Lynn Hammond
Co-founder of the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center
Category Archives: Activism
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Rebecca Cromwell Rouse
American social-services organizer and reformer
Rosalynn Carter
Rosalynn Carter, wife of the thirty-ninth U.S. president, Jimmy Carter, forged a career in public service as one of the nation’s foremost advocates for mental health.
Meribah Farmer
Quaker minister and philanthropist who helped found Cleveland’s original evangelical Quakers organization and the First Friends Church.
Born near Philadelphia, PA to Benjamin and Hannah (Webster) Butler, Meribah and her family moved to Salem, OH, in 1811. She married James Farmer on l Oct. l834, and they settled in Salineville, OH. In 1856, the Farmers became the first members of the Society of Friends (Quakers) to settle in Cleveland.
Meribah was accepted early in life as a Quaker minister. Always wearing her bonnet and unostentatious attire, Meribah adhered strictly to the dress and manners of the Quakers, and, in meetings for worship, ministered in the spirit with great strength and sweetness.
The Cleveland Friends meeting first began in 1871 in the Farmer’s home located at the corner of Superior Avenue and East 6th Street (former HOLLENDEN HOTEL site). It was here the idea for a First Friends Church was born. In 1874 a modest church was built on Cedar Avenue. Meribah was one of four resident ministers, and James Farmer was an Elder.
Meribah devoted herself to various charities, including the Cleveland Protestant Orphan Asylum, The Aid Society of the Civil War, The Homeopathic Hospital, The Retreat (a home for the mentally disabled), and always provided aid for the Freedmen and the Indians through the Board of the Society of Friends.
The Farmers had seven children, Elihu, Beulah, Ellen, Lydia, Laura, Elizabeth and James. Meribah is buried in LAKE VIEW CEMETERY.
Ruth Townsend Lucas
A founder and director of the Central Volunteer Bureau of the Welfare Federation of Cleveland (Ohio) and a nationally recognized developer of volunteer programs.
Carrie Zander
Co-founder of the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center
Joanne Woodward
Academy Award–winning actress and activist who ranks among the most well-respected actors of the twentieth century.
Emily Taft Douglas
In 1944 U.S. Congresswoman Emily Taft Douglas, a proponent of overseas humanitarian projects and a postwar United Nations Organization, defeated one of the most strident isolationists in the House of Representatives, heralding, as some observers believed, the triumph of American internationalism.
Helen Newton Thompson
South African anti-apartheid political activist and founding member of the Black Sash
Sheila Weinberg
South African political, anti-apartheid and human rights activist