old Huxtable was hired as the first architecture critic at The New York Times, a position she held for almost 20 years. In her column, she wrote about new and old buildings, threatened buildings, and bad-designed buildings. She also mentioned emerging architects, architectural trends, movements, and exhibitions. Huxtable encouraged the everyday readers to look at buildings from a new perspective, not as an assembly of bricks and pilasters but as a public statement with history and meaning. Raising awareness of the city’s heritage, the urban environment, and civic engagement, she set the tone for modern architecture criticism, for which, at the age of 49, she was the first-ever to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. In 1981, at the age of 60, Huxtable received a MacArthur grant that allowed her in-depth research on subjects she was interested in, such as the development of the skyscraper, the negative impact of postmodernism building, and preservation vs. modernity. At 76, she returned to writing for the public as an architecture critic for The Wall Street Journal, publishing columns for the next 15 years. Throughout her career, Huxtable was involved in various committees, serving as a fellow at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the Architectural Selection and Building Design Committees for the Getty Center, Getty Villa, and as a Jury member for The Pritzker Architecture Prize. She published more than 10 books on architecture, including “Kicked a Building Lately?,” “Goodbye History,” “Hello Hamburger,” and a biography of Frank Lloyd Wright. Huxtable died in NYC at 91. This post is also available in: Español Read more...
Agatha Christie WWP
Literature & Poetry

Agatha Christie, 1890-1976

English author and playwright. Known as the Queen of Mystery for her detective novels.

Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born in Torquay, England, into a middle-class family. In her early years, she was homeschooled by her parents and taught herself to read at the age of five, against her mother’s wish. In 1901, at 10, she wrote her first poem, “The Cow Slip.” That same year, her father died, and not long after, her mother remarried, and the family moved to Cheadle, Cheshire. She began to receive formal education at Miss Guyer’s Girls’ School but had trouble adjusting to the strict environment. At 15, she was sent to a boarding school in Paris, where she mainly had piano lessons and vocal training. Following her return to England, she began writing short stories reflecting her interest in spiritualism and the paranormal. These include The Call of Wings, and The House of Beauty, later published as The House of Dreams. In addition, she began working on her first novel, Snow Upon the Desert, which she tried to publish under a pseudonym but got rejected by six different publishers. In 1912, at 22, she began a relationship with a military officer named Archie Christie. At the outbreak of World War I, he was sent to fight in France, and the couple had to wait for his home leave to get married. During the war, she volunteered as a nurse at the Voluntary Aid Detachment of the Red Cross. There, she met many Belgian soldiers, which inspired her to create the character of Hercule Poirot – a former Belgian police officer “with a magnificent mustache.” He appeared in Christie’s first detective novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, as the distinguished detective and later in 25 more novels and numerous short stories. That first novel was written in 1916 but was published only in 1920 after Christie signed a six books contract with The Bodley Head publication. After the war, Christie and her husband moved to London, and in 1919 she gave birth to her daughter Rosalind. She continued to write thrillers and murder mystery stories, developing new detective characters, such as Tommy and Tuppence in The Secret Adversary and Miss Jane Marple in the short story collection The Thirteen Problems. In 1926, she published The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, which was an immediate best-seller, and years later was voted the best crime novel ever by the British Crime Writers’ Association. Despite her literary success, she dealt with personal issues. First, her mother died, and then her husband filed for divorce after falling in love with another woman. On December 3rd, 1926, following a fight with her husband, Christie left the house without saying where she was going. The next morning, her car was found abandoned, and the mysterious disappearance of the author became a news sensation. Thousand police officers and 15,000 volunteers searched for her. The author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, gave a medium one of Christie’s gloves to locate her, and a newspaper offered a £100 reward to the person who would find her. Eleven days later, Christie got recognized in a hotel in Yorkshire, where she registered under the last name of her husband’s lover. She suffered from amnesia and couldn’t recall who she was or how she got to Yorkshire. After the incident, she moved to London with her daughter, received psychiatric treatment, and divorced. In 1928, at 38, she took the Orient Express to Istanbul and then continued to Baghdad. While visiting the archaeological site at Ur, she befriended the archaeologist Leonard Woolley, who invited her back the following year. Then, she met the archaeologist Max Mallowan, 13 years her junior. After they married, she joined him on his archaeological expeditions in the Middle East, which inspired many of her stories, such as the 1934 novel Murder on the Orient Express. She continued to publish more novels and short stories, and in 1943, after she disliked a stage adaption of one of her novels, she began to adapt her stories into plays. In the early 1970s, her health began to decline. She published her last novel in 1973 and made her last public appearance in 1974. She died two years later at the age of 85. During her life, she wrote 74 novels (66 of them are detective stories), 14 short-stories collections, 19 plays, and an autobiography. Dozens of her works got adapted into films, TV series, and stage plays. Her books have been translated into over 100 languages and sold over 300 million copies worldwide. In 1976, at the time of her death, she was the best-selling novelist in history.   Dive deeper into the inspiring story of Agatha Christie with our fun and engaging printable worksheet! Available now on Etsy and Teachers Pay Teachers.   This post is also available in: Español Read more...
Alice-Dunbar-Nelson-WWP
Literature & Poetry

Alice Dunbar Nelson, 1875-1935

A poet, journalist, playwright, and political activist. Associated with the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.

Alice Ruth Moore was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, the daughter of a Creole seaman and a former enslaved black seamstress. After graduating high school at 14, she attended a teacher-training program at Straight University, and at 17, she began teaching at an Elementary school in New Orleans. She became involved with activism at the Phyllis Wheatley Club and wrote for the Woman’s Era Club newspaper – the first newspaper created for and by African American women. In 1895, she published her first collection of poems, essays, and short stories titled “Violets and Other Tales.” That same year she moved to NYC, where she helped establish the White Rose Mission – a settlement house for colored girls. Furthering her education, she took courses at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University. Her writings for the Woman’s Era newspaper caught the attention of the poet and journalist Paul Laurence Dunbar, and in 1898, after two years of correspondence, she moved to live with him in Washington, DC, and they got married. Their relationship fertile their writing but was also disruptive and abusive. He raped her before they got married, and after three years of violent behavior, she left him and moved to Wilmington, Delaware. There, Dunbar taught at various institutes, including Howard High School, the Hampton Institute, and the State College for Colored Students. She never stopped studying, and at 32, she received her M.S degree from Cornell University. In 1913, Dunbar worked as the co-editor and writer for the A.M.E. Review – the African Methodist Episcopal Church’s newspaper. She met poet and civil rights activist Robert J. Nelson, and they got married in 1916. Although she was always involved in political activism, supporting the women’s rights movement and working toward the empowerment of women of color, it was only in 1918 that Dunbar-Nelson was appointed to an official role in the movement as a representative of the Woman’s Committee of the Council of Defense. In 1920, she became the co-editor of the progressive black newspaper, the “Wilmington Advocate.” In that same year, she published a literary anthology, aiming at black readers, titled “The Dunbar Speaker and Entertainer.” At 45, Dunbar-Nelson was a successful and popular writer, consistently publishing articles, columns, and essays in newspapers as well as in academic journals. Dunbar-Nelson became a speaker at various events, including the 1928 American Negro Labor Congress Forum in Philadelphia. After she moved with her husband to Philadelphia in 1932, her health declined, and two years later, she passed away at the age of 60. Dunbar-Nelson is a representative of the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Her writing is characterized by complex understandings of race, gender, and ethnicity. In her work, Dunbar-Nelson explored issues that she dealt with as a woman of color, especially her mixed-raced experiences, not belonging here or there. She wrote about her perspective of education opportunity, workplace environment, and social oppression, inspiring generations of black writers to come. This post is also available in: Español Read more...
Alice Walker WWP
Literature & Poetry

Alice Walker, 1944

A novelist, poet, and social activist. The first African-American woman to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Alice Malsenior Tallulah-Kate Walker was born in Eatonton, Georgia, the youngest of eight children of sharecroppers. At 8, she was injured in her eye after her brother played with a BB gun, causing her permanent blindness in one eye. The mark on her eye made her an easy target to her classmates, so she turned to poetry for comfort. Growing up in the segregated south, she attended an only black kids’ high school, from which she graduated valedictorian. Her high scores granted her a full scholarship to Spelman College, where she studied for two years before transferring to Sarah Lawrence College in NYC. In this period, Walker had an abortion which caused her suicidal thoughts. She wrote all about it in her poems. In 1965, at the age of 21, Walker moved to Jackson, Mississippi, and became active in the civil rights movement. She worked for the Legal Defense Fund of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and as a consultant in black history to the Friends of the Children of Mississippi Head Start program while serving as writer-in-residence in various academic institutes publishing essays and short stories. At 23, she married Melvyn Rosenman Leventhal, a Jewish civil rights attorney. At the time, interracial marriage was illegal in the south, and the couple had to travel to NYC to get married. On their return, they became the first legally married interracial couple in Mississippi since 1822, when the miscegenation laws passed. During their nine years of marriage, they suffered recurring harassment from the Ku Klux Klan. In 1970, at 26, Walker published her first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, following the life of an abusive sharecropper husband and father. Three years later, she was appointed editor of Ms. Magazine, published her second poetry collection and her first collection of short stories. In 1976, Walker returned to NYC and published her second novel Meridian, about several civil rights activists in the south during the 1960s. In the late 1970s, she moved to California, where she wrote her best-known work, The Color Purple. Published in 1982, the novel explores the struggles of a black woman in the racist and patriarchal society of 1900s Georgia. The book was a best-seller, and in the following year, 39 years old Walker became the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Later the novel was adapted into a film featuring Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg and a Broadway musical produced by Quincy Jones and Oprah Winfrey. In 1984, she co-founded the feminist publishing company Wild Tree Press. She deepened the world of some of her characters from The Color Purple in two of her novels, The Temple of My Familiar and Possessing the Secret of Joy, and created new characters that allowed her to delve into other social issues, such as female sexuality in By the Light of My Father’s Smile from 1998, and identity questions in Now Are the Time to Open Your Heart from 2005. Throughout the decades, Walker published seven novels, ten poetry collections, four short stories collections, four children’s books, and a dozen collections of essays and articles. In all of her work, Walker deals with the struggles of black people, especially women, and their experiences in sexist, racist, and violent surroundings. Often using Black vernacular, which highlights the hundreds of years of slavery and oppression, she had dealt with complex topics such as rape, isolation, bisexuality, and troubled relationships within the black community. Walker is a long-time social and political activist, promoting and fighting for various causes, from black and women’s rights to environmental issues, Palestinians’ fight for independence, and the elimination of female genital mutilation. This post is also available in: Español Read more...
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