Alice Belcher – 2011

Alice Belcher was a pioneer on many fronts. She was the first woman to enter the College of Arts & Sciences at Washington University in 1870. She was the first woman employed by the St. Louis Democrat. She wrote a weekly column to earn book money under the pen name “N.D.,” which stood for “nikeso dynamai,” which is Greek for “I will conquer; I am able.” She later moved to New York and wrote articles for the New York Evening Post and Popular Science Monthly, including stories such as “Is Education Opposed to Motherhood?” and “Woman and the Ballot.” “She expressed her strength of will by forthright presentation in St. Louis and clever guile in New York, which persuaded newspapers to accept her work — and pioneered the way in journalism for publication of the written word and commentary by other women,” her grandson, John Tweedy, told Washington University biographer Candace O’Connor. “This is her enduring legacy.”

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