President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva sanctioned the law that inscribes the name of Antonieta de Barros, the Brazil’s first black female deputy, in the Book of Heroes and Heroines of the Homeland, which registers the names of Brazilians who have offered their lives to their homeland, for its defense and construction, with exceptional dedication and heroism. The sanction was published today (5) in the Official Diary of the Union (DOU).
Black and of humble origin, Antonieta de Barros stood out for her fight against prejudice and racial discrimination. Born in 1901, in Florianópolis, Antonieta de Barros was an educator, writer, journalist, activist for women’s suffrage and state deputy for Santa Catarina.
Antonieta contested the first election in which Brazilian women could vote and be voted for the Executive and Legislative, in the year 1934. She ran for one of the vacancies of deputy to the Legislative Assembly of the State of Santa Catarina and was an alternate of the Catarinense Liberal Party ( PLC). As the holder, Leônidas Coelho de Souza did not take over, she took office in the vacancy, exercising the mandate in the 1935-1937 legislature.
During her mandate, she was the first woman in Brazil to assume the Presidency of a Legislative Assembly, presiding over the session of the legislative house on July 19, 1937.
In 1945, after the end of the Estado Novo, which closed parliaments across the country, Antonieta ran again for a vacancy for state deputy, for the Social Democratic Party (PSD), becoming the party’s second substitute. Summoned, she assumed the vacancy in June 1948.
In the same year, he presented a bill creating Teacher’s Day, in Santa Catarina, with a school holiday on October 15.
“Educating is teaching others to live; it is to illuminate the paths of others; it is to support the weak, transforming them into strong ones; it is to show the paths, point out the climbs, making it possible to advance, without crutches and without stumbling”, says an excerpt from the speech given by Antonieta on the occasion of the enactment of the law that instituted Teacher’s Day.
Her mandate ended in 1951. A law of 2006 named the Auditorium of the Legislative Assembly as Deputy Antonieta de Barros.
education and journalism
In 1922, he founded the Private Course Antonieta de Barros, in Florianópolis, which was aimed at literacy. She directed the institution until the year of her death, in 1952.
She was also a teacher at the Escola Normal Catarinense, teaching Portuguese and literature, from 1934; she taught at Colégio Coração de Jesus and Colégio Dias Velho, having been Director from 1937 to 1945. She was also a teacher at the current State Institute of Education, between 1933 and 1951.
He entered journalism in 1920. He created and directed the newspaper A Semana, which ran from 1922 to 1927, and the periodical Vida Ilhoa, in 1930.
Antonieta de Barros died on March 28, 1952, in Florianópolis, and was buried in the São Francisco de Assis Cemetery.
