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Anne Bonny
Anne Bonny was an Irish-American pirate in the early 18th century in the Caribbean Sea. She and her crewmate Mary Read were known as the only two pirates in the Western world. She came to the attention of the authorities, the press and the society of her time for her daring and exceptional lifestyle at a time when Western society disapproved of women who abandon habitual social roles. Anne Bonny's life has inspired everything from motion pictures to television series to novels. -
Sojourner Truth
She was born a slave before escaping in 1826. After gaining her freedom, Truth preached abolitionism and equal rights for all. She was greeted by President Abraham Lincoln in 1864. She was the first black woman to sue a white man in a United States court and win. Truth helped recruit black soldiers during the Civil War. In 1870, Truth unsuccessfully defended the rights of former slaves seeking to obtain land grants from the federal government. -
Abigail Smith Adams
She was one of the first defenders of women's rights, as well as an advisor to her husband John Adams, the second president of the country. Opposed to slavery, she promoted the education of women. Her husband and her president always counted on her opinions on political matters. When he was elected president in 1797, he wrote to his wife: "Never in my life have I desired your advice and help more ..." -
Abigail Adams
She was the wife of the second president of the United States, John Adams. She also was the mother of the sixth president, John Quincy Adams. Abigail developed her own ideas about women's rights and government, which would have an indirect influence on the founding of the United States. -
Dorothea Dix
She became internationally known for her activism for asylum and prison reform, and later leader of the Nurses Union during the Civil War. Because of her efforts, all the ever-expanding states of the United States allocated land, money, and legislative attention to creating and improving asylums. -
Elizabeth Cady Stanton one of the first leaders of the woman’s rights movement
1848, Stanton helped organize the First Convention on Women's Rights, often called the Seneca Falls Convention. Stanton helped draft the Statement of Sentiments, which established what the rights of American women should be. She along with Susan B. Anthony formed the National Loyal League of Women to encourage Congress to pass the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery. In the late 1860s, supported more liberal divorce laws, reproductive self-determination, and greater sexual freedom for women. -
Lucy Stone
Lucy Stone was the first Massachusetts woman to earn a college degree and to refuse to take her husband's last name. She wrote and delivered abolitionist speeches and was active in women's rights. In 1850, Stone organized the first National Convention on Women's Rights in Worcester, Massachusetts. In 1858, she set a new precedent when she reminded Americans of the "no tax, no representation" principle. She became a member of the executive committee of the American Equal Rights Association. -
Susan B. Anthony American Anti Slavery Society leader
Anthony was born near Adams, Massachusetts, on February 15, 1820. From 1846 to 1849, she taught at a female academy in upstate New York. After, she left teaching and moved to the family farm in Rochester, New York where she met many leading abolitionists, and became involved in the anti-slavery movement. Supported woman suffrage too. she was key to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. -
Susan Brownell Anthony
She was one of the most important leaders of the women's suffrage movement along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton. She was inspired by the Quaker belief that everyone is equal before God. Anthony and Stanton worked together fighting for women's rights. In 1868 they became editors of the Association's newspaper, The Revolution, which helped spread ideas of equality and women's rights. In 1872, Anthony was arrested for voting, which brought national attention to the suffrage movement. -
Mary Harris Jones
She was known as the "White Haired Mother Jones" of the labor movement from 1880 to the early 1920s. On the night of May 4, 1886, Jones participated in the Haymarket Day rally where workers gathered for the eight-hour workday. She became an organizer for the United Mine Workers. In 1898, she helped in the formation of the Social Democratic Party. She was also among the founders of what was called "a great industrial union," in 1905. -
Anna Howard Shaw
Shaw served as a lecturer with the Massachusetts Women's Suffrage Association; she traveling a lot promoting women's voting rights. She was president of the National Association for Women's Suffrage in 1904. She became part of the Women's Committee of the National Defense Council during World War, which was recognized even by President Woodrow Wilson. Although she was a leading suffragette during the hard years, she did not become as well known as other figures such as Susan B. Anthony. -
Carrie Chapman Catt
Catt was involved in the women's suffrage movement and joined the Iowa Women's Suffrage Association. In 1902, she founded the International Alliance for Women's Suffrage to spread democracy around the world. She assisted in founding the Women's Peace Party in 1915 and founded the League of Women Voter to educate women about politics. After World War I, she organized the Committee on the Cause and Cure of War. She worked for German Jewish refugees and received the American Hebrew Medal in 1933. -
Jane Addams
Awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931, the first American woman to receive this honor. In 1889, founding member of the National Committee on Child Labor, which was instrumental in achieving a Federal Child Labor Act in 1916. He protested the United States entry into World War I. She wrote articles and delivered speeches around the world to promote peace and helped found the International League of Women for Peace and Freedom in 1919. -
Mary Church Terrell
Terrell fought for equal opportunity and helped to found the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) in 1896. She supported women's suffrage for black women as well. Terrell said that she belonged to the only group that had two major obstacles to overcome in her country, gender, and race. In 1948, she became the first black member of the American Association of University Women. Thanks to her the Supreme Court in 1953 ruled that segregated eating facilities were unconstitutional. -
Maud Wood Park
Park was the first national president of the League of Women Voters in 1900. She campaigned for the 19th Amendment in Washington, D.C. She traveled extensively to involve college women in the suffrage cause. Park helped form the Women's Congressional Joint Committee (WJCC) in 1920 that succeeded in passing the Maternity Protection Act and the Cables Act of 1922, which granted independent citizenship to married women. -
Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor was the niece of President Theodore Roosevelt, and she married a man who would become another, Franklin D. Roosevelt. She opposed racial discrimination and was appointed by President Harry Truman as a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly. She was president of the UN Human Rights Commission helping in the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. She was reappointed by President John F. Kennedy to the United States delegation to the UN in 1961. -
Alice Paul
Paul promoted social awareness of the need for a federal amendment on women's suffrage to the U.S Constitution; she organized White House protests and she was jailed several times before the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. In 1938 she founded the World Party for the Equal Rights of Women. Paul worked on obtaining references to gender equality in the preamble to the United Nations Charter and in the United States Civil Rights Act of 1964. -
First woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean
In 1921, she began taking flight lessons. First record came in 1922 when she became the first woman to fly solo above 14,000 feet. In 1932, she became the first woman to fly alone across the Atlantic Ocean. Congress awarded her the Distinguished Flying Cross, the first woman to receive the honor. She worked hard to promote opportunities for women in aviation. June 1, 1937, Earhart tried to go around the world. She disappeared with her partner during the flight -
Ella Baker
She joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1940. Baker joined the Martin Luther King Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, an organization focused on nonviolent direct action. She formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Baker believed that voting was one of the keys to freedom. His influence was reflected in the nickname he acquired: "Fundi", a Swahili word that means a person who teaches a trade to the next generation. -
Rosa Louise Parks, mother of the modern day civil rights movement
She helped start the civil rights movement in the United States when she refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery bus on December 1, 1955. That day a white man had no seat in the designated "white" section. The driver told the passengers in the row seats of the "colored" section to get up, Parks did not. In 1999, Parks was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. She died on October 24, 2005, and became the first woman in the nation’s history to lie in honor at the U.S. Capitol. -
Daisy Bates
Together with her husband, Bates founded the Arkansas Weekly newspaper, one newspaper dedicated exclusively to the Civil Rights Movement. She was president of the Arkansas chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. After the Supreme Court ruled segregated schools illegal in 1954, she began gathering African American students to enroll in all-white schools. Bates was invited to sit on stage during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom program in 1963. -
Betty Friedan
Author of The Feminine Mystique (1963), She was one of the founders of the National Organization of Women in 1966, being its first president. She fought for abortion rights by establishing the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws in 1969. And she promoted through her works (The Second Stage), helping women fight the demands of the job. and home. She is remembered as one of the leading voices of the 20th-century feminist and women's rights movement. -
Shirley Chisholm, First Black Woman in Congress
The eldest of four daughters of her immigrant parents. In 1968, she ran for Congress from Brooklyn, winning that seat. She was known for taking positions against the Vietnam War, for minority and women's issues. In 1972, she visited the segregationist governor of Alabama in the hospital. In 1974, he gave her support to the Chisholm bill to extend federal minimum wage provisions to domestic workers. She was involved in the founding, administration, and support of numerous organizations. -
Patsy Mink
Mink was the first woman of color elected to the United States House of Representatives and the first Asian-American woman to serve in Congress. She fought for racial and gender equality. She supported Title IX which stated that no person in the United States could be discriminated against from obtaining state financial aid in any educational program. In 1974, she succeeded in getting the Women's Education Equity Act passed to promote gender equality in schools. -
Alice Walker
Walker worked in Jackson, Mississippi as a volunteer for voter registration drives. She taught a course on black women writers at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. Her novel "The Color Purple," changed her life by winning the Pulitzer Prize. The book has been the subject of book bans in the United States. She continues to be actively involved in environmental, feminist, and economic justice causes.