Nine Women who gave a large part of their lives to others' welfare in the 16th to 20th centuries were honored March 24 in a talk at the Boston Public Library. The women are featured in a 14-foot-wide mural by artist Ellen Lanyon in the library's Boylston Street lobby (see photo caption below with a brief description of their claims to fame).
The "nine women" mural, commissioned in 1980 by Workingmen's Cooperative Bank in Boston, commemorates women who made an impact on the city and the nation in causes they became passionate about—from civil rights to social work to freedom of religion. The women were chosen in part by Boston high-school students who wrote essays on their favorite notable women, and by a committee of academicians, state government workers, and social service employees. The Schlesinger Library (Cambridge, Mass.), part of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and devoted to the study of women's history, researched the lives and work of each of the women.
