Annie Jump Cannon
Known as the “census taker of the sky,” Annie Jump Cannon was a brilliant astronomer that revolutionized the way scientists classify stars.
Category Archives: Activism > Suffrage
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Carrie Chapman Catt
A skilled political strategist, Carrie Clinton Lane Chapman Catt was a suffragist and peace activist who helped secure for American women the right to vote. She directed the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) and founded the League of Women Voters (1920) to bring women into the political mainstream.
Ana Roqué de Duprey
Ana Roqué de Duprey, a prolific educator, writer, and scientist, founded the first woman’s suffrage organization in Puerto Rico in 1917. Known as “Flor del Valle” (“Flower of the Valley”) for her work in botany, she strove to promote educational opportunities and political rights for women in Puerto Rico.
Sojourner Truth
A former slave, Sojourner Truth became an outspoken advocate for abolition, temperance, and civil and women’s rights in the nineteenth century. Her Civil War work earned her an invitation to meet President Abraham Lincoln in 1864.
Felisa Rincón de Gautier
Felisa Rincón de Gautier, affectionately known to the public as Doña Fela, became the first female mayor of a capital city in the Americas when she was appointed mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1946. She went on to win reelection four times, serving in office until 1969. Doña Fela devoted herself to public welfare, working to improve housing, public health, and employment for the city’s most vulnerable residents.
Maria Guadalupe Evangelina de Lopez
Maria de Lopez rallied the crowd gathered at Los Angeles Plaza on October 3, 1911 by giving a speech in favor of woman’s suffrage entirely in Spanish, an unprecedented event for the time. An educator, translator, and clubwoman, Lopez helped win the vote for Californian women with her oratory and the writings she translated into Spanish. In addition to her suffrage work, Lopez fought for decades to preserve Spanish- and Mexican-American cultural heritage.
Adelina Otero-Warren
Adelina Otero-Warren, the first Hispanic woman to run for U.S. Congress and the first female superintendent of public schools in Santa Fe, was a leader in New Mexico’s woman’s suffrage movement.
Jovita Idár
As a Mexican-American journalist, activist, and suffragist, Jovita Idár often faced dangerous situations. However, she never backed down from a challenge. She single-handedly protected her newspaper headquarters when the Texas Rangers came to shut it down, and crossed the border to serve as a nurse during the Mexican Revolution. Idár bravely fought the injustices in her time.
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
As a poet, author, and lecturer, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was a household name in the nineteenth century. Not only was she the first African American woman to publish a short story, but she was also an influential abolitionist, suffragist, and reformer that co-founded the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs.
Dr Mabel Ping-Hua Lee
In a 1912 New York Times article, Mabel Ping-Hua Lee was regarded as “the symbol of the new era, when all women will be free and unhampered.” At the time, sixteen year old Lee was already a recognized suffragist and activist that would help to lead almost 10,000 people in the New York suffrage parade.