Activism > Women's Rights Archives

Eliza Harriot O’Connor

Elizabeth “Eliza” Harriot Barons O’Connor was the first woman public lecturer in the United States, as well as a promoter of female education.

Lila Meade Valentine

Lila Meade Valentine was an American suffragist, education reformer, and public-health advocate.

Lucy Randolph Mason was a social liberal and prominent labor activist who took advantage of a genteel southern pedigree in order to promote the aggressive Congress of Industrial Organizations throughout the South from the 1930s to the 1950s.

Pauline Adams

Irish-born American suffrage activist

Millie Lawson Bethell Paxton

Millie Lawson Bethell Paxton was a civic leader who worked toward a more inclusive democracy in Roanoke, Virginia.

Mary-Cooke Branch Munford

Mary-Cooke Branch Munford was an advocate of woman suffrage, interracial cooperation, education, health, and labor reforms.

Mary Elizabeth Pidgeon

Mary Elizabeth Pidgeon was a suffrage activist who worked for change at every level: as a grassroots organizer, a state politics watchdog, and a researcher at a federal agency.

Elizabeth Smith Miller

American suffragist and dress reformer

Carrie Buck

Carrie Buck was the first person involuntarily sterilized under Virginia’s eugenics laws. In Buck v. Bell (1927), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Virginia’s law was constitutional and that Buck should be sterilized, the first of approximately 8,300 performed under state law between 1927 and 1972.

Rose O’Neill

Rose Cecil O’Neill was a self-taught bohemian artist, who ascended through a male-dominated field to become a top illustrator and the first to build a merchandising empire from her work, with her invention of the Kewpie doll.