Helen Rodríguez Trías
Pioneering American pediatrician, educator, and women’s rights activist.
Pioneering American pediatrician, educator, and women’s rights activist.
Iconic figure in Puerto Rico’s labor history. An anarchist writer and relentless activist, she championed labor rights, women’s empowerment, free love, and human emancipation.
Doña Ines was a fifteenth-sixteenth century caciqua of Taíno origin
Puerto Rican poet, activist and playwright
Puerto Rican heroine
Puerto Rican-Cuban poet and activist
Rita Moreno has influenced the entertainment industry for over 70 years as an actress, singer, and dancer. After earning the four major entertainment awards: an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony, Moreno became the first Latina woman to have an “E.G.O.T.” In 2004, she was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her many contributions to the arts.
A dedicated public health advocate, Antonia Novello made history as the first female and first Hispanic U.S. Surgeon General in 1990. Novello has led several major public health campaigns in her efforts to improve health conditions and access to medical care, especially for women, children, and minority populations.
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.