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March is National Women's History Month, and this year's theme -- Celebrating Women of Courage and Vision -- is reflected in our tribute to some of the courageous and visionary women who have visited Boston University over the years. Photos by BU Photo Services

Shirley Chisholm, the first African-American woman elected to Congress, speaking in the GSU Conference Auditorium in 1981. Chisholm was a longtime advocate for minorities, women, and children. She entered several Democratic presidential primaries in 1972 and received 151 delegate votes for the presidential nomination. Chisholm served in Congress until 1982.		Margaret Mead, during a 1967 lecture on campus. The renowned anthropologist, who studied half a dozen tribes when most in her field were studying one, spent the 1920s and '30s in the Pacific Islands and New Guinea, locales which then offered conditions that tested a scholar's mettle. "The natives are superficially agreeable," she once wrote home, "but they go in for cannibalism, headhunting, infanticide, incest, avoidance and joking relationships, and biting lice in half with their teeth."

Barbara Jordan (GRS'89) (seated) at a reception in her honor on December 6, 1972, at BU's King Center. Elected to the House of Representatives from Texas in 1972, Jordan became the first African-American congresswoman to be elected -- and then reelected -- from the deep South. In 1976, she was the first woman and the first African-American to give the keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention.

Bella Abzug, with her trademark wide-brimmed hat, at BU's Hayden Hall in 1980. Abzug donned her signature headwear in 1971 after she was elected to the House of Representatives. There, she introduced legislation calling for gay rights, reproductive freedom, an end to the Vietnam War, banning discrimination against women seeking credit, and more. She helped found the National Women's Political Caucus and served as chair of the National Advisory Commission on Women under President Jimmy Carter.

Maya Angelou, award-winning author, signing books at Barnes & Noble at BU in 1997. In the 1960s, Angelou began writing and won a National Book Award for I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, her first autobiographical work. In 1971, with Georgia, Georgia, she became the first African-American woman to have a screenplay produced as a film. Her writings have brought her numerous awards, and she has been nominated for a Tony, an Emmy, and a Pulitzer prize.

16 March 2001
Boston University
Office of University Relations