Activism > Labor Rights Archives

Josefina Vicens

Mexican novelist, poet, screenwriter and activist for labor rights and women’s rights

Juliet Clannon Cushing

Juliet Clannon Cushing (1845-1935), an advocate of protective labor legislation for women and founded the Consumers’ League of New Jersey in 1900.

Sue Ko Lee was a Chinese American garment worker and labor organizer with the Chinese Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Association. In 1938, she participated in a successful 15-week strike against the National Dollar Stores garment factory. At the time, it was the longest strike in the history of San Francisco’s Chinatown. Lee went on to become a leader in the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) in California.

Alberta Gonzalez

She and other workers staged the first Puerto Rican workers strike in New Jersey.

Leonora Barry

Leonora Barry (1849-1923) was the first woman paid to be a labor investigator in the US.

Marietta Boggio Botto

Marietta “Maria” Boggio Botto (1870-1915) was an “outwork” silk worker, who hosted the Paterson Silk Strike of 1913 at her home in Haledon, New Jersey.

Elizabeth Almira Allen

Elizabeth Almira Allen (1854-1919) was a teachers’ rights advocate and the first female president of the New Jersey Education Association.

Katherine Schaub

Katherine Schaub (1902-1933) was a dial painter who played a pivotal role, with her court testimonies and self-documentation, in getting radium recognized as a harmful substance and subsequently phased out of use in manufacturing altogether.

Cordelia Greene Johnson

Cordelia Greene Johnson (1887-1957) founded the Modern Beautician Association and served as its president until her death.

Mary Yamashita Nagao

As a Japanese-American woman living through World War II, Mary Yamashita Nagao (1920-1985) was interned at the Manzanar Relocation Center in Owens Valley, California under Executive Order 9066.