Fran Rowan
Rowan was a tireless community leader who advocated for youth, the arts, and neighbors in need. She was instrumental in the founding of Meridian House, a residential substance abuse treatment program for men and women.
Category Archives: Activism
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Gladys Gusson
Among the social workers who served at the South End House in Boston was Gladys Gusson (1935-88) who counseled families, was a tenant advocate, and ran after-school groups and girls’ clubs.
Rebecca Buffum Spring
New Jersey’s Rebecca Buffum Spring (1811-1911) founded the middle-class utopian communities of The North American Phalanx at Red Bank as well as the Raritan Bay Union at Perth Amboy.
Lucy Craft Laney
The founder and principal of the Haines Institute in Augusta for fifty years (1883-1933), Lucy Craft Laney is Georgia’s most famous female African American educator.
Lugenia Burns Hope
Lugenia Burns Hope was an early 1900s social activist, reformer, and community organizer. Spending most of her career in Atlanta, she worked for the improvement of Black communities through traditional social work, community health campaigns, and political pressure for better education and infrastructure.
Mary Berkeley Minor Blackford
Mary Berkeley Minor Blackford was an antislavery leader who founded a female auxiliary of the American Colonization Society in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
Kathleen Neal Cleaver
Black Panther Party Communications Secretary and the first woman in the Party’s leadership group who later became a university porfessor and also worked as a law clerk in the U.S. Court of Appeals
Thoko Ntshinga
For South African actress Thoko Ntshinga, her art and her community are inseparable.
Gaelynn Lea Tressler
Born with Osteogenesis Imperfecta (Brittle Bones Disease) that limits her range of motion, the violinist, singer, and songwriter plays the violin with a technique like that of a cellist. Her original songs and approach to traditional fiddle music are enhanced by her incorporation of live looping and sonic exploration.
Clara Ripley
Founded in Boston in 1892, the Dorchester Woman’s Club united women to promote intellectual growth and community values, led by early members Clara Ripley (1855-1931) and Ella Whiton (1857-1932).