15
Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906): Suffragette. Born in Adams, Massachusetts, Anthony was a leader of the movement to gain women the right to vote. As a leader of the Womenis Temperance Movement along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, she secured the first laws in New York State giving women control over their children, property, and wages.

15
Felix Frankfurter (1882-1965): Jewish American. Lawyer, teacher, jurist. Frankfurter taught law at Harvard Law School, was an advisor to President Wilson, and helped to found the American Civil Liberties union. He was appointed to the United States Supreme Court by President Franklin Roosevelt.

15
Nirvana (Buddhais Death): Buddhist. In the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, this day marks the death of Buddha in 483 B.C.E. and commemorates his attainment of final Nirvana. The date is based on the Japanese Buddhist calendar.

15
Randy Shilts (1952-1994): Gay. Author and journalist. The national correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle, Shilts was one of the first openly gay journalists hired at a major newspaper. Shiltsi best selling books include The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk (1982), And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic (1987), and Conduct Unbecoming: Lesbians and Gays in the U.S. Military (1993). And the Band Played On was made into a docudrama that was broadcast on HBO on September 11, 1993. Band has been translated into seven languages and released in 16 nations. Conduct Unbecoming won numerous awards, earning Shilts the designation of Author of the Year in 1988 from the American Society of Journalists and Authors. This is the date of his death from AIDS.

17
Marion Anderson. (1902-1993): African American. Singer. Gifted with a rich contralto that the conductor Arturo Toscanini called ithe kind of voice heard once in a hundred years,i Marian Anderson rose from modest beginnings in Philadelphia to become an internationally acclaimed concert artist, renowned for her interpretations of the classical repertoire and of African American spirituals. During her 1933 Scandinavian concert tour, Anderson was encouraged by her accompanist Kosti Vehanen, a finnish pianist, to learn some songs by the finnish composer Jean Sibelius and perform for him at his home. Sibelius was so impressed by Anderson that he wrote an original composition for her. *In 1939, Anderson was barred from performing at Constitution Hall in Washington D. C., by the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) because of her race, whereupon first Lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the DAR in protest. The federal government * invited Anderson to sing instead at a public recital on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, and on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939, Marion Anderson gave her now-historic recital before a crowed of more than 75,000 people, the largest to date ever assembled at the Memorial. In 1955, thirty years after beginning her concert career, she became the first African American to sing a leading role at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. Widely admired for her humane spirit, she served on the United States delegation to the United Nations General Assembly in 1958 and won the United Nations peace prize in 1977.

17
Goyaale (1829-1909): American Indian (Chiricahua Apache). Military leader. As chief of the Chiricahua Apache Indians, Geronimo escaped repeatedly from reservations and led attacks on settlers and soldiers in northern Mexico and the southwestern United States during the late 1870is and early 1880s. He surrendered to U.S. government forces in 1885. This is the anniversary of his death.

17
Presidents Day: United States. The birthdays of U.S. George Washington (February 22, 1732) and Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809) are observed on this day.

18
Sholom Aleichem (born Solomon Rabinowitz) (1854-1916): Jewish Russian American. Writer. Born in Ukraine, Rabinowitz began writing in Yiddish in 1883, using as his pseudonym the Yiddish greeting i Peace be with you.i His best known works are his stories of Jewish life in the villages of Eastern Europe. Along with I. Peretz and Mendele Sforim, he is considered one of the founders of modern Yiddish literature.

18
Audre Geraldin Lorde (1934-1992): Lesbian. Poet and essayist. Audre Lorde was a Black lesbian who fought for justice through both her writings and her political activities. She held a number of teaching positions and toured internationally as a lecturer, forming coalitions between Afro-German and Afro-Dutch women, founding a sisterhood in South Africa, starting the Women of Color Press, and establishing the St. Croix Womenis Coalition. Her poetry collections include, From a Land Where Other People Live (1973), The Black Unicorn (1978), Our Dead Behind Us (1986), and The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance (1993). She won the American Book Award in 1989 for A Burst of Light and was appointed New York Stateis Poet Laureate by then Governor Mario Cuomo in 1991. Lorde chronicled her 14 year battle against breast cancer in works such as The Cancer Journals, before finally succumbing to the disease in 1992.

18
Luis Munoz Marin (1898-1980): Puerto Rico. Political leader. Elected Puerto Ricois first governor in 1948, Munzo Marin served in that office until 1964, instituting programs of economic development and social reform. He also proposed a plan for maintaining Puerto Ricois union with the United States while establishing the island as a self-governing unit exempt from U.S. taxes. This proposal became the basis for the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, created by and act of Congress and proclaimed in 1952.

19
Beginning of Japanese internment (1942) United States. On this date President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order requiring the removal of most persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast to internment camps in rural Arizona, Colorado, Arkansas, California, Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming. This act, a response to anti-Japanese feeling in the country after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, uprooted 120,000 people, including 71,000 U.S. citizens.

21
Barbara Jordan (1936-1996) : African American. Lawyer, politician, teacher. Born in Houston, Texas, Jordan graduated magna cum laude from Texas Southern University and Boston University Law School. In 1966, she was the first Black woman to be elected to the Texas State Senate. She later became the first woman and first African American elected to Congress from Texas.

21
First publication of the Cherokee Phoenix (1828): American Indian. In 1828 a system of symbols developed by Sequoyah to give written form to the Cherokee language made possible the publication of the Cherokee Phoenix, the first newspaper printed in an Indian language.

21
Maha Shivaratri (Shiva's Night) : Hindu. This festival honors Shiva who, along with Vishnu and Krishna, is one of the most important deities in Hinduism. It is observed in the spring and is celebrated with fasting and prayer and meditation.

22
Santiago Iglesias (1872-1939): Spanish Puerto Rican. Labor organizer and political leader. Iglesias first became involved in activities demanding civil rights for workers as a 12 year-old apprentice carpenter in his native Spain. Immigrating to Cuba three years later, he continued to organize laborers to demand better working conditions first there and then in Puerto Rico, where he rose to leadership of the Federacion Libre de Trabajadores de Puerto Rico. He was the organization's president from 1900 to 1935. An active Socialist, he eventually entered electoral politics, serving in the Puerto Rican senate from 1917 to 1933 and as Puerto Rico's representative to the U.S. Congress from 1933 until his death.

22
Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Bonnin) (1876-1938): American Indian (Sioux). Writer and activist. Born in South Dakota to a full-blooded Sioux mother and a white father, Zitkala-Sa became an eloquent writer of essays and memoirs and a leader in the movement to advance the civic, educational, and economic opportunities of American Indians while recognizing and preserving American Indian cultures. As secretary of the Society of American Indians and then president of the National Council of American Indians, she lectured, wrote, and lobbied on behalf of Indian legislation, and was instrumental in the passage of the Indian Citizen Bill of 1924. On June 2, Congress extended the rights of citizenship to all American Indians born in the United States. Previously, only part of the American Indian population had been granted citizenship through treaties, statutes, naturalization, and service in the armed forces.

22
Peoples Power Day: Philippines. This commemorates the overthrow of Ferdinand Marcos, who ruled the Philippines as a dictatorship from February 22 to February 25. It was on February 25 that Ferdinand Marcos left the Philippines and Corazon Aquino was recognized by the United States as president.