March 3: Nichelle Nichols
Science fiction fans worldwide will recognize this iconic woman: Lieutenant Uhura on the original ‘Star Trek’ series. As one of the first Black female lead actors on television, Nichelle inspired many, including Martin Luther King, Jr., who convinced her to stay on the show when she considered leaving after one season, and partnering with NASA to help recruit astronauts, like Sally Ride, Frederick Gregory, and Mae Jemison.
Nichols wrote, "When I was on those wonderful sets with all of the cast members, the universe of Star Trek began to feel not so much a fantasy but an opportunity to lay the groundwork for what we might actually achieve by the 23rd Century … a bold aspiration and an affirmation of Uhura as we eagerly await her arrival."
(Source: Kalhan Rosenblatt for NBC News)
March 10: Minnie Mae Freeman 
On January 12, 1888, Minnie Freeman was only 19, working at a school in Mira Valley, Nebraska, when one of the deadliest blizzards in US history struck. The storm, later called “The Children’s Blizzard,” killed an estimated 200 people, but Minnie, in an act of love and bravery, saved all 13 of her students from the same fate by guiding them back to her own home to wait out the storm. Later, a song called “Theirteen Were Saved; Or Nebraska’s Fearless Maid” was written in Ms. Freeman’s honor, and she earned the nickname “The Fearless Maid.” She claimed this feat was “an act of simply duty.”
Minnie went on to become an activist for women’s rights until her death in 1943. She is immortalized in a mural on the Nebraska State Capital building, and in an episode of the TV show ‘Little House on the Prairie.’
(Source: Justin Housman at Adventure-journal.com)
March 17: Tye Leung Shulze
Tye Leung Shulze was the first Chinese woman to vote in a U.S. election.
She was born in 1887 San Francisco’s Chinatown to a large family of working class immigrants from China. Tye was sold into domestic servitude as a child and promised, through arranged marriage, to a man in Montana as a 12-year-old. Refusing this life, she ran away and advocated for immigrant victims of trafficking for the rest of her life. In her lifetime, she rescued 3,000 Chinese women and girls from being trafficked.
In 1910, she was hired as an interpreter, becoming the first Chinese-American woman to work for the Federal Government. She voted for the first time in 1912, just one year after women were granted that right in the state of California. Of this experience she said: "…I thought long over that. I studied; I read about all your men who wished to be president. I learned about the new laws. I wanted to KNOW what was right, not to act blindly...we women are more careful than the
men. We want to do our whole duty more. I do not think it is just the newness that makes us like that. It is conscience."
(Source: PBS’s American Masters Series)
March 24: Sonia Sotomayor 
Sonia Maria Sotomayor is the first Latina and only the third woman ever appointed to SCOTUS. She was born and raised in the Bronx, New York, by her Puerto Rican parents. She graduated as valedictorian of her high school and went on to earn a full scholarship to Princeton, where she graduated summa cum laude in 1976. Inspired by Nancy Drew and Perry Mason, Sonia Sotomayor went on to Yale Law School. At both schools, she advocated for more Latinx representation.
Sotomayor taught at both New York University and Columbia Law schools and also holds the distinction of being the youngest judge to join the United States District Court of the Southern District of New York, to which she was nominated by the George H.W. Bush administration. She was nominated and confirmed to the Supreme Court in 2009.
Justice Sotomayor was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age 8, which she talks about in her memoir ‘My Beloved World’. Sotomayor recently appeared at MDC’s Wolfson Campus.
(Source: National Women’s History Museum, ‘My Beloved World’)
March 31: Patsy Mink
If you played on a girl’s high school sports team, you have Patsy Mink to thank—she was one of the authors of Title IX, which opened school academics and athletics to women. Before that, though, she was born in Maui, Hawai’i, graduated from high school as valedictorian, earned a law degree, and became the first Japanese-American attorney in Hawai’i.
As a minority woman attorney, she felt called into politics to change some of the “boys club” she experienced in that space, as such, Patsy Mink devoted her entire adult life to public service, becoming the first minority woman to serve in the United States Congress. She served in the Hawai’i Territorial Legislature, the U.S. Interior Department, and even ran for President in 1972 as a symbol of protest against the war in Vietnam. She served in the House of Representatives from 1965 to 1977, and then again from 1990 until her death in 2002.
(Source: The Honolulu Advertiser)
March 5: Wangari Maathai 
Born in Nyeri, Kenya, Wangari Maathai was an educator, writer, politician, and environmental activist. Her Green Belt Movement, founded in 1977, worked with women in villages across Kenya to plant 30 million trees to help combat deforestation and desertification. The trees also
provided a fuel source for the villages. The movement took off and similar programs began in several other African nations.
Her advocacy also extended to AIDS prevention, human rights, and women’s issues, and she was elected to Kenya’s National Assembly with an astonishing 90% of the vote. In 2004, she won the Nobel Prize for Peace.
In her book Unbowed she wrote: “The future of the planet concerns all of us, and all of us should do what we can to protect it.. you don't need a diploma to plant a tree.” Wangari Maathai died in 2011.
(Source: Britanica.com)
March 12: Ada Lovelace:
Although her father was the poet Lord Byron, Ada Lovelace is famous in her own right. Augusta Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace demonstrated a gift for mathematics at an early age. Born in 1815, little Ada’s mother insisted her tutors teach her math and science—these were not considered standard or necessary subjects for women at the time.
Before her 18th birthday, Lovelace met Charles Babbage, a well-known mathematician and inventor, who became her mentor. Later, he asked her to translate one of his articles (she also had a gift for languages), which she did—adding her own thoughts and ideas about the analytical engine discussed in the text. These notes described how codes could be created for the device, and theorized that the engine could repeat a series of instructions. Due to these ideas, which are the foundation of computing today, she is considered the first computer programmer—before computers were even invented.
(Source: Biography.com)
March 19: Graça Machel 
“There is vast potential to be tapped in the dreams, aspirations, abilities, and determination of girls and young women,” Graça Machel said. Machel’s early life in a small Mozambique village and subsequent education in Lisbon sparked her lifelong advocacy for girls and women, social justice, and education.
She was Mozambique’s first Minister of Education and Culture, and has worked extensively with the United Nations to champion her causes. She has earned her a WHO Gold Medal, among other accolades. Her 1996 UNICEF report on the effects of war on children was a pivotal document in creating stronger policies to protect children in vulnerable situations.
Further, Machel holds the unique distinction of being the First Lady of two separate nations—the only person to ever do so. She was married to the first President of independent Mozambique (they gained independence from Portugal in the70s) Samora Machel. After President Samora Machel died in 1986, she fell in love with and married another President—Nelson Mandela, the first Black President of South Africa.
(Source: thebenchmark.com)
March 26: Malala Yousafzai
Malala Yousafzai is a name you might recognize—her 2013 book ‘I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban’ tells her story. After being told she could no longer go to school, Malala did not stay quiet and has used her life and experiences to advocate for every girls’ right to an education through Malala Fund. This charity dedicated to “dedicated to giving every girl an opportunity to achieve a future she chooses” earned her the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014—the youngest person to ever earn the distinction at just 17.
Yousafzai graduated from Oxford in 2020, and still continues her fight for education and equality. More than 130 million girls around the world are not in school—that’s 130 million potential educators, lawyers, doctors, inventors, and educated citizens. Malala said, “I tell my story not because it is unique, but because it is the story of many girls.”
March 7: Roxcy Pearl O’Neil Bolton 
“Women are not disasters,” Roxcy Bolton announced. For various historical reasons, the National Weather Bureau (now called the National Weather Service) started naming hurricanes women’s names. In the 1960s though, Miami activist and early member of NOW (the National Organization for Women) Roscy Bolton started working to change that.
Her cheeky suggestion was to name the storms for senators who “delight in having things named after them.” While this may have been a joke, the World Meteorological Association adopted the system we have now—alternating women’s and men’s names for each letter of the alphabet. She also advocated for many women’s issues, and founded Women in Distress, a shelter in Ft. Lauderdale that still exists today.
Her former home in Coral Gables is a Florida Heritage Site, and she was inducted into the Florida Women’s Hall of Fame in 1984. She died in 2017 at the age of 90.
(Source: werehistory.org, wikipedia)
March 14: Mary McLeod Bethune
Daytona Beach’s own HBCU Bethune-Cookman was founded, in part, by Mary McLeod Bethune. Bethune, whose parents were enslaved, graduated from a North Carolina boarding school and went on to college in Chicago. Unable to find a church willing to sponsor her missionary work, she became an educator instead.
In 1899, she moved to Palatka, Florida with her husband and son. When her marriage ended, she opened the Daytona Beach Literary and Industrial School for Training Negro Girls to make sure she could support her son. This school eventually became a college, which then merged with the all-male Cookman Institute, and Behtune Cookman College was born in 1929.
Bethune led voter registration drives after women gained the right to vote and served as the National Youth Administration director of Negro Affairs under FDR, raking her the highest Blak woman in government at the time. She also served as VP of the NAACP for many years. Bethune is immortalized in a statue in the National Statuary Hall Collection in Washington D.C.
(Source: National Women’s History Museum)
March 21: Dr. Donna Shalala 
Dr. Donna Shalala’s name probably sounds familiar—she was the president of the University of Miami for 14 years. Before that, though, she taught at Baruch College and Columbia University. Dr. Shalala was also the first woman to lead a Big Ten Conference School and the second woman to lead a major research university. This was due to her work as chancellor of UW-Madison, where she began working in 1988.
Dr. Shalala has also served under two presidents—Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton—and was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018 and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from George W. Bush, among other accolades. Her work in government really began, though, when she became one of the country’s first Peace Corps Volunteers. Most recently, Dr. Shalala was a member of the 2026 FIFA World Cup bid committee—the team’s bid, as you may already know, was successful.
(Source: womeninwisconsin.org, miamifwc26.com)
March 28: Marjory Stoneman Douglas
The “Guardian of the Glades” was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1890, but by 1915, she was living in Miami with her father, who founded what would become ‘The Miami Herald’ in 1908. She worked as a reporter and editor until 1917, when she was the first Florida woman to enlist in the Naval Reserve, eventually serving with the Red Cross and returning to Miami to work again in journalism after the war.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas was an early supporter of designating the Everglades as a national park, which happened in 1947, the same year her book ‘Everglades: River of Grass’ was published. “There are no other Everglades in the world,” she wrote. Her continued advocacy earned her the designation of Conservationist of the Year twice, as well as the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas died at 108 years old and her ashes were scattered in her beloved Everglades.
(Source: National Women’s History Museum)