Madeleine Albright, the first female U.S. secretary of state and a feminist icon whom President Joe Biden called “a force,” died March 23 at age 84.
Albright's family made the announcement on Twitter, stating cancer as the cause of death. World leaders and the public reacted to the news with condolences and remembrances of Albright as a "trailblazer," Reuters reported at the time.
"Madeleine Albright was a force," President Joe Biden said, according to Reuters. "She defied convention and broke barriers again and again."
Albright was born May 15, 1937, in Prague. Her family fled Czechoslovakia when Germany invaded in 1939, going first to London then Switzerland before returning to Czechoslovakia after the war, Reuters reports. She was raised Roman Catholic, but learned after becoming Secretary of State that her family had been Jewish and three of her grandparents died in the Holocaust, Reuters reports.
Albright attended Wellesley College in Massachusetts and earned a doctorate from Columbia University. After beginning her career in academics, she worked in 1976 for Sen. Ed Muskie (D-Maine) before joining President Jimmy Carter's staff as a member of the National Security County in 1978, Reuters reports.
During President Bill Clinton's two terms, Albright served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 1993-1997, and as the country's first female Secretary of State from 1997-2001. Reuters reports she had a reputation as a "tough talking" and "plain-spoken" diplomat who took a hard line against perpetrators of foreign crises in the 1990s, including genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia-Herzogovina, Reuters reports.
While Albright was the country's U.N. ambassador, the U.S. supported a war-crimes tribunal that sentenced Bosnian Serb leaders to prison and led a NATO air strike against Serbs committing genocide against Albanians, according to Reuters. As Secretary of State, Albright traveled to North Korea to discuss ending that country's nuclear weapons program with its leaders, becoming the highest-ranking U.S. official to go to the Communist country, Reuters reports.
After leaving government service, the former secretary of state became a best-selling author and inspired women to demand respect and opportunity in the workplace, Reuters reports. A popular Albright quote, according to Reuters, was “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.”
