Fannie Lou Townsend Hamer rose from humble beginnings in the Mississippi Delta to become one of the most important, passionate, and powerful voices of the civil and voting rights movements and a leader in the efforts for greater economic opportunities for African Americans.
Known as the “census taker of the sky,” Annie Jump Cannon was a brilliant astronomer that revolutionized the way scientists classify stars. Not only did she develop the important Harvard spectral system, she also classified about 350,000 stars manually. She became the first woman to receive a Doctor of Astronomy degree from Groningen University, the first woman ever to receive an honorary degree from Oxford University, and in 1931 she became the first woman to be awarded the Henry Draper Medal of honor from the National Academy of Sciences.
A skilled political strategist, Carrie Clinton Lane Chapman Catt was a suffragist and peace activist who helped secure for American women the right to vote. She directed the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) and founded the League of Women Voters (1920) to bring women into the political mainstream.
Ana Roqué de Duprey, a prolific educator, writer, and scientist, founded the first woman’s suffrage organization in Puerto Rico in 1917. Known as “Flor del Valle” (“Flower of the Valley”) for her work in botany, she strove to promote educational opportunities and political rights for women in Puerto Rico.
A veteran of the 1969 Stonewall Inn uprising, Sylvia Rivera was a tireless advocate for those silenced and disregarded by larger movements. Throughout her life, she fought against the exclusion of transgender people, especially transgender people of color, from the larger movement for gay rights.
A former slave, Sojourner Truth became an outspoken advocate for abolition, temperance, and civil and women’s rights in the nineteenth century. Her Civil War work earned her an invitation to meet President Abraham Lincoln in 1864.
Known as the “Godmother of Title IX,” Bernice Sandler fought for women’s rights in education. After being denied equal access to teaching jobs at her university, Sandler took matters into her own hands. In addition to starting a social revolution for women’s rights, she became the first woman ever appointed to a Congressional committee to work specifically on women’s issues.
On May 2, 1963, 9 year old Audrey Faye Hendricks became the youngest known person arrested during the Civil Rights Movement. She was one of hundreds of children who took part in marches against segregation in the city of Birmingham, Alabama.
Felisa Rincón de Gautier, affectionately known to the public as Doña Fela, became the first female mayor of a capital city in the Americas when she was appointed mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1946. She went on to win reelection four times, serving in office until 1969. Doña Fela devoted herself to public welfare, working to improve housing, public health, and employment for the city’s most vulnerable residents.
Pauli Murray was breaking barriers from a young age. Held back by what Murray dubbed “Jane Crow,” s/he* was a staunch advocate for the rights of women and people of color and fought tirelessly for civil rights. As a poet, writer, activist, organizer, legal theorist, and priest, Murray was directly involved in, and helped articulate, the intellectual foundations of two of the most important social justice movements of the twentieth century.