This post is very long, and I have bolded some things for those who want to just scan, but I hope you read it. Some is inspiring and some is shocking in that it wasn't achieved until so recently. I could have written so much more, and have left out so many Hoosier women deserving of recognition.

Polly Strong

Polly Strong stood up for herself and fought for her freedom using the judicial system in the early days of Indiana statehood.

Polly was born about 1796 to Jenny, a black slave. Prominent Vincennes, Ind., resident Hyacinth Lasselle purchased Polly in approximately 1806. Through a series of laws, slavery was prohibited in Indiana. But, court documents show Polly’s bid for freedom was not resolved quickly. Sometime before 1816, a judge of the Indiana Territory ruled Polly and her brother, James, were still slaves. A freedom suit was filed, and Hyacinth was ordered to bring Polly and her brother to the Knox Circuit Court in July 1818. The slave owner requested that the case be dismissed, but for two years Polly and James argued for their freedom. Finally, on July 22, 1820, the Indiana Supreme Court found that the 1816 Constitution banned slavery and that Hyacinth had violated the law by enslaving Strong. Polly was declared a free woman.

Roberta West Nicholson

In 1925, she moved to Indiana, where she was “absolutely bowled over by the fact that it was virtually the headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan and their vile machinations.” From a politically conservative family, Mrs. Nicholson soon found that in Indiana “the Republican party, as far as I could ascertain, was almost synonymous with the Ku Klux Klan. Well, how could you be anything but a Democrat, you know? That was to be on the side of angels so to speak.”

Nicholson established Indianapolis’s first Planned Parenthood center. She spent years working as a family planning and social hygiene advocate. She dedicated her life to improving the welfare of children. She was a member of the Women’s Organization for National Prohibition Repeal and was elected secretary to the state constitutional convention that ratified the 21st Amendment, repealing prohibition. As the only woman to serve in the 1935-1936 state legislature, she authored the “Anti-Heart Balm Bill,” which made waves in Indiana and across the country. Nicholson’s proposal would outlaw the ability of a woman to sue a man who had promised to marry them, but changed their minds. She felt that deriving monetary gain from emotional pain went against feminist principles and that if a man did the same to a woman he would be absolutely condemned.

During the Depression, Nicholson recalled witnessing a woman intended to rally Hoosiers from across the state to press Governor Paul McNutt for jobs. She was struck by the fact that the woman was wearing a flour sack as a dress, on which the Acme Evans label was still visible.

To see for herself if conditions were as dire as she’d heard-despite some local newspapers denying the extent of the poverty-Nicholson took a job at a canning factory. There she learned that the “economic condition was as bad or worse than I had feared.” She hoped to ease this struggle as the Marion County Director of Women’s and Professional Work for the Works Progress Administration (WPA).

In the early 1940s, Governor Henry F. Schricker appointed Nicholson to a commission on Indianapolis housing conditions. The reformer, concluded that the real estate lobby was at the center of the disenfranchisement of African Americans. As she saw it in 1977, the lobby prevented:

[W]hat we now call ‘upward mobility’ of blacks. I don’t think we would have this school problem in Indianapolis we have now if the emerging class of blacks with education and with decent jobs had not been thwarted in their attempts to live other than in the ghetto. They were thwarted by the real estate laws.

She added that black residents were essentially prohibited to live “anyplace but in the circumscribed areas which the real estate lobby approved . . . And now we have school problems and I think it’s a crying shame that we put the burden for directing past injustices on the backs of little children.”

During World War II, Nicholson fought for black servicemen to be able to utilize the exact same amenities as their white counterparts. One of her tasks included providing troops with a dormitory in the city because “there was no place where these young black men could sleep.” After being turned away by various building owners, Nicholson was allowed to rent a building with “money from bigoted people,” but then came the “job of furnishing it.” With wartime shortages, this proved exceptionally difficult. Nicholson approached the department store L. S. Ayres, demanding bed sheets for the black servicemen. According to Nicholson, some of the Ayres personnel did not understand why the black troops needed sheets if they had blankets. She contended “the white ones had sheets and I didn’t see why the black ones should be denied any of the amenities that the white ones were getting.” Nicholson succeeded in procuring the sheets and a recreation facility at Camp Atterbury for African American soldiers.

Sallie Wyatt Stewart

She organized the Evansville Federation of Colored Women’s Club and led its effort in 1918-1919 to establish the first day care center for children of Black working mothers. She served as first secretary of the local NAACP chapter in 1915 and was a founder of Evansville’s first Inter-Racial Commission. She founded a boarding house and recreation center for young Black women. During World War II, she organized the local Colored Women’s War Work Community that sold bonds and stamps to help support the war. She continued teaching for 50 years.

Her influence was felt on a national scale. Stewart was president of the Indiana Federation of Colored Women from 1921 to 1928, then president of the 200,000-member National Association of Colored Women, leading efforts to raise the standards of living for Black women and their families. She founded the National Association of Colored Girls in 1930, the same year she served as a delegate to the International Council of Women in Vienna, Austria, and was the first African-American to be elected president of the National Council of Women in the United States. She also was a founder and first secretary of the Frederick Douglass Memorial and Historical Association.

Helen Murray Free

People around the world continue to benefit from the pioneering research by chemist Helen Murray Free, who in 1956 revolutionized many self-testing systems for diabetes and other diseases by developing the dip-and-read strips.

Kathleen Flossie Bailey

Bailey led the successful campaign for adoption of Indiana’s anti-lynching law in 1931 and lobbied for a national anti-lynching law, as well as for school integration and fair treatment of African Americans in hospitals, movie theaters and other public spaces.

In the 1940's, her home in Marion had served as Indiana headquarters for the NAACP for a time while she was state president of the NAACP. She was a recipient of the national NAACP’s Madam C. J. Walker Media Award

Margaret Ray Ringenberg 

Tom Brokaw devoted a chapter to Hoosier aviator Margaret Ringenberg in his book "The Greatest Generation" . Ringenberg began her career in 1943 as a 20-year-old pilot with the legendary Women Airforce Service Pilots during World War II. In 1994, at the age of 72, she completed the Round-the-World Air Race  and was still at it in 2001, racing from London to Sydney at age 79. She logged more than 40,000 hours of flying time.

Dorothy Stratton

First female officer in the US Coast Guard. Reformed Purdue University and it's relationship with female students, leading to many reforms, educational opportunities and vast increases in enrollment.

Vivian Carter

Founded a record company, Vee Jay Records, using $500 borrowed from a pawn store.

The company signed blues, doo-wop and jazz musicians. The first song they recorded made it to the Top 10 of the national rhythm and blues charts. Pre-Motown, Vee Jay Records was the most successful black music company.

In 1963, they signed the Beatles, engineering the initial release of "Please Please Me." The single sold a mere 5,650 copies. Their next Beatles release, "From Me to You" drew no air time and the label dropped the British band

Lovina McCarthy Streight

Not many women fought in the Civil War. But when Lovina McCarthy Streight's husband, Abel, became commander of the 51st Indiana Volunteer Infantry, she would not hear of languishing at home. Instead, she and the couple's 5-year-old son went with him. Streight, who was born in 1830, nursed the wounded, eventually earning her the title "The Mother of the 51st." Confederate troops captured her three times, twice exchanging her for prisoners. The third time, she brandished a gun she had stashed inside her skirt.

A list of just a few Female Hoosier Political achievements:

1875

Elizabeth (Bessie) Jane Eaglesfield becomes the first female lawyer admitted to the Indiana bar under a Vigo Circuit Court order and one of the first fifteen women lawyers in the United States

• 1895

Helen M. Gougar becomes one of the first women to argue before the Indiana Supreme Court on her own behalf in a case appealing the denial of her right to vote in the 1894 election.  The case was filed in the Tippecanoe Superior Court

•  1896

Miss Mary Harry Peacock becomes the first woman admitted to practice before the Indiana Supreme Court

• November 1920

  Julia D. Nelson, of Delaware County, became the first woman to serve in the General Assembly as a member of the House of Representatives

Mrs. Anna D. Monroe is the first woman to vote in Indiana, after the passage of the 19th Amendment

• 1933

Virginia E. Jenckes unseats a 16-year veteran Congressman to become the first Indiana woman to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives

• 1955

Z. Mae Jimison becomes first African-American woman to win an Indianapolis Mayoral Primary

• 1957

Mary Jancosek Bercik becomes the first woman to serve as mayor of an Indiana city when she is appointed as Mayor of Whiting, Indiana after her husband dies in office. After completing her husband's term, Mary Jancosek Bercik went on to seek and win the mayoral office for the next four years

• 1965

Daisy Riley Lloyd becomes the first African-American woman to be elected to the Indiana House of Representatives and to serve in the Indiana General Assembly. Aside from 1970, there has been at least one black female legislator serving in every Indiana session since her election.

• 1967

Flo Doty, Alberta Edwards, Barbara Hanley, and Liz Coffal Robinson serve on the Indianapolis Police Department's female pistol team, the first in the United States.

•  1969

Barbara Boyd joins the staff of Channel 6 and becomes the first African-American female reporter

• 1984

Sarah Evans Barker becomes the first female federal judge in Indiana when she was appointed to the United States District Court, Southern District of Indiana

• 1992

Pam Carter became the first black woman elected to a statewide office, elected Attorney General. In the process, she also became the first black female to serve as Attorney General in any U.S. state.

• 1995

Myra Selby becomes the first woman and the first African-American to be appointed justice of the Indiana Supreme Court

• 2008

Sen. Vi Simpson becomes the first woman elected as Minority Leader by the Senate Democrat Caucus

Jill Long Thompson (Democrat) became the first woman to win a major party nomination for Governor of Indiana.

• 2014

 Loretta Rush becomes the first female Chief Justice of the Indiana Supreme Court

• 2016

Lucy Brenton (Libertarian) became the first Indiana woman to win a major party nomination for U.S. Senate.