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Ms Sheila Michaels, activist who popularized "Ms." honorific, dead at 78
Sheila Michaels, popularizer of the honorific "Ms." for women, is dead at 78. The BBC:
"I didn't belong to my father and I didn't want to belong to a husband - someone who could tell me what to do."
Born in St Louis, Missouri, Ms Michaels spent some of her childhood in New York City. She was a lifelong feminist activist, biblical scholar, and collected oral histories of the civil rights movement later in life.
In her professional life, she worked as a ghostwriter, editor, and even ran a Japanese restaurant - but her obituary in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch notes her favourite job was being a New York City taxi driver.
"Ms." — referring to women without reference to a husband or lack thereof — dates to 1901, but was only adopted by the New York Times in 1971.
Oddly, Wikipedia has an extensive article for Sheila from South Park, but not a word for Sheila Michaels. Someone who can nagivate that place should fix this!
Original Link: http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/lcAg-Ts4mBU/ms-sheila-michaels.html