ForsythiaJo @forsythiajo - Tumblr Blog

Introduction

Hello Tumblr, this is ForsythiaJo! I’m not a stranger to the site, but this is my sideblog where I’ll be sharing some of the work I do as a Wikipedia editor :)

My thought is I could share links to articles I’ve found that I’ve written, updated, expanded, or just found interesting. In my ~2 years on the site I feel like I’ve learned about so many interesting things, so I want to share that with y’all (and maybe encourage you to contribute to Wikipedia in your own way!).

Check out my tags here: tags!

Some areas I (try to) focus on:

Women’s bios; did you know that, as of November 2024, only 19.98% of bios on wikipedia are about women? I am a member of Women in Red, a group of editors working to up that percentage :)

LGBTQ bios and subjects

Native American and First Nations bios

Bios for activists, artists, and writers

Improving bios of subjects who have recently died

Trawling the New Pages feed to help with copywriting, formatting, and catching promotional or spam pages

I am almost always open to suggestions for topics or if other editors would like to collaborate on a page or topic!

And feel free to ask me questions about editing wikipedia either here or on my user talk page on wikipedia :)

#forsythiajo posts

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Chen Congying (陈琮英; b. January 1902) died on this day, 31 May, in 2003. Chen was a Chinese revolutionary who took part in the Long March (1934-1935).

Chen was born in Hunan and raised in a poor family. She moved in with her future husband's family at age 12, and began working in a factory at age 14. In 1926, she joined the Communist Youth League and married Ren Bishi, a Communist revolutionary. Their first three children died. Chen worked to transport documents for her husband, sometimes at peril to herself; in 1931, she and her fourth infant child were imprisoned for three months.

After being released from prison, Chen left her daughter with family and traveled to meet Ren in Jiangxi. While there, she worked to decipher telegrams and had two sons; one died, while the other was left with locals, as the revolutionaries would be leaving the area on the treacherous Long March. She gave birth to her seventh child, a daughter, while on the March.

After the establishment of the People's Republic of China, Chen was a leader in the All-China Women's Federation and a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. She lived to the age of 101.

forsythiajo

Chen Congying (陈琮英; b. January 1902) died on this day, 31 May, in 2003. Chen was a Chinese revolutionary who took part in the Long March (1934-1935).

Chen was born in Hunan and raised in a poor family. She moved in with her future husband's family at age 12, and began working in a factory at age 14. In 1926, she joined the Communist Youth League and married Ren Bishi, a Communist revolutionary. Their first three children died. Chen worked to transport documents for her husband, sometimes at peril to herself; in 1931, she and her fourth infant child were imprisoned for three months.

After being released from prison, Chen left her daughter with family and traveled to meet Ren in Jiangxi. While there, she worked to decipher telegrams and had two sons; one died, while the other was left with locals, as the revolutionaries would be leaving the area on the treacherous Long March. She gave birth to her seventh child, a daughter, while on the March.

After the establishment of the People's Republic of China, Chen was a leader in the All-China Women's Federation and a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. She lived to the age of 101.

forsythiajo

Frances Renault (b. circa 1893) died on this day, May 29, in 1955.

Renault was an American vaudeville performer and female impersonator who went by the stage name Auriema. Renault's early life is murky, but we know he began performing in the United States in the 1910s, primarily imitating actress and singer Lillian Russell. By the 1920s, he was billed as the "world's greatest female impersonator". He performed until at least 1946, appearing at Carnegie Hall twice.

Part of Renault's draw to audiences was his fashion, dubbing himself "the Original Slave of Fashion" and "the Parisian Fashion Plate". At some performances, his outfits were displayed in the lobby of the theater, allowing audiences to examine them up close.

Unlike some other female impersonators, Renault also crossdressed outside of performances, and was arrested at least twice for crossdressing in Atlanta and Dallas.

Renault also was a boxer in the 1920s, and owned a nightclub and speakeasy starting in 1926.

forsythiajo

Paul Parkman (d. May 7, 2024) was born on this day, May 29, in 1932. Parkman was an American physician-scientist and virologist, and was a developer of the rubella vaccine.

Parkman was born and raised in New York. He studied medicine and joined the Army Medical Corps, where he became interested in virology. He worked at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, where he was on the team which identified and isolated the rubella virus. In 1965, he was involved in clinical trials of a rubella vaccine; the vaccine was announced to the public the following year, and in 1969 was licensed commercially. Parkman and his team did not monetize their vaccine patents, wanting the vaccine to be freely available.

Parkman became the National Intitutes of Health chief of general virology, and then in the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. He retired in 1990, but continued to work as a consultant until the 2010s.

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Ruth B. Loving (d. November 25, 2014) was born on this day, May 27, in 1914. Loving was an American community activist based in Massachusetts.

Loving was born in Pennsylvania, but moved to New Haven, Connecticut at a young age. Although her family was African-American, Loving did not face overt racial discrimination as a child. After marrying her husband and moving to Boston, Loving worked as a singer.

When the couple later moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, Loving became involved with the NAACP. During World War II, Loving also performed for troops in nearby Chicopee through the United States Organizations. In 1943, she joined the Massachusetts Women's Defense Corps (part of the National Guard), where she learned morse code; she went on to send secret government communications from a location in Springfield.

In the 1960s, Loving became president of the Springfield NAACP and founded the Springfield Negro Post. She met both MLK Jr. and Rosa Parks when they visited the city. Following MLK's assassination, she was chairperson of the city's first King memorial observance.

From 1969 to 2011, Loving hosted a local radio show. In 1988, she earned a bachelor's degree at UMass Amherst.

In her later years, Loving served on the White House council on Aging and the Springfield Council on Aging. She died of a heart attack at age 100.

The non-fiction anthology Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence was published by Naiad Press on this day, May 24, in 1985.

The anthology, as might be inferred, compiles accounts by 51 queer women who were nuns previously or currently. The book received increased media coverage after the Archdiocese of Boston attempted to prevent an interview with the book's two editors from airing.

Outside of Catholic circles, the book was well received by academics and literary critics, and the media coverage led to the book being carried by mainstream bookstores and led to multiple printings.

#wikipedia #my articles #women in red #lgbtq studies #christian studies #united states #catholicism #anniversaries

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Elizabeth Käsemann (d. 24 May 1977) was born on this day, 11 May, in 1947. Käsemann was a German woman killed in Argentina during the Dirty War.

Käsemann was born in Germany; her father was theologian Ernst Käsemann. The family moved frequently during her childhood due to Ernst's work. She studied politics at the Freie Universität Berlin, which required she take a mandatory practical training semester. he took her semester in Bolivia, working for the Evangelical Methodist Church. Käsemann then decided to study economics at the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina.

After the 1976 military coup in Argentina, Käsemann helped forge documents for political targets who were trying to escape the country. She was arrested in March 1977 and taken to a torture camp, where she was killed sometime in late May 1977. In the aftermath, the German government faced criticism for not securing her release from Argentina. The two men who ran the torture camp were given life sentences in prison by Argentine courts in 2011.

Käsemann's niece, Dorothee Weitbracht, established a foundation in her aunt's name in 2014. The foundation aims to improve German-Latin American relations, and provide education on totalitarianism.

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Happy birthday to Lilou Ruel (born 9 May 2003)! Ruel is a French freerunner and parkour competitor.

Ruel was born in Normany and grew up in a suburb of Toulouse. She became interested in parkour at age nine, and went viral for a parkour video at age 11. She has competed since 2017. She has medaled at the Freerunning and Parkour World Cup, the Parkour World Championships, and two Red Bull parkour competitions. Ruel is also the first woman to both try and complete the 4.5m gap/15m tall 'Manpower' jump in Évry, France.

In July 2024, Ruel appeared in the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics, as one of the performers of the masked torchbearer.

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On this day, 5 May, in 1862, Mexican nurse and militant Altagracia Calderón participated in the Battle of Puebla against French troops. She continued to fight on and off against the Second French intervention in Mexico (1861-1867), sometimes commanding troops herself.

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The Gay and Lesbian Information Bureau (GLIB) was founded on this date, May 1, in 1986. GLIB was a Bulletin Board System (and later, website) active from 1986 to 2001.

GLIB was founded by Jon Larimore, who was inspired by The Backroom, a BBS system based in New York for gay men. GLIB was launched in May 1986, and by 1991 was available nationwide for users in the United States and Canada, although most members were from the Washington, D.C. area. By 1993, it had more than 1,000 active members, who called themselves "GLIBertines".

Membership in GLIB was free to anyone 18 or older who "supported the gay community" - aka, were members or financial supporters of LGBTQ groups. Although most GLIB users were LGBTQ, some were straight allies.

The GLIB system was divided into a number of Special Interest Groups (SIGS), which covered a vast range of interests, identities, and support groups.

GLIB began to wind down with the advent of the Internet, and after making the switch to a website, it closed in 2001.

^ an advertisement for GLIB

forsythiajo

Toribio Sabandija Quimada (d. 23 May 1988) was born on this day, April 27, in 1917. Quimada was the founder of the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Philippines.

Quimada was born to a poor Roman Catholic family in Cebu, the second of thirteen children. He was not exposed to individual study of the Bible until 1937, when he and his wife moved in with a Presbyterian cousin.

Quimada and his family converted to Presbyterianism in 1943, and Quimada was ordained in the Iglesia Universal de Cristo in 1948. He led nine congregations on Negros with limited resources. In 1951, while searching for external support, he began exchanging letters with the Universalist Service Committee in the United States. Quimada began using USC materials in his ministry, prompting his expulsion from the Iglesia Universal ministry in 1954.

After his expulsion, Quimada decided to found the Universalist Church of the Philippines (UCP; later renamed the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Philippines, or UUCP), joined by several hundred of his former congregants. The church was formally recognized by the Philippine government the following year.

Quimada continued to remain in contact with Unitarian groups in the U.S., who helped fund his education. He also wrote a number of church songs based on Visayan folk music.

Quimada was shot and killed in his home in May 1988. According to his daughter, he had been killed by a right-wing paramilitary group. After his death, the militants burnt his body and a number of UUCP materials.

forsythiajo

Alice Bhagwandai Singh (d. 2 November 1970) was born on this day, April 22, in 1891. Singh was a Surinamese-Guyanese activist, feminist, and community organizer.

Singh was born in what is now Suriname, into a family of Indian descent. She met her husband while working as a typist, and after marrying they moved to British Guiana.

Singh began her community organizing work in 1927, when she established the East Indian Ladies' Guild, a charitable organization. She also worked with her husband to established a Hindu religious organization, and she founded a women's branch of the association. She was the first president of the British Guiana Dramatic Society beginning in 1937, and directed some of the group's plays. She was also involved in a number of other charitable groups.

Singh also served in the government, as a member of the Poor Law Commission and the Prison Comissioners. In 1950, she received the Order of the British Empire for her work.

forsythiajo

Ruth Cox Adams (b. circa 1818) died on this day, April 22, in 1900. Adams was an American abolitionist who was born into slavery.

Ruth Cox was born to an enslaved woman on a Maryland plantation. There, she worked as a nurse and a caretaker of children. Cox escaped slavery in the early 1840s, when she was 24, after the plantation owner died and she feared being sold.

After escaping slavery, Cox traveled up to Massachusetts, where she lived with Frederick and Anna Douglass in Lynn until 1847. While living with the couple, Cox went by the pseudonym Harriet Bailey, to avoid the attention of slave catchers. Because Cox and Douglass had come from the same region of Maryland, and because one of Cox's brothers shared a name with Douglass' mother, Douglass came to view Cox as his sister. Cox worked with Anna to help run the home and raise her children. While Frederick was in England for two years, she read his letters to Anna and dictated her replies, as Anna was illiterate.

Cox became engaged in 1847 to Perry Frank Adams (d. 1868), marrying him in November of that year. The two settled in a boardinghouse in Springfield, Massachusetts and had three children. She also adopted a fourth child after his mother, a fellow boarder, died. The couple were involved with abolitionist organizations in the area.

The family later moved to Haiti (1861-1863), and Adams and her daughter moved to Providence in the late 1870s. They moved again to Nebraska in 1884.

Adams died in April 1900, and was buried without a headstone. Interest in Adams was raised in the early 2000s, and a grave marker was placed at her grave in 2008.

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Frankétienne (d. 20 February 2025) was born on this day, 12 April, in 1936. He was a Haitian novelist, poet, playwright, and painter, writing in both French and Haitian Creole.

Jean-Pierre Basilic Dantor Franck Étienne d'Argent was born in a small Haitian village to a young black Haitian mother and a wealthy white American father, who abandoned the family. Jean-Pierre's mother raised him in Port-au-Prince, where he excelled in school.

He began writing poetry around 1960, publishing his first works in 1964 and 1965 under the pen name Frankétienne. In 1975, he published Dézafi, which is considered the first modern novel to be written entirely in Haitian Creole. He was also a central figure in Haiti's spiralism literary movement. From 1977 onwards, he wrote multiple plays.

Frankétienne began painting in 1973, first exhibiting his work the following year. By 2004, he had created about 1,000 paintings. He worked in an expressive and abstract style, often utilizing the colors of the Haitian flag.

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Troy Masters (d. December 11, 2024) was born on this date, April 13, in 1961. Masters was an American journalist and editor, working primarily in LGBTQ publishing.

Masters was born in Tennessee, where he was raised in "a Fox News household before Fox News," and faced bullying at home after realizing he was gay at age 12. Masters left home at age 17, attending the University of Tennessee.

After college, Masters moved to New York City, becoming involved in the queer community. He attributed his dedication to LGBTQ media to the AIDS crisis, and seeing many of his friends die during it. In 1988, he began working at gay and lesbian magazine OutWeek. After the magazine's closure in 1991, he founded QW Magazine, and then Lesbian and Gay New York (LGNY) in 1995. LGNY was relaunched as Gay City News in 2002.

In 2015, Masters moved to Los Angeles, where he launched The Pride LA and, in 2017, the Los Angeles Blade. He died in Los Angeles in 2024, at the age of 63, from suicide.

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April 7 marks the International Day of Reflection on the Genocide in Rwanda. In honor of today, I’d like to share with you two women who saved lives during the genocide:

Josephine Dusabiama (born 1957) is a Hutu woman who was living on the shores of Lake Kivu with her famiy as subsistence farmers when the genocide began. She went on to shelter multiple Tutsi men, women, and children in her home. She obtained canoes so her Tutsi visitors could flee across the lake under cover of night. At first she traded goats for the canoes, but later stole canoes from genocide perpetrators. In total, she saved the lives of 12 people.

Helene Nayituriki (born 1955) is a Catholic Benedictine nun and educator. She was a teacher at a girls’ school in Kigali when the genocide began. She collected her students’ identity cards, which listed their ethnicities, so soldiers could not identify Tutsi students. Although she was pressured by militiamen, she refused to turn over any of her students. She also found shelter and resources for local Tutsis, and gave them school uniforms to blend in with the students. When she and her students tried to flee on buses, they were intercepted by militiamen. Again, Nayituriki refused to turn over her Tutsi students, and bribed the men to allow the buses to return to the school. She saved the lives of 150 Tutsi people in total.

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