Category: Historical / page 10

Frances Perkins
Frances Perkins


Frances Perkins served as the U.S. secretary of labor from 1933-1945 and was the principal architect of the New Deal. She was the first woman to hold a U.S. cabinet position and the first woman to enter the presidential line of succession. As secretary of labor, she was largely responsible for the adoption of social security, unemployment insurance, federal laws regulating child labor and the federal minimum wage. Perkins was born on April 10, 1880, in Boston, Massachusetts. She earned a bachelor's degree in physics from Mount Holyoke College in […]
Maria Eva Peron
Maria Eva Peron


María Eva Duarte de Perón was the wife of Argentine President Juan Perón and first lady of Argentina from 1946 until her death in 1952. She is usually referred to as Eva or Evita. Perón was born May 7, 1919, in the village of Los Toldos, Argentina, the youngest of five children. Her parents were not married, and her father abandoned the family when Perón was one year old, leaving them in poverty. Perón's legal and societal status as an illegitimate child followed her throughout her life. At age 15, […]
Jeannette Rankin
Jeannette Rankin


Jeannette Pickering Rankin was the first woman to hold federal office in the United States, with her 1916 election to the U.S. House of Representatives by the state of Montana. In 1940, she was elected to a second House term. A lifelong pacifist, she was one of 50 House members (and six senators) who opposed the war declaration of 1917, and the only member of Congress to vote against declaring war on Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Rankin was born on June 11, 1880, near Missoula, […]
Sarah Parker Remond
Sarah Parker Remond


Sarah Parker Remond was a free-born African American lecturer, abolitionist and physician. Remond was born on June 6, 1826, in Salem, Massachusetts. Her parents, also free born, were successful businesspeople and activists. Remond became an anti-slavery lecturer, delivering her first lecture in 1842 at the age of 16. In 1853, Remond was forced to leave a theater and pushed down a flight stairs after she refused to sit in a segregated section. She sued for damages and won, and the court ordered the theater to integrate its seating. From 1856 […]
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 Boynton 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 […]
Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt


Eleanor Roosevelt was first lady of the United States from 1933-1945, the wife of the 32nd president of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt. She was also a diplomat and activist. Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was born on October 11, 1884, in New York City. Her father, Elliot Roosevelt, was the younger brother of Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States. She was tutored privately, and attended a private finishing school in England from 1898-1902. After returning to the United States, she became active in the social reform movement, […]
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 […]
Nellie Tayloe Ross
Nellie Tayloe Ross


Nellie Davis Tayloe Ross served as the 14th governor of Wyoming from 1925 to 1927 and director of the U.S. Mint from 1933 to 1953. Ross was the first woman to serve as an American governor and the first to serve as director of the U.S. Mint. Ross was born in St. Joseph, Missouri, on November 29, 1876. She attended a teacher-training college for two years and taught kindergarten for several years. Her husband, William B. Ross, was governor of Wyoming from 1923 until his death on October 2, 1924. […]
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 […]