Category: Activist / page 16

Rose Schneiderman
Rose Schneiderman


Rose Schneiderman was a Jewish suffragist, labor rights activist and orator. Her diminutive stature—she was only 4’9”—flaming red hair, powerful speaking skills and penchant for socialism earned her the nickname “The Red Rose of Anarchy.” Schneiderman was born on April 16, 1882, to working-class parents in Poland. The family immigrated to New York City in 1890 and three years later, Schneiderman’s father died leaving behind three children and a pregnant wife. In 1895, at the age of 13, she had to drop out of school and start working as a […]
Stephanie Schriock
Stephanie Schriock


Stephanie Schriock is the former president of EMILY's List, an organization dedicated to recruiting pro-choice Democratic women to run for elected office. Schriock was born in 1973 in Morton Grove, Illinois. She graduated from Minnesota State University, Mankato in 1995. Schriock serves on the board of advisors of Let America Vote, an organization working to end voter suppression. Previously, Schriock was campaign manager for the 2008 Senate race of Al Franken. She was also campaign manager for Jon Tester's 2006 Senate race, and then served as his chief of staff. […]
Fawn Sharp
Fawn Sharp


Fawn Sharp served as president of the National Congress of American Indians from 2019 to 2023 and as president of both the Quinault Indian Nation and of the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians. In 2021 Sharp became the first tribal leader issued diplomatic credentials. Sharp was born in Aberdeen, Washington, on May 20, 1970. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in criminal justice from Gonzaga University in 1990. In 1995 she received her juris doctorate from the University of Washington School of Law. She has certificates from the National […]
Anna Howard Shaw
Anna Howard Shaw


Anna Howard Shaw was an American suffragist who became the first woman minister of the Methodist Protestant Church. Shaw was born February 14, 1847, in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Northumberland, England. In 1851, Shaw's family immigrated to the United States. To help support her family, at age 15, Shaw worked as a teacher at a frontier school. After the Civil War, Shaw was able to attend high school and then college. She entered Albion College in 1873, but left in 1876 to attend Boston Theological Seminary. She graduated in 1878 as the only […]
May Slosson Gorslin Preston
May Gorslin Preston Slosson


May Gorslin Preston Slosson was a suffragist, educator and prison chaplain. Slosson was born in 1858 in Ilion, New York. She was the first woman to obtain a doctoral degree in philosophy in America and the first woman to earn a Ph.D. from Cornell University. Slosson lived in Wyoming for most of her adult life, teaching at the University of Wyoming. She also organized lectures for prisoners at the Wyoming State Penitentiary and eventually was appointed the chaplain, the first female prison chaplain in the United States. She moved with […]
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Elizabeth Cady Stanton


Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an American leader in the women's rights movement who, in 1848, formulated the first organized demand for woman suffrage in the United States. Stanton received a superior education at home, at the Johnstown Academy, and at Emma Willard's Troy Female Seminary, from which she graduated in 1832. While studying law in the office of her father, Daniel Cady, a U.S. congressman and later a New York Supreme Court judge, she learned of the discriminatory laws under which women lived and determined to win equal rights for […]
Gloria Steinem
Gloria Steinem


Gloria Steinem is a writer, lecturer, political activist, and feminist organizer who became nationally recognized as a leader and a spokeswoman for the feminist movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Steinem was born on March 25, 1934 in Toledo, Ohio. Her paternal grandmother, Pauline Perlmutter Steinem, was chairwoman of the educational committee of the National Woman Suffrage Association, a delegate to the 1908 International Council of Women, and the first woman to be elected to the Toledo Board of Education. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Smith College […]
Rowena Edson Stevens
Rowena Edson Stevens


Rowena Edson Stevens was born on April 25, 1852, near Columbus, Wisconsin. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Iowa State College (now Iowa State University) in 1873, a member of Iowa's State first graduating class. She taught school in Iowa and Nebraska from 1873 to 1876, then married John Stevens, a 1872 graduate of Iowa State. The Stevens family lived in Ames from 1876 to 1893, then moved to Boone, Iowa. Stevens was a strong supporter of women's suffrage. She served as president of the Political Equality Club in Ames […]
Maria W. Stewart
Maria W. Stewart


Maria W. Stewart was a African American teacher, lecturer and activist. She was one of the first American women of any race to speak to a "mixed" audience of men and women and the first African American woman to publish a political manifesto. Stewart was born in 1803 in Hartford, Connecticut, to free African American parents. Orphaned by age 5, she served as an indentured servant to a minister until age 15, receiving no formal education. Between ages 15-20, Stewart supported herself as a servant, eventually moving to Boston. She […]
Lucy Stone
Lucy Stone


Lucy Stone, abolitionist and women's rights activist, was born in West Brookfield, Massachusetts, on August 13, 1818. At the age of 16, after completing local schools, she taught and saved money for advanced study. She attended nearby Mount Holyoke Seminary for one term in 1839, but returned home to attend to the illness of a sister. Stone waited until 1843 to enroll at the Oberlin Collegiate Institute (later Oberlin College); upon her graduation in 1847, she became the first Massachusetts woman to earn a bachelor's degree. Stone gave her first […]