A Latina chief in New Mexico’s suffrage motion and one of the crucial state’s first feminine executive officers all over the twentieth century can be stamped on a U.S. quarter in her honor later this summer season.
Adelina “Nina” Otero-Warren – who changed into the primary Latina ever to run for U.S. Congress — equipped management in New Mexico’s motion for ladies’s proper to vote and performed a trailblazing function in politics.
From 1917 to 1929, she served because the first feminine superintendent of Santa Fe public colleges, the place she driven for the inclusion of the Spanish language in school rooms, which on the time went in opposition to the federal English-only mandate.
She additionally labored diligently to fortify prerequisites in colleges in rural Hispanic and Local American communities, raised instructor salaries, and fought to finish punishment towards scholars for talking Spanish in the school room or within the schoolyard.
The honorary quarter showcases Otero-Warren along yucca plant life — New Mexico’s state plant life — along the phrases “Voto Para Los angeles Mujer,” a suffragist slogan that interprets to “Votes for Girls.”
In 1917, Otero-Warren additionally changed into head of the New Mexico bankruptcy of the Congressional Union for Girl Suffrage, which later grew into the Nationwide Girl’s Birthday celebration.
A number of years later, she earned the Republican Birthday celebration nomination for a seat at the U.S. Area of Representatives in 1921 however misplaced within the basic election.
Otero-Warren died on January 3, 1965, within the Santa Fe house the place she grew up.
She is going to seem at the quarter on August 15 as a part of the U.S. Mint’s American Girls Quarters Program, a four-year program that highlights notable feminine ancient figures who contributed to American historical past from quite a few fields.
Different ladies who’ve been commemorated with 1 / 4 all over this system this 12 months come with world-renowned poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou and Anna Might Wong, the primary Chinese language American movie big name in Hollywood.
Click on right here to determine which different prominent ladies can be featured within the U.S. Mint’s American Girls Quarters Program, which is able to proceed via 2025.