DATE=3-29-2002

TYPE=Special English Feature

NUMBER=7-22766

TITLE=SPECIAL ENGLISH AMERICAN MOSAIC #863 National Women's History Month

BYLINE=Jerilyn Watson

TELEPHONE=619-2585

DATELINE=Washington

EDITOR=Shelley Gollust

CONTENT=

HOST:

March is National Women's History Month. It honors women who have improved life in the United States. The National Women's History Project is one organization that honors women this month. It was established in Nineteen-Eighty to record and recognize women's influence on society. It is honoring six women this year. Shep O'Neal tells us about them.

ANNCR:

The six women being honored are all more than seventy years old. They have worked to keep history and cultural traditions alive and to improve people's lives.

Historian Gerda Lerner was born to a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria in Nineteen-Twenty. She came to the United States in Nineteen-Thirty-Eight after resisting Nazi oppression. Miz Lerner helped establish women's history as an important subject for study. In Nineteen-Eighty-One, she became the first woman in fifty years to head the Organization of American Historians.

Native American storyteller Mary Louise Defender Wilson is being honored for helping keep alive the spirit of the Dakotah-Hidatsa tribes. She has traveled around the United States to tell stories about heroes, birds, plants and animals.

Human rights activist Dorothy Height is also being honored this month. She was born in Nineteen-Twelve. Mizz Height helped lead the American civil rights movement during the Nineteen-Sixties. She led the National Council of Negro Women for more than forty years.

Labor leader Dolores Huerta has worked to improve conditions for farm workers who must travel to different areas of the country to pick crops. With activist Cesar Chavez, she established and led the United Farm Workers Union.

Congresswoman Patsy Mink is also being honored. Her grandparents moved to the American state of Hawaii from Japan. She became the first Asian-American woman elected to Congress. She has worked for equal educational chances for women. Mizz Mink has represented Hawaii in the House of Representatives for twelve terms.

Sportswoman Alice Coachman was the first African-American woman to win an Olympic gold medal. She broke the record for the high-jump event in the Nineteen-Forty-Eight Olympic Games in London.

Each of these women is being recognized by lawmakers in her home state with a special party in her honor. And all their stories are being told in schools and other education centers around the country.