Ella Josephine Baker was born in Norfolk, Virginia. At the age of seven, following a race riot in which black shipyard workers were beaten, her mother took the family to her hometown, Littleton, North Carolina, and her father stayed in Norfolk to continue working on a steamship. Growing up, Baker listened to her maternal grandmother’s stories about slavery, slave revolts, and women in the old days. Learning first-hand about the oppression of black people has shaped her sense of social injustice. After high school, Baker attended Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, graduating as valedictorian of her class. In 1927, at 24, she moved to NYC, where she worked as a domestic and waitress before she got a job as an editorial assistant at the Negro National News. Living in NYC during the Harlem Renaissance, Baker’s point of view evolved into actions, and she began her life-long dedication to political activism. In 1931, she became a member of the Young Negroes Cooperative League (YNCL), which formed cooperatives that provided affordable services to its members. Soon, she was appointed the national director of the YNCL. She also taught classes on consumer education, African history, and labor history as part of the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration. In 1938, Baker became active at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), first as a field secretary. Within two years, she became director of branches and the highest-ranking woman in the organization. Through this position, she put into practice her belief that social change occurs from the bottom up, and the success of an organization depends on the commitment of its members, not its leaders, emphasizing the importance of women and young people to its success. As its director, Baker traveled throughout the South to recruit new members, earning the people’s trust with her personalized approach, sleeping in their homes, and attending church services. Over time, she built a network of people who played a significant role in the struggle for civil rights in the South. In 1946, at 43, Baker took custody of her niece and left her position at the NAACP but continued to be active as a volunteer at the New York branch. There, she mainly worked on the desegregation of schools and improving the education of black children. When she was 54, she moved to Atlanta to establish and serve as the executive director of Martin Luther King’s new organization – the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Its goal was to promote nonviolent actions to achieve racial justice and social progress. First, they organized education and church ceremonies to encourage people to register to vote. The campaign was not successful as hoped for, but it laid the foundations for local activist centers. In 1960, following the Greensboro sit-ins, when black college students refused to leave a segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter, Baker left the SCLC to assist the Greensboro Four. She organized a meeting at Shaw University, where she formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Under her guidance, the SNCC became one of the leading human rights organizations in the US, initiating some of the most successful nonviolent protests of the time. Including the Freedom Rides of 1961, when buses of civil rights activists rode through the segregated Southern states, and the Freedom Summer of 1964, when hundreds of volunteers arrived in Mississippi protesting against the intimidation and discrimination against registered black voters. In addition to her work with the SNCC, Baker worked with the Southern Conference Education Fund (SCEF), promoting social justice and interracial desegregation via the education of the southern white population. In 1964, she co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), served as its coordinator, and led its delegation to the National Democratic Party convention. At the age of 64, Baker returned to NYC, continuing her fight for social justice for two more decades. She consulted various organizations, such as the Puerto Rican Solidarity Committee, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and the Third World Women’s Coordinating Committee. She remained a prominent figure in the fight for human rights until her death on her 83rd birthday.   Dive deeper into the inspiring story of Ella Josephine Baker with our fun and engaging printable worksheet! Available now on Etsy and Teachers Pay Teachers. Read more...

Stormé DeLarverie was born in New Orleans to a white father and black mother. During her childhood, she often faced bullying for been biracial. DeLarverie discovered her baritone voice and her love for jazz music at a young age, and at age 15, she began to sing at clubs in New Orleans. Around 18 years old, she realized she was gay and left the city, finally settling in NYC. In 1955, at the age of 35, DeLarverie joined the Jewel Box Revue – the first racially integrated drag show in the US. She was the only women drag king alongside 25 male drag queens. During the shows, she wore tailored three-piece suits, and with or without her wardrobe, she could pass as either a woman or a man, black or white. At the time, the law required people to wear clothing that matched their assigned gender, and DeLarverie, who obeyed the law, was arrested a couple of times for wearing women’s clothes, been identified as a man in drag. Afterward, DeLarverie wore her suits in the streets and not only on stage. Her androgynous looks inspired other lesbians to wear more “manly” clothes. Today she is credited for influencing gender-nonconforming fashion, years before the unisex style became a trend. In the early hours of June 28, 1969, 49 years old DeLarverie finished a show and came to the Stonewall Inn gay bar in Greenwich Village. As happened occasionally, the police raided the bar and arrested the people in it, including her, a woman in man’s clothing. During the arrest, she was pushed and hit by at least four policemen. She fought back and shouted to the bystanders, “Why don’t you guys do something?” Though it is unknown who threw the first punch, the rumors said it was her. The crowd began to fight back, and the six days rebellion became known as the Stonewall Riots. This event initiated the gay rights movement. In the following month, DeLarverie co-founded the Stonewall Veteran’s Association. Throughout the years, she served in various positions in the organization, including Chief of Security, Ambassador, and vice president. For the next few decades, DeLarverie worked as a bouncer in lesbian bars across the city and volunteered to patrol the streets of Greenwich Village with a concealed rifle to protect gay people and keep them safe from the “ugliness” – her term for intolerance, bullying or abuse against the queer community. She also organized benefits for women and children who experienced domestic violence. In her last years, DeLarverie suffered from dementia and lived in a nursing home in Brooklyn. She died at the age of 93. Read more...

June Millicent Jordan was born and raised in NYC, NY, the only child of Jamaican immigrants. Her father, with whom she had a complex and abusive relationship, expose her to poetry and literature from a young age, and by the age of 7, she began to write poetry. Jordan attended the predominantly white preparatory school Northfield Mount Hermon School, where the teachers encouraged her interest and writing talent but did not introduce her to Black poets’ works. After high school, Jordan attended Barnard College. There she witnessed again that black history is not part of the school’s white-male curriculum. At 19, she married Michael Meyer, and the couple moved to study at the University of Chicago. Later, she returned to Barnard and earned a BA degree. In 1958, at the age of 22, Jordan gave birth to her only son, and a few years later, she got divorced and raised her child alone. At the time, Jordan had her first career success, working with the architect Buckminster Fuller on a film in which she examined the architectural and environmental impacts on the low-income Black families. In 1967, at 31, she began her 30 years career as a professor. First, at the City College of New York, and then at Sarah Lawrence College, Yale University, and University of California, Berkeley. There, she taught at the Women’s Studies and African American Studies departments and founded the Poetry for the People program in 1991. When she was 33 years old, Jordan published her first book, a collection of poems for children titled Who Look at Me, in which she described paintings of Black American artists in an intended Black English vernacular. The use of this style of language is a recurring motive of Jordan’s work. She used it as a way to legitimize it and to keep the Black community alive. During the 1970s, Jordan’s books were aimed at children and young adults, though over time, she began to publish essays, magazine columns, poetry, musical librettos, and plays. In all of her work, Jordan explored complex issues, both personal and political, from women, black and LGBT’s rights, sexuality, and single motherhood to race, class, capitalism, the educational system in the US, and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Her writings evoked conversations, and her ideas and thoughts rose from the papers to the daily life of her readers and students. Throughout her life, Jordan wrote 27 books, and three more were published post posthumously. Jordan died of breast cancer at the age of 65. Read more...

Alice Ruth Moore was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, the daughter of a Creole seaman and a former enslaved black seamstress. After graduating high school at 14, she attended a teacher-training program at Straight University, and at 17, she began teaching at an Elementary school in New Orleans. She became involved with activism at the Phyllis Wheatley Club and wrote for the Woman’s Era Club newspaper – the first newspaper created for and by African American women. In 1895, she published her first collection of poems, essays, and short stories titled “Violets and Other Tales.” That same year she moved to NYC, where she helped establish the White Rose Mission – a settlement house for colored girls. Furthering her education, she took courses at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University. Her writings for the Woman’s Era newspaper caught the attention of the poet and journalist Paul Laurence Dunbar, and in 1898, after two years of correspondence, she moved to live with him in Washington, DC, and they got married. Their relationship fertile their writing but was also disruptive and abusive. He raped her before they got married, and after three years of violent behavior, she left him and moved to Wilmington, Delaware. There, Dunbar taught at various institutes, including Howard High School, the Hampton Institute, and the State College for Colored Students. She never stopped studying, and at 32, she received her M.S degree from Cornell University. In 1913, Dunbar worked as the co-editor and writer for the A.M.E. Review – the African Methodist Episcopal Church’s newspaper. She met poet and civil rights activist Robert J. Nelson, and they got married in 1916. Although she was always involved in political activism, supporting the women’s rights movement and working toward the empowerment of women of color, it was only in 1918 that Dunbar-Nelson was appointed to an official role in the movement as a representative of the Woman’s Committee of the Council of Defense. In 1920, she became the co-editor of the progressive black newspaper, the “Wilmington Advocate.” In that same year, she published a literary anthology, aiming at black readers, titled “The Dunbar Speaker and Entertainer.” At 45, Dunbar-Nelson was a successful and popular writer, consistently publishing articles, columns, and essays in newspapers as well as in academic journals. Dunbar-Nelson became a speaker at various events, including the 1928 American Negro Labor Congress Forum in Philadelphia. After she moved with her husband to Philadelphia in 1932, her health declined, and two years later, she passed away at the age of 60. Dunbar-Nelson is a representative of the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Her writing is characterized by complex understandings of race, gender, and ethnicity. In her work, Dunbar-Nelson explored issues that she dealt with as a woman of color, especially her mixed-raced experiences, not belonging here or there. She wrote about her perspective of education opportunity, workplace environment, and social oppression, inspiring generations of black writers to come. Read more...

Lillian Wald was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to a liberal Jewish family. When she was 11 years old, the family moved to Rochester, New York, where she attended a private boarding school. From a young age, she excelled in math, science, arts, and languages, and at 16, she applied to Vassar College but was rejected because of her young age. At age 22, she witnessed a nurse assisting her sister to give birth, and she decided to become one. She attended the New York Hospital’s School of Nursing, and then, the Woman’s Medical College. She worked at the New York Juvenile Asylum, taking care of the orphans as well as teaching a home nursing class for poor immigrant families in the Lower East Side, NYC. Wald was determined to bring affordable health care to those in need. She left school and moved to a room in the Lower East Side so she could be close to her patients. She coined the term “Public Health Nurse” to describe her work with the community and began to advocate for nursing in public schools. Her efforts led the New York Board of Health to establish the first public nursing system in the world, and Wald was appointed as the first president of the National Organization for Public Health Nursing. She promoted a national health insurance plan and established a nursing insurance partnership with an insurance company, which later replicated to other corporate projects. Wald believed that every city resident is entitled to health care, regardless of race, gender, or social status. That in mind, in 1895, she founded the Henry Street Settlement – a not-for-profit organization providing health care, social services, nurses’ training, and educational programs for the community. Within 13 years, the organization had 18 district centers, and by 1913 it had branches throughout NYC, taking care of thousands of patients. The settlements also provided employment opportunities for women, enabling them to have a career outside the house and become independent. In 1902, Wald initiated the first American public-school nursing program in NYC. She founded the National Child Labor Committee as well as the Women’s Trade Union League and served on its executive committee. Wald was one of the founding members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and held its first public conference at the Henry Street Settlement. In 1915, she co-founded the Henry Street Neighborhood Playhouse for the theater arts. Ahead of her time, Wald was an early advocate against child labor and was one of the Child Labor Committee’s prominent leaders, promoting federal child labor laws. As a women’s rights activist, she organized campaigns for NYC suffrage, and as a pacifist, she argued against the entry of the US into WW1, joined the Woman’s Peace Party, co-founded the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and served as president of the American Union Against Militarism. But when the US entered the war, she chaired the American Red Cross Committee on Community Nursing and represented the US at International Red Cross meetings. In 1933, after suffering a stroke, she retired to her house in Westport, Connecticut. She died at 73 of a cerebral hemorrhage. A few months after she passed away, more than 2000 people attended her memory ceremony at Carnegie Hall, in which the president, governor, and mayor delivered massages in her memory. In her lifework, Wald paved the way to the public health care of today. Read more...

Dorothy May Day was born in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in Chicago, the third of five children. Even though Day’s parents were not devoted Christian, she had been interested in religion from a young age, reading the Bible, attending church, and studying catechism. At the age of 14, she was baptized and confirmed in an Episcopal church. She was also an enthusiastic bookworm, reading one book after another, from Russian literature to American social works, such as The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, that shaped her way of thinking. After graduating high school, Day attended the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign for two years before moving to NYC. There, she settled on the Lower East Side and became involved with the literary and liberal bohemia, having several love affairs. With a growing interest in social causes, she searched for ways to help the workers and the poor. She joined the Industrial Workers of the World and wrote for several Socialist publications. She was arrested numerous times for her involvement in protests, and in 1917, after being jailed for protesting for women’s suffrage in front of the White House, she went on a 10 days hunger strike. In 1921, she married Berkeley Tobey, and the newlyweds traveled to Europe. Away from politics, she began working on a semi-autobiographical novel, The Eleventh Virgin, which was published three years later. By then, Day and her husband separated, and with the payments for selling the movie rights to her novel, she bought a beach house in Staten Island. At 28 years old, Day, who thought she could not have children due to traumatic abortion, was surprised to realize that she is pregnant from her boyfriend, Forster Batterham. During her pregnancy, her connection to Catholicism has increased, and by the time her daughter Tamar was born, she was baptized and joined the Roman Catholic Church. Over the next few years, she supported herself by writing columns for local newspapers and book reviews for Catholic publications, combining her two passions – Catholicism and social activism. In 1932, Day met Peter Maurin, and together they founded The Catholic Worker Movement. They published a newspaper titled “Catholic Worker,” in which they promoted Catholic teachings, pacifism, and social justice principles, especially highlighting the working conditions of women and African Americans. Soon, the paper gained popularity, and within three years, it was distributed to 150,000 subscribers. As part of the movement’s agenda of hospitality, Day co-founded the House of Hospitality, a settlement house providing food and clothing for those in need, as well as several communal living farms. The movement spread out of NYC, and by 1941 it had more than 30 communities in the US, UK, and Canada. Throughout her life, she was dedicated to promoting her socialist beliefs inside her faith, writing, protesting, and campaigning for causes such as disabling nuclear weapons, equal rights for people of color, and defending the poor and the homeless. In her last years, she lived in one of the settlement houses she established in NYC. When she was 83 years old, she died from a heart attack. To this day, The Catholic Worker Movement is active, with more than 200 communities in the US and abroad. Read more...

Judith Sylvia Cohen was born in Chicago, Illinois. Her mother inspired her passion for art, and by the age of three, she began to draw and attend classes at the Art Institute of Chicago. In college, she studied Fine Arts at UCLA and was active at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People chapter, designing posters for the organization and serving as its corresponding secretary. At 20, she met Jerry Gerowitz, they got married in 1961, but two years later, he died in a car accident. Widowed at 23, she had an identity crisis, which eventually led her to change her last name from Cohen to Chicago, freeing herself from being connected to a man, by heritage, or by marriage. In her art, Chicago experimented with different media types, from drawing and sculptures to acrylic plastic and even fireworks and pyrotechnics. At the age of 26, she had her first solo show at the Rolf Nelson Gallery in LA, been one of only four women to display their work in that event. In that same year, Chicago married the sculptor Lloyd Hamrol and stayed married for 14 years. At 31, she took a teaching position at Fresno State College. She opened a women-only class, which soon became a full Feminist Art Program – the first feminist art program in the US. She rented a studio off-campus with her students, and in addition to art collaborations, they held reading and discussion groups, exploring their experiences and translating them into art. In 1972, together with Miriam Schapiro, Chicago founded the Womanhouse – a Hollywood mansion which was turned into a workshop and exhibition space, where women can create and display their art. In 1978, she founded the “Through the Flower” – a non-profit feminist art organization for educating about the importance of art and promoting it as a tool for emphasizing women’s achievements. In 1979, Chicago exhibited her most known work for the first time – “The Dinner Party.” The piece is a large triangle table, set for 39 places, each one commemorates a mythical or historical female figure, such as Virginia Woolf, Sojourner Truth, and Empress Theodora of Byzantium. The artwork symbolizes the struggle for equality women face in male-dominant societies. In 1980, she began to work on the installation – Birth Project, in which she reinterpreted the Genesis creation narrative by using images of childbirth, emphasizing women’s role in giving life. In 1985, she returned to work independently in her studio. In her next piece, “PowerPlay,” she explored the construct of masculinity by replacing the male gaze with a female’s one. In the same year, she married photographer Donald Woodman, with whom she collaborated on “The Holocaust Project: From Darkness into Light,” in which she examined her Jewish identity by exploring masculine power in the context of the Holocaust. Chicago continues to create and experiment with materials. In her art, she is challenging not only the male-dominated art world but also the conventional conceptions about society and women’s role in it. Her art has been exhibited all around the world and is on display in permanent collections in museums around the globe. Read more...

Milholland was born in Brooklyn, NYC, to a wealthy and liberal family. Her father was a journalist and a businessman, and they had homes in London and NYC. Her parents advocated for civil rights, world peace, and women’s rights. After graduating high school in England, she returned to the US and enrolled in Vassar College. While on vacation in London, she met the suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst and learned about the suffrage movement in London. Coming back to the college, she started organizing two-thirds of the students into a suffrage club and taught them the foundations of socialism and women’s rights. Following her graduation, she began working as a suffrage orator in NYC, while applying to several law schools, who rejected her because of her gender. Finally, she admitted to the New York University School of Law. While studying for her degree, she was active in several organizations – the women’s rights movement, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the National Child Labor Committee, the Equality League of Self Supporting Women and the National Woman’s Party, where she became a leading speaker. She made her most notable appearance On March 3, 1913, the day before President Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration, when she led thousands of women through the streets of Washington, DC, riding a white horse and wearing a crown and white cape, representing the “New Woman” of the 20th century. At 26, after earning her LL.B. degree and passing the bar, she began to work as a labor and children’s rights attorney. The following year, while on her way to London, she met Eugen Jan Boissevain, a Dutchman coffee importer. She proposed to him on the ship, and they got married as soon they arrived to shore, knowing each other nearly a month. They both believed in free love and saw their relationship as a fusion of minds, bodies, and souls. When WW1 erupt, she devoted her efforts to campaigning for pacifism. She traveled to Italy and became a war correspondent, writing anti-war articles that eventually led to her banishment (she believed that her outset was because she was a woman and not because of her pacifist views). When returning to the US, her health declined, and she began to suffer from pernicious anemia. In 1916, she went on a tour, advocating the National Woman’s Party on the west coast. On November 22nd, 1916, in the middle of a speech, she collapsed and was rushed to the hospital where she died 3 days later, at 30 years old. Read more...

Born in NYC and grew up in Scarsdale, New York. From age 5, her father sexually and physically abused her. Her mother knew of the abuse but was scared to interfere. The molestation stopped when Ensler was 10 years old, upon his death. As a teen, she used alcohol as a coping mechanism, an addiction that continued into her mid 20’s. At 22, after graduating from college, she had a series of abusive relationships, which dragged her deep into her addiction, and she started using drugs regularly. At 24, she married Richard McDermott, who convinced her to go to rehab. The couple divorced after ten years, during that time she adopted his biological son – the actor Dylan McDermott. After she got sober, she started writing for the theater. As a survivor of sexual abuse, Ensler suffered from physical disassociation, feeling that she could not inhabit her own body. In an attempt to understand her experience, she interviewed other women about their experiences; those interviews were the basis for the groundbreaking play “The Vagina Monologues.” The play explores subjects such as body image, consensual and nonconsensual sexual experiences, encounters with reproduction, menstrual periods, and vaginal care. It became a worldwide phenomenon, translated into 48 languages and performed in more than 140 countries. Knowing for herself how it feels to be abused, she decided to dedicate her life to end violence against girls and women, and in 1998 she founded V-Day – a global movement advocating for ending gender terror. The organization founded more than 12,000 anti-violence programs all over the world. In 2011, they opened the City of Joy in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which provides a community for survivors of gender violence. In 2012, the organization, led by Ensler, created the One Billion Rising campaign, fighting for justice and gender equality for women worldwide. Over the years she wrote 12 plays and 10 books, most of them are exploring women’s perspectives of social conventions. She has also been involved in several films, including the television version of The Vagina Monologues, “Until The Violence Stops,” and “What I Want My Words To Do To You.” In her 50’s she struggled with uterine cancer, which she details in her memoir “In the Body of the World.” Read more...

Betty Naomi Goldstein was born in Peoria, Illinois, to a Jewish family. From a young age, she was active in Jewish and Marxist circles. In high school, she wrote for the school newspaper, but after her request to write a column was declined, she founded, with six other friends, a literary magazine which dealt with subjects relating to home life. After high school, she attended the all-female Smith College, and won a scholarship for her academic achievements. She published poems in the campus publications and became editor-in-chief of the college newspaper, which became more political under her leadership. After graduating summa cum laude with a major in psychology, she received a fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley. At age 22, she started to write for left-wings and labors publications, first at Federated Press and then at UE News. At the time, she married Carl Friedan, and the couple had three children before their divorce in 1969. At the age of 31, she was dismissed from the newspaper because she was pregnant with her second child. Though she wrote as a freelance for several magazines, she was mainly a housewife, taking care of her family and doing household chores. She became restless and felt restrained and wondered if other women feel as she did. In 1957 she surveyed her fellow college graduates, asking about their experiences and satisfaction with their lives. The conclusions of the survey led her to write articles on the subject, which she called “The problem that has no name.” Those publications were the basis of her groundbreaking book – “The Feminine Mystique.” Published in 1963, the book explores the roles of women in society, their self-identity as homemakers, and finding fulfillment in life. It challenged the perception of sexism in US society and changed the context of the meaning of “women’s rights.” Not only it became a bestseller, but it also sparked the second wave of the women’s movement in the US. In 1966 Friedan co-founded the National Organization for Women and became its first president. The organization lobbied for equal rights matters, such as the outlaw of discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, enforcing civil rights laws against workplace discrimination, equal access to public places, establishing national daycare system and the legalization of abortion. Throughout the years, she founded various organizations focusing on women’s needs and women’s rights, including the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws, the First Women’s Bank and Trust Company, and the National Women’s Political Caucus. She published six books, including The Second Stage and The Fountain of Age, and lectured at universities as well as women’s conferences around the world. She died at the age of 85 due to heart failure. To this day, she is referred as the “mother” of the modern women’s movement. Read more...