"Elizabeth Thorn Scott Flood opened Oakland's first private school for African American children in 1857, paving the way for desegregated education in California. In 1913, Piedmont nurse Bertha Wright founded Children's Hospital Oakland and established the state's first public child daycare center. Frances Albrier became the first Black woman to run for Berkeley City Council in 1939 and the first Black female welder in the Richmond shipyards during World War II."
"San Francisco lab technician Pat Maginnis helped lead the fight for abortion rights in the 1960s. Del Martin and UC Berkeley graduate Phyllis Lyon co-founded the first lesbian rights organization in the U.S. in 1955-and later became the first same-sex couple legally married in San Francisco. Disability rights activist Judy Heumann co-founded Berkeley's Center for Independent Living in the early 1970s, laying the groundwork for the Americans with Disabilities Act."
"To be frank, I did not know what I was doing. I was just very angry about women being written out of history."
The Bay Area has a rich history of women who fought for civil rights, education, healthcare, and social justice, yet their contributions remain largely absent from public memory, monuments, and textbooks. Figures like Elizabeth Thorn Scott Flood, who opened the first private school for African American children in 1857, Bertha Wright, who founded Children's Hospital Oakland, and Frances Albrier, the first Black woman to run for Berkeley City Council, exemplify this erasure. Other pioneers include Pat Maginnis in abortion rights advocacy, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon in LGBTQ+ rights, and Judy Heumann in disability rights activism. Journalist Rae Alexandra's anger at this historical omission led her to create the KQED series "Rebel Girls from Bay Area History" and the book "Unsung Heroines: 35 Women Who Changed the Bay Area," illustrated by artist Adrienne Simms and published by City Lights.
Read at East Bay Express | Oakland, Berkeley & Alameda
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