• April 1, Beware of pranks on this day. In France, the wary watch out for pranksters attaching paper fish to their backs on the day of "Poisson d'Avril" (April fish). Some historians link this day to the vernal equinox, when Mother Nature fools people with unpredictable weather. Also linked to the Roman festival of Hilaria, when citizens dressed in disguises, and to festivals of Aphrodite, Fortuna Virilis, and Loki, the Norse trickster god.

• April 1, 1983 Women formed a 14-mile human chain to oppose US missiles in England at the women's peace camp at Greenham Common.

• April 1, 1940 Birth of Wangari Maathai, Kenya-born winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize and founder of the Green Belt Movement, in which women planted more than 40 million trees. Dr. Maathai wrote four books and was the subject of the 2008 documentary Taking Root: the Vision of Wangari Maathai.

• April 2 "Battle of the Flowers," a tradition originating in France in which people throw flowers at the hearts of those they desire.

• April 2, 1931 Seventeen-year-old Jackie Mitchell (the "Strikeout Queen") struck out baseball greats Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in an exhibition game. Soon after that, the baseball commissioner cancelled Jackie's contract with a women's baseball team, declaring that women are unfit for the game. Meaning: men, especially Ruth and Gehrig, can't stand the competition from a girl.

• April 4, 1887 Susanna Salter elected the first woman mayor in the U.S., much to the surprise of the group of men who nominated Salter on the prohibition party as a joke.

• April 4, 1967 Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke against the Vietnam war: "This war is a blasphemy against all that America stands for."

• April 4, 1968 Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinated.

• April 4, 1928 Birth of Maya Angelou, author, poet, actor, singer.

• April 6, 1917 Montana's Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress, joined 55 colleagues to vote against declaration of war on Germany.

• April 6, 1882 Birth of Rose Schneiderman, Polish-born U.S. labor activist, feminist, and social reformer.

• April 7, 1987 Washington, D.C. opening of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the only major museum solely dedicated to celebrating women in the arts.

• April 7, 1915 Birth of Billie Holiday, legendary jazz singer who popularized Abel Meeropol's song "Strange Fruit," a wrenching protest against lynching.

• April 7, 1944 Birth of Julia Miller Phillips, first woman film producer to win an Oscar, for The Sting (1973). She also produced Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Taxi Driver.

• April 8, 2008 Yi Soyeon became the first South Korean to fly in space

• April 9, 1137 Eleanor of Aquitaine became, as a teenager, the Duchess of Aquitaine. She later became queen consort of France, queen of England, and patron of the legendary Courts of Love.

• April 9, 1887 Birth of Florence Price, first African-American woman symphony composer. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1933 premiered her Symphony No. 1, a blend of European and African-American traditions. Recent manuscript discoveries contribute to revived recognition of Price's work.

• April 9, 1939 Marian Anderson sang at the Lincoln Memorial after the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused her permission to sing at Constitutional Hall because of her race.

• April 10, 1930 Dolores Huerta birth. Washington State Legislature in 2019, declared April 10th a Day to honor this cofounder and vice president of the United Farm Workers of America (UFW).

• April 10, 1971 The Jeannette Rankin Brigade of 8,000 women, led by 90-year-old Congressional veteran Jeannette Rankin, marched on the Pentagon for nuclear disarmament.

• April 11, 1968 Enactment of the Civil Rights Act. The clause barring discrimination against women began as a joke.

• April 12, 1913 Birth of Keiko Fukuda, Japanese martial arts legend who taught judo in San Francisco as part of the women's movement, and at the age of 69, became one of only four living people to attain the 10th degree.

• April 13, 1932 Birth of Loretta Lynn, the "Coal Miner's Daughter" who became the "Queen of Country Music."

• April 16, 1689 Death of Aphra Behn, prominent dramatist of the Restoration era, poet, a spy for the Crown, and one of the first women to earn her living with her pen. Writer Virginia Woolf declared that "All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds."

• April 18 Yom Hashoah. Day of Holocaust remembrance.

• April 18, 1983 Alice Walker won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction with The Color Purple, making Walker the first African-American woman to win this honor.

• April 19, 1995 Oklahoma City bombing killed 168, including 19 children in a day care center located in the ground floor of the federal building.

• April 19, 1977 Fifteen women met to form the Congressional Women's Caucus, which in 1981 became the Congressional Caucus for Women's Issues, and included men.

• April 20, 1988 Helen Thayer reached the magnetic North Pole on foot and skis at the age of 50 with her companion, a husky named Charlie. Thayer, born in New Zealand, walked across the Gobi Desert (at age 63), and the Sahara, and lived beside a wolf den for three years. She was named by National Geographic as "One of the Great Explorers of the 20th Century" and inducted into the Snohomish County, Washington Sports Hall of Fame.

• April 20, 1895 Birth of Mary Kawena Pukul, descendant of native Hawaiian priestesses, researcher and preserver of Hawaiian stories, songs, and dances, and a moving force in the Hawaiian Renaissance.

• April 22 Earth Day, founded in 1970. Today we honor Rachel Carson, marine biologist and author of Silent Spring (1962), a warning about the misuse of pesticides and a spark for the environmental movement that led to Earth Day.

• April 22, 1891 Birth of Laura Gilpin, photographer whose work over 35 years ranged from portraits to aerospace to Southwestern landscapes, most notably lands of the Pueblo and Navajo people. Both the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame and the National Cowgirl Museum honor Gilpin.

• April 24, 1990 Launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, due largely to the efforts of astronomer Nancy Grace Roman, the "Mother of Hubble," which brought to Earth dazzling pictures of the stars Nancy had loved as a child.

• April 24, 1942 Birth of Barbra Streisand, singer, actor, director, producer, songwriter, filmmaker, winner of two Academy Awards.

• April 25 Robigalia, Roman festival to Robigo, Goddess (or God) of Mildew. In Oregon's Willamette Valley, it is useful to know that lighting an altar fire and offering incense and wine help to appease this deity.

• April 25 World Children's Day.

• April 25, 1982 Women in Canberra, Australia laid a wreath for all women raped in wars.

• April 25, 1917 Birth of Ella Fitzgerald, "First Lady of Song," legendary jazz singer, winner of 13 Grammy Awards.

• April 26, 1777 Sybil Ludington rode on horseback through the night to muster her father's militia to repel a British attack. The 16-year-old's ride covered 40 miles - more than the ride of Paul Revere, the "male Sybil Ludington."

• April 26, 1933 Birth of Carol Burnett, beloved comedian, actor, singer, and longtime host of The Carol Burnett Show, the first show of its kind to be hosted by a woman.

• April 26, 1986 Partial meltdown of Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine.

• April 27, 1927 Birth of activist Coretta Scott King, author, activist, singer, and a major leader of the civil rights movement.

• April 27 or 28 Floralia, a three-day Roman festival to Flora, Goddess of flowers and the pleasures of youth. Revelers were showered with beans and other symbols of fertility.

• April 29, 1915 Founding of the Women's International League of Peace and Freedom (WILPF).) by Jane Addams, Emily Greene Balch and others.

• April 29, 1918 Birth of Pearl Bailey, singer, actor, and United Nations Goodwill Ambassador.

• April 30 Festivals of reproduction and renewal: Beltane (Celtic), Walburga (Germany and Scandinavia), May Eve (Central Europe), First Foods (North American Indians).

• April 30, 1939 Birth of Ellen Zwilich, prolific American composer and the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for Music.

April is a month of contradictions, when the storms of winter give way to the glorious colors and light of the awakening earth in the northern hemisphere.

April 1 is the day of fools and of the Roman women’s festival of Fortuna Virilis. Presided over by Venus/Athena, Goddess of love, the festival of Fortuna Virilis promoted good relations between women and men.

There’s a connection here, because April is both a month of fools’ wars and of seeking peace. April marks the anniversaries of Martin Luther King’s plea for peace in Vietnam and of King’s death, and of the final U.S. evacuation from Vietnam. April is the month when thousands of young men and boys were slaughtered at Gallipoli in 1914, and the month when in 1917, Montana’s Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin cast a symbolic vote against U.S. entry into World War I.

April is the founding month of the forerunner of the Women’s International League of Peace and Freedom (WILPF), whose work continues today. WILPF was founded in 1915 as April’s flowers mixed with blood on the European battlefields of World War I. Women’s organizations had tried to prevent the war, and now they were trying to stop it. On April 28, 1915, women from 12 nations, including those already at war, gathered in The Hague, Netherlands. The demands of the International Congress of Women were clear and bold: continuous mediation by neutral nations to end the fighting, formation of a Society of Nations, general disarmament, peace education and women’s rights.

The women of The Hague, like generations of women before them, believed war to be a result of male aggression and competitiveness. Time and again, women as mothers and grandmothers protested sacrificing their sons to men’s wars. They railed against having to pick up the pieces of bodies and lives left shattered by battle. And they linked their own struggles for women’s rights with peacemaking. They firmly believed that with the power of the vote, they could participate in nations’ decision-making and end wars.

Jane Addams presided over the International Congress of Women. As cofounder of Hull House, the pioneer settlement house for immigrants, Addams was well known for her work in social justice and women’s rights. She would become the first president of WILPF in 1919.

Following the Congress at The Hague, delegations of women met with world leaders urging an end to the war. Many of the women visited battlefields to observe conditions there. Jane Addams herself reported that young men were induced with drugs and alcohol to force them to fight. Many of the soldiers told Addams they didn’t want war and “considered the older men responsible for it.” Newspapers and U.S. government officials lambasted Jane Addams, Jeannette Rankin and other peace women as unpatriotic subversives out to “demasculinize” men.

The carnage of World War I finally ended in 1918, three years after the Hague Congress. Women won the vote in 1920. But wars and wars’ aftermath continued, and so did women’s work for their own rights, social justice and peace.

As women’s peace movements continued to grow, so did opposition to their efforts. And it was clear that the enemies of peace also opposed women’s rights. The U.S. War Department targeted women’s groups as Bolshevik-inspired. In 1922 the department issued the infamous “Spider Web Chart” linking WILPF, the American Association of University Women, the Young Women’s Christian Association, the Parent-Teachers Association and other peace-supporting women-led organizations with an international communist conspiracy set to undermine national security. Among the individuals on the chart were Jane Addams, once known as "America's most dangerous woman," and economist and pacifist Emily Greene Balch. Addams and Balch would go on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931, despite continued vicious attacks on their patriotism.

In 1933, at the urging of WILPF and other organizations, a Congressional committee investigated the arms industry. The hearings documented huge profits by arms manufacturers during World War I, plus the arms industry’s role in “bribing public officials to vote for higher military budgets and to collude in price fixing,” according to historian Amy Swerdlow.

It is another April. Flowers bloom once more. Fools’ wars go on. The profits of war continue. And, the fathers and grandfathers join with the mothers and grandmothers as they still cry out for peace.

The author wishes to thank Barbara Drageaux for providing some of the information used in this article.

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