Friday / Weekend Open Lines

The first state college for women was created this month in 1884 in Mississippi. Known as the Mississippi Industrial Institute and College, classes opened in the fall of the next year on the campus of a former college in Columbus. Now called the Mississippi University for Women, it has been ranked as one of the top schools in the annual list of “America’s Best Colleges.” The now coed school of some 2,400 students has a number its campus buildings on the National Register of Historic Places. Across the U.S. today, there are some 19.5 million graduate and undergraduate students enrolled in colleges. Over 56 percent are women. That’s 7 percent of the female population over the age of 3. You can find more facts about America’s people, places and economy from the American Community Survey at <www.census.gov>.

Saturday, March 14th. This is National Peanut Month — celebrating one of the nation’s favorite foods, and absolutely America’s favorite snack nut. They are enjoyed in many ways — roasted in the shell, used in salads and stir-fry recipes, in cookies and, of course, ground into peanut butter. The idea of honoring the peanut has been a monthlong observance since 1974. Americans eat an average of more than six pounds of shelled peanuts a year, about half in the form of peanut butter. Even the shells are used in such products as kitty litter, wallboard, and artificial fireplace logs. American peanuts have a global customer base. In 2013, over $540 million worth were exported; nearly 18 percent of that went to Canada, and 14½ percent to Mexico. Profile America is in its 18th year as a public service of the U.S. Census Bureau.

Sunday, March 15th.  This date in 1879 was a milestone in women’s history and the opportunities available to them. President Rutherford Hayes signed a congressional act “to relieve certain legal disabilities of women.” With this bill, its champion, 49-year-old Belva A. Lockwood, became the first woman to be admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court, which she did the following year. Lockwood followed this advance in 1884 by becoming the first woman to mount a serious candidacy for the presidency. Lockwood was one of about 200 women lawyers in 1880, out of more than 64,000 in the nation. Today in the U.S., there are nearly 1.1 million lawyers, judges, judicial law clerks and other judicial workers, with more than 36 percent of them women. You can find more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau online at <www.census.gov>.