Category: Historical (born 1920 or before) / page 7

Harriet 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 […]
Clare Boothe Luce
Clare Boothe Luce


Clare Boothe Luce served as U.S. ambassador to Italy from 1953 to 1956, the first American woman appointed to a major ambassadorial post abroad. She also served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1943 to 1947. Luce was born March 10, 1903, in New York City. Her original ambition was to become an actress and she briefly attended a school of the theater in New York City. She was also active in the suffrage movement as a young woman. She married George Tuttle Brokaw, a New […]
Theresa Malkiel
Theresa Serber Malkiel


Theresa Serber Malkiel was an influential Jewish labor activist and suffragist in the early twentieth century. Born on May 1, 1874 in the town of Bar, Theresa Serber escaped anti-Semitic persecution in Russia to seek refuge in the United States with her family in 1891. Though she had been part of a Jewish middle class in Russia and was fairly well-educated, Serber was forced to work in sweatshops in New York City. Serber discovered her interest in workers’ rights quickly and joined the Russian Workingmen’s Club. After finding work in […]
Katherine McCormick
Katherine McCormick


Katharine Dexter McCormick was a biologist, suffragist and philanthropist. McCormick was born on August 27, 1875, in Dexter, Michigan, and grew up in Chicago. Her family was wealthy, and both of her parents believed in the education of women. In 1904, she earned a Bachelor of Science in biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the second woman to graduate from MIT. While a student, she successfully argued that a rule requiring female students to wear feathered hats was a fire hazard in laboratories, and MIT changed their policy. She […]
Golda Meir
Golda Meir


Golda Meir was the world's third female prime minister, serving as prime minister of Israel. She assumed the position after the sudden death of Levi Eshkol in 1969. Meir served as prime minister until 1974. Meir was born on May 3, 1898, in Kiev, Ukraine. At the age of 8, her family immigrated to the United States and she grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. When she was young, Meir joined the Poalei Tzion youth movement. At the end of 1917, she married Morris Meyerson, and they immigrated to the Land […]
Inez Milholland
Inez Milholland


For more information on her sister, Vida Milholland, visit her profile here: https://wp.las.iastate.edu/cattcenter-awpc/directory/vida-milholland/. Inez Milholland was a militant suffragist, often referred to as “the most beautiful suffragette.” Milholland was born on August 6, 1886, to wealthy philanthropists John E. Milholland and Jean Torry. Along with her sister, Vida, she got involved in activism early on when she studied at Vassar College. Milholland defied Vassar’s policy prohibiting suffrage clubs when she invited New York suffragist and daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Harriet Stanton Blatch, to speak on campus. When the talk […]