Welcome to Infinite Women

This Day In History

Activism

1956 The US Supreme Court struck down laws calling for racial segregation on public buses in Browder v. Gayle. Aurelia Browder was an Alabama civil rights activist who was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white rider.

Arts

1976 Jane Curtin became the first female anchor of the long-running Saturday Night Live segment Weekend Update. Years later during a cast reunion, Curtin opened up about how Studio 8H was sometimes a hostile environment for comediennes. She called out John Belushi for undermining the show's female writers: 'They were working against John, who said women are just fundamentally not funny. You'd go to a table read and if a woman writer had written a piece for John, he would not read it in his full voice. He would whisper it. He felt as though it was his duty to sabotage pieces that were written by women.'

1982 The Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC, designed by Maya Lin, opens to the public.

Religion

1938 Mother Francis Xavier Cabrini is beatified, the first American woman citizen to become a saint.