Unsung Heroines

Why are there so few public monuments honoring women? Unsung Heroines shows it's time to claim that space!

Women are grossly underrepresented in all of the Bay Area's public spaces, but not because they didn't exist! Did you know about Charlotte Brown, a Black woman in San Francisco who in 1863 took the city's transportation system to court for forcibly removing her from a streetcar, and won her landmark case? How about the first Chinese-American woman to register to vote, Clara Chan Lee, who went on to start the Chinese Women's Self-Reliance Association? Or Barbara May Cameron, a Native American writer, photographer, and activist who co-founded the first gay American Indian liberation organization? How many other notable women who deserve public recognition have been written out of the history of our region?

Drawn from award-winning journalist Rae Alexandra's KQED Arts & Culture series, "Rebel Girls From Bay Area History," Unsung Heroines is a collection of 35 short profiles honoring the contributions of a diverse group of women from San Francisco, the East Bay, and the greater Bay Area, from the very first years of the founding of San Francisco to the present day. Educators and organizers, adventurers and entertainers, these inspiring women had a profound impact on our region. Together, their stories constitute a new telling of the history of Northern California from the vantagepoint of women who made a difference. A reader's perspective will be permanently altered by the realization of just how many of these untold stories have been lost to time, encouraging them to scan their own environment for traces of women whose stories deserve to be recovered and told.

Rae Alexandra is an award-winning arts and culture writer with a passion for weird history, pop culture and feminist causes. Born and raised in Wales, she started her career in London as a music journalist and worked for uproarious rock 'n' roll magazine Kerrang! for a decade. After moving to San Francisco in 2002, she also began contributing to alt-weeklies including SF Weekly and The Village Voice, before landing at KQED in 2017. Her love for all things Bay Area soon prompted Rae to pivot into researching and writing about local history. After 20 years living in San Francisco's Mission District, Rae recently relocated to Stockton, California.

Adrienne Simms is a San Francisco-based fine artist and illustrator who has exhibited her art since the early 2000s. Her creative work tends to focus on women, and her style includes bold colors and decorative patterns. While her images are generally feminine, she infuses her subjects with an inner strength, even defiance. From topics as disparate as spirituality and politics, her aim is to create art that is both beautiful and powerful. In addition to fine art, she embraces the challenge of illustration and portraiture projects. Her preferred mediums include oil painting, and pen and ink drawing.