Category: Activist / page 13

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 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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks


Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was an American civil rights activist who was arrested in 1955 for refusing to give up her seat on a public bus to a white passenger. Her act of defiance and the resulting Montgomery Bus Boycott became important symbols of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States and helped launch nationwide efforts to end segregation of public facilities. Parks was born February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. She married in 1932, and with her husband's encouragement, finished high school in 1933 at a time when […]
Alice Paul
Alice Paul


Alice Paul was one of the main leaders in the U.S. women's suffrage movement. Paul was born on January 11, 1885, in Mount Laurel, New Jersey, a descendant of William Penn, the Quaker founder of Pennsylvania. Paul’s parents supported gender equality and social reform, and Paul attended women’s suffrage meetings with her mother. Paul graduated from Swarthmore College, a Quaker school co-founded by her grandfather, in 1905 with a bachelor's degree in biology. She received a Master of Arts in 1907 and a doctorate in 1912 from the University of […]
Autumn Peltier
Autumn Peltier


Autumn Peltier is the chief water commissioner of the Anishinabek Nation, and a water-rights advocate and environmental activist. Peltier was born on September 17, 2004, in Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory, Manitoulin Island, Ontario, Canada, and is a member of the Aniishnabek Nation. She currently attends school in Ottawa, where she lives with her family. Peltier was appointed as the Anishinabek Nation chief water commissioner in 2019 following the death of her great-aunt, Josephine Mandamin, who had been the previous chief water commissioner. Since beginning her activism at age 8, Peltier has […]
Carmen Perez
Carmen Perez


Carmen Perez is an activist and the executive director of The Gathering for Justice, and one of the national co-chairs of the 2017 Women's March on Washington. Perez was born on January 21, 1977, in Oxnard, California. She received an associate's degree in general liberal arts from Oxnard College and a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of California – Santa Cruz. Perez has advocated for civil rights issues, including mass incarceration, gender equity, violence prevention, racial healing and community policing. Since 2010, she has served as the executive […]