Myrtle Cain
Known as the “flapper legislator,” Myrtle Agnes Cain was a lifelong women’s rights activist and labor organizer. When she was elected to the Minnesota House in 1922, she and three other women became the state’s first female legislators.
Category Archives: Activism > Labor Rights
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Martha Dorsett
Martha Angle Dorsett is best known for being Minnesota’s first female lawyer. After being denied the right to practice law in Minnesota in 1876, she successfully petitioned the Minnesota legislature to change the state law governing attorney admissions. With the law amended to permit admission regardless of sex, Martha went on to practice law and remained active politically throughout the rest of her life in Minneapolis.
Eva McDonald Valesh
In 1888, a St. Paul Globe exposé of women’s working conditions penned by “Eva Gay” launched the career of Eva McDonald Valesh, a young writer. During the time that she lived in the state, Valesh left a big impression on Minnesota journalism, politics, and labor organizing.
Nellie Stone Johnson
Nellie Stone Johnson was an African American union and civil rights leader whose career spanned the class-conscious politics of the 1930s and the liberal reforms of the Minnesota DFL Party.
Meridel Le Sueur
For more than seventy years, the Minnesota-based writer and activist Meridel Le Sueur was a voice for oppressed peoples worldwide. Beginning in the 1920s, she championed the struggles of workers against the capitalist economy, the efforts of women to find their voices and their power, the rights of American Indians to their lands and their cultures, and environmentalist causes.
Mary Walsh Lee
Leader in the South Australian suffrage movement and a worker for working women.
Naomi Klein
Canadian author, professor, activist, and filmmaker
Anna Clemenc
Born in Calumet, Michigan to Slovenian immigrant parents in 1888, Anna Klobuchar Clemenc Shaw was instrumental in the fight for worker’s rights during the 1913-14 Copper Miners’ Strike in Michigan’s Copper Country.
Rosalinda Guillen
Rosalinda Guillen is a farmworker and justice leader as well as the Executive Director of Community to Community Development.
Velma Veloria
In 1992, Veloria became the first Filipina in the United States to be elected to a state legislature.