Category: Activist / page 18

Sojourner Truth
Sojourner Truth


Sojourner Truth was an African American evangelist and reformer who applied her religious fervor to the abolitionist and women's rights movements. Named Isabella by her parents, Truth was born circa 1797, in Ulster County, New York. The daughter of slaves, she spent her childhood as an abused chattel of several masters. Between 1810 and 1827, she bore at least five children to a fellow slave named Thomas. Just before New York state abolished slavery in 1827, she found refuge with Isaac Van Wagener, who set her free. With the help […]
Harriet Tubman
Harriet Tubman


Harriet Tubman was an abolitionist, social activist, and leader for the Underground Railroad. She lead many enslaved people through networks of antislavery activists and safe houses on the Underground Railroad. Tubman was born into slavery in the state of Maryland. Her date of birth is debated, but it is thought to be 1822, according to historic records. She documented her date of birth as 1825. During the American Civil War, Tubman served as a scout and spy for the Union Army. Following the abolition of slavery, she became involved with […]
Michelle Vallejo
Michelle Vallejo


Michelle Vallejo ran for election to the U.S. House to represent Texas' 15th Congressional District. She lost in the general election on November 8, 2022. Vallejo was born on June 10, 1991, in Alton, Texas. She studied political science and history at Columbia University. She co-founded the New Leaders Council STX Frontera chapter. She also co-founded Hustle + Socialize, an annual women’s entrepreneurship conference providing resources and support for minority women in business in San Antonio and throughout South Texas. She also helped immigrant rights organizations as an oral historian, […]
Mabel Vernon
Mabel Vernon


Mabel Vernon was a national leader in the United States suffrage movement and a key organizer of the Silent Sentinels campaign that picketed the White House six days a week from January 10, 1917, to June 4, 1919. Vernon was born on September 19, 1883, in Wilmington, Delaware, to a Quaker family. She graduated from Swarthmore College in 1906, a year behind fellow suffragist Alice Paul. After graduating, she taught Latin and German at Radnor High School in Wayne, Pennsylvania. She later earned a master's degree in political science from […]
Emma Watson
Emma Watson


Emma Watson is a British actress, model and activist. Watson was born on April 15, 1990, in Paris, France, to British parents. At age five, she moved to Oxfordshire, England. At age nine, she was cast as Hermione Granger in the "Harry Potter" movie series. She graduated from Brown University in 2014 with a degree in English literature. In July 2014, Watson was appointed as a UN Women Goodwill Ambassador and helped launch the UN Women campaign HeForShe. In December, the Ms. Foundation for Women named Watson its Feminist Celebrity […]
Gertrude Weil
Gertrude Weil


Gertrude Weil was a North Carolina suffragist and labor reform and civil rights activist. Weil was born on December 11, 1879, in Goldsboro, North Carolina, to an affluent Jewish family. She graduated from Smith College in 1901 and returned to Goldsboro to join the Goldsboro Woman’s Club, which her mother had founded. Club work gave Weil an outlet for her ambition and she became president within a few years. In 1911 Weil joined the National American Woman Suffrage Association and worked alongside Carrie Chapman Catt to further the movement. In […]
Angelina Grimké Weld
Angelina Grimké Weld


Angelina Grimké Weld was nineteenth-century abolitionist, suffragist and orator. Born on February 20, 1805, to a family of wealthy slaveholders in Charleston, South Carolina, Weld witnessed the evils of slavery from an early age. Both she and her sister, Sarah Moore Grimké, were deliberately educated less than their brothers, although the boys shared what they had learned with their sisters. Weld joined her sister in Philadelphia in 1829 and converted to Quakerism, both joining the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. In 1835, Grimké was catapulted to fame after a letter she […]
Ida B Wells-Barnett
Ida B Wells-Barnett


Ida Bell Wells-Barnett, editor and anti-lynching activist, was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi, on July 16, 1862. Wells attended Rust College in Holly Springs until 1878, when a yellow fever epidemic killed her parents and one of her six siblings. Determined to keep her family together, Wells began teaching in surrounding areas. In 1881, she moved her youngest siblings to Memphis to live with an aunt and took a job as a schoolteacher in nearby Woodstock. In September 1883, while commuting by train, Wells was asked to leave the "ladies' […]
Frances Willard
Frances Willard


Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard was an American educator, temperance reformer and women's suffragist. Willard became the national president of Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in 1879, and remained president until her death in 1898. During her lifetime, Willard succeeded in raising the age of consent in many states, as well as passing labor reforms including the eight-hour work day. Her vision also encompassed prison reform, scientific temperance instruction, Christian socialism, and the global expansion of women's rights. Willard was born on September 28, 1839, in Churchville, New York. She graduated […]
Betty Williams
Betty Williams


Betty Williams is a peace activist from Northern Ireland and a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize with Mairead Maguire in 1976 for their work as co-founders of the Women for Peace, which later became the Community for Peace People, an organization dedicated to encouraging a peaceful resolution to violence in Northern Ireland. Williams was born on May 22, 1943, in Belfast, Northern Ireland as Elizabeth Williams. Unusual for the time, her father was Protestant and her mother was Catholic, to which Williams attributes her religious tolerance and desire for […]