Feminist, surgeon, spy: Meet the only woman to ever receive the Medal of Honor
She received the medal for her “valuable service” and “earnest and untiring” efforts.
BY HALEY BRITZKY | PUBLISHED MAR 3, 2022 2:08 PM
Dr. Mary Walker (1832-1919), an American physician and reformer who was an assistant surgeon with the Union Army during the Civil War, wearing the Medal of Honor, ca. 1866.
The only woman to ever receive the Medal of Honor was exactly how you’d probably imagine her: Strong-willed, ambitious, and refusing to take anyone’s shit.
Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, born Nov. 26, 1832 in Oswego, New York, was intent on breaking stereotypes for women almost from the very beginning. Her parents were abolitionists and “encouraged her to think freely,” the National Women’s History Museum says. She regularly wore men’s trousers and collared shirts, Sharon Harris, author of “Dr. Mary Walker: An American Radical, 1832-1919,” told NBC News.
“Boys chased her and threw rocks at her,” Harris told NBC. “She once said that nobody would ever know what she had to go through just to step out the door each morning.”
Her parents insisted that she be educated just like her brothers, and in 1855 she graduated from Syracuse Medical College as a doctor, a profession not typically open to women at the time. She married Albert Miller, another medical student, while wearing a suit and top hat, according to the American College of Surgeons, and ditched the word “obey” in her wedding vows. The two opened a medical practice in New York. But the public “did not want to accept a female doctor,” according to the National Women’s History Museum, and the practice failed.
https://taskandpurpose.com/culture/womens-history-medal-of-honor-mary-edwards-walker/
