Susie Williamson Stageberg is known as the “Mother of the Farmer-Labor Party.” The Red Wing activist spent a lifetime fighting for unpopular political and social causes. She strongly opposed the merger of the Democratic and Farmer-Labor Parties in the 1940s.
One of the first four women elected to the Minnesota legislature in 1922, Sue Metzger Dickey Hough campaigned for gun control, strict capital punishment, and mandatory automobile insurance, among other issues.
Sarah Burger Stearns was a committed reformer dedicated to the cause of women’s rights. She founded one of Minnesota’s first suffrage organizations, the Rochester Woman Suffrage Association, in her home city of Rochester. In 1881, she was elected the first president of the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Association (MWSA).
Lena Olive Smith was a prominent civil rights lawyer and activist during the 1920s and 1930s.
Ethel Ray Nance was an African American activist and writer. During the 1920s, she broke various racial and gender barriers in Minnesota, participated in the Harlem Renaissance movement, worked as a secretary for the National Urban League, and contributed to Opportunity magazine.
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.
At the turn of the twentieth century, Evangeline Whipple used her wealth to improve the lives of women, people of color, and the poor. She supported social justice for Native Americans in Minnesota, for African Americans in Florida, and for villagers and World War I refugees in Bagni di Lucca, Italy.
The first female nominee of a major party for the US Senate, Anna Dickie Olesen was a celebrated orator and passionate social reformer who became one of the most prominent Democratic women of the early twentieth century.
Bertha Berglin Moller (Delin), jailed twice in Washington, DC, for leading a hunger strike, was one of Minnesota’s most passionate and fiery woman suffragists.
Charlotte Ouisconsin Clark Van Cleve was the child of a military family and a crusader for the rights of disadvantaged people in Minnesota and beyond. Born during her parents’ journey to help build the future Fort Snelling, she lived to see a fledgling community grow into an urban center.