Portrait of Jessie Street

Birthday profile

Jessie Street

Jessie Street, Australian activist (died 1970)

Born
April 18, 1889
Died
July 2, 1970
Zodiac sign
Aries
Birth year
1889

About Jessie Street

Jessie Mary Grey Street (née Lillingston; 18 April 1889 – 2 July 1970) was an Australian diplomat, suffragette, and a campaigner for Indigenous Australian rights. She was referred to as "Red Jessie" by the Australian media, due to her support for the Soviet Union through World War II and the Cold War, as she organised the "Sheepskins for Russia" campaign during World War II, and she was notably one of two Australians to attend Stalin's funeral. As Australia's only female delegate to the founding of the United Nations in 1945, Jessie served as the first Vice President of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, and she played a central role in ensuring the inclusion of sex as a non-discrimination clause in the United Nations Charter. She was Lady Street from 1956, with the elevation of her husband Lieutenant Colonel Sir Kenneth Whistler Street. Her father-in-law Sir Philip Whistler Street served as Chief Justice of New South Wales, and as Lieutenant-Governor of New South Wales, as did her husband Kenneth and their youngest son, Laurence, who was knighted in 1976.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

The world when Jessie Street was born

Jessie Street was born in 1889. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Headlines and milestones

  • Top headlineEiffel Tower opens for Paris World's Fair
  • Technology milestoneEiffel Tower — world's tallest structure
  • World population~1.49B

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderBenjamin Harrison
  • U.S. population58.6M

1889 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Jessie Street's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure18892026
Population58.6M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Library of Congress, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.