Category: Activist / page 5

Angela Davis
Angela Davis


Angela Davis is a political activist, professor, and author. She was member of the Community Party and the Black Panther Party. Davis was born in Birmingham, Alabama, on January 26, 1944. Her mother, Sallye Bell Davis, was a prominent leader in the Southern Negro Youth Congress. Davis earned a bachelor's degree in French from Brandeis University in 1965 and a master's degree from the University of California, San Diego, in 1968. She completed doctoral-level work at the University of California, San Diego but did not receive a degree. In 1969, […]
Megan Davis
Megan Davis


Megan Davis is an Australian Aboriginal activist and professor of law at the University of New South Wales. She is Cobble Cobble Aboriginal and South Pacific Islander and was the first Aboriginal Australian member of a United Nations body. Davis was born October 6, 1975, in Monto, Queensland, and attended the University of Queensland for her law degree. Davis served as an international lawyer at the United Nations and worked on the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples from 1999-2004. In 2010 Davis was appointed to United Nations Permanent […]
Ellen DeGeneres
Ellen DeGeneres


Comedian, actress, and activist, Ellen DeGeneres is an advocate for a number of causes, including supporting orphans, disadvantaged children, gay and lesbian rights, women’s rights, abuse victims and those suffering from AIDS and HIV. After coming out as gay in 1997, DeGeneres became an advocate for the gay rights movement. This is evident in her speech at the vigil of Matthew Shepard who died as a result of a hate crime because of his sexual orientation-- and in her campaigns against Proposition 8 in California, which made same-sex marriage illegal […]
Deidre DeJear
Deidre DeJear


Deidre DeJear was the Democratic nominee for governor of Iowa in 2022, losing to incumbent Kim Reynolds in the general election. She is the founder of Vision Leads, a nonprofit organization fostering civic engagement. DeJear was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and moved to Oklahoma as a child. She attended Drake University and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in journalism. In 2005 DeJear cofounded the nonprofit Back 2 School Iowa and in 2008 she started her business consulting firm, Caleo Enterprises. In 2019 she joined the board of the nonprofit […]
Wilhelmina Kekelaokalaninui Wideman Dowsett
Wilhelmina Kekelaokalaninui Widemann Dowsett


Wilhelmina Kekelaokalaninui Widemann Dowsett was a Hawaiian suffragist and political leader. Born on March 28, 1861, to German coffee planter and cabinet minister Hermann A. Widemann and Hawaiian chieftess Mary Kaumana Pilahiulani, Dowsett grew up during the last years of Hawaiian independence. Due to her father’s position as a cabinet minister, her 1888 wedding to Jack Dowsett, a businessman and politician, was attended by both King Kalākaua and Queen Kapi’olan. After the United States overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy and annexed the island during the years of 1898 to 1900, Hawaiian […]
Anne Dudley
Anne Dallas Dudley


Anne Dallas Dudley was a Tennessee suffragist and one of the most prominent leaders in the Southern suffrage movement. Born on November 13, 1876, into a prominent Nashville family, Dudley attended Ward Seminary High School and Price’s College. In 1902, she married banker and insurance broker Guilford Dudley, and went on to have three children. Ignoring the inherent constraints that came with being a wealthy woman of high social standing, Dudley co-founded the Nashville Equal Suffrage League and led several “May Day” suffrage parades. She included her children in these […]
Flora Dunlap
Flora Dunlap


Flora Dunlap was a social worker and suffragist in Iowa. Dunlap was born on February 27, 1872, in Pickaway County, Ohio. She graduated from Cincinnati Wesleyan College. The following year, she served an apprenticeship at the Kingsley Settlement House in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Following the apprenticeship, she spent a winter in the Goodrich House in Cleveland, Ohio and then lived at Hull House in Chicago, Illinois. In 1904, Dunlap accepted the position of head resident at Roadside Settlement House in Des Moines, Iowa. One of her first assignments was to lead […]
Crystal Eastman
Crystal Eastman


Crystal Catherine Eastman was an American lawyer, antimilitarist, feminist, socialist, and journalist. She was a leader in the women's suffrage movement, co-founder of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union. Eastman was born on June 25, 1881, in Marlborough, Massachusetts. She graduated from Vassar College in 1903, received an M.A. in sociology from Columbia University in 1904, and received a law degree from New York University Law School in 1907. Her first job was researching labor conditions in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the […]
Shirin Ebadi
Shirin Ebadi


Shirin Ebadi is an Iranian lawyer, former judge and human rights activist who founded the Defenders of Human Rights Center in Iran. In 2003, Ebadi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts for democracy and human rights, especially for the rights of women and children. She was the first Iranian and the first Muslim woman to receive the prize. Ebadi was born in Hamadan, Iran, on June 21,1947. She graduated from the University of Tehran with a law degree in 1969 and then with a doctorate degree in […]
Marian Wright Edelman
Marian Wright Edelman


Marian Wright Edelman, a graduate of Spelman College and Yale Law School, began her career in the mid 1960s. As the first Black woman admitted to the Mississippi Bar, she directed the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Legal Defense and Educational Fund office in Jackson, Mississippi. Edelman was born June 6, 1939, in Bennetsville, South Carolina. In l968, she moved to Washington, D.C., as counsel for the Poor People's Campaign that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. began organizing before his death. She founded the Washington Research […]