OVERLOOKED: Long-Overdue Obituaries for Great Women Who Never Got Them (The Takeaway)

Over the past few weeks we've been bringing you stories of women initially passed over by the obituary section of The New York Times. The Times's “Overlooked” project is giving obits to great women in history who never got them until now. And today, the story of a woman who roared across America on her Harley. Bessie Stringfield was a black woman with a passion for riding at a time many people didn’t want to see a black woman on a motorcycle. She was often the only woman among men, like when she served as a motorcycle dispatcher in World War II. Eventually she settled in Miami. “She was the motorcycle queen of Miami," says Nikita Stewart, the New York Times reporter who has written a new obituary for Stringfield, who died in 1993. "She was this incredible woman who, at a time when many women were at home or worked as domestics, she decided that she wanted to ride motorcycles. And she led motorcycle clubs and many times she was the only woman, and she just had a big impact on folks who would see her leading packs of men in parades.” Nikita Stewart explains how Bessie Stringfield became an important symbol in her day, and why she still makes such an impression today. Click on the 'Listen' button above to hear this segment. Don't have time to listen right now? Subscribe to our podcast via iTunes, TuneIn, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts to take this segment with you on the go. Want to comment on this story? Share your thoughts on our Facebook page.

The New York Times has been writing new obituaries for great women whose deaths were never acknowledged in the pages of the Times. It’s called the “Overlooked” project, and we’ve been bringing you some of those women’s stories over the past few weeks, along with your nominations for women who deserve more due. Today, a story of the power of a young person, a teenager, to rise up and push for change. We go back almost 100 years, to a teen hero from 1919. Yu Gwan-sun was a young fighter for Korean independence, who died while imprisoned by the Japanese for her rebellion. Inyoung Kang, an editor on the news desk at The New York Times, has written a new obituary for Yu Gwan-sun, and says while Yu Gwan-sun may have been overlooked by the Times, she is a beloved symbol in South Korea. Click on the 'Listen' button above to hear this segment. Don't have time to listen right now? Subscribe to our podcast via iTunes, TuneIn, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts to take this segment with you on the go. Want to comment on this story? Share your thoughts on our Facebook page.  

This month, thanks to The New York Times, we’ve been bringing you stories of some of history’s great women who were overlooked in the obituary pages of The Times. We’ve heard about Emily Warren Roebling, who helped complete construction of the Brooklyn Bridge in her husband’s place, and about Mary Outerbridge, who introduced tennis to the U.S. And we’ve heard your nominations for overlooked women from history. Find the Times Overlooked project at nytimes.com/overlooked. We continue with a look at Nella Larsen, author of the Harlem Renaissance. She’s one of the women to be newly recognized with an obituary in the Times for her 1964 death. We hear from Dr. Jacquelyn McLendon, professor of English emerita at The College of William and Mary, and the woman who wrote this new obit, The New York Times's Bonnie Wertheim. Click on the 'Listen' button above to hear this segment. Don't have time to listen right now? Subscribe to our podcast via iTunes, TuneIn, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts to take this segment with you on the go. Want to comment on this story? Share your thoughts on our Facebook page.

Last week we introduced you to a project called "Overlooked" from The New York Times. It's designed to give some remarkable women in history the obituaries they never got in The Times when they died. You can find last week’s conversation about the project here. Over the next few weeks, we’ll continue talking to the writers behind these new obituaries, to hear about the women whose stories they're bringing to light. Today: Amy Padnani, digital editor of obituaries at The New York Times, who has written an obituary for Mary Ewing Outerbridge, the woman who brought tennis to America. Padnani thought up the Overlooked project after she stumbled upon Outerbridge’s name for the first time. She tells us Outerbridge's story, and sheds light on how The Times decides who warrants an obituary, and how they are looking to change that process. Click on the 'Listen' button above to hear this segment. Don't have time to listen right now? Subscribe to our podcast via iTunes, TuneIn, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts to take this segment with you on the go. Want to comment on this story? Share your thoughts on our Facebook page.

How do we as a society honor the lives of remarkable women throughout history? That’s a question on our minds here at The Takeaway on this International Women’s Day. One way we mark their lives and accomplishments is through obituaries. "You know it’s always been said that to write an obituary is actually to talk about a life, not a death," says The New York Times Gender Editor Jessica Bennett, frequent contributor to The Takeaway. "But yet to look at those lives is also to get a sense of how society assessed them. And how they viewed them. And who was deemed worthy of an obituary at all." In many cases, it seems women haven’t been deemed worthy. The majority of obituaries at The Times, for instance, have been for white men. In fact even in the last two years alone, only about 20 percent of the subjects of New York Times’s obituaries were female. Well The Times is looking to change that now, with a new project called "Overlooked" — creating new obituaries for women throughout history who never got one, but should have. Bennett sits down with Jezebel's Editor-in-Chief and Takeaway contributor Koa Beck to explain what’s behind the effort, and to share two stories of women they say deserve their long-awaited spotlight. Click on the 'Listen' button above to hear this segment. Don't have time to listen right now? Subscribe to our podcast via iTunes, TuneIn, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts to take this segment with you on the go. Want to comment on this story? Join the conversation on Facebook.