Ozy Classics: the forgotten pioneers – OZY

A century ago, Jackson, Wyoming, a small frontier town of about 300 people, was the poster child of what economists call a tragedy of the commons. With laws unenforced and taxes and fines unpaid, the city’s coffers dried up while its streets swam in mud and garbage. Needing a Wyatt Earp figure who could put an end to the anarchy and decline, the Wandering City stumbled upon a radical but hugely successful solution to its problems: female domination.

The death toll in British concentration camps during the Second Boer War in South Africa would have been much higher had it not been for the fearless work of Emily Hobhouse. When she heard of the horrific conditions in the camps, which housed Boer women and children, she started fundraising and traveled to South Africa to visit the sites. After her visit, she submitted a report to Parliament, which improved conditions in the camps, saving thousands of lives.

Not all political or social revolutions begin with gunfire, a formal declaration, or even street raids. Sometimes they begin … with a strongly worded letter. On May 21, 1954, Jo Ann Gibson Robinson, an English professor at Alabama State College, wrote such a letter to the mayor of Montgomery, Alabama, an act that precipitated one of the most notable demonstrations of the story.

Most Americans can’t remember a Thanksgiving that didn’t start with the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade in New York. The parade became synonymous with the department store chain, but what really made Macy’s reputation as “the world’s largest store” was not an it, but a she. Before Margaret Getchell first introduced herself as a cashier, RH Macy & Co. primarily sold ribbons, lace, and related accessories; under his visionary influence, it would become a modern department store in its own right, the first of its kind in America.

To found and run a business as a woman in early 19th century Europe was to defy serious odds. Running a liquor business required rare audacity. At a time when the Portuguese wine industry was on the brink of extinction, Antónia Ferreira learned all there was to know about the sector and rebuilt it, helping to drive a wave of regeneration that saved the economy of the whole region.

In 1888, a young German, Bertha Benz, is preparing to embark on a historic race. Benz’s husband, Carl, was a skilled mechanic, not to mention the father of the modern automobile, but it was Bertha’s moral and financial support that was essential to getting her cars on the road. Carl was a perfectionist and didn’t believe his car in development could still cover long distances, so Benz decided to test that hypothesis by driving 65 miles to visit his mother in a remarkable journey that changed the course of automotive history.

Joan Clarke was a brilliant logic and math talent whose name would have been lost to history had it not been for World War II. She worked alongside Alan Turing to find the solution that cracked the Nazi Enigma code that opened the war in favor of the Allies, giving them direct operational access to live communications. More people now know the name Joan Clarke after Keira Knightley portrayed her in the movie The Imitation Game, but her amazing life and contribution to world peace deserves over 120 minutes of our time.

If you thought self-isolation in your apartment or house was bad, try being stuck alone on Wrangel Island in northern Siberia. Cook and seamstress Ada Blackjack was the sole survivor of an attempt to claim the island for the British Empire. After three of her expedition partners abandoned the island in an attempt to reach Siberia, she had to care for the last member of their party, who had scurvy. He died six months later and she survived another two months, with no one but a cat for company, before being rescued.

The first black woman to earn a medical degree in America, Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler has released A book of medical discourses: in two parts, a text that has democratized medical care, making knowledge accessible to doctors and caregivers alike. Her treatise is the result of years of work dealing with recently freed former slaves and disadvantaged women in the aftermath of the Civil War.