Popping bottles in 1925 via White Flag

8 Badass Women Who Changed the Game in San Francisco History

30 November 2017

V. Alexandra de F. Szoenyi

Here's for some major female empowerment.

Women have done some rad stuff in history; much of which has been underreported or long forgotten. We've done our homework though and found many a local female badass in our city's backstory. Take a look at some of the coolest women to leave their mark on San Francisco history.

Daisy Simpson was one of the few female Bureau of Prohibition agents of the Treasury Department. She served from 1921 until 1925, when women were banned from serving as field agents. During her tenure, Daisy went undercover and uses a variety of disguises. In one sting, she pretended to faint outside a bar; when the bar employees gave her whiskey, she arrested them.
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Lotta Crabtree was an actress, comedian, philanthropist, and entertainer who became known as "The Nation's Darling," and "Miss Lotta, the San Francisco Favorite." During the 1880s, Lotta was the highest paid actress in the country.
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San Francisco native, Filipino-American Vicki Manalo Draves was the first woman to win two gold medals in a single Olympics. At the 1948 games, she also became the first Asian-American to win a gold medal, and the first American woman to win two gold medals in diving, among many other accomplishments. Draves is also the only woman ever to do the cutaway two-and-one-half somersault.
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Leola King was one of the first women of color to own a nightclub in the Bay Area and was proprietor of:
A barbecue pit called Oklahoma King's at 1601 Geary
Blue Mirror at 935 Fillmore Street
Bird Cage Tavern 1505 Fillmore Street
Goldie's Supper Club (half completed)
Redevelopment took these and other properties owned by King. She fought back (but to no avail).
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San Francisco native Frances Marion was a reporter for the San Francisco Examiner, and a WWII combat correspondent, before writing screenplays for various films in the 1920s and '30s. She is considered the most renowned female screenwriter of the 20th century. Marion won two Academy Awards: one for writing 1931's The Big House, and the other for best story for Champ, in 1932. She also directed films, including those of actress Mary Pickford.
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Before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus in 1955, Charlotte L. Brown was standing up for her civil rights in 1863 San Francisco. On April 17 of that year, Brown was kicked off of a horse-drawn streetcar after refusing to get off. She had ridden the streetcar before, but was still asked to leave. Charlotte sued the Omnibus Railroad Company on two separate occasions, for two separate incidents—and won both times.
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The namesake of Coit Tower, Lillie Hitchcock Coit, was so obsessed with firefighting in San Francisco that she became an honorary member of Knickerbocker Engine Company No. 5. Coit was one of the boys, smoking cigars, wearing pants, and even dressing up as a man so she could gamble in North Beach.
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Juana Briones y Tapia de Miranda, of Spanish and African descent, was born in Santa Cruz and raised in the Presidio. The healer, widwife, and entreprenuer was granted a separation (which was unheard of at the time) from an abusive husband, after asking a Bishop of the Catholic Church to do so. When California became a state in 1850, Juana also fought all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court to keep her land. This made Briones one of the first female property owners in the state.
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