Category: Activist / page 12

Rigoberta Menchu
Rigoberta Menchu


Rigoberta Menchú has been a passionate spokesperson for the rights of indigenous peoples. She won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 for her work on behalf of the indigenous groups of Guatemala, her native country. However, her work has made her a leading voice for the rights of indigenous peoples throughout the Western Hemisphere. Rigoberta Menchú was born on January 9, 1959, in Chimel, a village in the Quiché province in the mountainous northwest region of Guatemala. Menchú started working on southern coastal cotton and coffee plantations when she was […]
Inez Milholland
Inez Milholland


For more information on her sister, Vida Milholland, visit her profile here: https://wp.las.iastate.edu/cattcenter-awpc/directory/vida-milholland/. Inez Milholland was a militant suffragist, often referred to as “the most beautiful suffragette.” Milholland was born on August 6, 1886, to wealthy philanthropists John E. Milholland and Jean Torry. Along with her sister, Vida, she got involved in activism early on when she studied at Vassar College. Milholland defied Vassar’s policy prohibiting suffrage clubs when she invited New York suffragist and daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Harriet Stanton Blatch, to speak on campus. When the talk […]
Vida Milholland
Vida Milholland


For more information about her sister, Inez Milholland, visit her profile here: https://awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/directory/inez-milholland/ Vida Milholland was a suffragist, peace activist and performer. Milholland was born on January 17, 1888, to wealthy philanthropists John E. Milholland and Jean Torry. Along with her sister, Inez, she got involved in activism early on when she studied at Vassar College. Although she had aspirations of becoming an opera singer, Milholland gave it up in 1910 to become a full-time suffragist. Milholland and her sister toured the United States under the direction of Alice Paul […]
Abby Milton
Abby Crawford Milton


For information on her colleague, Catherine Talty Kenny, visit her profile at https://awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/directory/catherine-talty-kenny/. Abby Crawford Milton was the youngest of the Southern suffrage leaders who made Tennessee the prized 36th vote to ratify the 19th Amendment. Born on February 6, 1881, in Milledgeville, Georgia, Milton was the daughter of a prominent Georgia family. In 1904, she married George Fort Milton, editor of the pro-suffrage Chattanooga News and moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee. Milton would go on to have three daughters between 1913 and 1917, some of the most consequential years in […]
Virginia Minor
Virginia Minor


Virginia Louisa Minor was a suffragist leader in Missouri. Minor was born on March 27, 1824, in Virginia. After her 1843 marriage, she and her husband moved to St. Louis, later purchasing a farm there just before the start of the Civil War. During war, Minor volunteered in area hospitals and provided produce from her farm for soldiers stationed nearby. Minor was the first woman in Missouri to publicly state that women should be given the right to vote. In 1867, she helped to found the Woman Suffrage Association of […]
Alice Montemayor
Alice Dickerson Montemayor


Alice Dickerson Montemayor was a Texas feminist, artist and leader in the League of United Latin American Citizens. Though she wasn’t a suffragist in the traditional sense, Montemayor was a model for women’s political involvement and a fierce voice for gender equity. Montemayor was born on August 6, 1902, in Laredo, Texas to John and Manuela Dickerson. She graduated from high school in 1924 and hoped to study law. After her father’s death, however, she stayed in Laredo to help her mother and attended Laredo Business College for a year. […]
Mary Morrisson
Mary Foulke Morrisson


Mary Foulke Morrisson was a suffragist, peace activist and political organizer. Morrisson was born in Richmond, Indiana, on November 14, 1879, to parents who were also suffragists. Her father, William Dudley Foulke, served as president of the American Woman Suffrage Association from 1886-1890. She married James William Morrisson in 1900 and relocated to Chicago, where she worked with Jane Addams at Hull House and with Carrie Chapman Catt on woman suffrage. She participated in the National American Woman Suffrage Association convention of 1916. After the Nineteenth Amendment was passed, Morrisson […]
Lucretia Mott
Lucretia Mott


Born Lucretia Coffin on January 3, 1793, in Nantucket, Massachusetts, Lucretia Mott was a women's rights activist, abolitionist, and religious reformer. A child of Quaker parents, Mott grew up to become a leading social reformer. At the age of 13, she attended a Quaker boarding school in New York State. Mott stayed on and worked there as a teaching assistant. While at the school, she met her future husband James Mott. The couple married in 1811 and lived in Philadelphia. By 1821, Mott became a Quaker minister, noted for her […]
Nadia Murad
Nadia Murad


Nadia Murad is an Iraqi Yazidi human rights activist and a co-recipient of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize with Denis Mukwege for “their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict.” She is the first Iraqi and Yazidi to be awarded a Nobel Prize. Murad was born on March 10, 1993, in Kocho, Iraq. In 2014, she was kidnapped by Islamic State fighters who attacked her village and killed several hundred people, including her mother and six of her siblings. Held as […]
Emily Murphy
Emily Murphy


Emily Murphy was a Canadian equal rights activist, jurist and author. Murphy was the first female magistrate in Canada and the British Empire, and helped to repeal discriminatory legislation against women in Canada. However, her legacy is disputed, with her contributions to feminism weighed against her racist views and her advocation of eugenics. Murphy was born on March 14, 1868, in Cookstown, Ontario. Due to her family’s wealth and influence in society, Murphy was educated in private schools throughout her early life. In 1887, she married Arthur Murphy and had […]