Jeannette Rankin was the first woman to serve in the U.S. Congress. She helped pass the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote, and was a committed pacifist. Rankin was born in 1880 near Missoula, Montana. As a child, Rankin cleaned, sewed, and helped care for her younger siblings, in addition to sharing in …
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 …
Barbara Jordan was the first black woman elected to the Texas state senate and the first black Texan in Congress. Jordan had been inspired to become an attorney by a talk by Edith Sampson, a black lawyer who gave a talk at Phyllis Wheatley High School, which was segregated. Jordan was a member of the …