In the mid-1930s, an Australian journalist visited Germany to report on the rise of fascism and interview Adolf Hitler. The atrocities she saw there, which included the public beating of Jews, forever changed the course of her young life. Nancy Wake, who died Sunday at age 98, would spend World War II fighting Nazism tooth and nail, saving thousands of Allied lives, winding up at the top of the Gestapo’s most-wanted list and ultimately receiving more decorations than any other servicewoman.

Wake made her way from Spain to Britain, where she convinced special agents to train her as a spy and guerilla operative. In April 1944 she parachuted into France to coordinate attacks on German troops and installations prior to the D-Day invasion, leading a band of 7,000 resistance fighters. In order to earn the esteem of the men under her command, she reportedly challenged them to drinking contests and would inevitably drink them under the table. But her fierceness alone may have won her enough respect: During the violent months preceding the liberation of Paris, Wake killed a German guard with a single karate chop to the neck, executed a women who had been spying for the Germans, shot her way out of roadblocks and biked 70 hours through perilous Nazi checkpoints to deliver radio codes for the Allies. (via)

Chiune Sugihara. This man saved 6000 Jews. He was a Japanese diplomat in Lithuania. When the Nazis began rounding up Jews, Sugihara risked his life to start issuing unlawful travel visas to Jews. He hand-wrote them 18 hrs a day. The day his consulate closed and he had to evacuate, witnesses claim he was STILL writing visas and throwing from the train as he pulled away. He saved 6000 lives. The world didn’t know what he’d done until Israel honored him in 1985, the year before he died.

Why can’t we have a movie about him?

He was often called “Sempo”, an alternative reading of the characters of his first name, as that was easier for Westerners to pronounce.

His wife, Yukiko, was also a part of this; she is often credited with suggesting the plan. The Sugihara family was held in a Soviet POW camp for 18 months until the end of the war; within a year of returning home, Sugihara was asked to resign - officially due to downsizing, but most likely because the government disagreed with his actions.

He didn’t simply grant visas - he granted visas against direct orders, after attempting three times to receive permission from the Japanese Foreign Ministry and being turned down each time. He did not “misread” orders; he was in direct violation of them, with the encouragement and support of his wife.

He was honoured as Righteous Among the Nations in 1985, a year before he died in Kamakura; he and his descendants have also been granted permanent Israeli citizenship. He was also posthumously awarded the Life Saving Cross of Lithuania (1993); Commander’s Cross Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland (1996); and the Commander’s Cross with Star of the Order of Polonia Restituta (2007). Though not canonized, some Eastern Orthodox Christians recognize him as a saint.

Sugihara was born in Gifu on the first day of 1900, January 1. He achieved top marks in his schooling; his father wanted him to become a physician, but Sugihara wished to pursue learning English. He deliberately failed the exam by writing only his name and then entered Waseda, where he majored in English. He joined the Foreign Ministry after graduation and worked in the Manchurian Foreign Office in Harbin (where he learned Russian and German; he also converted to the Eastern Orthodox Church during this time). He resigned his post in protest over how the Japanese government treated the local Chinese citizens. He eventually married Yukiko Kikuchi, who would suggest and encourage his acts in Lithuania; they had four sons together. Chiune Sugihara passed away July 31, 1986, at the age of 86. Until her own passing in 2008, Yukiko continued as an ambassador of his legacy.

It is estimated that the Sugiharas saved between 6,000-10,000 Lithuanian and Polish Jewish people.

On the morning of September 4, 1957, fifteen-year-old Dorothy Counts set out on a harrowing path toward Harding High, where-as the first African American to attend the all-white school – she was greeted by a jeering swarm of boys who spat, threw trash, and yelled epithets at her as she entered the building.

Charlotte Observer photographer Don Sturkey captured the ugly incident on film, and in the days that followed, the searing image appeared not just in the local paper but in newspapers around the world.

People everywhere were transfixed by the girl in the photograph who stood tall, her five-foot-ten-inch frame towering nobly above the mob that trailed her. There, in black and white, was evidence of the brutality of racism, a sinister force that had led children to torment another child while adults stood by. While the images display a lot of evils: prejudice, ignorance, racism, sexism, inequality, it also captures true strength, determination, courage and inspiration.

Here she is, age 70, still absolutely elegant and poised.

Hey Theodore Roosevelt, remember that time someone tried to assassinate you, but you just laughed and proceeded to give a 90-minute long speech with the bullet lodged in your lung, where it remained for the rest of your life? Or when you tore up your leg after being thrown into piranha-infested waters while exploring uncharted Brazil? Or all those times you broke your ribs from falling off horses while doing badass jumps? Or when you destroyed the sight in your left eye in a White House boxing match? Or that time you killed a cougar in a knife fight (seriously)? And how the only way death could finally get to you was in your sleep, in the early morning on January 6th in 1919. Here's to TR as the infinite inspiration for pure, condensed badassery.

furnweh:

Theodore Roosevelt, October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919

“Death had to take him sleeping, for if Roosevelt had been awake there would have been a fight.”

Original Badass.

All of our presidents combined can’t add up to how much of a badass he was.

TR Appreciation Post ‘12

Not to mention he was an attractive mother fucker.

Dr. Seuss was not even in the general area of fucking around.

#everyone thinks of dr seuss as some sweet old guy who wrote kids books and made up cute words#little do they know he was the most hardcore political motherfucker to ever draw cartoons for newspapers of all time basically#he was of german and jewish descent and got bullied a lot as a kid#then he grew up and drew cartoons for the school paper#and when he got fired for being to fucking real for the paper to handle he made up a new name and KEPT SUBMITTING THEM ANYWAY#BECAUSE HE NEVER FUCKED AROUND FOR A SECOND#DID YOU KNOW DR SEUSS DID A FEATURE LENGTH DOCUMENTARY AFTER WWII ABOUT HOW WWII WASN’T ACTUALLY OVER AND THE NAZIS WERE STILL ALL AROUND#IT WAS CREEPY AS ALL FUCK AND MORE HARDCORE THAN YOU WILL EVER KNOW#IT WON A FUCKING OSCAR OR SOME SHIT#HE DID KIDS BOOKS ON A WHIM HIS REAL TALENT WAS DISMANTLING FASCIST REGIMES WITH ADORABLE BLACK AND WHITE SKETCHES OF TURTLES#OH YEAH AND YURTLE THE TURTLE WAS ABOUT HITLER#AND THE SNEECHES WERE ABOUT SEGREGATION#SO FUCK Y’ALL AND YOUR CANDY-ASS VISION OF DR SEUSS

I think almost all of his stories have a deeper meaning and Horton Hears a who was written as an apology to the Japanese after WWII

I appreciate politics with a hint of whimsy.

He was also pro-choice and his family is still suing people who use "Horton Hears a Who" for anti-abortion propaganda.

Keiko Fukuda Shihan passed away yesterday at the age of 99. She was the last surviving student of the founder of judo, Jigoro Kano, and the highest ranking female judoka in history. She was promoted to 10th dan (degree) black belt just last year, a rank that at the time was held only by 3 other people, all men living in Japan. Fukuda Shihan left her homeland and refused marriage to achieve her dreams of training in judo, constantly battling gender discrimination which kept her from being promoted as quickly as men less skilled than her. “As far as I know, no one has lived their life completely for judo as I have.”

BAMF.

Everyone talks so much about Frida, but never mentions Rigoberta Menchú.

Rigoberta Menchú was born on January 9, 1959 to a poor Indian peasant family and raised in the Quiche branch of the Mayan culture. In her early years she helped with the family farm work, either in the northern highlands where her family lived, or on the Pacific coast, where both adults and children went to pick coffee on the big plantations. Rigoberta Menchú soon became involved in social reform activities through the Catholic Church, and became prominent in the women’s rights movement when still only a teenager. Such reform work aroused considerable opposition in influential circles, especially after a guerilla organization established itself in the area. The Menchú family was accused of taking part in guerrilla activities and Rigoberta’s father, Vicente, was imprisoned and tortured for allegedly having participated in the execution of a local plantation owner. After his release, he joined the recently founded Committee of the Peasant Union (CUC). In 1979, Rigoberta, too, joined the CUC. That year her brother was arrested, tortured and killed by the army. The following year, her father was killed when security forces in the capital stormed the Spanish Embassy where he and some other peasants were staying. Shortly afterwards, her mother also died after having been arrested, tortured and raped. Rigoberta became increasingly active in the CUC, and taught herself Spanish as well as other Mayan languages than her native Quiche. In 1980, she figured prominently in a strike the CUC organized for better conditions for farm workers on the Pacific coast, and on May 1, 1981, she was active in large demonstrations in the capital. She joined the radical 31st of January Popular Front, in which her contribution chiefly consisted of educating the Indian peasant population in resistance to massive military oppression. In 1981, Rigoberta Menchú had to go into hiding in Guatemala, and then flee to Mexico. That marked the beginning of a new phase in her life: as the organizer abroad of resistance to oppression in Guatemala and the struggle for Indian peasant peoples’ rights. In 1982, she took part in the founding of the joint opposition body, The United Representation of the Guatemalan Opposition (RUOG). In 1983, she told her life story to Elisabeth Burgos Debray. The resulting book, called in English, I, Rigoberta Menchú, is a gripping human document which attracted considerable international attention. In 1986, Rigoberta Menchú became a member of the National Coordinating Committee of the CUC, and the following year she performed as the narrator in a powerful film called When the Mountains Tremble, about the struggles and sufferings of the Maya people. On at least three occasions, Rigoberta Menchú has returned to Guatemala to plead the cause of the Indian peasants, but death threats have forced her to return into exile. Over the years, Rigoberta Menchú has become widely known as a leading advocate of Indian rights and ethno-cultural reconciliation, not only in Guatemala but in the Western Hemisphere generally, and her work has earned her several international awards.

From Les Prix Nobel. The Nobel Prizes 1992, Editor Tore Frängsmyr, [Nobel Foundation], Stockholm, 1993

This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and later published in the book series Les Prix Nobel/Nobel Lectures. The information is sometimes updated with an addendum submitted by the Laureate.

Lady Florence Norman, a suffragette, on her motor-scooter in 1916, travelling to work at offices in London where she was a supervisor. The scooter was a birthday present from her husband, the journalist and Liberal politician Sir Henry Norman.

Mariam “Al-Astrolabiya” Al-Ijliya: Why she kicks ass

Doria Shafiq (1908 - 1975) was one of the bravest and significant women’s rights activist of Egypt.

Shafiq, who studied at the Parisian Sorbonne, founded the the magazine Daughters of the Nile during the 40s and a little later the “Union of the Daughters of the Nile”. In July 1951 she stormed the parliament in Cairo together with hundreds of other women to push trough the female suffrage. Three years later she went on hunger strike to protest for the right of women to run a political office. Revolutionary Leader Nasser, with whom she had initially worked together, placed the belligerent women’s rights activist under house arrest in 1957 when she demanded his resignation. He let all her publications be annihilated.  In 1975 the completely isolated Shafiq commited suicide by jumping off the balcony of her apartment.

She now has been crossed out of the Egyptian textbooks for 2013/14 by the Minister for Education, Mostafa Mosaad. The reason: She was not veiled.

“So long as she was decently dressed and deported herself in an orderly manner, she had the right to dress as she pleased.” (1850s)

Image Courtesy of American Antiquarian Society

What do a ‘Communist draft-dodging homosexual sex-pervert’ and a ‘Civil Rights hero’ have in common?

Well, for starters, they’re sometimes the same person.

Bayard Rustin was an activist, teacher and administrator who played a key role in the Civil Rights movement — he acted as a secretary to Dr Martin Luther King, helped organise the Freedom Rides and bus integration protests, and was the key organiser for the 1963 March on Washington, at which King gave his ‘I Have A Dream’ speech. 

So why have you never heard about Bayard Rustin in history class? 

Because Bayard Rustin was gay. 

In 1953, he was arrested in Pasadena, California for having consensual sex in a parked car with two male partners. He was initially charged with vagrancy and lewd conduct: the charges were later altered to a lesser count of ‘sex perversion’, to which he pleaded guilty. After his conviction, he was asked to leave the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the pacifist Civil Rights organisation that he worked for, and was later shunned or encouraged to take a behind-the-scenes role by many members of the movement (it’s important to remember that this may not have been completely due to the homophobia of the other civil rights leaders — they were acting under  the fear of being smeared or blackmailed by right-wing opposition). Nevertheless, he managed to live through this stigma, and spent the rest of his life working for both African-American and gay civil rights. 

Read more and find links to follow at the Secret Histories Project.

Have I reblogged him before? If not I needed to and if so fuck it I always need to reblog this awesome motherfucker.