Category: Historical (born before 1900) / page 3

Coralie Cook
Coralie Franklin Cook


Coralie Franklin Cook was an African American suffragist, orator and scholar. Descended from a woman enslaved by President Thomas Jefferson, Cook was born in Lexington, Virginia, in 1861 to Albert and Mary Elizabeth Edmondson Franklin. She graduated from Storer Normal School in 1880. After a few years of teaching at her alma mater, she moved to Washington, D.C., and served as the head of the Home for Colored Orphans and Aged Women for five years. In 1899, she married George William Cook, an academic and NAACP member, and joined the […]
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 […]
Amelia Earhart
Amelia Earhart


Amelia Mary Earhart was an American aviation pioneer and author. Earhart was also affiliated with the National Woman's Party and was an early supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment. Earhart was born on July 24, 1897, in Atchison, Kansas. Due to her father's occupation as a legal representative for various railroads, the family moved frequently during her childhood, living at times in Kansas City, Des Moines, St. Paul, and Chicago. Earhart graduated from Chicago's Hyde Park High School in June 1915. Earhart entered Ogontz School near Philadelphia in 1916. The […]
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 […]
Queen Elizabeth I
Queen Elizabeth I


Elizabeth I was queen of England and Ireland from November 17, 1558, until her death on March 24, 1603. Known as the Virgin Queen or Good Queen Bess, she was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty. Elizabeth was born September 7, 1533, the daughter of Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn. After Anne's execution two and a half years after Elizabeth's birth, the marriage was annulled and Elizabeth was declared illegitimate. After the death of Henry VIII in 1547, Elizabeth's younger half-brother, Edward VI, ruled […]
Rebecca Felton
Rebecca L Felton


Rebecca Latimer Felton, a prominent suffragist and temperance advocate but also a white supremacist and an advocate of segregation and lynching, was the first woman to serve in the United States Senate, as a senator for Georgia. Appointed to fill a vacancy, she served only 24 hours. Felton was born on June 10, 1835, in De Kalb County, Georgia. She graduated from Madison Female College in 1852. In 1953, she married William H. Felton, a state legislator, physician, Methodist minister and planter. She began her political career as his campaign […]
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn


Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was born on August 7, 1890, in Concord, New Hampshire. She was born into a radical, activist family; her father was a socialist and her mother was a feminist. She grew up in poor, industrial New England towns before her family settled in the blue-collar Bronx section of New York City. Flynn became active in socialist groups and gave her first public speech at the age of sixteen. As a result of her involvement in political affairs, she was expelled from her high school in 1907. Her […]
Abby Kelley Foster
Abby Kelley Foster


Abby Kelley Foster was an abolitionist and women’s rights advocate. Kelley was born on Jan. 15, 1811, in Pelham, Massachusetts, into a Quaker family. After completing high school, she became a teacher, moving to Lynn, Massachusetts, in 1836. Known by her colleagues and the public as, simply, “Abbyy Kelley,” she became interested in abolition after attending a lecture by abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, and joined the Female Anti-Slavery Society of Lynn, a chapter of Garrison’s American Anti-Slavery Society. She served as the chapter's first delegate to the national convention of […]