Category: Activist / page 13

Mary Foulke 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 […]
Alva Myrdal
Alva Myrdal


Alva Myrdal was a Swedish politician, diplomat and social reformer, and the 1982 co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Myrdal was born on January 31, 1902, in Uppsala, Sweden. She earned a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Stockholm in 1924 and a Master of Arts from the University of Uppsala in 1934. Myrdal and her husband were leading advocates for social welfare reform and women's rights in the 1930s. She was also a prominent member of the Social Democrat Party in Sweden. In 1943, she was appointed to […]
Diane Nash
Diane Nash


Diane Judith Nash is a civil rights activist who was a leader of the student wing of the Civil Rights Movement. Nash was born on May 15, 1938, in Chicago, Illinois. She began her college career at Howard University but transferred to Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, after a year. There she had her first experience with segregation and Jim Crow laws. She attended nonviolent protest workshops led by Rev. James Lawson and became a leader in the Nashville Student Central Committee. In early 1960, Nash helped organized the Nashville […]
Clarina H Nichols
Clarina H Nichols


Clarina Howard Nichols was an American journalist, lobbyist and public speaker involved in the temperance, abolition, and the women's rights movements. Despite her prominence in her time, she has been largely overlooked by historians until recently. Nichols was born on January 25, 1810 in West Townshend, Vermont. After graduating as class valedictorian, she attended an advanced school in West Townshend for further education, then taught for a year or two before marrying Justin Carpenter, a recent law school graduate and member of a prominent local family; the couple moved to […]
Leonora O’Reilly
Leonora O'Reilly


Leonora O’Reilly was a labor leader, trade union organizer and suffragist. O'Reilly was born February 16, 1870, in New York City to working class Irish immigrant parents. Her father died when she was one year old, and her mother supported the family by working long hours as a garment worker and taking in boarders. As a child, O'Reilly attended union meetings with her mother. At age 11, she was forced to leave school to work in a factory as an assistant to a seamstress, and at 16, she became a […]
Christabel Pankhurst
Christabel Pankhurst


Christabel Pankhurst was born September 22, 1880 in Manchester, England. She was the daughter of a major leader in the suffrage movement, Emmeline Pankhurst and her husband, Richard Pankhurst. She attended the Manchester High School for Girls. Following that education, she obtained a law degree from the University of Manchester, despite not being allowed to practice law, as she was a woman. She was a co-founder of the Women's Social and Political Union. She was a major force in the militant action of the organization. Many of the events of […]
Emmeline Pankhurst
Emmeline Pankhurst


Emmeline Pankhurst was a political activist and leader of the suffrage movement in Great Britain. Though often criticized for her strongly militant tactics, her contributions toward achieving women's suffrage in Great Britain are well-recognized. Pankhurst was born on July 15, 1858, in Manchester, England, to politically active parents. Despite being academically gifted, she did not receive the same education as her brothers. Although her parents supported women's suffrage and the general advancement of women in society, they believed that the most important part of a girl's education were the skills […]