Category: Historical (born 1920 or before) / page 9

Leonora O'Reilly
Leonora O'Reilly


Leonora O’Reilly was a labor leader, trade union organizer and suffragist. O'Reilly was born February 16, 1870, in New York City to working class Irish immigrant parents. Her father died when she was one year old, and her mother supported the family by working long hours as a garment worker and taking in boarders. As a child, O'Reilly attended union meetings with her mother. At age 11, she was forced to leave school to work in a factory as an assistant to a seamstress, and at 16, she became a […]
Christabel Pankhurst
Christabel Pankhurst


Christabel Pankhurst was born September 22, 1880 in Manchester, England. She was the daughter of a major leader in the suffrage movement, Emmeline Pankhurst and her husband, Richard Pankhurst. She attended the Manchester High School for Girls. Following that education, she obtained a law degree from the University of Manchester, despite not being allowed to practice law, as she was a woman. She was a co-founder of the Women's Social and Political Union. She was a major force in the militant action of the organization. Many of the events of […]
Emmeline Pankhurst
Emmeline Pankhurst


Emmeline Pankhurst was a political activist and leader of the suffrage movement in Great Britain. Though often criticized for her strongly militant tactics, her contributions toward achieving women's suffrage in Great Britain are well-recognized. Pankhurst was born on July 15, 1858, in Manchester, England, to politically active parents. Despite being academically gifted, she did not receive the same education as her brothers. Although her parents supported women's suffrage and the general advancement of women in society, they believed that the most important part of a girl's education were the skills […]
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks


Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was an American civil rights activist who was arrested in 1955 for refusing to give up her seat on a public bus to a white passenger. Her act of defiance and the resulting Montgomery Bus Boycott became important symbols of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States and helped launch nationwide efforts to end segregation of public facilities. Parks was born February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. She married in 1932, and with her husband's encouragement, finished high school in 1933 at a time when […]
Alice Paul
Alice Paul


Alice Paul was one of the main leaders in the U.S. women's suffrage movement. Paul was born on January 11, 1885, in Mount Laurel, New Jersey, a descendant of William Penn, the Quaker founder of Pennsylvania. Paul’s parents supported gender equality and social reform, and Paul attended women’s suffrage meetings with her mother. Paul graduated from Swarthmore College, a Quaker school co-founded by her grandfather, in 1905 with a bachelor's degree in biology. She received a Master of Arts in 1907 and a doctorate in 1912 from the University of […]
Frances Perkins
Frances Perkins


Frances Perkins served as the U.S. secretary of labor from 1933-1945 and was the principal architect of the New Deal. She was the first woman to hold a U.S. cabinet position and the first woman to enter the presidential line of succession. As secretary of labor, she was largely responsible for the adoption of social security, unemployment insurance, federal laws regulating child labor and the federal minimum wage. Perkins was born on April 10, 1880, in Boston, Massachusetts. She earned a bachelor's degree in physics from Mount Holyoke College in […]
Maria Eva Peron
Maria Eva Peron


María Eva Duarte de Perón was the wife of Argentine President Juan Perón and first lady of Argentina from 1946 until her death in 1952. She is usually referred to as Eva or Evita. Perón was born May 7, 1919, in the village of Los Toldos, Argentina, the youngest of five children. Her parents were not married, and her father abandoned the family when Perón was one year old, leaving them in poverty. Perón's legal and societal status as an illegitimate child followed her throughout her life. At age 15, […]
Jeannette Rankin
Jeannette Rankin


Jeannette Pickering Rankin was the first woman to hold federal office in the United States, with her 1916 election to the U.S. House of Representatives by the state of Montana. In 1940, she was elected to a second House term. A lifelong pacifist, she was one of 50 House members (and six senators) who opposed the war declaration of 1917, and the only member of Congress to vote against declaring war on Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Rankin was born on June 11, 1880, near Missoula, […]
Sarah Parker Remond
Sarah Parker Remond


Sarah Parker Remond was a free-born African American lecturer, abolitionist and physician. Remond was born on June 6, 1826, in Salem, Massachusetts. Her parents, also free born, were successful businesspeople and activists. Remond became an anti-slavery lecturer, delivering her first lecture in 1842 at the age of 16. In 1853, Remond was forced to leave a theater and pushed down a flight stairs after she refused to sit in a segregated section. She sued for damages and won, and the court ordered the theater to integrate its seating. From 1856 […]
Felisa Rincón de Gautier
Felisa Rincón de Gautier


Felisa Rincón de Gautier was a Puerto Rican suffragist and the first female mayor of San Juan. Rincón de Gautier was born on January 9, 1897, in Ceiba, Puerto Rico. She was active in the campaign to win Puerto Rican women the right to vote, which finally succeeded in 1932. She was one of the first women to vote in Puerto Rico and was later elected the first female mayor of San Juan, serving from 1946-1969. Her social programs were widely supported and were focused on childcare programs, centers for […]