Katherine has been identified as the first African American student of the Danbury State Normal-Training School (now WCSU).  After the State Senate approved establishment of a school in Danbury, John Perkins recruited students and teachers and classes started in 1904. Katherine’s family had a farm on Clapboard Ridge in Danbury. She graduated from Danbury High School in 1902 and enrolled in that first class.  While Old Main was being built, the students attended classes in the attic of Danbury High School.  It was noted that she “excelled in drawing and “the art of teaching.”” She went on to marry Howard Steadwell and to teach in Danbury for a number of years before they moved to New Haven. 

Norwich Bulletin, John Rollend Steadwell Sr.,  https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/norwichbulletin/name/john-steadwell-obituary?pid=158538001

WestConn’s first African American Students, https://archives.library.wcsu.edu/omeka/exhibits/show/pioneers 

Danbury Normal School, https://archives.library.wcsu.edu/omeka/exhibits/show/pioneers/normal 

About this research, https://archives.library.wcsu.edu/omeka/exhibits/show/pioneers/about-this-research 

A community activist and writer, Sarah was the first black schoolteacher in the Brooklyn district schools. In 1902 she married Richard Stedman Fleming, an immigrant from St. Kitts.  In 1910 the Flemings and their 2 children moved to New Haven and became active in the prominent black circles in the city. Richard became the first black dentist in Connecticut, and she joined the Twentieth Century Club which had been founded in 1901 and was New Haven’s oldest black women’s club. She was active in promoting the woman’s suffrage cause and she came to the attention of black suffragists Mary McCleod Bethune and Mary Church Terrell. After passage of the 19th amendment, she became active in the League of Women Voters. She encouraged interracial membership in the 19th ward, holding League meetings at her home on Dwight Street. 

Sarah Lee brown Fleming, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Lee_Brown_Fleming
Chalkboard Champions, https://chalkboardchampions.org/sarah-lee-brown-fleming-teacher-activist/

Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame, https://www.cwhf.org/inductees/sarah-lee-brown-fleming 

 The daughter of a farmer, Mary graduated from Wesleyan Academy in Wilbraham, Massachusetts in 1866 and became a teacher.  Because of her belief in equal opportunities for women, she attended a suffrage convention in Hartford in 1877.  There she heard the noted Hartford attorney, John Hooker, whose wife Isabela Beecher was actively involved in the woman’s suffrage movement, speak on the restrictive property rights for women.  She determined to become an attorney and was accepted to read the law in her brother’s law practice.  He died suddenly in 1877 and John Hooker, now reporter of the Supreme Court of Errors (Connecticut Supreme Court) decisions, took her on as an apprentice. Finishing her law training in 1882, she applied for admission to the Connecticut bar.  The Hartford Bar assessed her skills and voted to admit her, subject to a decision by the Connecticut Supreme Court on whether the Connecticut Statutes permitted admission of women. The statute of 1708 on admission to the bar made no mention of gender.  The court ruled in Hall’s favor, In re Hall, 50 Conn. 131 (1882).  She continued to work in Hooker’s office for several years, eventually opening her own practice in Marlborough.   

Connecticut History.org,  Mary Hall: Connecticut’s First Female Attorney, https://connecticuthistory.org/mary-hall-connecticuts-first-female-attorney/ 

Cohn, Henry S. and Schulz, Michael, “john Hooker, Reporter of Judicial Decisions” . Connecticut Law Review (May 2021, v. 53 no. 2 ) 498.https://opencommons.uconn.edu/law_review/498/

                                                                                                                                                       Accepting the Nobel prize                  

Barbara was urged to focus on marriage rather than a career when she was young. In spite of this she received her father’s approval to attend Cornell’s College of Agriculture in 1919. She completed her doctorate in botany there and stayed on as an instructor.  She never married, preferring to focus all her attention on her research. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1944 and in 19454 became the first woman president of the Genetics Society of America.  She is considered one of the greatest geneticists of the 20th century. She won the Nobel Prize in 1983 for her studies of genetic mutations in maise which led to the discovery of “mobile genetic elements.”  She proved that genetic elements can sometimes change position on a chromosome and that this causes nearby genes to become active or inactive.” 

The Nobel Prize, Barbara Mcclintock Facts, https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1983/mcclintock/facts/ 

Ravindran, Sandeep. Classic Profile Barbara McClintock and the discovery of jumping genes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.  https://www.pnas.org/content/109/50/20198NAS 

McClintock's Challenge in the 21st Century, https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1215482109

Barbara McClintock, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_McClintock

Flicker, CHSL archives, https://www.flickr.com/photos/cshlarchives/4189880273

                                                                   Anika Noni Rose and  picture of Princess TIana,              Rose at the 42nd NAACP Awards

She is a Tony award winning actress and singer.  Her career includes many movies, theater and TV series roles.  She is best known for being the voice of the first black Disney princess, Tiana, in The Frog and the Princess in 2009.  Her Tony was won for her role in Caroline or Change in 2004.  During the Covid lockdown she created a weekly series for young children, reading bedtime stories to reduce their fears.  She wanted to “give her voice to the ones who know it best” and foster a love of books. 

Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anika_Noni_Rose 

IMDB, Anika Noni Rose, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0741242/

Broadway.com, Once Upon a Time: Tony Award Winner Anika Noni Rose Launches Bedtime Stories for the Littles!, https://www.broadway.com/buzz/198992/once-upon-a-time-tony-winner-anika-noni-rose-launches-bedtime-stories-for-the-littles/

DIsney Parks blog, https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2021/07/exclusive-anika-noni-rose-reads-an-excerpt-from-tales-of-courage-and-kindness-disneys-ultimate-princess-celebration/

National Endowment for the Arts, Art Talk.  https://www.arts.gov/stories/blog/2013/art-talk-anika-noni-rose

Broadway World, Anika Noni Rose Will Star in LET THE RIGHT ONE IN , https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/Anika-Noni-Rose-Will-Star-in-LET-THE-RIGHT-ONE-IN-20210415

Born in New York and orphaned as a baby, Augusta was raised by a wealthy New York businessman,  Isaac Gager, in Brooklyn Heights.  She attended the best schools studying French, literature, philosophy and the classics.  When Gager suffered financial reverses, she found work doing special writing assignments for several New York newspapers. She became interested in typesetting and convinced the New York Era to hire her as an apprentice.    Conflict with the man’s typesetting union and reformers who wanted to concentrate on women’s suffrage led to the organization of the Woman’s Typesetters Union in New York in 1868 – the first trade union for women.  She married Alexander Troup in 1872 and they moved to New Haven and continued their activism.  She helped her husband with his newspaper, The New Haven Union, and also became a successful teacher.   In 1911, Augusta established the New Haven Teachers League to better teachers working conditions. She also lobbied the state for provision of pensions for public school teachers and worked to raise awareness about woman’s suffrage in her community. A New Haven public school was named in her honor. 

International Printing Museum, Women’s Typographical Union No. 1, https://www.printmuseum.org/blog/womens-type-union 

Conecticut Women's Hall of Fame, 
 
S.H.G.A.P.E. Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, A Woman Ahead of Her Time,  https://www.shgape.org/a-woman-ahead-of-her-time-augusta-lewis-troup/