Category: Historical (born 1920 or before) / page 12

Mary Church Terrell
Mary Church Terrell


Mary Church Terrell was a writer, educator and activist for civil rights and women's suffrage. Terrell was born on September 23, 1863, in Memphis, Tennessee. Her parents, both former slaves, were small business owners, and her father was the South's first African American millionaire. She graduated from Oberlin College in 1884 with a Bachelor of Arts in classical languages and earned a master's degree in education from Oberlin in 1888. After earning her bachelor's degree, Terrell taught at Wilberforce College (Ohio) and then at the M Street Colored High School […]
Susette Tibbles
Susette La Flesche Tibbles


Susette La Flesche Tibbles Bio Susette La Flesche Tibbles, also known as Bright Eyes, was a Native American suffragist and activist. Her sister, Susan Le Flesche Picotte was the first Native American woman physician. She was born in Bellevue, Nebraska in 1854 to Joseph La Flesche, the last recognized chief of the Omaha people. She attended the Presbyterian Mission Boarding Day School from 1862 to 1869. The brutality of forced assimilation at many of these boarding schools has been well documented. Native children were often forced to dress in Western […]
Grace Trout
Grace Wilbur Trout


A Maquoketa-born woman led the way to women’s suffrage in the state of Illinois and later across the United States. Her name is Grace Wilbur Trout and she was born in 1864 in Maquoketa. She became known as “The Woman Who Never Fails.” That may be because Grace Trout never gave up on her fight to gain the vote for women. On June 11, 1913, after going so far as to block the way of any legislators who might be tempted to leave the capitol before a vote was taken, […]
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 […]
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 […]
Queen Victoria
Queen Victoria


Queen Victoria was queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 1837 to 1901, and empress of India from 1877 to 1901. This is the second longest reign of any of British monarch in history. Victoria was born on May 24, 1819 in London, England. Victoria became the heir apparent after her father died. Her father, Edward, had three older brothers; however, none of them had legitimate heirs to the throne. After the death of King William IV, Victoria became queen at the age of 18. Victoria […]
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' […]