‘Remember the ladies.’ In March, we learn about pioneers behind powerful words, acts

“Latte, two sugars please.” The barista handed me my order with a grown-up, sippy-cup lid firmly in place … and, for no particular reason, I lifted the lid. I’m not in the habit of it: I knew that the coffee was made exactly the way I liked it and I needed to drink that perfect coffee, but I simply had an overwhelming compulsion to lift lid and peek in.

I was rewarded with a gift.

Under the lid of my to-go coffee cup, the barista had drawn a milk-foam leaf that I wouldn’t have seen if I had just guzzled down that latte. It was a personal lesson in stopping to smell the coffee, for sure, but also a reminder during Women’s History Month that we should look under the lid of history for the gifts. Look beyond the “need-to-knows” to the “should-knows.”

In the wise words of Abigail Adams, herself an accomplished, intelligent, independent woman who Founding Father John Adams had the brilliance to yoke himself to: “Remember the ladies.”

The official theme for Women’s History Month this year is, “Celebrating Women Who Tell Our Stories.” Maybe you don’t identify as a woman, but you can still tell the stories, so here are a few suggestions to get you going.

There are the obvious, “behind-the-man” women who often are relegated to an asterisk in their husbands’ well-known histories, but who were very accomplished in their own right. Consider Zelda Fitzgerald. Often remembered as F. Scott’s flapper-arm-candy, she was an accomplished writer and artist. Many believe, as I do, that she was also a writer of some of the important work he was fully credited with.

Look beyond the lids covering your history textbook knowledge of Booker T. Washington, and learn about his wife, Margaret Murray Washington. After the deaths of his first two wives, Margaret came into the marriage already an educator, women’s organization leader and suffragist. She continued her work while raising his three children.

If you look into the history of Orville and Wilber Wright, you’ll easily spot their sister, Katharine, who completed college while running the family home after their mother died. She taught school and ran her brothers’ businesses so that they could concentrate on aviation.

There are thousands of women who didn’t stand in relatives’ shadows, but are still often forgotten. Lift the lid of civil rights history in the 1900s and you’ll see Mary McLeod Bethune touching every corner of it. Lift the lid of FDR’s New Deal and see the architect of it, Francis Perkins, creating programs that still benefit Americans today.

Like sports? In 1926, 20-year-old Gertrude Ederle dove into the English Channel and finished swimming across it two hours faster than any man had before. And was there anything Babe Didrikson Zaharias didn’t play? When she was asked that, she said, “Yeah, dolls.” What she did excel in was everything else (deep breath) basketball, golf, track, baseball, tennis…even bowling.

And then there are the “Who?” names. Like the one woman who ended the fight for U.S. women’s suffrage? That woman was Febb E. Burn. No, I didn’t make that name up.

We can’t forget that there were women who ran entire countries with great success during hostile periods of time, including Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen Elizabeth I, Empress Maria Theresa and Queen Victoria, to name just a few. So many queens and empresses, so little time.

And that’s the thing: Women’s History Month only lasts 31 days, too little time to meet the history makers who have been shoved into sidebars and footnotes for far too long. But, just maybe, it will be long enough to get all of us in the habit of looking beyond the obvious and lifting the lid to discover the extraordinary.

Susan is a Kansas City based writer and podcaster. She’s a co-host of the award-winning, long running The History Chicks podcast where you can take a deep dive into the historic lives of women 12 months a year.