Category: Activist / page 15

Cecile Richards
Cecile Richards


Cecile Richards served as the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund from 2006 to 2018. In 2019, Richards co-founded Supermajority, a women's political action group. Richards was born on July 15, 1957, in Waco, Texas. Her mother, Ann Richards, later served as governor of Texas (1991-1995). She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Brown University in 1980. After college, she worked as a labor organizer for low-wage workers in the hotel, health care, and janitorial industries […]
Gloria Richardson
Gloria Richardson


Gloria Richardson was a civil rights activist and leader of the Cambridge Movement in Cambridge, Maryland. Richardson was born on May 6, 1922, in Baltimore, Maryland. Richardson's family were influential and affluent members in the state of Maryland. She earned her B.A. in sociology from Howard University. At Howard University, she was involved in political and social activism. Following her university experience, she began her career in civil rights. She was the co-chair of the Cambridge Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. While co-chair, she found goals outside of desegregation to work towards, […]
Felisa Rincón de Gautier
Felisa Rincón de Gautier


Felisa Rincón de Gautier was a Puerto Rican suffragist and the first female mayor of San Juan. Rincón de Gautier was born on January 9, 1897, in Ceiba, Puerto Rico. She was active in the campaign to win Puerto Rican women the right to vote, which finally succeeded in 1932. She was one of the first women to vote in Puerto Rico and was later elected the first female mayor of San Juan, serving from 1946-1969. Her social programs were widely supported and were focused on childcare programs, centers for […]
Amelia Robinson
Amelia Boynton Robinson


Amelia Boynton Robinson was a fierce civil rights activist for African Americans and is well known for being a leader in the 1965 civil rights march in Selma, Alabama. Amelia Boynton Robinson was born on August 18, 1911, in Savannah, Georgia, one of ten children in a working-class family. As a child, Robinson accompanied her mother to increase voter participation in their community and accompany women to the polls. After graduating from Tuskegee University, she married Samuel William Boynton and, together, they started a series of small businesses helping African […]
Ernestine Rose
Ernestine L Rose


Ernestine Louise Rose was born January 13, 1810, in Piotrkow, Poland. A rabbi's daughter, she received more education than was common for women at that time. After her mother's death when Rose was 16, her father arranged a marriage without her consent. Rose refused the match and successfully sued to retained her inheritance from her mother. At 17, she left home for Berlin, where she supported herself by tutoring and marketing perfumed papers of her own invention. She studied the texts of the great religions and concluded that all were […]
J.K. Rowling
J.K. Rowling


British author famous for writing the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling is also a social activist. Rowling has used her platform as the first-ever billionaire author to donate and champion causes and charities, including Amnesty International, One Parent Families (Gingerbread), Multiple Sclerosis Society Scotland, Comic Relief, the Maggie’s Centres for Cancer Care, the UK Labour Party and Doctors Without Borders. She is the founder and president of the international children’s non-profit organization the Children’s High Level Group (CHLG), now known as Lumos, which works to end the institutionalization of children […]
Gertrude Rush
Gertrude Rush


Gertrude E. Rush was a lawyer, civil rights activist, suffragist and author, and the first African American female lawyer in Iowa. Rush was born on August 5, 1880, in Navasota, Texas. After graduating from high school in Quincy, Illinois, she was a teacher from 1898 to 1907. In 1907, Rush married Des Moines attorney James B. Rush and began studying law with him while working in his office. She earned a Bachelor of Arts at Des Moines College (now Des Moines University) in 1914 and a law degree through correspondence […]
Margaret H Sanger
Margaret H Sanger


Margaret Sanger was proponent for scientific contraception (birth control) and family planning, but also a supporter of eugenics. Sanger was born on September 14, 1884, in Corning, New York, into a Roman Catholic family as one of eleven children. Sanger was greatly influenced by her father's political views in support of women's suffrage and tax reform, although these and other beliefs caused the family to be seen as radical in the eyes of their neighbors. After graduating from Claverack College at Hudson, New York, Sanger took a teaching position in […]
Linda Sarsour
Linda Sarsour


Linda Sarsour is a Palestinian American political activist and former executive director of the Arab American Association of New York. She was a co-founder of the Women's March on Washington and a national co-chair until July 2019. Sarsour was born in 1980 in Brooklyn, New York. After being placed in an arranged marriage at the age of 17, Sarsour attended college at Kingsborough Community College and Brooklyn College with the goal of becoming an English teacher. Shortly before the September 11 attacks, Sarsour began volunteering at the Arab American Association […]
Phyllis Schlafly
Phyllis Schlafly


Phyllis Schlafly was a lawyer, activist, author and speaker, and founder of the Eagle Forum known for her staunch social and political conservatism and her successful campaign against the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Schlafly was born August 15, 1924 in St. Louis, Missouri. She earned her A.B. Phi Beta Kappa from Washington University, in St. Louis in 1944, a master of arts degree in government from Radcliffe College in 1945, and her J.D. from Washington University Law School in 1978. In 1946, Schlafly became […]