Category: Activist / page 10

Addie Waites Hunton
Addie Waites Hunton


Addie Waites Hunton was an African American suffragist, civil rights leader and women’s rights activist. Born in Norfolk, Virginia in 1875, Hunton was raised by a maternal aunt in Boston after the death of her mother and went on to attend college in Philadelphia. Starting her career as a teacher in Alabama, Hunton married William Alphaeus Hunton, secretary of a YMCA branch, in 1893 and attended the founding convention of the National Association of Colored Women in 1895. In 1906, the Huntons moved their family to Brooklyn, New York, where […]
Hester Jeffrey
Hester Jeffrey


Hester Jeffrey was a prominent African American suffragist, activist and community leader. Jeffrey was born in 1842 in Norfolk City, Virginia, to Robert and Martha Whitehurst Smith, both free African Americans. Her parents sent her and her siblings to live in Boston with her uncle, whose home acted as a stop on the Underground Railroad. From an early age, Jeffrey was introduced to some of the leading minds in abolition, like William Lloyd Garrison. At the age of 23, she married Roswell Jerome Jeffrey. The couple had four children, though […]
Sonia Johnson
Sonia Johnson


Sonia Johnson is a feminist activist and writer, and was a candidate for president of the United States for the Citizens Party in 1984. Johnson was born February 27, 1936, in Malad City, Idaho, a fifth-generation Mormon. She graduated from Utah State University with a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1958. After her 1959 marriage, she and her husband moved to Apia, Western Samoa where they taught English for a year. After returning to the United States, Johnson received her master's and Ed.D. degrees from Rutgers University.Between 1960 and […]
Claudia Jones
Claudia Jones


Claudia Vera Jones was a political activist, feminist, and black nationalist. Born Claudia Vera Cumberbatch in Port of Spain, Trinidad, on February 21, 1915, she immigrated to Harlem with her family at age eight. Experiencing racism, poverty, and the death of her mother early in life, Jones turned to political activism as a teenager, joining the Communist Party USA in 1936. She began working as a writer for the Young Communist League USA’s newspaper, the Weekly Review, working her way up to editor-in-chief. During and after World War II, Jones […]
Queen Noor of Jordan
Queen Noor of Jordan


Queen Noor of Jordan, also known as Noor Al-Hussein, is the American-born widow of King Hussein of Jordan. She is an advocate for issues of international exchange and understanding of Arab, Muslim and Western relations, and conflict prevention and recovery issues such as refugees, missing persons, poverty, climate change and disarmament. Her peace-building work has focused on the Middle East, the Balkans, Central and Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa. Queen Noor was born Lisa Najeeb Halaby on August 23, 1951, in Washington, D.C. Her father, Najeeb Halaby, was an […]
Tawakkol Karman
Tawakkol Karman


Tawakkol Karman is a Yemeni journalist and human rights activist and a co-recipient of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Leymah Gbowee "for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women's rights to full participation in peace-building work." Karman was born on February 7, 1979, in Ta'izz, Yemen. She earned a bachelor’s degree in commerce and a graduate degree in political science from the University of Science and Technology in Sana’a and a master's degree in international security from the University of Massachusetts […]
Edna Buckman Kearns
Edna Buckman Kearns


Edna Buckman Kearns was a militant suffragist, peace activist and member of Alice Paul’s National Women’s Party. Born on Christmas Day, 1882, Kearns was the daughter of an established Quaker family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She attended the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art where she studied art and, in 1903, met her future husband, Wilmer Rhamstine Kearns. After they married in 1904, they moved to New York City where Kearns became a mainstay in the suffrage movement. Inspired by her Quaker faith, Kearns became involved in women’s rights broadly […]
Florence Kelley
Florence Kelley


Florence Kelley was an American social and political reformer who fought for government regulation to protect working women and children. She was the first female factory inspector in the United States. Kelley was born on September 12, 1859. Her father was William D. Kelley, an abolitionist, founder of the Republican Party, judge and longtime U.S. Congressman. Her family were Philadelphia Quakers deeply committed to the abolition of slavery, universal suffrage and the education and literacy of women. She graduated from Cornell University in 1882 and studied law and government at […]
Catherine Talty Kenny
Catherine Talty Kenny


Catherine Talty Kenny was a Tennessee suffragist and political organizer. Born in 1874 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Kenny grew up poor with five siblings and a widowed mother who worked as a seamstress to support the family. Bouncing from one tenement apartment to another, Kenny was eventually sent to a Catholic high school, but only attended one semester. She worked odd jobs for the next ten years to support herself and her family. In 1899, she married John M. Kenny, an ambitious coffee salesman turned Coca-Cola franchise owner. The couple had […]
Patrisse Khan-Cullors
Patrisse Khan-Cullors


Patrisse Khan-Cullors is an artist, activist and co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement. Khan-Cullors first used the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter after co-founder Alicia Garza's use of the phrase "Black Lives Matter" in a Facebook post about the Trayvon Martin case. Khan-Cullors was born in 1984 in Los Angeles, California. A Fulbright scholar, she earned a degree in religion and philosophy from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2012. Khan-Cullors has served as executive director of the Coalition to End Sheriff Violence in L.A. Jails and co-founded the prison activism […]