Kathy Acker was an American experimental novelist, punk poet, playwright, essayist, postmodernist and sex-positive feminist writer. She is best known for her 1984 novel Blood and Guts in High School. Asker was born in New York City in 1947. Her father left the family before Acker was born, and her mother remarried quickly. Acker grew …
Mary Barbour was a Scottish political activist, community leader and social policy pioneer who became one of the first female Labour Councillors on the Glasgow Town Council, the first woman Bailie on Glasgow Corporation and one of Glasgow’s first female Magistrates. She is best known for her part in the Red Clydeside movement in the …
Pauli Murray was an American civil rights activist, women’s rights activist, lawyer and author. She was the first woman to be awarded a J.D.S degree from Yale and the first black woman to be ordained as an Episcopal priest. She also co-founded NOW, the National Organization for Women. Murray was born in 1910 in Baltimore, …
Liliuokalani was Hawaii’s first queen and final sovereign ruler before the islands were annexed by the United States in 1898. Liliuokalani was born Lydia Kamakaeha in 1838 in Honolulu, Hawaii to the High Chieftess Analea Keohokālole and High Chief Caesar Kaluaiku Kapaʻakea. Her mother served as an adviser to King Kamehameha III. Liliuokalani was educated …
Mary McLeod Bethune was an educator and activist known as “The First Lady of The Struggle” due of her commitment to gain better lives for African Americans. She founded the National Council of Negro Women and served as president of the National Association of Colored Women. Bethune was born Mary Jane McLeod in 1875 near …
Funmilayo Ransome Kuti was a Nigerian teacher, feminist and political leader who was the leading advocate of women’s rights in her country during the first half of the 20th century. Ransome-Kuti was born Frances Abigail Olufunmilayo Thomas in 1900 in Abeokuta, Egbaland (now Nigeria). She became the first female student at the Abeokuta Grammar School, …
Elizabeth Raffald was an English businesswoman, best known for her 1769 book The Experienced English Housekeeper. Raffald was born Elizabeth Whitaker in 1733 in Doncaster, England. Her father, John Whittaker was a schoolteacher and because of this, Raffald and her sisters were given the rare opportunity (for girls at the time) to learn to read …
Dorothy Hodgkin OM FRS was a British biochemist who developed protein crystallography. She won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964 for her determination of the structure of penicillin and vitamin B12. She is one of the pioneering scientists who worked in the field of X-ray crystallography studies of biomolecules. Hodgkin was born in 1910 in …
Mae Jemison is an American physician and NASA astronaut. She became the first African American woman to travel in space in 1992, when she went into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour. Jemison was born in 1956 in Decatur, Alabama. At the age of three, Jemison’s family moved to Chicago so that she and her …
Queen Nzinga Mbande was a 17th-century African ruler of the Ndongo and Matamba Kingdoms of the Mbundu people in Angola. She fought fearlessly to resist the Portuguese who were attempting to colonise the area at the time. Nzinga was born in 1583 to Ngola (King) Kiluanji and Kangela. She was named Nzinga because her umbilical …