Laura Smith Haviland

Laura Smith Haviland, not only established schools where Black and White children studied together in the 1830's and ran a principle stop on the Underground Railroad, but she made one Southern plantation owner so crazy that he wrote her a letter, calling her "a rogue, a damnable thief, a Negro thief, an out-breaker, a criminal in the sight of all honest men" who he was sure would eventually wind up in "the inner temple of hell." She responded with such strong words of her own that he was prompted to distribute flyers describing her, giving her address, and offering a $3000 bounty to anyone who could kidnap or even murder her.

When the Fugitive Slave Law was enacted, she could have gone to prison for her abolitionist work. Nevertheless, Haviland went into the South again and again, appearing at plantations in the guise of a cook or a light-skinned free woman of color to spirit away willing souls to the North and on to Canada.

After the Civil War, Haviland became a one-woman cyclone of activity, organizing refugee camps and establishing schools, volunteering as a teacher and a nurse, and giving public lectures during which she displayed instruments of torture used by slave holders to torment those they had held in bondage.

The famed abolitionist and women's rights speaker Isabella Baumfree (who took the name "Sojourner Truth") told a story about trying to climb onto a street car with Laura Haviland once. The conductor told Baumfree to leave the car, but Haviland took her other arm and told him to let her ride. "Does she belong to you?" the conductor asked. "No," replied Haviland firmly, "She belongs to humanity." In-your-face women ride what they want to ride when they want to ride it. In pairs, if they like.

Marian Rice Hart

Marian Rice Hart was 54 years old when she learned to fly in 1945 and 70 when she flew a single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza nonstop across the Atlantic from Newfoundland to Ireland. Fatigued from the 2,500-mile flight, she walked into the airport lounge upon her arrival, downed a large glass of whisky and said, "Now I feel better."

Though she made her original trans-Atlantic flight with a navigator, Hart subsequently made seven solo flights across the ocean and flew all over the United States, Europe, Asia, Africa and South America to boot. In fact, she flew alone until she was 87, logging more than 5,000 hours in her three decades as an aviator. In 1976, she received the highly prized annual Harmon International Trophy "for her consistently outstanding performance as a private pilot operating small aircraft on a global scale."  Hart wasn't just in-your-face.  She was in the air.

Nancy Morgan Hart

Born in the mid-1700's, Nancy Morgan Hart was six feet tall with red hair and a smallpox-scarred face, but she was unconcerned with such unimportant details and, in fact, was better known anyway for her hot temper, fearlessness and commitment to exacting vengeance if you did her -- or her family -- wrong.

After the Revolutionary War broke out, according to one well corroborated tale, five or six British soldiers showed up at the Hart family cabin in Georgia once and when the dust settled, Nancy had shot two of them to death and held the other three until her husband showed up so they could hang the rest.  Other stories suggest she could carry a heavy feed bag for miles, she was such a good shot that she sometimes served as a sniper for the revolutionary forces, and the local Native Americans appear to have called her something that may have translated as "Warrior Woman."

Today, Hart County is the only one of Georgia's 157 counties that's named for a woman.  An in-your-face woman, that is.

Rose Harland

In 1876 in New York City, Harry Hill's bar did a booming business with most of the patrons coming to see the boxing matches Hill regularly featured. Always looking for a good opportunity to bring in new customers, Hill occasionally put on matches between women, as well as men. At 5' 7" tall and 164 pounds, Rose Harland (a "variety dancer," by trade) was one of the first to step into the ring to square off with Nelly Saunders (herself a boxer's wife) for a prize of $200 and a silver butter dish.

Both women were trained by male boxers, got into the ring wearing borrowed knickers or trunks, and clearly gave it everything they had, given the extent of their training. By the third and fourth rounds, however, they were slugging it out toe to toe, scoring twenty solid hits apiece in each round. The judge said the fight could have been called a draw, but that Saunders had outscored Harland overall by one point, so Harland only wound up with a consolation prize of $10 collected from the crowd. On the battlefield, on the mountaintop, in the boxing ring -- is there anything an in-your-face woman won't do? Um...no.
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NOTE: While it's doubtful that Saunders checked her shiny nose in a mirror even before she climbed out of the ring, and if the fight outcome was decided by points, nobody got knocked out, the above illustration actually appeared in the Police Gazette after the fight.  Since I couldn't locate a photo of Harland, I opted to post this instead to demonstrate how uncomfortable men are with the idea of in-your-face women.  If the women must get in the ring and if they must duke it out successfully, the guys gotta make it look silly.  Right?  Whatever.

Alison Hargreaves

Alison Hargreaves was introduced to mountain climbing at the age of nine and never quit. In 1993, she became the first mountain climber ever to solo (climb alone) the six classic north faces of the Alps in a single season, climbing the deadly Eiger while heavily pregnant. Two years later, she reached the peak of Mount Everest without either sherpas or bottled oxygen, both of which were assumed to be absolutely necessary by most climbers.

It may have been that this sort of behavior contributed to the idea some had that Hargreaves was "too" ambitious. Nevertheless, though she died in a terrible storm when she was only 32 years old, while coming back down after climbing K2 in Pakistan, her favorite saying was, "One day as a tiger is better than a thousand days as a sheep." No in-your-face woman -- and certainly not Hargreaves -- could ever be said to be a sheep.

Fannie Lou Hamer

Fannie Lou Hamer spent the 1950's training to be an activist and organizer in the all-Black community of Mound Bayou, Mississippi. The State of Mississippi paid her back by sterilizing her in 1961 without her knowledge or consent during a state-wide effort to reduce the number of poor, Black people there. So, when a call went out for African-Americans in Mississippi to register to vote, Hamer was the first in line. She later said, "I guess if I'd had any sense, I'd have been a little scared -- but what was the point...? The only thing they could do was kill me and it kinda seemed like they'd been trying to do that a little bit at a time since I could remember."

Soon, Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee organizer Bob Moses heard about "the lady that sings the hymns" and recruited her to begin traveling throughout the South encouraging others to risk their lives for justice. Jailed on false charges in Winona, Mississippi, Hamer was very nearly beaten to death before she was released. Nevertheless, she went on to organize some of the best known and most effective actions of the voter registration campaign, including "Freedom Summer" in 1964, during which many college students -- both Black and White -- descended on Mississippi to support the struggle in various ways.

That same summer, Hamer spoke to the nation on television when her "Freedom Democrats" challenged the all-White and anti-civil rights delegation to the Democratic National Convention as not representing all Mississippians. "Is this America," she asked boldly, "the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily -- because we want to live as decent human beings?"

Older, overworked, frustrated and unwell, Hamer's famous line "I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired" appears on her tombstone. But she maintained until the day she died that "Nobody's free until everybody's free." An in-your-face woman has no quit in her.

Virginia Hall

Even though her left leg had been amputated at the knee and replaced with a wooden leg after a hunting accident, Virginia Hall was still reportedly considered by the German Gestapo in World War II "the most dangerous of all allied spies." Ivy League trained and more or less fluent in French, German and Italian, Hall started out in the United States diplomatic corps, but when the war got heated, she immediately volunteered, wooden leg and all, to join Britain's newly formed Special Operations Executive and slipped back into France in 1941, coordinating the activities of the French underground resistance while pretending to be a New York Post correspondent.

Spending some time in Spain and returning to London for a bit after the Gestapo put her on their "most wanted list," Hall nevertheless limped her way right back into France first chance she got, where she mapped drop zones for supplies and commandos from England, found safe houses, provided a constant stream of valuable reporting, and helped train three battalions of resistance fighters to wage guerrilla warfare against the Germans until the Allied Forces had time to take over France. Hall was the only civilian woman awarded a Distinguished Service Cross in World War II, but that's not really remarkable for an in-your-face woman now, is it?

Emily Hahn

By the time Emily Hahn (nicknamed "Mickey" as a child) was twenty-five years old, she had been awarded a degree in Mining Engineering from the University of Wisconsin, driven 2,400 miles around the United States with a woman friend (both dressed as men), worked for the Red Cross in the Belgian Congo, lived with a pygmy tribe for two years, trekked across central Africa on foot alone, and published a satirical book entitled Seductio ad Absurdum: The Principles and Practices of Seduction -- A Beginner's Handbook!

Subsequently, spending six years in China (where she attended high society dinner parties accompanied by a gibbon dressed in a dinner jacket), she became addicted to opium, had a baby out of wedlock, and once, while being held and interrogated by the Japanese in 1942, slapped the Japanese Chief of Intelligence across the face. We know so much about her adventurous life because Hahn somehow found the time to write about her escapades and was still going into her office at The New Yorker until shortly before her death at the age of 92.

Asked repeatedly during her lifetime why she gallivanted around so much, Hahn replied shortly, "Nobody said not to go." Not that in-your-face women listen to what other people say anyway.

Nell Gwynne

Nell Gwynne was a beautiful, witty woman who was the mistress of King Charles II of England for nearly twenty years in the late 1600's. Born to an alcoholic mother who ran a brothel, Nell learned prostitution at a young age, serving alcohol to the men in her mother's establishment. But when women began to be allowed to play the women's roles on stage in England (what a concept!), Nell soon showed herself to be a clever comedian indeed, demonstrating particular skill at playing in-your-face women (what a surprise!).

When she caught the eye of Charles II, however, her fate -- and her place in history -- was sealed. She left the theater at the age of 21 (having already produced a son for the king) and moved into a brick townhouse provided by the crown, where a second son was soon born. When the King died fourteen years later, he was very clear in his instructions: "Let not poor Nelly starve." And she continued to live in the manner to which she had become accustomed until she died of syphilis at 37. What made this woman of uncommon good fortune an in-your-face woman? Her witty tongue. Once, when her coachman was fighting with another man who had called Nell Gwynne a whore, Gwynne broke up the fight, saying, "I am a whore. Find something else to fight about." In-your-face women make no apologies for who they are.

Mary Louise "Texas" Guinan

In 1917, "Texas" Guinan made her silent movie debut in a film entitled "The Wildcat," but as exciting as that was, it wasn't enough for Guinan. Fortunately, the U.S. Congress passed legislation prohibiting the use of alcohol shortly thereafter and Guinan took the opportunity to open a speakeasy in New York City she called The 300 Club.

Greeting her nightly customers -- who represented New York's wealthiest elite and most interesting and recognizable celebrities -- with the salutation, "Hel-lo, suckers!" Guinan earned $700,000 in only ten months in 1926 while the police were routinely raiding her clubs and arresting her. She always claimed the customers brought the liquor in with them and that the small size of the club was the reason her forty scantily clad dancers were so close to those that had come to be entertained. (*wink!*)

Even Europe, often more open to in-your-face women than the United States, closed every seaport to Guinan when she tried to take her show on the road during the Depression. Nevertheless, she was immortalized twelve years after her death in a Hollywood movie entitled, appropriately enough, "Incendiary Blonde." Which is probably why 7,500 people attended her funeral.

Yvette Guilbert

When auburn-haired Yvette Guilbert walked out onto the stages of Paris, France, in the late 1800's, in a trailing yellow dress and long black gloves, she might have been any young songstress about to give a performance. But when she opened her mouth, she revealed that she was, first and foremost, an in-your-face woman. Her songs and patter were unapologetically risque and all the more outrageous because she looked so "sweet" (as ladies of the day were intended to look). Some called her songs "immoral," "raunchy," or "macabre," but Guilbert's presentation of life as it appeared in the streets of Paris (and everywhere else, as well?) included the realities that were usually hidden from view: the pain, the passion and the poverty she grew up with and her listeners understood. In-your-face women can help others look inside themselves and understand that they are not alone.