Setsuko Matsunaga Nishi
Setsuko Nishi (1921-2012) worked as a researcher for the Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Study and as a community activist before going on to a notable career as a scholar of race relations.
Category Archives: Activism
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Sarah Burger Stearns
Sarah Burger Stearns was a committed reformer dedicated to the cause of women’s rights. She founded one of Minnesota’s first suffrage organizations, the Rochester Woman Suffrage Association, in her home city of Rochester. In 1881, she was elected the first president of the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Association (MWSA).
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.
Dr Ruth Boynton
Ruth Boynton was a physician, researcher, and administrator who spent almost her entire career at the University of Minnesota (U of M). She worked in public health and student health services at a time (the mid-twentieth century) when there were few women in either of those fields.
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.
Mabeth Hurd Paige
In 1922, Mabeth Hurd Paige became one of the first four women to be elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives.
Sue Metzger Dickey Hough
One of the first four women elected to the Minnesota legislature in 1922, Sue Metzger Dickey Hough campaigned for gun control, strict capital punishment, and mandatory automobile insurance, among other issues.
Lena Olive Smith
Lena Olive Smith was a prominent civil rights lawyer and activist during the 1920s and 1930s.
Ethel Ray Nance
Ethel Ray Nance was an African American activist and writer. During the 1920s, she broke various racial and gender barriers in Minnesota, participated in the Harlem Renaissance movement, worked as a secretary for the National Urban League, and contributed to Opportunity magazine.