Concepción Arenal was a Spanish feminist writer and activist who founded the feminist movement in Spain. Arenal was born in 1820 in Ferrol, Galicia. In 1829, she and her family moved to Armaño following the death of her father. Arenal witnesses the social inequalities of the time, including the gender inequality imposed by the patriarchal …
This post is in collaboration with Sheroes of History who researched and wrote the biography of Rosa Luxemburg. Rosa Luxemburg died when she was just 47 years old, and was described as a small, frail woman. But in those 47 years she managed to pack enough in for two lifetimes and leave a huge impression …
Wilma Mankiller was the first female chief of the Cherokee Nation. Her administration founded the Cherokee Nation Community Development Department to improve the lives of Native Americans. Mankiller was born in 1945 in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, the capital of the Cherokee Nation. Her great-grandfather was one of over 16,000 Native Americans and enslaved Africans who were …
Josephine Baker was an American-born French dancer and singer who was the first black woman to star in a major motion picture. She devoted much of her life to fighting racism and was a vital member of the Civil Rights Movement. Baker was born in 1906 in St. Louis, Missouri. At the age of eight, …
Lena Horne was an American singer, dancer, actress and civil rights activist. She was one of the most popular African American entertainers of the twentieth century and best known for films such as The Wiz and her trademark song, “Stormy Weather.” Horne was born in 1917 in Brooklyn, New York. Her mother, Edna, was an …
Jane Elliott is an American former third-grade schoolteacher, anti-racism, feminist and LGBT activist and educator. She is best known for her “Blue eyes-Brown eyes” exercise initially devised to teach third graders about racial prejudice. Elliott was born in 1933 in Riceville, Iowa on her family’s farm. She attended a one-room rural schoolhouse before continuing her …
Daisy Bates was an American journalist and civil rights activist who is best known for playing a leading role in the Little Rock Integration Crisis of 1957. Bates was born in 1914 in Huttig, Arkansas. Bates was adopted as a baby after her mother was murdered when attempting to resist being raped by three white …
Margaret Ekpo was a Nigerian women’s rights activist, social mobiliser and pioneering female politician in Nigeria’s First Republic. Ekpo was born in 1914 in Creek Town, Cross River State Okoroafor Obiasulor, a native of Agulu-Uzo-Igbo near Awka in Anambra State and Inyang Eyo Aniemewue, who was from the family of King Eyo Honesty II, of …
Alice Walker is an American novelist, story story writer, poet and civil rights activist. She is best known for her critically acclaimed novel The Color Purple, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Walker was born in 1944 in Putnam County, Georgia. Walker lived under Jim Crow Laws, but her parents refused to …
Ethel L. Payne was an African-American journalist, publisher, civil rights leader, and educator known as the “First Lady of the Black Press”. Payne was born in 1911 in Chicago, Illinois and grew up in Englewood, which was a black community surrounded by white neighbourhoods. Payne’s father died when she was 12, and her mother was …