Women in Kentucky - Business

Mattie Mack: According to a 1990 report in the Courier Journal, there were 935 black-owned farms in Kentucky in 1982. In 1987 the number had shrunk to 673, a 28 percent decline, while white-owned farms declined by 9 percent. Mattie Mack is a Brandenburg tobacco farmer and activist who has worked to reverse these statistics. Her first efforts to buy a farm in Kentucky resulted in refusal because she was black. In 1963 she and her husband were finally able to purchase their farm because a black owner sold directly to them.

Mattie Mack is a woman for whom farming has been the only way of life, and she is on a mission to remind Kentuckians of the value of tobacco and the black farmer. For instance, in 1990 she successfully petitioned the Kentucky legislature to pass a bill providing loans to small farmers, and championed the inclusion of minority rights in the 1990 U.S. Farm Bill. In 1998 she expressed her concerns about the future of tobacco farmers to President Clinton when he visited Kentucky, and joined him in speaking out against teen smoking at a school. Mattie Mack serves as a role model for young women interested in continuing the Kentucky farming tradition.

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Women in Sports:

Minnie Adkins
Elizabeth Barret, Anne Lewis, Mimi Pickering, & Justine Richardson
Jane Burch Cochran
Joan Dance
Enid Yandell

Women in Business:

Nelda Barton-Collings
Julia Dinsmore
Laura Freeman
Mattie Mack
Lena Madesin Phillips
Caroline Burnam Taylor

Women in Education:

Helen Lew Lang
Katherine Pettit
Jane Stephenson
Cora Wilson Stewart

Women in Health/Medicine:

Mary Britton
Linda Neville
Ora Framer Porter
Louise Southgate, M.D.

Women in Journalism:

Linda Boileau
Alice Allison Dunnigan

Women in Law:

Pearl Carter Pace
Lt. Colonel Linda Smith

Women in Literature:

Effie Waller Smith

Women in Military:

Lt. Anna Mac Clarke
Capt. Helen Horlacher Evans
Julia Ann Marcum

Women in Music:

Sarah Ogan Gunning
Helen Humes
Lily May Ledford
Reel World String Band
Jean Ritchie
Mary Wheeler

Women as Pioneers:

Esther Whitley

Women in Public Service:

Governor Martha Layne Collins
Emma Guy Cromwell
Rep. Mary Elliott Flanery
Sen. Georgia Davis Powers
Lt. Gov. Thelma Stovall

Women in Reform:

Madeline McDowell Breckinridge
Laura Clay
Eula Hall
Josephine Henry
Belinda Mason
Lois Morris
Eliza Caroline Calvert Obenchain
Charlotte Richardson
Joan Robinett
Mary Sue Whayne
Corinne Whitehead
Evelyn Williams

Women in Religion:

Eldress Nancy Moore
Rabbi Gaylia Rooks

Women in Science:

Sarah Frances Price
Ellen Churchill Semple

Women in Sports:

Terri Cecil-Ramsey
Geri Grigsby
Audrey Whitlock Peterson
Mary T. Meagher Plant