Category: Historical (born 1920 or before) / page 8

Vida Milholland
Vida Milholland


For more information about her sister, Inez Milholland, visit her profile here: https://awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/directory/inez-milholland/ Vida Milholland was a suffragist, peace activist and performer. Milholland was born on January 17, 1888, to wealthy philanthropists John E. Milholland and Jean Torry. Along with her sister, Inez, she got involved in activism early on when she studied at Vassar College. Although she had aspirations of becoming an opera singer, Milholland gave it up in 1910 to become a full-time suffragist. Milholland and her sister toured the United States under the direction of Alice Paul […]
Abby Crawford Milton
Abby Crawford Milton


For information on her colleague, Catherine Talty Kenny, visit her profile at https://awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/directory/catherine-talty-kenny/. Abby Crawford Milton was the youngest of the Southern suffrage leaders who made Tennessee the prized 36th vote to ratify the 19th Amendment. Born on February 6, 1881, in Milledgeville, Georgia, Milton was the daughter of a prominent Georgia family. In 1904, she married George Fort Milton, editor of the pro-suffrage Chattanooga News and moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee. Milton would go on to have three daughters between 1913 and 1917, some of the most consequential years in […]
Virginia Minor
Virginia Minor


Virginia Louisa Minor was a suffragist leader in Missouri. Minor was born on March 27, 1824, in Virginia. After her 1843 marriage, she and her husband moved to St. Louis, later purchasing a farm there just before the start of the Civil War. During war, Minor volunteered in area hospitals and provided produce from her farm for soldiers stationed nearby. Minor was the first woman in Missouri to publicly state that women should be given the right to vote. In 1867, she helped to found the Woman Suffrage Association of […]
Alice Dickerson Montemayor
Alice Dickerson Montemayor


Alice Dickerson Montemayor was a Texas feminist, artist and leader in the League of United Latin American Citizens. Though she wasn’t a suffragist in the traditional sense, Montemayor was a model for women’s political involvement and a fierce voice for gender equity. Montemayor was born on August 6, 1902, in Laredo, Texas to John and Manuela Dickerson. She graduated from high school in 1924 and hoped to study law. After her father’s death, however, she stayed in Laredo to help her mother and attended Laredo Business College for a year. […]
Mary Foulke Morrisson
Mary Foulke Morrisson


Mary Foulke Morrisson was a suffragist, peace activist and political organizer. Morrisson was born in Richmond, Indiana, on November 14, 1879, to parents who were also suffragists. Her father, William Dudley Foulke, served as president of the American Woman Suffrage Association from 1886-1890. She married James William Morrisson in 1900 and relocated to Chicago, where she worked with Jane Addams at Hull House and with Carrie Chapman Catt on woman suffrage. She participated in the National American Woman Suffrage Association convention of 1916. After the Nineteenth Amendment was passed, Morrisson […]
Lucretia Mott
Lucretia Mott


Born Lucretia Coffin on January 3, 1793, in Nantucket, Massachusetts, Lucretia Mott was a women's rights activist, abolitionist, and religious reformer. A child of Quaker parents, Mott grew up to become a leading social reformer. At the age of 13, she attended a Quaker boarding school in New York State. Mott stayed on and worked there as a teaching assistant. While at the school, she met her future husband James Mott. The couple married in 1811 and lived in Philadelphia. By 1821, Mott became a Quaker minister, noted for her […]
Emily Murphy
Emily Murphy


Emily Murphy was a Canadian equal rights activist, jurist and author. Murphy was the first female magistrate in Canada and the British Empire, and helped to repeal discriminatory legislation against women in Canada. However, her legacy is disputed, with her contributions to feminism weighed against her racist views and her advocation of eugenics. Murphy was born on March 14, 1868, in Cookstown, Ontario. Due to her family’s wealth and influence in society, Murphy was educated in private schools throughout her early life. In 1887, she married Arthur Murphy and had […]
Alva Myrdal
Alva Myrdal


Alva Myrdal was a Swedish politician, diplomat and social reformer, and the 1982 co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Myrdal was born on January 31, 1902, in Uppsala, Sweden. She earned a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Stockholm in 1924 and a Master of Arts from the University of Uppsala in 1934. Myrdal and her husband were leading advocates for social welfare reform and women's rights in the 1930s. She was also a prominent member of the Social Democrat Party in Sweden. In 1943, she was appointed to […]
Clarina H Nichols
Clarina H Nichols


Clarina Howard Nichols was an American journalist, lobbyist and public speaker involved in the temperance, abolition, and the women's rights movements. Despite her prominence in her time, she has been largely overlooked by historians until recently. Nichols was born on January 25, 1810 in West Townshend, Vermont. After graduating as class valedictorian, she attended an advanced school in West Townshend for further education, then taught for a year or two before marrying Justin Carpenter, a recent law school graduate and member of a prominent local family; the couple moved to […]
Thelma Catherine “Pat” Nixon
Thelma Catherine "Pat" Nixon


Thelma Catherine "Pat" Nixon was first lady of the United States from 1969-1974, the wife of the 37th president of the United States, Richard Milhous Nixon. Nixon was born on March 16, 1912, in Ely, Nevada and raised in California. She was given the nickname "Pat" by her father, in reference to her birthdate and Irish ancestry. Her mother died in 1925 and her father in 1930. She graduated cum laude from the University of Southern California in 1937 with a Bachelor of Science degree in merchandising and a teaching […]