HerStory 2024

Known as “Her Deepness” or “The Sturgeon General,” Sylvia Earle is a legend in oceanic study and advocacy.  She’s an American marine biologist, oceanographer, explorer, author, and lecturer. She has been a National Geographic Explorer at Large since 1998. She was the first female chief scientist of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and was named by Time Magazine as its first Hero for the Planet in 1998. Much of her time and energy is spent educating people about and advocating for the health of our oceans, making sure it is known that the planet’s health is dependent on the health of the oceans. In other words, she’s amazeballs.

Inspired by a long-standing love of the outdoors and the work of Rachel Carson, Sylvia Earl always knew she’d make her living in and in service to the natural world. She began her studies in the 1950s, earning an Associate’s, Bachelor’s, and Master’s degrees in quick succession, but it took her 10 years to earn her PhD because she got married and had 2 children. But she did it, and experienced that unique-to-women feeling of constant juggling, missing things in her children’s lives for work, and missing opportunities at work due to her kids.

In 1970, she was the captain of the first all-female team to live underwater. Called the Tektite II, Earle and 4 other female scientists lived for weeks in an enclosed habitat on the ocean floor 50 feet below the surface, off the Virgin Islands. By this time, Dr. Earle had spent more than a thousand research hours underwater, more than any other scientists who applied to the program, but, as she says, “the people in charge just couldn’t cope with the idea of men and women living together underwater,” so she was denied the first time she applied. Fortunately, other female scientists also applied for this research team. She and her fellow scientists received a ticker-tape parade and a White House reception upon their return to the surface. Of course, they were called “aqua-babes” and asked about lipstick and hair dryers by journalists at the time, but they did it!

In 2009, she founded Mission Blue, an organization dedicated to protecting the ocean from threats such as climate change, pollution, habitat destruction, invasive species, and the dramatic decrease in ocean fish stocks. Earle has logged in more than 7,000 hours underwater, and was instrumental in having Google Earth display ocean data. 

Sylvia has dived in all five of the world’s oceans, and plays a leading role in establishing marine protected areas (MPAs) as “hope spots” around the world. Protecting the ocean really protects ourselves, Sylvia says. “We are all sea creatures. We all depend on the ocean.” Listing out all of her achievements would take pages and pages, so we’ve picked some of our faves, but we do encourage you to learn more about this inspiring woman.

Our colorway, Seagrass, is an homage to everything Sylvia Earle holds dear: the beauty of the ocean, the importance of preserving and protecting it, and the resilience she herself embodies.

This summer is Olympic summer, so what better July HerStory recipient than a track and field star? But, we aren’t honoring just any track and field star, folks, this month, our HerStory person is Man Kaur, a remarkable woman who started her much-honored athletic career at the age of 93 (and no, that is not a typo!).

In 2009, when Man Kaur was 93, her 79 year old son encouraged her to take up track and field. He remained her coach throughout her career. He took her to the track on a whim; he wanted to both connect with her and keep her fit. Kaur enjoyed it enough to want to return. She liked running, and she quickly she started to improve and get faster. Two years later, her son registered her for international events he was participating in and the rest, as they say, was history!

Born in 1916 in the now-defunct kingdom of Patiala in India, Kaur was raised by her paternal grandparents after her mother died in childbirth. School held no allure for her; she rarely went. She recalled earning coins for weaving drawstrings for pajamas as well as collecting twigs from the neem tree to sell as natural toothbrushes. She also milled wheat by hand and spun thread (she had loads of what we today call side hustles). In the early 1930s, Kaur found employment as a nanny and maid to one of the 360 queens of the maharaja of Patiala. She worked in the palace, serving one of the queens and minding the prince. Kaur got married in 1934 and went on to have three children. Later, she became a cook, working for families in many homes across the city. 

And then she discovered athletics. She and her son traveled all around the world competing. His wife had passed, and the pleasure both he and his mother got from competing in track and field events inspired him to sell most of his possessions to use the money for entry fees and travel. They secured government housing near the stadium they trained in, and lived a modest life, revolving around their sport.

One of the lovely stories we read as we researched for this love letter told of a full-circle event: remember that Kaur worked at the Patiala palace as a maid, getting a monthly salary of 10 rupees (equivalent to 15 cents today) in the 1930s. In 2016, she was invited to run in a 5-kilometer run in Patiala, which she ran the first few hundred meters, and she was invited to spend the night at the palace, in the bedroom of the queen she’d worked for. In an article found on NPR, she quoted a Punjabi saying: “What you ask for, you never get. It’s better to accept your blessings as they come.”

In India, the Blue Lotus flower symbolizes the expansion of the soul and the unfolding of the individual. We chose this flower to represent this amazing woman who, after a full life, still found ways to expand and unfold in her final few decades, and came to be an inspiration for people of all ages.

It’s summertime, and who better to showcase this month in HerStory than a drag queen who is a huge hiker, outdoorswoman, and an advocate for both environmental and queer issues? That’s right, friends, this month, our colorway is inspired by the one, the only Pattie Gonia!

Pattie Gonia (pronouns: she/they) is the drag persona of photographer Wyn Wiley (pronouns: he/they). Growing up in Lincoln, Nebraska, the outdoors was always a part of their life. When Wiley came out as gay right after high school, they said they felt accepted up to a point (that point being as long as their gayness didn’t make those in their life feel uncomfortable). As long as they continued to present as straight, many folks in their life intimated, all would be fine. Wonder what those folks think now? 

After a short dalliance with drag in early 2018 that ended in that most ubiquitous of modern hells, nasty internet comments/trolls, Wiley put their high heels away, but how they felt dressed in drag continued to nag at the back of their subconscious. On a whim, they tossed them into their backpack on a trip later that year, brought them out in the forest for a photoshoot, and Pattie Gonia was born. It wasn’t too long before environmental activism became a major part of Pattie’s lifestyle and online persona. Folded into Pattie Gonia’s advocacy for the outdoors has always been environmental awareness and stewardship, as well as activism surrounding LGBTQIA+ issues and widening access to outdoor spaces for all. 

As a part of this advocacy, Pattie has founded and organized many efforts: she developed a job board for queer outdoorists; co-founded “The Outdoorist Oath”, a nonprofit working on diversity, equity, inclusion and environmental causes in the outdoors community; and partnered with major outdoor brands to build community and welcome marginalized folks into outdoor spaces. She partnered with the Audubon Society in 2023 for their pride month Let’s Go Birding Together (LGBT, get it?!), creating the most gorgeous music video (link here: https://youtu.be/Nuk55Z3e4hc?si=J9laJukHvAYB8MbN). They recorded a song with Yo-Yo Ma (celebrated cellist) and Quinn Christopherson (an indigenous Alaskan trans singer-songwriter) (link: https://youtu.be/2dKk1bIn8aU) about not giving up on the planet that had tears swimming in our eyes.

In all of her work, Pattie is inspired, first and foremost, by the queerness inherent in the outdoors, and their goal often is to take the masculinity that has dominated outdoor spaces and turn it on its head. According to her in an article in Outside magazine in 2023, “so many of my drag looks are taking very masculine outdoor gear and making it into the gayest little outfits you’ve ever seen.”

A little over a year ago, Pattie debuted a drag look called “The Pansy,” creating not only one of the most stunning pieces of wearable art we’ve ever seen, but also reclaiming a word that has been used to disparage and hurt folks in the LGBTQIA+ community. Mission accomplished, Pattie, because it’s stunning. AND, she did it in the forest, surrounded by nature. Here is a link to her Instagram video: https://www.instagram.com/p/CkeGXJNjwU0/. We have been so inspired by Pattie that this month, we dyed up a Pansy of our very own! Our hope is that y’all create something lovely in this yarn at a drag show, on the trails, or, the perfect combo: with a drag queen ON the trails! Whatever you do with it, we hope you spend a bit of time with the lovely and inspiring Pattie Gonia this summer. 

We have been blessed by Beyonce’s newest album, Cowboy Carter, not only for the amazing music, but for all we have learned about country music and its roots in the African American diaspora. There has been lots of grumbling about a Black woman singing country, and we are here to confront those grumbles and dispel the incorrect beliefs that country music is somehow a white person thing. Country music, cowboys, and the banjo are all direct descendants of the music and knowledge that Africans brought with them when they were forcibly kidnapped from Africa and enslaved in America. 

Linda Martell, born in 1941 and raised in North Carolina, was the first Black woman artist to play at the Grand Ole Opry. She was the first Black woman to be commercially successful as a country music artist, with her sole album, Color Me Country, reaching number 40 on the Billboard Top Country Albums Chart. She was the first Black woman to perform on Hee Haw. Due to all of the usual suspects (racism, misogyny, and more racism), her career didn’t advance the way her talent indicated it should, and her legacy became mostly known, honored, and recognized by other Black women in country music. Until, that is, Cowboy Carter.

Martell started her singing career in R&B, in a group with her sister and cousins that never achieved much commercial success. After their group disbanded, she was “discovered” while singing at an air force base, and encouraged to break into country music with a record label called (yikes): Plantation Records (and yes, the name bothered the heck out of her, but she didn’t feel she could pass up this opportunity). She recorded her album with this label, and three of the singles hit the country charts, but support for a Black female country music artist in 1970 was neither strong nor wide-ranging. When the combination of the label lessening its support and promotion for her music in favor of a white female performer and the constant heckling and racism she experienced while on the road got to be too much, and finding a new record label just plain didn’t happen, Martell stepped away from the country music lifestyle. She had an expansive and musical life: running a record store in Brooklyn, performing non-country music on cruise ships, and even driving a school bus back in North Carolina. But, for a long time, it seemed her short-lived success was a flash in the pan and, this ground-breaking artist had been all but forgotten due to that hallmark of America, white supremacy. 

More and more in the past several years, Martell has been remembered, discussed, interviewed, and honored for the impact she made on country music. Her granddaughter is currently producing (and crowd-funding) a a documentary about her called Bad Case of the Country Blues: the Linda Martell Story; the trailer is up and available to watch (link here: https://youtu.be/uI-s7jK61UQ?si=UKUj8n00VOqQuMTO). Her influence is felt by every Black female country artist making music today, and many pay homage to her legacy. Rissi Palmer named her podcast Color Me Country, after Martell’s groundbreaking album of the same name. Maren Morris thanked Martell for her influence in her 2020 acceptance speech for winning Female Vocalist of the Year at a country music awards show. And, as we all know, Beyonce not only invited Martell to provide voice-over support on Cowboy Carter, but also named one of the tracks The Linda Martell Show.

Our April color is inspired by the Snapdragon, because they are ‘known to grow in rocky areas. The snapdragons tenacity and ability to bloom in poor conditions has led it being seen as a symbol of strength in trying circumstances, and we think Linda Martell has done just that!

This month, we are honoring a true pioneer, who settled and broke barriers here in Oregon: Letitia Carson. In the mid-1800s, Carson was one of many hundreds of people journeying along the Oregon Trail to find a better life. She traveled with David Carson (a white man), with whom she eventually had 2 children (little is known about their relationship, and there is speculation that she may have been enslaved by Carson at some point in their relationship. They also did not seem to be married). Only about 3% of people heading west during westward pioneering days in 1800s were Black, and Letitia was among that 3%. 

They settled in Benton County, Oregon, and built a homestead on a land claim in Soap Creek Valley. Oregon was not what one would call friendly to Black people: among the state’s first acts of governance, a law was passed barring Black people from residing within its borders or claiming land (the exclusion law stated that any Black person who attempted to settle in Oregon would be publicly lashed 39 times every six months). When David died suddenly, leaving no will, an estate executor ruled that Letitia shouldn’t inherit the homestead, so she took the case to court. The gist of her complaint was that if she wasn’t recognized as David Carson’s legal heir, then she was due back wages, damages, and compensation for the unlawful sale of her cattle. She won the case, although her homestead had already been portioned off and sold. Sidenote: even the family’s bedding and cooking supplies were sold at auction, and Letitia had to spend $104.87 to buy back these basic possessions in order to survive.

She and her children moved to Douglas County, Oregon, with scant possessions and a few cows. She  lived and worked on the land of another family, and served as the community midwife. By this point in time, Oregon had passed the second of its three Black-exclusion laws, and the third was written into the Oregon Constitution in 1857, where it remained until 1926. 

When the Homestead Act passed in Congress, granting virtually free land to settlers (up to 160 acres) and not excluding Black folks from applying, Letitia filed a claim. It was certified in 1869 (hers was among the first 71 claims to be certified), and she became the only Black woman in the entire state of Oregon to get land through the Act. She built a ranch that included a two-story house, barn, smokehouse, cattle, pigs, and an orchard of over 100 fruit trees. She lived the remainder of her life on the ranch, prospering in a place that still had laws specifically designed to disenfranchise Black people.

Letitia’s daughter married an Indigenous man, who was Walla Walla and Metis, and they made their home on the Umatilla Indian Reservation. Their descendants have rediscovered their family history, and their Black matriarch, and have worked at honoring Letitia’s legacy, through education and advocacy.

We chose the Camus flower to represent Letitia Carson due to its ubiquitousness in the place she first settled in Oregon: the Willamette Valley. Her Soap Creek Valley claim is now a part of Oregon State University’s holdings and an important piece of the Letitia Carson Legacy Project the university is sponsoring. This project pays homage to Black farmers in Oregon, and the project hopes for it to become both a historical center for the history of Black farming in Oregon and a resource for Black farmers of today. If you’d like to see more from the Legacy Project, here is a link to their digital home: https://letitiacarson.omeka.net/.

We’re heading to the high seas this month, as we honor Zheng Yi Sao, the Chinese Pirate Queen!

Zheng Yi Sao was one of the most successful pirates in history (and for sure the most successful female pirate), active in the South China Sea in the early 1800s. She went by many names (Shi Xianggu, Shek Yeung, Ching Shih, Cheng I Sao, Ching Yih Saou and Mrs. Cheng being some of them), and her backstory is a bit of a mystery. What we do know about her is that she was a ruthless and respected leader, and her organization skills and stringent rules of conduct for the pirates in her employ helped to make her the success that she was, and kept her confederation of pirate ships strong and connected until she ended things on her terms.

At age 26, she married a pirate named Zheng Yi, and accompanied him on his journeys. After his death in 1807, she took control of his operations, the Guangdong Pirate Confederation, with a fleet composed of 400 ships and between 40,000 and 60,000 pirates. They entered into conflict with several major powers, such as the East India Company, the Portuguese Empire, and the Great Qing.

They were both feared and respected, and, even though the whole pirate thing has a fun quality to modern sensibilities, the havoc they wreaked was pretty awful. Not only did they steal, they murdered and enslaved and tortured their captives. The punishments for infractions against the federation were severe, particularly for violence against female captives. Entire villages were laid to waste, casualties of wars the Confederation waged against the Chinese government and various trading companies. 

Zheng Yi Sao and her Guangong Pirate Confederation ruled the South China Sea for nearly a decade, and some say she was a victim of her own success. Piracy was so widespread, and had such a hold on the sea, that trade became almost non-existent, causing financial stress throughout China. The Chinese government, despite having been bested by Zheng Yi’s pirates on multiple occasions, came to a crossroads where they had no choice but to figure out how to end the hold piracy had on the country. 

In 1810, Zheng Yi Sao negotiated the most stylish surrender ever to the Qing authorities: she sailed into Canton harbor with her entire 260-boat fleet, flags flying, and demanded a very favorably-termed pardon. She and her pirates were able to keep their plunder, but had to give us most of their ships and weapons. Many of the pirates were actually then hired into the Chinese Navy, and in turn were in charge of persecuting pirates. Zheng Yi had a prosperous and peaceful life, after having been the most bad-ass of Pirate Queens.

To honor Zheng Yi Sao, we created the Chrysanthemum colorway. The chrysanthemum is a very important flower in the Chinese culture, having been honored and cultivated since hundreds of years BCE. In fact, there are over 20,000 cultivars in China! It’s also one of The Four Gentlemen (四君子 junzi), four plants that represent noble character: plum (梅 mei), orchid (兰 lan), bamboo (竹 zhu), and chrysanthemum (菊 ju).

For our second HerStory of 2024, we are sticking with catchy tunes by moving from the Mother of Hip Hop to the Queen of Salsa: Celia Cruz.

Born in Havana, Cuba in 1925, Celia loved music from a young age. It was said that she got her first-ever pair of shoes from a tourist who was impressed with her street performance when she was very young. Encouraged to become a teacher by her practical father, Cruz couldn’t get music out of her soul, and left her pursuit of education to study music. She took part in radio contests throughout her young adulthood, winning pretty much every one she took part in. 

She joined and became the lead singer for the Afro-Cuban orchestra Sonora Matancera in 1950, the ensemble’s first Black front person since its founding about 25 years earlier, and that was where her star truly began to rise. It was during this time that she coined her trademark shout “¡Azúcar!” in response to a waiter at a restaurant in Miami who asked if she would like her coffee with sugar. It became her catchphrase, and took on deeper significance as a remembrance of enslaved Africans who worked on Cuban sugar plantations, particularly poignant coming from a Black Cuban like Cruz.

While on tour in Mexico in 1960, Fidel Castro took control of Cuba, and La Sonora Matancera renounced his regime. They were exiled from Cuba, and Cruz wasn’t able to return for many decades. Castro even forbid their music to be played in the country. 

Cruz’s music and style constantly evolved. While her salsa music was perhaps what she was best-known for, she also performed rumba and reggaeton, and starred in films. Known for her powerful voice, colorful costumes, and energizing rhythm, Cruz was a vivacious entertainer that appealed to all generations. She influenced everything from fashion to music (a gown of hers is on display at the Smithsonian). She is still one of the best-known Latin artists and one of the most famous Afro-Latinas in the world, and her influence is still inspiring musicians across genres.

Cruz has an asteroid named after her, a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, had a postage stamp created to honor her, and has a wax replica at the Hollywood Wax Museum, to name a few of the honors bestowed on this talented multi-Grammy-winning singer (of course, the highest honor in our estimation is being included in our HerStory lineup ;)) This year, a quarter bearing her likeness will be released, so keep your eyes peeled! 

This month’s HerStory colorway is White Mariposa, the official flower of Cruz’s beloved Cuba. When she returned in 1990 to perform, Cruz collected a bag of soil from Cuban earth, and when she was buried in 2003, that soil was buried with her. Cuba was in her heart and soul, even though she lived outside of the country for longer than she lived in it. Honoring this love by creating a colorway inspired by Cuba’s official flower seemed the right choice. The fact that her very existence and fame seems a bit subversive, given her demographics (young, female, Black, Cuban), this flower, which was used for subversive means during the Spanish colonial times: women used to adorn themselves with these fragrant flowers and because of the flower’s intricate structure, women hid and carried secret messages important to the independence cause in the center of the petals.

It’s a fresh new year, and, after two years of the HerStory Book Club, we are ready for a bit of a change. For 2024, we are going to focus on flowers for HerStory, and our inspiration is going to be a bit more loosey-goosey than it usually is. Every month, our colorway will be inspired by a flower, and the HerStory recipient of that month will somehow be associated with that flower. 

January’s colorway is Lily of the Valley, inspired by the lovely flowers that are the birth-month flowers of our HerStory recipient, Sylvia Robinson. Robinson is known as the Mother of Hip-Hop: she was the founder and CEO of Sugar Hill records AND the producer and promoter of two of the most iconic songs in hip-hop history, Rapper’s Delight (1979) by the Sugarhill Gang, and The Message (1982) by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. In a discovery that tickled our fancy even more, she’s the Sylvia from the “Sylvia? Yes Mickey? How do you call your loverboy?” song from Dirty Dancing! AND! She played guitar on and arranged Ike & Tina Turner’s first hit, It’s Gonna Work Out Fine (but did not get a producer credit, because patriarchy).

Robinson was at the vanguard of so many things regarding women, particularly Black women, in the music industry, and there is definitely some sordidness in regards to her business practices, which have tarnished her reputation a bit. We won’t get into those today, because we are here to sing her praises and celebrate everything she did for the genre and industry, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t at least mention them. 

So many songs from early hip-hop and rap have her mark on them; Sugar Hill Records was THE label that first recorded and promoted rap and hip-hop, and helped to cement it as a musical genre in the waning days of disco and funk. Even things like boy bands have Sylvia to thank: she created the Sugarhill Gang specifically to explore the genre of hip-hop she had been hearing at clubs. And now, hip-hop/rap is the most listened-to musical genre in the world.

Sylvia Robinson’s legacy is still being felt today. Every hip-hop song that breaks records, every female recording artist that dips her toes into producing, every song about the struggles of marginalized communities that hits the charts, has Robinson to thank in some ways. She fought for herself in a time that was less than encouraging to women. She had two distinct recording careers: one as half of Mickey & Silvia in the 1950s, and one as a solo act in the 1970s. She founded two recording labels, received awards and recognition across musical genres for her work, and was posthumously inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2022. She’s an absolute legend, and we have so enjoyed getting to know more about her history, and by extension, the history of hip-hop, this month.