1972 Ann Worsham Richardson, owner of Birds I View Gallery and internationally recognized artist and naturalista 1945 Josephine Pinckney, renowned novelist 2022 Today -YOU! What will you do for womankind? www. Char l es tonWomenPodcas t . com | www. ReadCW. com | www. I ns tagram. com /Char l es tonWomen 13 experience, Pringle somehow managed the two rice plantations. When local rice production died out, she reinvented the business by planting peach orchards and renting land to hunters. She wrote a column for the New York Sun about being a woman planter, and her articles were later published in the book, “A Woman Rice Planter,” a bestseller. By the 20th Century, Susan Dart Butler began making waves for women of color. Butler studied at the Avery Institute, the prestigious local school for Blacks. Her father, a prominent Baptist minister, had founded a vocational school for Black children in Charleston. She became its director after his death in 1915 and converted her father’s personal library there into a lending library. With donations from wealthy benefactors, she expanded it to 3,600 books. The Dart Hall Library eventually became part of the Charleston Free Library, the predecessor of the Charleston County Public Library. Another graduate of Avery, Huldah Josephine Prioleau, was one of the state’s first Black woman doctors. After finishing medical school at Howard University in 1904, she returned to Charleston and opened a private practice on Spring Street, purchasing two adjacent houses— one as her office and the other as rental property. Prioleau also ran a wellness program from her home, taught medicine at the Cannon Street Hospital and helped establish the Charleston County Medical Association. Today’s women entrepreneurs continue to establish businesses in male-dominated fields. Womenowned businesses come in all shapes and sizes. For example, Erin Williams, owner Charleston Towing and Roadside said, “I grew up around heavy equipment and got my CDL at 19.” Now Williams manages the office duties while operating tow trucks. She works hard to gather clients, maintain machinery and run the business. Because of the precedents set by those who came before her, she can succeed a little more easily today. It doesn’t matter that her field is maledominated; it matters that she saw a place to make her mark on the world. It matters that women stood up for her hundreds of years before her birth. It matters for every woman alive today. feature Or i gi na l Dar t L ibrar y.
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