Category: Historical / page 7

Claudia Jones
Claudia Jones


Claudia Vera Jones was a political activist, feminist, and black nationalist. Born Claudia Vera Cumberbatch in Port of Spain, Trinidad, on February 21, 1915, she immigrated to Harlem with her family at age eight. Experiencing racism, poverty, and the death of her mother early in life, Jones turned to political activism as a teenager, joining the Communist Party USA in 1936. She began working as a writer for the Young Communist League USA’s newspaper, the Weekly Review, working her way up to editor-in-chief. During and after World War II, Jones […]
Edna Buckman Kearns
Edna Buckman Kearns


Edna Buckman Kearns was a militant suffragist, peace activist and member of Alice Paul’s National Women’s Party. Born on Christmas Day, 1882, Kearns was the daughter of an established Quaker family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She attended the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art where she studied art and, in 1903, met her future husband, Wilmer Rhamstine Kearns. After they married in 1904, they moved to New York City where Kearns became a mainstay in the suffrage movement. Inspired by her Quaker faith, Kearns became involved in women’s rights broadly […]
Florence Kelley
Florence Kelley


Florence Kelley was an American social and political reformer who fought for government regulation to protect working women and children. She was the first female factory inspector in the United States. Kelley was born on September 12, 1859. Her father was William D. Kelley, an abolitionist, founder of the Republican Party, judge and longtime U.S. Congressman. Her family were Philadelphia Quakers deeply committed to the abolition of slavery, universal suffrage and the education and literacy of women. She graduated from Cornell University in 1882 and studied law and government at […]
Catherine Talty Kenny
Catherine Talty Kenny


Catherine Talty Kenny was a Tennessee suffragist and political organizer. Born in 1874 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Kenny grew up poor with five siblings and a widowed mother who worked as a seamstress to support the family. Bouncing from one tenement apartment to another, Kenny was eventually sent to a Catholic high school, but only attended one semester. She worked odd jobs for the next ten years to support herself and her family. In 1899, she married John M. Kenny, an ambitious coffee salesman turned Coca-Cola franchise owner. The couple had […]
Susette La Flesche Tibbles
Susette La Flesche Tibbles


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. La Flesche 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 clothing, speak English exclusively, […]
Harriet Burton Laidlaw
Harriet Burton Laidlaw


Harriet Burton Laidlaw was a New York suffragist, reformer, and peace activist. Laidlaw was born on December 16, 1873 in Albany, New York. When she was six, her father died and the family moved in with his parents. She completed both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in pedagogy and taught public school in New York City. She received various degrees from Barnard College, Illinois Wesleyan University and Columbia University, while also taking courses at Harvard University and the University of Chicago. In 1905, she left teaching to marry James Lees Laidlaw, […]
Daisy Elizabeth Adams Lampkin
Daisy Elizabeth Adams Lampkin


Daisy Elizabeth Adams Lampkin was a suffragist, civil rights activist and community organizer. Born on August 9, 1883, to a working class African American family in Washington, D.C., Lampkin got her start organizing consumer protest groups made up of Black housewives in Pittsburgh. In 1915, she was elected president of the Lucy Stone Woman Suffrage League, a Pittsburgh-based organization dedicated to advocating suffrage for Black women. After representing the League at a conference of the National Association of Colored Women in 1916, Lampkin served as national organizer and chairman of […]
Clara Chan Lee
Clara Chan Lee


Clara Chan Lee was a Chinese-American suffragist, women’s rights activist, and community leader. Born on October 21, 1886, in Portland, Oregon, to the Rev. Chan Hon Fun and Ow Muck Gay, both Chinese immigrants, Clara moved to Oakland, California, with her parents in the early twentieth century. She eventually married Charles Goodall Lee, the first licensed Chinese-American dentist in the United States. After California passed woman suffrage in 1911, Lee, along with Emma Tom Leung, became the first Chinese-American woman to register to vote that same year. Tye Leung Schulze […]
Mabel Ping-Hua Lee
Mabel Ping-Hua Lee


Dr. Mabel Ping-Hua Lee was a Chinese-American suffragist, economist and community leader. Born in Guangzhou, China, in 1896, Lee immigrated to the U.S. on an academic scholarship at the age of 9. Starting in her teens, Lee became an active figure in the New York suffrage movement. In 1912, Lee, on horseback, helped lead a suffrage parade of 10,000 people, for which she was written about by both the New York Tribune and New York Times. The same year, Lee entered Barnard College, joined the Chinese Students’ Association, and wrote […]
Belva Lockwood
Belva Lockwood


Belva Ann Bennett Lockwood was an American attorney, politician, educator, suffragist and author. One of the first female lawyers in the United States, Lockwood successfully petitioned Congress in 1879 to be allowed to practice before the United States Supreme Court, the first woman attorney with this privilege. She ran for president in 1884 and 1888 as the nominee for the Equal Rights Party and was the first woman to appear on official ballots. Lockwood was born October 24, 1830, in Royalton, New York. In 1848, she married Uriah McNall, their […]