Category: Historical (born 1920 or before) / page 2

Simone de Beauvoir
Simone de Beauvoir


Simone de Beauvoir (Lucie-Ernestine-Marie-Bertrand de Beauvoir) was a French writer and political activist. De Beauvoir was born in Paris, France, on January 9, 1908. She studied at convent schools during her youth, with the hopes of becoming a nun. However, at age 14 she denounced Catholicism and became an atheist. In 1925, she studied mathematics at the Institut Catholique de Paris and literature/languages at the Institut Sainte-Marie. In 1928, she completed a degree in philosophy at the Sorbonne, and then wrote her diplôme d'études supérieures (roughly equivalent to an M.A. […]
Mary McLeod Bethune
Mary McLeod Bethune


Mary Jane McLeod Bethune was born July 10, 1875, near Mayesville, South Carolina, the 15th of 17 children. Scholarships enabled her to attend Scotia Seminary and then Moody Bible Institute. Turned down when she applied to go to Africa as a missionary, Bethune returned to the South. She met and married Albertus Bethune, and began to teach school. In Daytona, Florida, in 1904, Bethune scraped together $1.50 to begin a school with just five pupils. She called it the Daytona Literary and Industrial School for Training Negro Girls. A gifted […]
Irene Moorman Blackstone
Irene Moorman Blackstone


Irene Moorman Blackstone was an African American businesswoman, club member and suffragist who is remembered for her role in bringing racial cooperation into the New York suffrage campaign and for her work to prevent discrimination against African Americans in attaining socioeconomic and political equality. Blackstone was born in 1872 in Virginia. She began her career as a sub-agent in the brokerage business, then worked for the Metropolitan Mercantile and Realty Company. She later supported herself as a newsdealer in Harlem. Blackstone was a member of the women's auxiliary of the […]
Alice Stone Blackwell
Alice Stone Blackwell


Alice Stone Blackwell was a nineteenth century suffragist, journalist, feminist and human rights advocate. Born on September 14, 1857, Blackwell was the only child of reformers Lucy Stone and Henry Browne Blackwell. She belonged to a family of pioneering women. Her aunts Elizabeth Blackwell and Emily Blackwell were two of the country’s first female physicians and her aunt Antoinette Brown Blackwell was the first woman to be ordained as a minister in the U.S. Because her parents were both sought-after speakers on abolition and woman suffrage, Blackwell often stayed with […]
Katherine Blake
Katherine Devereux Blake


For more information about Blake's mother, Lillie Devereux Blake, visit her profile here: https://wp.las.iastate.edu/cattcenter-awpc/directory/lillie-devereux-blake/ Katherine Devereux Blake was an educator, author, and second-generation suffragist. Blake was born on July 10, 1858, in New York City to suffragist Lillie Devereux Blake and her first husband, Frank Umsted. She graduated from Normal College, now Hunter College, in 1876 and worked in the New York City public school district for her whole career. Initially a teacher, Blake became the principal of the Girls Department of Public School 6 in 1894. P.S. 6 was […]
Lillie Devereux Blake
Lillie Devereux Blake


For more information about Blake's daughter, Katherine Devereux Blake, visit her profile here: https://wp.las.iastate.edu/cattcenter-awpc/directory/katherine-devereux-blake/ Lillie Devereux Blake was an author and suffragist. Blake was born on August 12, 1833, to a prominent Virginia family. After her father’s death in 1837, the family moved to Connecticut and she was privately tutored and participated in the social whirl of their town. She married Frank Umsted in 1855 and, after the birth of their first daughter, turned to writing as a creative outlet. Her second daughter, Katherine, who would herself become a suffragist, […]
Amelia Jenks Bloomer
Amelia Jenks Bloomer


Amelia Jenks Bloomer was a temperance activist, suffragist and editor. Bloomer was born on May 27, 1818, in Homer, New York. Though she received only few years of formal education, she worked briefly as a teacher in Homer and then, after to moving to live with her sister in Waterloo, New York, she worked for several years as a live-in governess for a family. She married David Bloomer of Seneca Falls in 1840. She became active in the Seneca Falls political and social community, joined the local women’s Temperance Society, […]
Grace Lee Boggs
Grace Lee Boggs


Grace Lee Boggs was a civil rights and labor activist and author. Boggs was born on June 27, 1915 in Providence, Rhode Island. She was born as "Yu Ping 玉平". She attended Barnard College at Columbia University for her B.A. Following her B.A., she pursued her Ph.D. at Bryn Mawr College, where she received a doctorate in philosophy. After she graduated, she met and married James Boggs. They both engaged heavily in racial justice efforts. Following her education, she took a job at the University of Chicago in the Philosophy […]
Sue M. Wilson Brown
Sue M. Wilson Brown


Sue M. Wilson Brown was a clubwoman, civil rights activist and suffragist in Iowa. Brown was born on September 8, 1877, in Staunton, Virginia. She moved with her family to a coal mining camp near Buxton, Iowa, an integrated coal mining town in Mahaska County, and graduated from high school in Oskaloosa. She married S. Joe Brown, a lawyer in Buxton, in 1902 and they moved to Des Moines. Brown joined the Iowa Federation of Colored Women's Clubs, and from 1907 to 1909 she edited the Iowa Colored Woman, the […]
Lucy Burns
Lucy Burns


Lucy Burns was a suffragist and women's rights advocate, and a co-founder of the National Women's Party. Burns was born in Brooklyn, New York City on July 28, 1879. She attended Columbia University, Vassar College, and Yale University, then became a high school English teacher in Brooklyn. In 1906, she moved to Germany, where she continued her education, studying at University of Bonn and Berlin. She then moved to the United Kingdom, where she studied at Oxford University. In the United Kingdom, Burns met Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters, Christabel […]