Clara Barton
An educator and humanitarian, Clarissa “Clara” Harlowe Barton helped distribute needed supplies to the Union Army during the Civil War and later founded the disaster relief organization, the American Red Cross.
Category Archives: Activism
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Amelia Jenks Bloomer
Amelia Jenks Bloomer was an early suffragist, editor, and social activist. Bloomer was also a fashion advocate who worked to change women’s clothing styles.
Sarah Josepha Hale
Poet, Sarah Josepha Hale is best known for creating the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” However, her work extends far beyond her writing. Her influence can be seen in historic sites and a famous national holiday still widely celebrated today.
Penelope Pagett Barker
A loyal patriot of the American Revolution, Penelope Barker organized the famous Edenton Tea Party, the first recorded women’s political demonstration in America. Barker rallied 50 women in Edenton, North Carolina to sign a resolution boycotting British tea.
Martha Hughes Cannon
Mattie was considered an important witness in prosecuting polygamy. Not only was she in a polygamist marriage herself, but as a doctor, she often delivered the babies of polygamist wives. To the federal government, a baby delivered to a polygamist wife was proof a polygamist marriage. The prosecutors had a warrant out for Mattie to testify. She did not want to be responsible for a man getting arrested, leaving so many children without support. She decided to leave so that she would not have to testify. For the next two years, she and her young daughter Elizabeth moved around in England and the eastern U.S., until the warrant for her had expired.
Betty Friedan
Journalist, activist, and co-founder of the National Organization for Women, Betty Friedan was one of the early leaders of the women’s rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Her 1963 best-selling book, The Feminine Mystique, gave voice to millions of American women’s frustrations with their limited gender roles and helped spark widespread public activism for gender equality.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Abolitionist author, Harriet Beecher Stowe rose to fame in 1851 with the publication of her best-selling book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which highlighted the evils of slavery, angered the slaveholding South, and inspired pro-slavery copy-cat works in defense of the institution of slavery.
Louisa Swain
On September 6, 1870, 70-year-old Louisa Ann Swain, a grandmother with white hair peeking out from beneath her bonnet, stepped up to the ballot box in Laramie, Wyoming and cast her vote in the general election. In doing so, she became the first woman to legally cast a ballot since 1807, the year New Jersey took away a woman’s right to vote.
Jane Addams
A progressive social reformer and activist, Jane Addams was on the frontline of the settlement house movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She later became internationally respected for the peace activism that ultimately won her a Nobel Peace Prize in 1931, the first American woman to receive this honor.
Lillian D Wald
Lillian D. Wald helped to bring health care to the residents of New York’s Lower East Side at the turn of the twentieth century. As a “practical idealist who worked to create a more just society,” Wald fought for public health care, women’s rights, and children’s rights while running the Henry Street Settlement.