Activism > Labor Rights Archives - Page 3 of 16

Nennie Harken

Australian educator, pay equality activist and trade unionist

Dr Melnea Agnes Jones Cass

As a suffragist, clubwoman, and activist, Cass advocated for Boston’s most disadvantaged inhabitants.

Alice Lord sparked organization of the Seattle Waitresses Union, Local 240 (now Dining Employees Local #2) in March 1900, and orchestrated the union’s successful campaigns to promote landmark minimum wage and hour laws for working women.

Irene Levine Paull

Writer and activist Irene Levine Paull responded to discrimination by fighting for the rights of people who were oppressed.

Florence Rood

Florence Rood was one of the first Minnesota women activists in the Farmer Labor movement. She worked to improve the treatment of teachers and was active in their local and national organizations. Many of the successful struggles in which she participated informed the public of the importance of education and laid the groundwork for improved working conditions for educators.

Susie Williamson Stageberg

Susie Williamson Stageberg is known as the “Mother of the Farmer-Labor Party.” The Red Wing activist spent a lifetime fighting for unpopular political and social causes. She strongly opposed the merger of the Democratic and Farmer-Labor Parties in the 1940s.

Myrtle Cain

Known as the “flapper legislator,” Myrtle Agnes Cain was a lifelong women’s rights activist and labor organizer. When she was elected to the Minnesota House in 1922, she and three other women became the state’s first female legislators.

Martha Dorsett

Martha Angle Dorsett is best known for being Minnesota’s first female lawyer. After being denied the right to practice law in Minnesota in 1876, she successfully petitioned the Minnesota legislature to change the state law governing attorney admissions. With the law amended to permit admission regardless of sex, Martha went on to practice law and remained active politically throughout the rest of her life in Minneapolis.

Eva McDonald Valesh

In 1888, a St. Paul Globe exposé of women’s working conditions penned by “Eva Gay” launched the career of Eva McDonald Valesh, a young writer. During the time that she lived in the state, Valesh left a big impression on Minnesota journalism, politics, and labor organizing.

Nellie Stone Johnson

Nellie Stone Johnson was an African American union and civil rights leader whose career spanned the class-conscious politics of the 1930s and the liberal reforms of the Minnesota DFL Party.