Stephanie St. Clair – Harlem’s Queen of Numbers

by | Jun 12, 2020 | Contemporary (1914 - today), North America, USA | 0 comments

In light of the current protests going on, today’s article is about a woman who was a community organizer and activist for black rights in America during Prohibition, as well as a successful gangster/businesswoman that stood up to the Mafia and the corrupt police system. Did I mention she was an immigrant too? Making a living as a black woman wasn’t easy from the get go, but not only did she build her own business and defended it for years, but continued fighting for a better chance in life for her community as well as those who came after her. Meet Stephanie St. Clair, Harlem’s Queen of Numbers.

From what we know about Stephanie’s childhood, she was born in Le Moule, Guadeloupe on Christmas Eve 1897. Some biographers cite her year of birth as 1887 – a whole decade earlier – however the best researched source, a book by Shirley Stewart, is certain of the one I went with in the first place. However it is interesting that there would be a dispute about this as she was a well-educated woman and would have known her birthday …unless she wanted this confusion. You’ll see why that’s more than likely in a moment. 

So, Stephanie was born mixed, French and African, and grew up with her single mother who worked hard to ensure a good education for her daughter. That way she learned her native French as well as English – in reading and writing as well as speaking, although some biographers state she learned the latter only when she was already in the US. In 1911, when she was 13 years old, Stephanie left her home on a steamboat for America. Arriving in New York the same year, she initially passed through and worked as a domestic servant before returning to the US five years later. The biographies aging her a decade state she spent time in Marseilles, France, before coming to the US, however this claim has been disputed by Stewart. Stephanie herself never disputed this claim though and speaking French, had no problem passing it as truth. And doesn’t it sound glamorous? And Stephanie was all about glamour for sure.

Whichever way she went, it is certain that she eventually settled in Harlem, New York, fitting right in with the growing African-American community. Arriving just a few years before the Great Migration when millions of black people fled the confederate South to settle in more liberal cities like New York. So the city was her playground, and it didn’t take long until she had her own gang: The 40 Thieves. Her main goal was to make a bunch of money fast and coercion and scams really seemed to work. By 1923 she was able to invest $10.000 to develop a numbers racket. The start of a lucrative career. 

A short interlude to tell you about numbers rackets in case you’re as confused as I was. Other names for it are policy banking or just numbers game. It’s basically a mix of lottery, gambling and investment where the person betting had to guess three numbers to win after paying a fee to enter the draw. There were different ways on how these random numbers were “generated” and I don’t know which one Stephanie used, but the winner was determined the day after the bets were placed. While the practice was illegal, it was one of the few opportunities for the working class to invest their money and it was even more important to the African-American community. You see, at the time there were very few banks accepting black customers, so the policy banking was more or less their only investment option. While, yes, it certainly wasn’t the most honest of professions, it did provide the black community with a surprising amount of wealth and jobs. 

But back to our story. Stephanie teamed up with another famous black gangster called Bumpy Johnson and, making him her lieutenant, her business bloomed. For the next few years Madam St. Clair ruled the numbers rackets in Harlem, becoming rich herself but also giving back to the community. She paid her workers well and funded projects to help immigrants like herself to not only learn English but also give them a network and a sense of belonging. One of her main strategies was to put out newspaper ads – full-page and often with a big photo of herself attached – educating her community on their rights, advocating for voting rights and protesting police violence as well as the corrupt legal system.

You see, she was quite and extravagant person with an eccentric, opulent fashion sense and well-respected by the Harlem residents who were the first to call her Madam. Others called her Queenie. While contemporaries describe her as sophisticated and educated, she was also arrogant and known for her temper and occasionally foul mouth (in several languages!) It was that particular mix of character traits that make her story so interesting though. Like that one time she was arrested for her ads, publicized the trial and right after she was released after eight months of prison, she went to the higher ups, not only telling them how she had bribed officers but also how many of them were actually customers of hers. Many officers were fired that day. The Queen lived a lavish lifestyle and, earning an annual income of about $200.000, she amassed a small “personal fortune around $500,000 cash and [owned] several apartment houses.” She resided at 409 Edgecombe Ave in Sugar Hill, a renowned address of the Harlem Renaissance, alongside more reputable black citizens. Still she never made a secret of her occupation and nonetheless remained a major figure in her community. And she loved it. 

With the Great Depression in 1930 and the end of Prohibition two years later, the (predominantly white) Mafia in the surrounding areas saw their profits dwindle and decided that Harlem would be a pretty good addition to their turf. One mobster in particular was determined to take over Madam St. Clair’s business: Dutch Schultz, a brutal man with a violent temper who would become her arch nemesis for the years to come. And he wasn’t subtle about his entrance. He would beat up and straight up kill numbers operators who refused to pay for protection. And when Madam St. Clair refused, he started a personal vendetta against her, threatening her via phone, kidnapping and killing her men and bribing the police wherever he could. He even got her arrested at one point! She responded in the same fashion, killing his men, destroying his businesses, tipping off the police and having his property raided by the police. One such raid cost him $12 million (which would be around $172 million today!) Then she wrote about it in her newspaper ads, because that’s just how extra she was. You might think that’s a pretty stupid move, but actually she used her writings as insurance against potential attacks on her life. By recording the threats against her in the paper, everyone would know who to turn to should something happen to her. Still it was a bloody war with at least 40 people dead.

Slowly this feud pushed Queenie out of the game though. With the police’s eyes constantly on her, she had to watch her every move. In the mid-30s she turned most of the business over to Bumpy Johnson who in turn protected her. And again she used the newspaper to her advantage, this time posting ads that catalogued her activities as a defense against any criminal charges. And for that she had to keep her nose clean. Ironically it was then that the fight against Schultz finally ended …with him being shot. It was a Mafia thing and Madam St. Clair had nothing to do with the assassination whatsoever but she couldn’t miss the chance for one last taunt. It was only a small bible verse that arrived on his deathbed in the hospital via telegram: “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.” It was signed “Madam Queen of Policy.” 

But even with Dutch out of the way, Madam Queen retired from the numbers game and instead focussed all her energy on her activism. She also met and married Sufi Abdul Hamid around 1936, an eccentric activist who ran a mosque as well. He was also very anti-semitic and because of this (and the fact that he was often seen wearing a Nazi-style shirt combined with a cape and turban) he was dubbed Black Hitler by the press. Madam St. Clair and Abdul Hamid were certainly a match in regards to their eccentric characters and flamboyant fashion, as well as their fight for black rights. However their marriage was a stormy one from the start and ended abruptly in 1938 when she shot him. 

…or at him anyway. Abdul survived and went on to marry his mistress, a black fortune teller who went with the name Fu Futtam and somehow claimed to be Asian. The couple had already tried to establish quite a few businesses with Stephanie’s money and at some point she snapped. What followed was a sensational trial of Madame St. Claire vs. Abdul Hamid. 

Throughout it all she maintained that “if [she] had wanted him dead, he would be dead.” Eventually her lawyers got him to admit that his name was actually Eugene, that he wasn’t from Egypt but from Philadelphia as well as tell them all about his affair. Still, in the end Madame St. Clair was found guilty by the all-white jury and sentenced to prison. 

The duration of her stay there isn’t completely certain and ranges from 2-10 years and her trail gets a little faint afterwards. Just like with Dutch Schultz, fate seems to have had a strong dislike for those giving her trouble: just a few months into her imprisonment, Abdul Hamid died in a plane crash. After her release in the early 1940s it seems that she steered clear of criminal enterprises and once again fully focussed on her activist work. Continuing to use her newspaper ads, she publicized the discrimination against black people in her community as well as police brutality and the often illegal tactics employed in the name of justice. She kept campaigning for black voting rights and educating her peers on their civil rights until she died in 1969, quietly and still rich, shortly before turning 73. Four years earlier, in 1965, the Voting Rights Act had been passed which finally gave black people equal voting rights. 

Stephanie St. Clair was a complex and fascinating woman, shifting between gangster and community advocate as she pleased. But this duality is what makes her so interesting, we can see her motivated by a genuine wish for socio-political advancement just as easily as by the desire for riches and publicity. She was in the middle of a fight against racial inequality and she wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty. Her style of activism shaped future generations and shows just how creative especially marginalized groups can get when it comes to advocacy. Especially in these days her story is so important as it shows how exposing injustices and educating the community matters. It also shows that informal (and, let’s be honest, often illegal) networks are essential in organizing a successful protest against a corrupt system. So let’s learn from this incredibly smart woman and let’s make sure to continue her fight against police brutality.

image credits:

1: Photo of Stephanie St. Clair in her youth. Book cover of “Madame St-Clair, Reine de Harlem” by Raphaël Confiant – via Wikimedia Commons – Link
2: Harlem Numbers Banker Madame Stephanie St. Clair. (Courtesy of Morgan and Marvin Smith Photographic Collection, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture New York Public Library) – via the African American Intellectual History Society – Link
3: one of Stephanie St. Clair’s newspaper ads in The Amsterdam News – via Rejected Princesses – Link
4: African-American religious and labor leader, Sufi Abdul Hamid with his wife, Harlem mob boss, Stephanie Saint-Clair, in formal dress, January 23, 1938. (Photo by Afro American Newspapers/Gado/Getty Images) – embedded – Link
5: “Stephanie St. Clair Hamid in Custody” (fair use image) – via BlackPast.org – Link

Minna Canth – Finland’s First Feminist

by | May 22, 2020 | Finland, Mid Modern Period (1750 - 1914) | 0 comments

Because it’s my Mum’s birthday, I want to honor another badass mother today. After her husband died, she raised their seven(!) kids by herself and even found time to not only manage the family store, but also fight for gender equality, writing text that were way ahead of her time. Let me introduce you to Minna Canth.

We’re in Tampere, Finland in Spring 1844 and a after their first son had died in infancy, textile worker Gustav Johnsson and his wife Ulrika were overjoyed when their daughter Ulrika Wilhelmina, or Minna for short, was born. In 1850 another boy would follow and two years later another girl. One year after her little sister was born, her father was promoted to managing a yarn store and the whole family moved to Kuopio. Even before that she had attended the school at the factory her father worked for and continued her education in her new home. The shop was so successful under her father’s management that Minna was even admitted to an upper class school! 

That meant she was able to get a much better education than most working-class women at the time, not only learning the basics of reading and writing, but also history and geography and mathematics! Besides the main language, Swedish, she also learned to speak German, French and Russian, while at home she spoke Finnish. (Back then Swedish was the official language of Finland and it wasn’t until 1923 that Finnish was recognized in the same way.) Half the day was put aside for crafts – of course, it was a women’s school – but Minna really didn’t have the patience for that, she’d much rather devour every book she could find. 

When a school to train female teachers was established in a city near her home, 19 year old Minna was among the first to apply. The Jyväskylä Teacher Seminary was the first school in Finland to make higher education accessible for women and of course Minna wanted in. And she got in. 

In 1963 she began her education as a primary school teacher and she absolutely loved it! Not only was she elated to keep learning, but she also loved the philosophy of teaching and unexpectedly enjoyed the hour of gymnastics everyday and regular outdoor activity. In her journals she wrote: “Here, even the careless, like me, are forced to take better care of their health” and the habit of daily exercise and long walks would accompany her throughout her life. Minna also found love somewhere unexpected: in her natural science teacher Johan Ferdinand Canth. And in 1965 the two of them married. Unfortunately that also meant that she wasn’t allowed to continue her education at the Teacher Seminary, as married women weren’t allowed to study at the time. 

Even though her formal years of education were over, Minna had learned a lot and began to see society – and especially the role of women within it – in a whole new light. But for now she fully immersed herself in married life, taking care of the household while her husband worked at the school and as a newspaper editor. Her joy and pride was tending to the garden where she grew vegetables that not only fed her family but also produced a bit of income at the side. Apparently Minna had inherited her father’s talent as a salesperson. But not only her garden grew, her family did too. Between 1866 and 1890 the Canths had seven children!

Somehow in 1974 Minna found the time to start writing for the newspaper her husband worked at, focussing on women’s issues. She was incredibly happy to finally have intellectual stimulation in her life again, or as she called it “spiritual nourishment.” Her articles didn’t go over with the editors however and both her and her husband had to leave the paper only two years later. They were both immediately hired by the competition though and Minna began publishing her first fiction stories. They were even collected in a book in 1878!

But the happy family life came to a screeching halt when Johan Canth died unexpectedly in July 1879, leaving Minna alone with six children and a seventh on the way. Not only was she now a widow at 35, she was also really really broke.

She knew that continuing to write only newspaper articles would not sustain a large family like hers for long, so she thought bigger and sent a play to the Finnish National Theater in Helsinki where it was enthusiastically accepted. This would lead to a lifelong partnership with the director of the institution who taught her much. Still Minna knew it would be hard staying in the big city and after her youngest daughter Lyyli was born, she sold the family home in Jyväskylä and took her children on a three-day journey back to her hometown, Kuopio.

Returning home after 17 years of absence, Minna lost no time. Her parents had opened their own draper’s shop, but her father had died shortly after and now it wasn’t doing too well. So Minna took charge. Soon she had turned business around and was earning enough to not only take care of her seven kids and the family cat, but her mother and ailing brother as well. After her brother’s death in 1884, she took over his general store as well and she seems to have had a real talent for business: in 1895 she was elected as the first woman to be a voting representative in the General Merchant Meeting. There wouldn’t be another woman of a similar rank for the next 100 years. She also greatly enjoyed the freedom her existence as a businesswoman granted her. She made enough to hire people and finally, finally she had the time to write again!

Her home in Kuopio quickly became a meeting point for intellectuals and creative to discuss new ideas and Minna established a women’s circle to discuss social issues and needed reforms. But she didn’t just keep her ideas in her home, she wrote articles focussing on social and gender inequality for different newspapers and even planned a women’s magazine for which she ended up being too busy. Even if Swedish was the official language and she did speak it well, Minna made the choice to write in Finnish. Not only the language was unusual, but her opinions were often controversial and way ahead of her time as well – her topics included the wealth divide, public education, sexual repression and morality, as well as the stigma against sick and disabled people.

Often the deeper meaning of her work was overlooked in order to criticize the imperfect but very human characters and progressive ideas; some of her works were even banned! In 1889 she started a newspaper where she translated texts from all over Europe to debate international ideas with her readers, but that too was censored after just one year. She knew that she was ahead of her time – “a woman of a completely new age,” she called it – but she never gave up trying to usher in that new age for everyone else. 

And she had her personal reasons to keep standing up to against the system. As her daughters grew older she once again realized how difficult it was for a woman to get a good education. Without further ado she hired high school boys to teach her daughters what they learned, like mathematics and Latin, in addition to their regular lessons at the girls’ school. Of course Minna didn’t just stop at that. She and some members of her women’s group saw the need for women’s education and In 1886 the first Finnish-language co-educational school in the country was established – all paid for via fundraisers! One of her daughters, Elli, followed her mother as an intellectual, even going to Switzerland for a few years to study natural medicine. I imagine that must have made Minna very happy, as she firmly believed that to achieve true gender equality, we must empower our young women, not only by educating them but also by teaching them to navigate the world outside the home without relying on a husband.

And we know that at least with Elli she did a great job in doing so for her own daughters. When Minna died in 1897, at age 53, Elli and her brother Jussi continued their mother’s businesses and they kept operating (under various names) until 1974! But Minna’s story is not completely over yet. Ten years after her death, Finland became the first European country to give women the right to vote. It is not unlikely that her writings had at least a little influence on that progress. 

image credits:

1: “Finnish author Minna Canth (1844-1897) in her youth (age 13-16)” from her biography “Monisärmäinen Minna Canth : kirjoituksia hänestä ja hänen tuotannostaan” by Liisi Huhtala, 1998 – via Wikimedia Commons – Link
2: “Finnish author Minna Canth (1844-1897) and lecturer (teacher) Johan Ferdinand Canth (1835–1879) in Jyväskylä” from the biography by Liisi Huhtala, mentioned above – via Wikimedia Commons – Link
3: “One of the first uses of photographs in Finnish newspapers – Uusi Kuvalehti, June 1891, published in Kuopio – In picture: Kuopio-based authors Minna Canth and Juhani Aho” – from the biography by Liisi Huhtala, mentioned above – via Wikimedia Commons – Link
4: “Landscape from the cathedral tower” – Kuopio between 1889 and 1893, Minna Canth’s house is the light one at the corner. Photo: Aug. Schuffert [cropped] – Link
5: “Screw game in Kanttila [Minna Canth’s house in Kuopio]” – Pictured are Hanna Levander (left), Alma Tervo, Maiju Canth and Minna Canth, between 1890 and 1896. Photographer unknown – Digitized at the Kuopio Museum of Cultural History – Link
6: “Finnish author Minna Canth (1844-1897)” – date and photographer unknown – via Wikipedia Commons – Link

Fatima al-Fihri – Paving the Way for Modern University Education

by | May 7, 2020 | Africa, Middle Ages (500 - 1500 AD), Morocco | 0 comments

Today I want to tell you how a Muslim woman paved the way for higher education as we know it. This is the history of the world’s oldest, continually operating university as well as a story about determination and giving back to the community. Let me take you to 9th century North Africa where Fatima al-Fihri was born.

Around 800 AD in the Tunisian town of Kairouan, a merchant and his wife welcomed their first daughter into the world and named her Fatima. A second, Maryam, would follow soon. While it isn’t certain when the family became rich, it must have happened either before the girls were born or as they were growing up, as they enjoyed quite a few privileges. 

They did receive a thorough education for example, both scientific and religious, and they were. Apart from this, not much is known about Fatima’s early life, except that she was devoutly religious, as was her sister. So we’re going to fast forward a little. 

At some point she married and after an uprising in Kairouan the whole family decided to emigrate to Fez – a city in today’s Morocco on its way to becoming a bustling metropolis of the Islamic Golden Age – and settled in its west where many other people from their hometown were living aready. For now however, life wasn’t all that golden for Fatima. Shortly after her wedding her father died and soon after her new husband as well. There is no mention of her mother at all after this point, so I’m assuming she died before the family moved. So now Fatima and her sister were completely on their own in a new city. 

Being the only children to their parents however and with Fatima being a widow, the two women inherited quite a bit of money – most sources use the word “fortune.” But living modest lives, as was expected from Muslims, they didn’t really need that much and wouldn’t it be much more in Allah’s sense to give back to the community that so lovingly welcomed them? Maryam decided to buy a plot of land and supported the Andalusian immigrants of the city (who arrived prior to the wave from Kairouan) in building a mosque which they named Al-Andalus. It is still standing and one of the oldest landmarks of the old city center of Fez. Fatima too purchased land, near Maryam’s, however on her plot there was a mosque already which she tore down with the intention to rebuild it, but bigger and better! 

It took 18 years until Fatima’s ambitious project was finished. She oversaw the whole building process and is said to have fasted for the final two years until it was completed. It was planned as a community hub, 1520 m² big with a courtyard with a fountain, enough room for many many books and space dedicated to learning. Although the mosque itself is beautifully intricate and extravagant, she made a point of keeping its construction modest, using only materials from the site. It was a remarkable process really: they dug deep into the earth to find different materials to use and rebuilt a stable foundation after. Finally in 859 AD it was done, the Al-Qarawiyyin Mosque (Al Kara-ween – named after her hometown) was complete. Fatima was the first to walk through its doors and pray. 

In accordance with Muslim tradition, the mosque also functioned as a madrasa, a place of education and you might remember Fatima’s plan to include enough space for that purpose. She herself took an active part in learning too and attended lectures until old age. She also appears to have introduced certificates for completing studies in a certain subject, similar to our university degrees today! After seeing her mosque flourish and become a community hub, Fatima died around 880 AD, an old woman. 

But her story doesn’t end here because it’s her legacy that truly made a difference in the long run. Around 30 years after Fatima’s death Al-Qarawiyyin became the Jama Masjid, the main mosque, of Fez. With time its library expanded and attracted scholars from all over the country and even from across its borders.

By the 12th century not only the Qur’an and Fiqh (Islamic Law) were taught there but also worldly subjects like grammar, medicine, mathematics and astronomy. It still wasn’t officially called a university, but it came pretty close to the system we have today. Many of the people who studied there became influential personalities in the Muslim world and beyond! And not only Muslims went there to learn and it is likely that it was at Al-Qarawiyyin where Pope Sylvester II (before he became pope) learned about arabic numerals which he then brought to the Western world. Even though it had been a hub for learning and scientific exchange, Al-Qarawiyyin didn’t receive its official university status until 1963. 

Today the University of Al-Qarawiyyin is still standing and has been recognized as the oldest existing and continuously operating university in the world – it has been teaching for more than 1200 years! And even if Fatima did not really found it as an university, she built it as a place for learning. Thus she not only paved the way for significant progress in her country, but all over the world. Without her, our system of higher education would probably look way different. Just as Fatima wanted, Al-Qarawiyyin became a center of the community, making it better.

By the way: While the university itself is off-limits if you are not a student there, the library can be visited and of course the beautiful courtyard. So if you ever happen to be in Fez, you know where to go!

image credits:

1: “Fatima Al-Fihriyya Art Nouveau” by Nayzak on DeviantArt (cropped) – Link
2: “The oldest university of the world, Al Qarawiyine university in Fès” by User Abdel Hassouni in Wikimedia Commons, 2015 – Link
3: Fatima al-Fihri by Decue Wu for the Fiercely Female 2019 Calendar – Link
4: “University Al Quaraouiyine in Fès, Morocco” by User Medist in Wikimedia Commons, 2019 – Link

Manshuk Mametova – One-Woman Army

by | Apr 24, 2020 | Asia, Contemporary (1914 - today), Kazakhstan | 0 comments

This week I’m taking you to Soviet Kazakhstan, when World War II was just beginning, and one girl was determined to fight for her Motherland. Even though she was rejected at first and later only assigned clerk duty, she taught herself how to use a machine gun and eventually became Hero of the Soviet Union. That was not only the highest military honor, but she was the first Kazakh woman to receive it. Her name is Manshuk Mametova and I want to take you along on the wild ride that was her life. 

In 1922 in Zhaksus, a small village in the steppe of the Ural Region in Kazakhstan, a shoe maker and his wife welcomed their fifth child into the world, a daughter they named Mansia. Little Manshuk, as her mother affectionately called her, spent her childhood learning to ride before she could even walk and spending long nights around the yurt’s hearth, listening to stories about heroes and heroines, adventures and fairytales. Sometimes her aunt Amina would visit from Alma-Ata, and tell stories of a city built of stone. When she was around three or five years old, her parents sent her to live with her aunt as it was custom. (Well, it was custom to send the child to its grandparents, but they had died already, so she was sent to her aunt instead.) It seems that soon after her parents died, or maybe they died before and she was adopted then – sources are unclear. What is certain however, is that her aunt took her with her and she grew up in the capital. 

Her childhood in Alma-Ata seems to have been a very happy one, filled with the scent of apple trees growing all over the city. Her aunt was a strict but loving woman and every word of appreciation would make the little girl beam with joy. And when she was old enough to go to school, she soon felt like she had gained a second family. She loved to learn and the other girls loved her for her enthusiasm and kindness. In the picture you can see her on the top right with two of her classmates. As the years passed by, Manshuk learned more and more about her nation and learned to love its vast beauty. Especially Moscow stole her heart and she would dream of walking over the Red Square for years to come. 

After graduating, she entered a medical school program and later the Alma-Ata Medical Institute. At some point in her medical education, she took a job at the Secretariat of the Council of People’s Commissars, which aimed to fuse Kazakh culture with Soviet values. Life was good. She had a job she liked, friends and family she adored and soon, soon she would finally see Moscow! It was the Summer of 1941 and 18-year-old Manshuk was planning to go see a sports parade. But it was not meant to be. Nazi Germany had bombed Sevastopol, Odessa and Kiev and was now approaching Moscow. 

Even though the war was still far from Alma-Ata, Manshuk was one of the first to volunteer at the local recruitment office. Inspired not only by her love for the Soviet Union and her country, but also by the countless stories she grew up with, Manshuk wanted to take an active part in defending her homeland.

Even though the Red Army accepted women into their ranks, her request to go to the frontlines was rejected. But she persisted. It took one year until she was finally accepted into the Army – however only as a desk clerk instead of a warrior. It was a first step though and so Manshuk became a secretary and later a nurse as well. But still she dreamt of being a warrior. And so, between her administrative duties and her work in the local field hospital, she taught herself how to shoot a machine gun. Eventually she was asked to show her skills to her superior and she didn’t miss a single target. Impressed, her commander assigned her to the 100th Rifle Brigade and finally, in October 1942, she was on her way to the frontlines.

Her Regiment fought well and soon Manshuk had earned not only the rank of Senior Sergeant but also the respect and trust of her comrades. Never did she part with her beloved gun. But it wasn’t only battle that happened on the front lines but life as well. Manshuk made friends and shared stories of home with them. Sometimes she would get a letter or a parcel from home and it would remind her of the sunny days in an apple-scented city that she so passionately defended. However she did find something on the front that she didn’t back home: she fell in love. In a letter to her sister she wrote about fellow machine gunner Nurken Khusainov and how it was impossible now to act on her feelings. Apparently Nurken thought the same and so it remained unfulfilled. For their next assignment would mean death for both of them. 

On October 15, 1943, Manshuk and her regiment fought to liberate the city of Nevel on Russia’s western border – a difficult battle from the get-go, as the Germans occupied higher ground. The Soviets still weren’t able to advance after hours of battle, but continued to suffer heavy casualties, Nurken among them. To find a better spot to attack and to give the Germans another front to worry about, Manshuk and another machine gunner broke away from their unit. Soon they found what they were looking for: a small hill on the flank of the German army with a barricade for machine gunners on top. They quietly killed the enemy soldiers occupying the post and opened fire. The unexpected attack broke the German counter-offensive and finally the Soviets were able to advance.

Crawling between three different machine gun posts the two gunners relentlessly fired on the enemy, trying to avoid being hit themselves. At some point Manshuk was knocked out by a mortar shell, but regained consciousness and continued her assault. More than once her comrade asked her to retreat, but she refused. She knew that as soon as they stopped shooting they will be overrun and everyone else will die as well. The battle had waged for an hour when a grenade hit their post, immediately killing her comrade and mortally wounding her. Even so, Manshuk would not let go of her gun. With her last strength and nothing to lose, she occupied the best possible position and continued shooting until her last breath. It might have been her who finally turned the tides of the battle and without her the Red Army would not have been able to liberate Nevel.

Her body was recovered after the battle, her hands still clutching her gun, and buried in the city’s cemetery. For her bravery, she was posthumously awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union, the highest honor in the USSR. There are also a bunch of statues, one in Nevel for example and one in Almaty (that’s what Alma-Ata is called now), and streets and schools are named after her (including her former High School) and there are songs about her! Even though she wasn’t able to return to her beloved hometown, I think Manshuk Mametova would have been proud to know she is remembered for making a difference. And maybe that she now has her own folk tales as well. 

image credits:

all images via http://top-antropos.com/history/20-century/item/1019-manshuk-mametova

1: Manshuk Mametova with Aunt Amina, 1935
2: Manshuk Mametova, 1937
3: Portrait of Manshuk Mametova (undated, ca. 1942/43)
4: Monument to sniper Aliya Moldagulova and Manshuk Mametova (r.) in Almaty, Kazakhstan

Susan La Flesche Picotte – Doctor Between Two Worlds

by | Apr 10, 2020 | Mid Modern Period (1750 - 1914), North America, USA | 0 comments

This week I want to pay tribute to the medical workers of the world with an article about a doctor whose work spanned two worlds. Determined to provide adequate medical care for her community, she became the first Native American woman to hold a medical degree. But she wasn’t only a doctor! She helped out with financial issues as well as family disputes. Her name is Susan La Flesche Picotte and here is her story. 

Born in 1865, Susan came into life already inbetween worlds. Her father Joseph became Chief of the Omaha Tribe little more than ten years earlier and had since been pushing for assimilation. In his opinion only adapting the traditional lifestyle to the changing world would save his people. By the time Susan was born, there was a schism in the tribe between the traditionalists and innovators. She and her three older sisters grew up in a log cabin instead of a teepee, but were still taught the traditional ways and the Omaha language, walking the fine line between cultures.

When Susan was eight years old, she witnessed the death of an elderly tribeswoman as the local, white doctor simply didn’t come to treat her. She would think back to that incident for the rest of her life and later remember it as the moment she decided to become a doctor. But first she needed to go to school. After attending school on the Reservation until she was 14, being homeschooled for a few years and studying in New Jersey for a while, she returned home to Nebraska at age 17 to teach at the local Quaker Mission School. It was there that she met Harvard anthropologist Alice Cunningham Fletcher who encouraged her to pursue a higher education and to fulfill her dream of becoming a physician. They would remain close friends and Alice would become somewhat of a mentor to our young heroine.

So Susan travelled East again. This time to Virginia, where she had enrolled at Hampton Institute, one of the most prestigious schools for non-white students in the US. There she met another woman to support her on her way, the resident physician Martha Waldron, who was a graduate of the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania and urged her to apply to the school as well. With the help of Alice Fletcher, Susan was able to secure funds for a scholarship from the Office of Indian Affairs, likely making her the first person to receive aid for professional education in the US. The one catch was that she was forbidden from entering any kind of romantic relationship during her studies as well as a few years after to “allow her to fully focus on her practice.” It seems that she didn’t care that much though, or at least she never mentioned it, and so off she was, her dream within reach.

In 1889, after just two years instead of three, she graduated the WMCP with honors on top of her class and finally returned home to Nebraska to become the physician for the Omaha Agency, operated by the Office of Indian Affairs. Quickly people began flooding in. As you might have deducted from the incident with the old woman back when Susan was still a child, the medical care at the reservation was bad. Many tribespeople were sick with cholera and tuberculosis and many came to her for help in other matters as well. She became more than just their doctor, she was a lawyer as well as a priest and accountant to them. So many insisted to be treated by her, that her white partner quit, leaving her solely responsible for the medical care of over 1300 patients in a 450 square mile area. 

Susan wasn’t easily deterred though. While she was dreaming to build a proper hospital someday, for now she was making house calls on foot, often taking hours to reach just a single patient, risking her life in the process. Although she did eventually upgrade to a horse and later a buggy, things improved only slightly. She had always been suffering from chronic illness and already had to take a break in 1892 due to chronic pain and another one a year later after a fall from her horse left her injured. Since then her hearing worsened continuously. In addition to all that, some of her patients kept rejecting her diagnoses and questioning her knowledge. Again Susan didn’t even think about giving up though and kept advocating for changes in sanitary routines and against alcohol. She was quick to realize the damage that living in a white world did to her people and saw that changes had to be made in order to survive. And she was determined to bring about these changes. 

But first she fell in love. In 1894 she met Henry Picotte, a Sioux, and they married the same year. The couple settled in Bancroft on the Reservation and Susan opened her own little practice there, making no difference between the ethnicities of her patients. One or two years later their first son Caryl was born and two or three years later the second one, Pierre, arrived. After giving birth (and presumably resting for a little while) Susan continued to work, relying on her husband to take care of the family and household. We are in Victorian times, mind you, this was incredibly unusual! Shortly before her death she would even get to build the hospital she always dreamed of, but more on that later.

For more than 25 years Susan would work tirelessly for better medical care and illness prevention for her people, advocating for the use of screen doors to keep the flies out, for better sanitation and most of all against alcohol. She had recognized the growing numbers of people with tuberculosis which can be directly traced back to alcohol consumption. She also witnessed first- hand the white whiskey peddlers and how people pawned clothes and even land just to get more to drink. Even her husband slipped into alcoholism and would eventually die from tuberculosis in 1905. She saw her people suffering and she saw alcohol as the culprit – at least the culprit she could do something against. And she did. 

In the 1890s she ran a campaign to enforce prohibition on the reservation which failed, partly because many Omaha people were illiterate at the time and liquor dealers were handing them ballots against prohibition and/or bribed them with alcohol. Finally in 1897 a law was introduced that outlawed trading alcohol against land …however it proved impossible to enforce.

For the rest of her life, Susan would continue this fight but never truly get rid of the problem. But she did have some success in fighting for her people’s land after all! You see, the land of the Reservation was held in trust by the government at the time, so it didn’t truly belong to the Native Americans even though they had lived there for ages. Her first brush with bureaucracy was when her husband died and although he left the land to her and their children, there was no other adult man to legally take the land and it was all very complicated. But after a series of quite infuriated letters over the course of three years, she did get to inherit her land and sell some of it (which was a whole other can of worms because technically it still wasn’t her land – the trust-thing, you remember – but yeah, she managed.) Soon others came to her because they had similar problems and she quickly had established a side-gig in addition to her doctor’s work. And raising two kids. And campaigning against alcohol. In 1907 she moved her family to Walthill. Gosh, where did she take the time?!

Anyways, she helped people with their inheritances and land sales and at some point she realized there was a circle of men, both white and Omaha, who cheated minors out of their inheritances and thus out of Omaha land. After campaigning for her tribes right to their land for years she now suddenly wrote to the Office of Indian Affairs that the Omaha people needed the continued guardianship of the state. Yes, I was just as confused as you probably are, but it’s actually quite a smart plan. Susan accused the OIA of the lack of business skills of her people and held them accountable for minors under their guardianship losing their land to fraudsters and reminded them of their duty to protect the Native Americans. Simultaneously she chastised them for having treated her people like children since the beginning which was the whole reason for this mess. The plan kinda backfired though and in the end the Omaha became even more dependent on the OIA and lost even more land, if not to fraudsters. 

But even though many of her endeavors ultimately failed, she did make illness prevention and proper health care available to her people. And one more thing: Remember that hospital I talked about earlier? In 1913, two years before she died from bone cancer, her dream of opening a hospital for her community finally became reality – completely funded by the community through her tireless crowdsourcing (she did ask some rich people too.) Even though she was gone, the hospital remained operational well into the 1940s and the building still exists today!

image credits:

1: “Susan La Flesche Picotte, M.D.” – National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution (54752), via the Changing the Face of Medicine Exhibition – Link
2: “Susan La Flesche Picotte”, 1889 – Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania Photograph Collection (ACC-AHC1) Item Number p0164a, via iDEA by Drexel University Libraries – Link
3: “Susan La Flesche, early 1900s, when she returned to the Omaha Reservation” – National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution (54752), via the Changing the Face of Medicine Exhibition – Link
4: “Picotte, Dr. Susan, Memorial Hospital”, National Register of Historic Places Collection (88002762) via National Park Service Gallery – Link