Ida B Wells was an American journalist, suffragist, sociologist and an early leader in the Civil Rights Movement. Wells was born a slave in Mississipi in 1862. Six months after her birth slaves were decreed free by the Union thanks to the Emancipation Proclamation. Wells faced racial prejudice and discriminatory rules because of her race. …
Betty Friedan was an American writer, women’s rights activist, and feminist. She co-founded the National Organisation for Women (NOW). Friedan was involved with the school newspaper while at Peoria High School, after her application to write her own column was turned down she and 6 friends launched a literary magazine called ‘Tide’. She graduated from …
Madam C.J Walker was a civil rights activist, philanthropist and entrepreneur. She was named “the first black woman millionaire in America” for her successful line of hair care products. Walker was the first free child born to her parents Owen and Minerva Anderson Breedlove (her birth name is Sarah Breedlove). She was born on a …
Annie Kenney was an English working class suffragette who became a leading figure in the Women’s Social and Political Union. Kenney started work at the age of 10 in a local cotton mill in Yorkshire. She was a cotton frame tenter and her duties were to crawl on her hands and knees under the machine …
Angela Davis is an American academic, Civil Rights Activist, scholar and Women’s Rights Activist who advocates for the oppressed. Davis’ political activism began when she was a child in Birmingham, Alabama. She lived in the “Dynamite Hill” neighbourhood, which was marked by racial conflict and experienced racial prejudice and discrimination. As a teenager she organised …
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an American suffragist, social activist, abolitionist, and leading figure of the early women’s rights movement. Cady Stanton was introduced to the abolitionist, temperance, and women’s rights movements through her cousin, the reformer Gerrit Smith. In 1840 she married the reformer Henry B. Stanton, she insisted that ‘obey’ be dropped from the …
Nina Simone was an American singer, songwriter, pianist and civil rights activist. Simone started playing piano by ear when she was 3 years old. She played piano in her mother’s church and soon began to study classical music with an Englishwoman called Muriel Mazzanovich. She developed a love of Bach, Chopin, Brahms, Beethoven and Schubert. …
Amelia Boynton Robinson was an American activist who was a leader of the American Civil Rights Movement in Selma, Alabama and a key figure in the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches. She was also the first black woman to run for Congress in Alabama. Robinson began her interest in activism at nine years old when …
Kathleen Hanna is an American musician, feminist activist, and punk zine writer. She is best known for being one of the founding members of the Riot Grrrl band Bikini Kill. Hanna was born in 1968 in Portland, Oregon. She became a feminist at a young age, inspired by Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, the feminist …
Norah Fry (also known by her married name Norah Cooke-Hurle) was an advocate and campaigner for disabled children and those with learning difficulties. She was a mental health pioneer. Fry was a member of the Bristol Quaker Fry family of the J. S. Fry & Sons company who made chocolate and cocoa. She became Norah …