Mary Regula, 1926-2018

Photo credit - courtesy of the National First Ladies’ Library

The founder of the National First Ladies' Library.

Mary Regula was born in Girard, Ohio, to Eastern European immigrant parents. Growing up, she was fascinated with Eleanor Roosevelt, followed by an interest in American history and particularly in the women who influenced it.

After high school, she was awarded a scholarship to Mount Union College in Ohio, where she studied American history and education. At the time, she met her future husband, Ralph Regula, and after graduation, the couple married and settled on her husband’s family farm in Navarre, Ohio. There, she worked as a teacher and educator.

Since 1960, her husband got involved in politics, and in 1973 he was elected into the US house of representatives, a position he served in for 18 terms until he retired in 2009. During the 36 years that her husband was in US Congress, Regula was his most trusted adviser. As a Democrat, she contributed her opinions and helped him to express a moderate Republican voice. She had a desk in his office in Washington, assisting him in various events. On one of those occasions, Regula was supposed to deliver a speech on Mary Todd Lincoln. She could barely find information about her. This experience gave her the idea of a library focused on the first ladies of the US, from Martha Washington to the current First Lady.

In 1994, at the age of 66, Regula recruited 13 women to set the ground for establishing a first ladies library as a research and education center about the first ladies of the US and other women pioneers in US history. With first lady Hillary Clinton as honorary co-chair and with the support of all the living first ladies, she launched a nationwide funding campaign, and in 1998 the First Ladies’ Library was opened to the public. Today, the library, located at the Saxton McKinley house – the family home of Ida Saxton McKinley, the wife of President William McKinley, is a designated historic site.

Throughout her life, she promoted women’s issues. She was the National Cabinet of Mount Union Women president and founded the first National Student Women’s Scholarship. She was the Chairman of “Made in the USA,” advocating for Americans to purchase domestically manufactured products, and a member of numerous organizations, including the Smithsonian Society, the US Capitol Historical Society, the Ohio Historical Society, and National Trust for Historic Preservation.

In her later years, she had Alzheimer’s disease and passed away when she was 91 years old.

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Fun Facts

  • She has three children.
  • She grew up in a democrat surrounding; the first Republican she met was her husband.
  • She was Catholic, and her husband was Protestant. To overcome the differences, they decided to raise their children Episcopalian.
  • She and her husband commuted every weekend from Washington to their home in Navarre, Ohio.
  • The Ralph and Mary Regula Center for Public Studies and Civic Engagement is named in their honor.

Awards

  • The Women Helping Women Award (1996)
  • Inducted into the Ohio Women's Hall of Fame (1999)
  • Honorary doctorates from Mount Union College and The University of Akron

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Category: Literature & Poetry
Tags: Educator

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Adelina-Otero-Warren-WWP
Activism & Feminism

Adelina Otero-Warren, 1881-1965

A suffrage leader, educator, and politician. The first Latina to run for US Congress and one of the first’s women to serve as a government official in New Mexico.

Adelina “Nina” Otero Warren was born near Los Lunas, New Mexico. Her family was among the early settlers in New Mexico, and her parents were part of the Hispanic elite. When she was 2 years old, her father was killed by an Anglo squatter. A few years later, her mother married an English businessman, and she grew up in a multicultural environment. She was influenced by her mother, who was an advocate for social and educational developments and served as the director of Santa Fe’s Board of Education. At 16, the family relocated to Santa Fe, where she became a socialite. At the age of 26, she married Lieutenant Rawson D. Warren, a cavalry officer who was nine years older than her. Though the marriage did not last long, she kept her x-husband’s last name and called herself a widow, so she would not be stigmatized as a divorced woman.   At 31, Nina moved to NYC to keep house for her brother. There, she became active in Anne Morgan’s settlement house, working alongside the famous suffragist Alice Paul and organizing crafts programs for working-class women. Two years later, her mother died, and Nina returned to Santa Fe to take care of her half-siblings. Upon her arrival, she started working for the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage. Soon she became the first Mexican-American state leader of the Congressional Union in New Mexico, raising support from the Spanish-speaking community as well as from the English-speaking community. Using her family connections, she was a successful lobbyist for voting in favor of the Nineteenth Amendment, and she had a key role in its ratification in 1920. In 1922, at the age of 41, Nina ran as the Republican Party nominee for New Mexico to the US House of Representatives – The first Latina to run for the US Congress. During her campaign, she spoke Spanish and advocated for the improvement of education, health care, and welfare services, as well as for the preservation of Hispano heritage and culture. Ultimately, she lost the election by less than 9%, probably because it was discovered that she was a divorcee, not a widow. In 1917 Nina was appointed as the Santa Fe Superintendent of Instruction – one of the first women to serve as government officials in New Mexico. In her 12 years in office, she worked tirelessly to improve the education of Hispano. This post is also available in: Español Read more...
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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...
Agnes Macphail WWP
Politics & Leaders

Agnes Macphail, 1890-1954

A Canadian politician. The first woman elected to the House of Commons of Canada.

Agnes Campbell MacPhail was born in Proton Township, Ontario, Canada, to a family of farmers. At 14, she wanted to attend high school, but her parents wanted her help on the farm. After receiving permission to further her education, MacPhail went to study at the Owen Sound Collegiate School for a year before transferring to Stratford Normal School, graduating with a teaching certificate. While teaching at several schools in Ontario and Alberta, she became active in the Ontario agricultural co-operative movement, joining the political and social organization United Farmers of Ontario (UFO) and the United Farm Women of Ontario. She also began to publish a column in the Farmer’s Sun newspaper. Following the amendments to the Elections Act that passed two years earlier, Canadian women could vote in national elections for the first time in 1921. Macphail decided to represent the farmers in her region and ran as a member of the Progressive Party of Canada, representing the district of South-East Grey. When elected, she became the first woman Member of Parliament (MP) in Canada and served for 19 years. In 1924, Macphail felt that the Progressive Party did not protect and promote the interests of farmers and industrial workers, and she co-founded the Ginger Group. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the group allied with various agrarian, labor, and socialist groups to found the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), with Macphail serving as its first president. The organization lobbied for the nationalization of key industries and called for the formation of a welfare state to provide universal health insurance, pensions, and unemployment insurance. Throughout her tenure as MP, Macphail promoted various social issues, advocating farmers’ rights and also women, immigrants, miners, prisoners, and other marginalized groups. In 1936, she contributed to the formation of the investigative Archambault Commission, which concluded with overall prison reform; in 1939, she founded the Elizabeth Fry Society of Canada, which assisted women and gender diverse people in the justice system. In 1940, at the age of 50, she lost her seat in the House of Commons, and for the next three years, she wrote for various newspapers, lectured throughout Canada and the US, and worked for the CCF. In 1943, she returned to politics and won the provincial election to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. Alongside Rae Luckock, Macphail became one of the first two women members of the Ontario Legislature and was the first woman sworn in as an Ontario Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP). She lost her seat in the 1945 elections but won it back three years later. In 1951, her final year in this role, she worked for the passage of the Female Employees Fair Remuneration Act, the first equal pay legislation in Ontario. Shortly after, she lost her seat. She continued to promote issues she believed in, mainly women’s status and social rights. In 1954, she was offered an appointment to the Senate by Prime Minister Louis St-Laurent, but she died before receiving the position. She was 63 years old. 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...
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