State women inducted in hall of fame

State women inducted in hall of fame

A virtual who’s who of influential women, including feminist Gloria Steinem and former Planned Parenthood President Faye Wattleton, were to be among the 35 women inducted Saturday into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, N.Y.

The 1993 class of inductees is the largest in the hall’s 24-year history, said Susan Butler, the hall’s director. It includes two Michiganians -Rosa Parks and former Lt Gov. Martha Griffiths.

Parks, 80, has been a legendary figure in the civil rights movement since her arrest in 1955 on a Montgomery, Ala., bus protesting segregation laws.

Griffiths, 81, was the first woman ever elected as Michigan’s lieutenant governor, serving from 1983 through 1990. Prior to that, she served 20 years in the U.S. House of Representatives where she was instrumental in seeing that the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibited discrimination based on sex.

Besides Steinem and Wattleton, other inductees expected to attend the ceremony were Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to the U.S. Congress; Wilma Mankiller, principal chief of the Cherokee Nation; and Griffiths.

Butler says all the women in this year’s class are risk takers.

“All of them have been willing to jump out there and do something that women have not done or have not done well in the past,” she said.