Date: Thursday, March 8, 2012
Location: Wesleyan College, Macon, GA
Time: 10:30 a.m. Registration – Porter Auditorium, Wesleyan College
11:00 a.m. Induction Ceremony – Porter Auditorium, Wesleyan College
12:00 pm Luncheon – Anderson Dining Room, Wesleyan College

Luncheon Tickets are available for $30.00

2012 Inductees:
Sarah Randolph Bailey (1885 – 1972)
Macon, Ga.

Ethel Harpst (1883 – 1967)
Cedartown, Ga.

Beulah Rucker Oliver (1888 – 1963)
Gainesville, Ga.

Each Georgia Women of Achievement honoree will be featured in short video that highlights the accomplishments of their life, presented by our partner Georgia Public Broadcasting.

For more information, table reservations, or sponsorships, please contact Beth Oleson at 706-845-9085, bbland@asginfo.net or visit our web site www.georgiawomen.org.

May duBignon Stiles was born on May 2, 1894 in Savannah, Georgia, to parents John and Edith. After her mother’s death when May was seven, her father’s sisters had a large influence on her. Caroline Lovell was a noted writer and painter; Elizabeth Screven was a Georgia historian and supporter of patriotic causes; Isabel Marshall was a designer and artist in New York City; Margaret Stiles was an artist. These women helped shape May’s idea of how women could be a force for change in society.

May attended Brunswick schools and graduated from Glynn Academy. She continued her education in the nursing program at St. Luke’s Hospital in New York City and then worked at Telfair Hospital in Savannah where she met Dr. Lee Howard, a pathologist. They married in 1916 and were together 44 years until his death in 1960.
May began her community leadership at Waters Avenue School in the 1920’s when Savannah schools were crowded with rural poor families who had come to town looking for work. She began the lunchroom program, addressing the nutrition of hundreds of children. She became president of the Chatham County Council of Parent-Teacher Associations, serving from 1929-1931, where she focused on free dental inspections in the system schools.

From that post she chaired the state Child Hygiene Committee where she promoted medical screenings of at-risk children during the summer months. Her responsibilities broadened over many counties and her advocacy grew to include other issues of child heath and well being, including educating children with special needs.
May also understood that knowing the democratic process allowed individuals to participate and effect change, rather than being bystanders. She developed workshops for teaching parliamentary procedures and how to participate in public meetings in order to involve more citizens. This led to writing bylaws and handbooks for hundreds of PTAs. Her continued involvement at the state level resulted in her election as State Treasurer at age 70.

Although May was recognized as “Mrs. PTA” throughout Georgia, she was involved in other community organizations and causes. With her background in nursing, she served as the president of the Women’s Auxiliary to the Chatham County Medical Society and later as the president of the Medical Association of Georgia Auxiliary in 1942. She focused on two devastating illnesses of that time, polio and tuberculosis, and volunteered for the Department of Family and Children’s Services for 20 years.
May also was instrumental in organizing the United Community Service, now known as the United Way of the Coastal Empire. She served on its Board of Directors, and also served as a Trustee of the Savannah Foundation, a charitable trust committed to the public welfare. She was active in the Catholic Women’s Club, caught the Nancy Hanks train to Atlanta where she continued to lobby the General Assembly on behalf of the PTA, and she raised five children.

May duBignon Stiles Howard has been honored many times for her work. Governor Herman Tallmadge appointed May Howard as Georgia Delegate to the President’s Mid-Century Conference on Education in 1950. IN 1953 the Savannah Area Chamber of Commerce named her “Woman of the Year,” and in 1954 presented her with the Hillyer Trophy, its highest civic award. In 1960 May Howard Elementary School opened its doors on Wilmington Island.

May Howard followed her role models and inspired future generations by being an advocate for good causes, refusing to be limited by gender or age. Thousands of children and adults have benefited from her dedication.

Additional Resources:

Mary Francis Hill was born August 15, 1900 in Baker County, Georgia. She was the youngest child and the surviving twin of Martha, who died at childbirth. Mary was raised by her aunts and uncles after losing her parents at a young age, and her value of willingness to help others was shaped by this act. Mary had little, if any, formal education, but in a Georgia where women were often treated as less than equal citizens, and where, for poor and black women, the struggle was compounded, she became an influential advocate for community health.

Mary married carpenter Ashley Coley and the family moved to Albany in 1930. It was after this move that she became interested in midwifery and was trained by Alabama midwife Onnie Lee Logan in the apprentice tradition. For over 30 years Mary delivered more than 3,000 babies in Dougherty, Lee, Mitchell and Worth counties. She was known for her tireless work ethic and her willingness to serve both black and white mothers in the segregated south.

Her care of new families extended beyond the delivery of the baby. She would visit for days after the birth to help in cooking, cleaning and washing clothes, and she organized the registration of forms and certificates to be filed with the county health office. She believed her work was a spiritual calling, and she let nothing keep her from mothers who needed her, seeing no racial barriers.

Mary Coley was recognized by more than her community for the work she did. In 1952, documentarian George Stoney filmed All My Babies, a movie produced by the Georgia Health Department as an instructional training film. Stoney followed “Miss Mary” for four months, recording the preparation for and delivery of babies in rural conditions in the Albany area, with help from local public health doctors and nurses. The film is not only a portrait of Mary, but also is a historical record of the actual living conditions of her patients.

In 2002 the film was selected by the Library of Congress for placement on the National Film Registry as “a culturally, historically and artistically significant work.” It has been used as a tool for midwife training and as an example of early documentary style filming over the last 58 years.

The Anacostia Smithsonian Museum for African American History and Culture hosted an exhibit in 2005, “Reclaiming Midwives: Pillars of Community Support” which featured Miss Mary among the midwives. The exhibit emphasizes the role of African American midwives at the center of health and social support systems in black communities.

That same year other exhibits opened at the Columbia University School of Nursing as well as the Mailman School of Public Health in New York City. Mary Coley was featured in both.

When Mary Coley died in March, 1966 in Albany, she was recognized as a healer, an advocate healthy babies, and a liaison between the healthcare system and her community. She was also hailed as a role model for future generations of women who want to make a difference.

In 2007 George Stoney returned to Georgia to film a reunion of 150 babies delivered by Mary, all grown up with stories of their own. The film is currently in the editing stage. When these people tell the stories of their lives, it will be even more evident that Mary Coley had a profound influence on her community and beyond.

Additional Resources:

Bessie Lillian Gordy was born August 15, 1898 to James and Mary Ida Gordy in Richland, Georgia, a town a few miles west of Plains. She was the daughter of a postmaster and a homemaker, and grew up in the rural south where color and race were defining characteristics. She knew at an early age that she wanted to be a nurse and she studied at the Wise Sanitarium in Plains, and finished her education at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia in 1923.

After her graduation, Lillian married James Earl Carter, a local businessman from Pains, and raised four children while working as a nurse part time in her community and at the local hospital. She also worked with her husband at Carter’s Warehouse, which specialized in the buying and selling of peanuts and cotton. She used her nursing skills to help her husband’s employees and tended both black and white neighbors who needed medical care. She didn’t see “color” but rather saw humanity, and refused to allow race to be a determining factor in how she treated people.

Lillian’s husband died in 1953. She served as the housemother for the Kappa Alpha fraternity at Auburn University from 1955-1962 and she helped run a nursing home in Blakely, Georgia, but in 1966 she made a major decision. At the age of 68, when many people were retiring from hard work, Lillian joined the Peace Corps and went to Godrej Colony in India, 30 miles from Mumbai. There she nursed in a small clinic treating all illnesses, including leprosy. She turned 70 there before returning home.
Lillian was a busy and important part of her son Jimmy’s political campaigns for state senate, governor and in 1976, President of The United States. She published two books during his presidency, one a collection of letters that she had written her family from India. Her later years were spent at her home outside Plains visiting with family and fishing. When she died at the age of 85 in 1983 in Americus and was buried beside her husband at Lebanon Church Cemetery, more than a city or state grieved. People all over the world who had come under her influence mourned.

Lillian Carter has received many honors for her work during her life. In 1977 she received the Covenant of Peace Award from the Jewish Synagogue Council of America. In 1978 she was awarded the United Nations’ Ceres Medal for being one of the first proponents of civil rights in her community.

In 1980, she was named honorary chair of the Peace Corps National Advisory Council, and in 1986 the Atlanta Regional Office of the Peace Corp created the Lillian Carter Award, given every other year to volunteers over the age of 50 who demonstrate commitment to improving the lives of others.

Emory University established the Lillian Carter Center for International Nursing in 2001, in honor of the work she did in India, reflecting the mission “to improve the health of vulnerable people worldwide, through nursing, education, research, practice and policy.”

The mother of a president and a formidable leader in her own right, Lillian Gordy Carter set an example for all women with her determination to make the world a better place. Whether it was by serving as a nurse in the Peace Corps in India, or bridging cultural gaps in rural Georgia, her nursing skills and her compassion endeared her to many.

Additional Resources:

The mother of a president and a formidable leader in her own right, Lillian Gordy Carter (8-15-1898 to 10-30-1983) set an example for all women with her determination to make the world a better place. Whether it was by serving as a nurse in the Peace Corps in India, or bridging cultural gaps in rural Georgia ,  her nursing skills and her compassion  endeared her to many.

Mary Francis Hill Coley (8-15-1900 to 3-8-1966) was born in a Georgia where women were often treated as less than equal citizens, and where,  for poor and black women,  the struggle was compounded.  With little, if any, formal schooling, she became an accomplished and recognized midwife, an advocate for health care who  saw no racial barriers,  as documented in the award winning film, All My Babies, in 1952.

more info coming soon!

Jane Hurt was born in Greenville, South Carolina on August 15, 1924, and raised in Scottsboro, Alabama, but the impact of her conservation efforts can be seen on the coast of Georgia, her adopted home state. Her work was vital to the protection of the barrier islands and marshes of Georgia, but also instrumental in national conservation legislature as well.

After Jane married Dr. Charles Yarn and settled in Atlanta, she raised three children and was active in local charity work. A trip to the African bush in 1967 sparked her interest in protecting the environment, and when she returned home she spent a year studying preservation issues in Georgia. She was able to lobby against mining on Little Tybee Island, and she focused her energies on protecting the coastal islands and marshes. As a result of her activities, she was asked to serve on the board of the Nature Conservancy in 1969, eventually becoming its first female Vice Chairman. In 1970 she was named Atlanta’s Woman of the Year.

Jane was more than just a spokesperson for a cause. She and her husband purchased Egg Island, located in the Altamaha River, in one of the first actions taken to preserve the Georgia coast. Today Egg Island, Little Egg Island and Wolf Island make up the Wolf Island National Wildlife Reserve, which is designated a National Wilderness Area. She also worked to protect other coastal islands, including Ossabaw, Cumberland, Wassaw and St. Catherine’s Island.

Jane founded Save Our Vital Environment (SAVE), which was the first full-timer environmental lobbying organization in the state, and which worked to pass the Coastal Marshlands Protection Act in 1970. In the early 1970′s, Jane was honored many times for her passionate conservationism. She received the American Motors Conservation Award in 1971, and the same year was named by Harper’s Bazaar Magazine as one of the “100 Women in Touch With Our Times.”

Jane assisted Jimmy Carter with environmental lobbying when he was governor of Georgia, and after he became President of the United States, he nominated her to serve in Washington as a member of the White House’s Council for Environment Quality. It was difficult to spend the week in Washington and see her family only on weekends, but she didn’t consider it a sacrifice because she believed so ardently in her work. She was very proud of her role in the passage of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, which was one of the many accomplishments of her three year commitment to the CEQ.

After her service to President Carter, Jane returned to Atlanta and continued to work on environmental issues with a variety of organizations, including The Wilderness Society, The National Wildlife Federation and the Southern Environmental Law Center. She received the national Nature Conservancy Oak Leaf Award in 1989, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Georgia Environmental Council in 1993, the national Common Cause Public Service Award in 1995, and she served on the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games Environmental Task Force.

Jane Yarn died in 1995 after a long struggle with breast cancer. During her last months, trees were planted in her honor on Lafayette Square across from the White House, and in the Chattahoochee River Park.

In addition to those trees, there is other evidence that Jane Yarn’s legacy will continue to inspire all who care about nature’s delicate balance. Following her death, Governor Zell Miller dedicated the Jane Hurt Yarn Environmental Education Center at Tallulah Gorge State Park in her honor. The Nature Conservancy gives the Jane Hurt Yarn Award to its Outstanding Conservation Volunteer each year. In August, 2007, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources sank a 63′ ship off the Georgia coast as an artificial reef. The ship is the Jane Hurt Yarn, named after the woman who helped designate Gray’s Reef, to the east of St. Catherine’s Island, a sanctuary. This ship will be a research site to learn more about what creatures attach themselves to the vessel, and whether coral and sponges can inhabit an artificial reef.

Jane Yarn was an active citizen and activist, and her work continues.

Additional Resources:

Link

On a large plantation outside of Vienna in Dooly County, Emily Woodward was born on May 2, 1885. Her parents were well educated and her life was comfortably affluent but that wasn’t enough for Emily who would become one of the state’s most influential journalists, an advocator of prison reform and an active member of the state’s Democratic party.

Emily attended public schools in Vienna and Gordon Institute at Barnesville before returning home to work in various businesses. In 1916 she went to work at the Vienna News as Editor and Assistant Manager and moved up to Editor the next year. By 1918 Emily became the owner, Editor and Publisher of the weekly newspaper, being one of very few women in Georgia and the country to hold those responsibilities. Emily remained at the paper through 1932 but wrote and remained active in journalism throughout her life.

In August 1927 Emily was the first woman elected president of the Georgia Press Association and during her tenure she founded the Georgia Press Institute, offering annual seminars for newspaper editors. In addition, Emily became a member of the State Democratic Committee and attended the Democratic National Convention in Houston in 1928.

Controversy was no stranger to “Miss Em,” as she became known in her hometown, and she fought for prison reform by directing town hall meetings at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary during the 1940s. In an article for The Atlanta Journal (June 14, 1942), she wrote, “With the fascinating panorama of the new life at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary crowding in on the canvas of the mind, perhaps it is the influence of this museum atmosphere that brings the great institution into focus as less a prison than a vast art center where deft sculptors toil at the most difficult of all tasks – the task of remolding human bodies and souls.”

Emily also participated in the Atlanta Conference on Race Relations in 1943 and was an advocate of training local leaders to empower themselves to direct their county and state to greater heights. Her ideas for training are in her first book, “Forums – How and Why,” and she served as Director of Forums at the University of Georgia from 1938-1944. Emily also was the founder of the first Leadership Institute held at the university and served as its director from 1943-50. Emily, also a poet, authored an early pictorial history of Georgia, “Empire: Georgia Today in Pictures and Paragraphs,” which was published in 1936 and remains a valuable reference.

Emily traveled the world and went to England in 1944 at the invitation of the American and British Offices of War Information to hold forums in the interest of better relations between the two countries. Traveling with a convoy of other dignitaries, Emily delivered radio addresses over the BBC while bombs were falling. At the end of World War II, The United States War Department and the State Department asked Emily to serve on General Douglas MacArthur’s committee on education. She traveled to Japan where she visited schools and discussed what needed to be done to bring their educational system into the 20th century. Her work there has been a factor in Japan’s excellent educational system.

In Vienna, Emily was instrumental in securing funding from the Works Progress Administration to build a public library in her hometown and she led a fundraising drive when in her 80s to add a reading room to the facility. Emily was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Georgia in 1929 and received LaGrange College’s first honorary doctorate in 1946. She was inducted in the Georgia Newspaper Hall of Fame in 1973 and became the state director of Forums, an adult education program that grew out of President Roosevelt’s New Deal policies.

As a Georgia woman of achievement, Emily Woodward left a legacy not only for Georgians but for all citizens of a democratic society through her pioneering work on public forums and as a journalist, educator and advocate of prison reform.

Additional Resources:

Vienna Historic Preservation Society
(229) 268-3663

Robert W. Woodruff Library, Emory University
Special Collections & Archives

“I am naturally the most unambitious of women and life in the White House has no attractions for me.”
– Ellen Louise Axson Wilso

Highlights:

• 1883 – Meets Woodrow Wilson
• 1884 – Attends Art Students’ League in New York City
• 1885 – Marries Woodrow Wilson
• 1902 – Becomes first lady of Princeton University
• 1905 – Brother’s family drowns in accident; forms scholarship in memory, supported by sales of paintings
• 1912 – Becomes First Lady of the United States
• 1913 – Makes surprise visits to Government offices; uses influence as First Lady to improve working conditions for federal employees
• 1914 – “Alley” bill is passed by Congress in Ellen’s honor; she dies later that day

Ellen Louise Axson Wilson was born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1860. At age four, her family moved to Madison where her father became pastor of the Madison Presbyterian Church. In 1866 the family moved again, this time to Rome, Georgia, to join its First Presbyterian Church.

Gallery of Wilson' s Paintings

It was following a Sunday service in 1883 that Ellen met young Woodrow Wilson, who was in town on legal business. The two courted by correspondence and through occasional visits once Ellen began studies at the Art Students’ League in New York City. They married in June of 1885 in Savannah.

Over the next few years, Woodrow taught at Bryn Mawr and Wesleyan University, during which time Ellen bore three children—all girls. In 1890, at age 33, Woodrow took a position at Princeton University as chair of Political Economy and Jurisprudence. In 1902 Ellen became first lady of Princeton University when Woodrow was elected university president. She served as research associate and foreign language translator for many of her husband’s scholarly books.

Ellen was a devoted mother who made time for her artistic talent. She established a scholarship at the Berry School near Rome for the education of underprivileged and rural mountain children. The scholarship was in honor of her brother who drowned in 1905 with his wife and young son.

In 1910 Woodrow became governor of New Jersey. Just two years later he was elected President of the United States. Ellen became America’s first activist First Lady.

As First Lady, Ellen was her husband’s most trusted advisor and strongest supporter. She used her influence in matters of importance, holding open houses and visiting government offices—particularly the Government Printing Office and the Post Office Department where she crusaded for better working conditions for all people—but for women in particular.

Ellen also led tours showing civic leaders, congressmen and their wives the poverty and substandard housing that surrounded them in the nation’s capitol. She sponsored legislation to improve the living conditions of Washington’s disadvantaged citizens. The “Alley” bill—credited to Ellen—was passed by Congress on August 6, 1914. Ellen died the same day, knowing her bill had passed. It would be one of many legacies she left behind in service to her country and its neediest citizens.

Additional Resources:

Sara Hightower Library
Rome, GA 30161
(706) 236-4611

Florence Griswold Museum
96 Lyme Street
Old Lyme, CT 06371
(860) 434-5542