Saleswomen in Mercantile Stores: Baltimore, 1909 (1912)

The third generation from her grandfather who died an untimely death ten years before her birth, Federica was the female and first-born of twins and five years younger than her older brother. She came of age in a town where she had attended three most barbaric witch trials, one of which involved her grandfather’s junior wife, accused of sending two lions that mauled her dear grandmother to death. But although she was first home-schooled by a woman who became a Carmelite nun as protest against extreme misogyny, her teaching didn’t influence her, nor did her grandmother’s death compel her to quit school to care for five orphans. To the contrary, she saw African men as worse victims of foreign occupiers than the women. As most males of all creatures protect their females and their young, she blamed the mistrust of African men over their women on foreign occupation. She returned to school two years later, vowing that unlike Kenyatta who drove out the English he saw invading Kenya, she would be equally content to see the Portuguese leaving her country. Returning from school as a teacher, she called for support for the construction of a school in a town that had never had one. She was looked upon as a messiah, galvanizing the entire region and beyond. Donations followed. By September 25th 1964, a new community-owned school was opened with her as its first headmistress.