Women We Overlooked in 167 Years of New York Times Obituaries

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Retweeted by David Fahrenthold: https://twitter.com/Fahrenthold

Since 1851, obituaries in @nytimes have been dominated by white men. Just 20% have been women.

Today we introduce Overlooked — a project to write the obituaries for the women who never got them, but should have.

Link to tweet

Women We Overlooked in 167 Years of New York Times Obituaries

OVERLOOKED

Since 1851, obituaries in The New York Times have been dominated by white men. Now, we’re adding the stories of 15 remarkable women.

By AMISHA PADNANI and JESSICA BENNETT MARCH 8, 2018

Obituary writing is more about life than death: the last word, a testament to a human contribution. ... Yet who gets remembered — and how — inherently involves judgment. To look back at the obituary archives can, therefore, be a stark lesson in how society valued various achievements and achievers.

Since 1851, The New York Times has published thousands of obituaries: of heads of state, opera singers, the inventor of Stove Top stuffing and the namer of the Slinky. The vast majority chronicled the lives of men, mostly white ones; even in the last two years, just over one in five of our subjects were female.

Charlotte Brontë wrote “Jane Eyre”; Emily Warren Roebling oversaw construction of the Brooklyn Bridge when her husband fell ill; Madhubala transfixed Bollywood; Ida B. Wells campaigned against lynching. Yet all of their deaths went unremarked in our pages, until now.

Below you’ll find obituaries for these and others who left indelible marks but were nonetheless overlooked. We’ll be adding to this collection each week, as Overlooked becomes a regular feature in the obituaries section, and expanding our lens beyond women.

{snip}

[flying_wahini]

1. Spectacular! And about damn time. Really even the NYT knows how they dropped the ball

On this one.

[Skittles]

2. I watched a documentary on Marsha P. Johnson on Netflix

very fascinating gal indeed

Sylvia Plath - a biographer said it was hard to find an obituary ANYWHERE on her, no doubt because her family was distressed by her suicide and the details (head in oven while kids were in another room)