Ketanji Brown Jackson was born in Washington, DC, and grew up in Miami, Florida. She attended Palmetto Senior high school, where she was a member of the debate team and president of the student body. She studied government at Harvard University, graduating magna cum laude, and then worked for a short time as a researcher and reporter at TIME Magazine. In 1993, at 23, she continued her studies at Harvard Law School, where she served as the supervising editor of the Harvard Law Review. In 1996, the same year she received her law degree, she married Patrick Graves Jackson. For the next decade, she worked in both the private and public sectors. She clerked for several federal judges, including Judge Patti B. Saris of the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts, Judge Bruce M. Selya of the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and Justice Stephen Breyer of the US Supreme Court. In 2003, at the age of 33, Jackson returned to work for the government, first as an assistant special counsel to the US Sentencing Commission and then as an assistant federal public defender. In 2009, President Obama nominated her to serve as vice-chair of the US Sentencing Commission for four years. After President Barack Obama’s nomination, she began serving on the US District Court for the District of Columbia in March 2013. In June 2021, following President Joe Biden’s nomination, she was confirmed as a circuit judge for the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. In the following year, President Biden announced her nomination for associate justice of the US Supreme Court, and on April 7th, 2022, 52 years old Jackson became the first black woman in the Supreme Court. She is also the first federal public defender to sit on the court and the first justice in almost 30 years to have represented criminal defendants. Jackson is serving on various boards and committees, including the Judicial Conference Committee on Defender Services, Harvard University’s Board of Overseers, the Council of the American Law Institute, the board of Georgetown Day School, and the US Supreme Court Fellows Commission.   Dive deeper into the inspiring story of Ketanji Brown Jackson with our fun and engaging printable worksheet! Available now on Etsy and Teachers Pay Teachers. Read more...

Mary Ann Shadd was born in Wilmington, Delaware, to free African-Americans and abolitionists parents. Her father was a conductor on the Underground Railroad, and their home was a refuge for fugitive slaves. When she was 10 years old, it became illegal for African-Americans to receive education in Delaware, so the family moved to Pennsylvania, where she attended a Quaker Boarding School. At 16, after graduating high school, she established a school for black children in East Chester, and later she taught in several cities, including NYC. At the age of 27, the family moved to Canada, following the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which allowed everyone to capture free slaves and returning them to their masters. As a natural-born activist, Shadd became an outspoken advocate for full racial integration and encouraged African-Americans to immigrate to Canada. She founded a school for both black and white children, and in 1852, she published a pamphlet titled “Notes on Canada West,” in which she discussed the benefits and the opportunities that wait for African-Americans in Canada. In 1953, she established “The Provincial Freeman” – the first anti-slavery newspaper, which made her the first female journalist in Canada and the first black female editor in North America. In its seven years of publication in Canada and the US, it explored a variety of topics, from immigration to world events and culture. Her unorthodox approach toward immigration made her a controversial figure in her community, and it almost cost her speech at the Philadelphia Colored Convention of 1855. When Shadd was 33, she married Thomas F. Cary, and when he died four years later, while she was pregnant with their second child, she returned to the US. During the Civil War, she served as a recruiting officer, enlisting black volunteers for the Union Army. After the war, she settled in Washington, DC, where she worked as a teacher while attending evening classes at Howard University Law School. In 1883, Shadd graduated at the age of 60 and became the second black woman in the US to earn a law degree. She never stopped writing, publishing articles in numerous newspapers, including The People’s Advocate and the National Era. Shadd was also a women’s rights activist, working alongside Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony at the National Woman Suffrage Association, and in 1880, she established the Colored Women’s Progressive Franchise – an organization promoting equal rights of African-American women. She died at the age of 70 from stomach cancer. Read more...

Born Phyllis McAlpin Stewart in St. Louis, Missouri. Growing up during the great depression, her father was unemployed, and her mother supported the family. She studied at a private Catholic girls’ school, from which she graduated valedictorian. After high school, she was granted a scholarship to Maryville College of the Sacred Heart but moved to the Washington University in St. Louis. To pay for tuition, she worked night shifts test-firing guns at a munition factory. At the age of 20, after graduating Phi Beta Kappa with a Bachelor of Arts, she continued to study for a Master’s degree in government at Radcliffe College. At 22, she joined a conservative think tank for a short time, before joining the Claude I. Bakewell’s campaign for the United States House of Representatives. At the age of 25, she married John Fred Schlafly Jr. – a wealthy attorney, and the couple moved to Alton, Illinois. She became politicly active after attending the Republican National Convention of 1952, and during this year, she made her first run for the US Congress but lost in the general election. After another loss in the 1960 elections, she began to serve as head of the Illinois Federation of Republican Women. In 1964, at the age of 40, she published her first book – A Choice Not An Echo, in which she discussed the issue of elitism in the Republican party. It sold millions of copies and was credited for the wide support of Barry Goldwater during the 1964 presidential campaign. In 1967. After losing the National Federation of Republican Women’s presidency, she began publishing a monthly newsletter titled “The Phyllis Schlafly Report,” promoting her political views. During 1972 when Congress passed the Equal Rights Amendment, ERA, and its ratification in the states started, Schlafly launched a campaign to stop its ratification – Stop ERA. She argued that the ERA is threatening traditional gender roles, strip women from their gender privileges and housewives’ benefits, and force them to work and serve in the military. In 1975, she founded and led the Eagle Forum, which gathered hundreds of thousands of women from all over the country to fight against the ERA ratification. They reached out to their legislators in various ways, from writing letters to sending them homemade food with slogans such as “Preserve us from a congressional jam; Vote against the ERA sham.” She was a key player at the failure of the ratification of the ERA by 38 states. Following the ERA defeat, Schlafly remained politicly active, serving as a delegate at Republican national conventions, providing commentaries on the radio, appearing on TV, and writing a newspaper column, where she was outspoken against issues such as abortions and legalization of same-sex marriage. In 1993, after her husband died, she moved to Ladue, Missouri, where she lived until she died at the age of 92. Read more...

Kamala Devi Harris was born in Oakland, California. Both of her parents were immigrants, her mother from India, and her father from Jamaica. Growing up in Berkeley, California, during the civil rights movement, she saw the lawyers as the architects of change and decided to become one. In kindergarten, she traveled daily from the predominantly black neighborhood she lived in, to a school in Thousand Oaks as part of desegregation efforts. When she was 7 years old, her parents got divorced, and 5 years later, she moved with her mother and sister to Montreal, Canada. There she had her first political initiative – protesting against a policy that banned children from playing on the lawn of their apartment building. After high school, Harris returned to the US to attended Howard University, from which she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science and economics. While in school, she held her first campaign as a class representative of the student council. Harris also chaired the economics society, led the debate team, and was a member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. At 22, she moved to California to study Law at Hastings College, where she served as president of its chapter of the Black Law Students Association. At the age of 25, after passing the bar examination, Harris began a career at the deputy district attorney in Alameda County, California. In this position, she prosecuted cases of sexual abuse, drug trafficking, and gang violence. In 1998, she began to work as an assistant district attorney for the San Francisco district attorney and then as City Attorney at San Francisco City Hall. In 2004, Harris took over her former employer, becoming the District Attorney of the City and County of San Francisco, the first woman as well as an African-American woman. In 2010, she was elected as the Attorney General of California and once again made history for being the first woman and the first person of color serving in this position. In-office, she prosecuted cases of guns, drugs, and human trafficking, she defended the Affordable Care Act, protected the climate change law, helped win marriage equality, and created the Open Justice platform – a public online criminal justice database. In 2015, Harris declared her candidacy for the US Senate, in her campaign, she called for the protection of women’s reproductive rights, increase the minimum wage and immigration and criminal-justice reforms. In 2017, when she was sworn as US Senator for California, she became the first South Asian-American and second US African-American woman senator. After taking office, Harris began serving on various committees, including the Committee on the Judiciary, the Select Committee on Intelligence, the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. At the beginning of 2019, she announced her nomination for the Democratic presidential election, but by the end of the year, she decided to quit the race. On August 11th, 2020, Joe Biden, the Democratic candidate in the 2020 presidential elections, announced her as his vice-president, and at 55, Harris became the first woman of color to run as the vice-presidential nominee for a major party ticket. Biden-Harris won the 2020 elections. January, 20th, 2021, was Harris’s first day as the first female Vice President of the US. On July 21st, 2024, following US President Joe Biden’s decision to retire from the re-election campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee.   Dive deeper into the inspiring story of Kamala Harris with our fun and engaging printable worksheet! Available now on Etsy and Teachers Pay Teachers. Read more...

Born as Belva Ann Bennett in Royalton, NY, the second of five children. Until age 14, she attended schoolhouses, and afterward, she taught at local schools until she got married at age 18 to Uriah McNall. Five years after the wedding, her husband died of tuberculosis, and Lockwood realized that to support herself and her daughter, she needed a better education. She returned to teaching and used the money to pay for classes at a college prep school, and at 27, she graduated with honors from Genesee College. She decided that change to women’s suffrage will happen from inside the system, by knowing the law. Since at her college, there has been no law department, she took private lessons with a local law professor. After graduating, she served as the headmistress of the Lockport Union School, until she found out that she was paid half of what her male colleagues were earning. She continued to teach and work as the principal at several local schools for girls. Influenced by Susan B. Anthony, Lockwood expanded the school’s curriculum, adding courses such as gymnastics and public speaking, which was customary for young boys but not for girls. At the age of 36, Lockwood moved with her daughter to Washington, DC, where she opened a private school and began her law studies. Two years later, she married Reverend Ezekiel Lockwood, an American Civil War veteran with progressive views. He supported Lockwood’s pursued studying law and raised her daughter as his own. She tried to enroll in various law schools, which rejected her admission applications because of her gender, like the Columbian Law School, for example, which rejected her out of fear that she would distract the male students. Eventually, she and 14 other women were allowed to enroll in the new National University Law School. At 43, Lockwood graduated law school, admitted to the bar of the District of Columbia, and worked as a lawyer in her own firm, arguing in cases against women discrimination, such as the right to inherit property and unequal pay. When she found out she cannot argue before the Supreme Court, she dedicated the next five years lobbying a bill that allows women to practice law before the US Supreme Court, and in 1879 she became the first woman to do so. In 1884, 54 years old Lockwood became the first woman to officially run for President of the United States as the candidate of the National Equal Rights Party. Though she and her running mate, Marietta Stow, polled less than 5,000 votes, they raised women’s awareness of politics and public policy. Four years later, Lockwood ran for the presidency for the second time, but the chances for her to win were low in the first place since women could not vote, alongside a lack of support from newspapers and other politicians. She continued to promote her beliefs in gender equality and world peace, writing and advocating until her last year, when she died in May 1917. Read more...

Born as Joan Ruth Bader to a family of Jewish descent in Brooklyn, NYC. Her mother, Celia, wanted her to get a good education and encouraged her to be independent. Sadly, she passed away a day before Ginsburg’s graduation. She earned her bachelor’s degree in government from Cornell University and finished first in her class. There, she met Martin Ginsburg, and they got married a month after her graduation. After Martin got drafted into the US Army, they moved to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where she worked for the Social Security Administration office. Ginsburg got a demotion after becoming pregnant. At 23, Ginsburg enrolled at Harvard Law School and was one of only 9 women in a class of 500 men. The Dean of Harvard Law chided the female students for taking the place of male students. Martin, also a law student at Harvard, was diagnosed with cancer. In addition to her classes and taking care of their two-year-old daughter, Ginsburg also attended his classes, taking notes and typing his papers. When he found a job in NYC, she transferred to Columbia Law School and graduated first in her class. Despite her academic record, she struggled to find a job due to her gender, and eventually was hired as a law clerk for Judge Edmund L. Palmieri. Afterward, she worked as a research associate and as an associate director of the Columbia Law School Project on International Procedure. In 1963, Ginsburg became a professor at Rutgers Law School, becoming one of less than 20 female law professors in the US. While working there, her salary was lower than male colleagues because she was married, and her husband had a good income. At 37 years old, she co-founded the Women’s Rights Law Reporter – a law journal focusing on women’s rights. In 1972, she began teaching at Columbia, becoming the first female tenured professor in Colombia’s Law School. With the rise of the second wave of feminism during the ’70s, she decided to fight for women’s rights by changing the American discrimination laws. She co-founded the Women’s Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. She took cases that would get her to argue in the Supreme Court. The hard part at the beginning was to convince the court that such discrimination exists. She won 5 out of 6 gender discrimination cases she argued before the Supreme Court. In 1980, RBG served at the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, a position she served for 13 years. In 1993, she was appointed as the 107th Associate Justice of the Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton, the second US female justice and the first Jewish female justice in this position. As a supreme judge, Ginsburg is known for her strong voice for gender equality, worker’s rights, and separation of church and state. In 1999, she was diagnosed with cancer, which returned four more times till she passed away of metastatic pancreatic cancer complications on September 18th, 2020, when she was 87 years.   Dive deeper into the inspiring story of Ruth Bader Ginsburg with our fun and engaging printable worksheet! Available now on Etsy and Teachers Pay Teachers. Read more...

Born Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, she grew up in the South Side of Chicago – sharing one attic, divided by wood paneling, with her parents and a brother. She was an excellent student, who skipped the second grade, enrolled into a gifted class in elementary school, and graduated as the salutatorian of her class from Whitney Young High School, Chicago’s first magnet high school. After high school, she studied at Princeton and later at Harvard Law School, where she became more aware of discrimination based on socioeconomic status, gender, and race. She joined demonstration for hiring professors from minority groups and worked for the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, aiding low-income tenants with housing cases. At the age of 25, she sat in a 47th-floor office, working for a Chicago-based prestigious law firm, a job she hated for it felt like “document production.” There she met her future husband, Barack Obama, whom she mentored as a summer associate. As her husband climbed to the US presidency, she left corporate law for public service practice, working for Chicago’s City Hall and the University of Chicago and raising their two daughters. After her husband won the presidential campaign on January 20th, 2009, he became the first black US president, and she became the first black first lady of the US. During her time in the White House(2009-2017), she became a role model for women and an icon of “relatability” – making her position less official and distant from the public, using familiar language, and expressing her opinions openly, even if controversial. She also advocated for healthy nutrition and lifestyle, mainly for children. As a First Lady, she became one of the most popular women in US history, and in 2018, she was ranked the most admired woman of the year in Gallup’s Most Admired List and stayed at the top for several years. The post-White House years secured her status as an icon. She published a memoir, “Becoming,” which was the best-selling book of 2018. In it, she wrote about professional and personal matters, including the fertility treatments the couple went through to conceive their two daughters, and courageously revealed her feelings of being a ‘damaged woman’ because of her difficulties to conceive. By that, she brought great awareness to a sensitive subject that causes many women great pain, along with the political issues of the cultural and social definitions of fulfillment as a woman first and most by becoming a mother.   Dive deeper into the inspiring story of Michelle Obama with our fun and engaging printable worksheet! Available now on Etsy and Teachers Pay Teachers. Read more...

Alice Paul was born to a wealthy Quaker family on a small New Jersey farm. As Quakers, her parents supported gender equality, including education for women. From a young age, she developed a passion for reading and learning. After graduating high school, top of her class, she studied biology at Swarthmore College, where she was a member of the Executive Board of Student Government. It sparked her interest in political activism, and she moved to NYC to complete a fellowship at the College Settlement House social work. She went on to study and gain multiple degrees, including a Ph.D. in sociology and three law degrees. During a fellowship in England, Paul became involved with the militant Women’s Social and Political Union in London, first selling Suffragist magazines on street corners and then, alongside fellow American suffragette Lucy Burns, organized events, campaigns and established the Scottish branch of the organization. She learned militant protest tactics, such as picketing and hunger strikes, and became known as one who put herself in danger in public events to increase the visibility of the movement. Despite the violent experience of 7 arrests, 3 imprisonments, and 4-week force-feeding, campaigning for the cause of suffrage became her life mission. Upon her return home in 1910, Paul joined the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). She became a central figure in organizing the 1913 Women March in Washington the day before President Wilson’s inauguration, in which about 8000 women marched through Pennsylvania Avenue, viewed by a half million people, many of them harassing and heckling the marchers. In 1916, Paul’s militant approach created tension between her and the NAWSA, and she left to found the National Woman’s Party (NWP). The following year, she stood wearing a white dress and holding purple and gold banners as part of the Silent Sentinels – the first political picket in front of the White House. She was arrested but did not receive the special treatment she was supposed to as a political prisoner, living in harsh conditions and poor sanitation. With her fellow suffragist prisoners, Paul embarked on a hunger strike, for which she was transferred to the prison’s psychiatric ward, being tied up and forced fed. Her methods led to the end of the long struggle of the US suffrage movement, with the ratification of the 19th amendment, granting the legal voting right for women. After women’s suffrage was achieved, Paul moved her efforts to the international arena: co-founding the World Woman’s Party and lobbing for gender equality. She then went back to national politics, drafting the Equal Rights Amendment, which is still in the process of ratification during the 21st century. In 1945, she lobbied for the inclusion of the equality for women clause in the United Nations proclamations, and at the age of 79, she ensured that the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had a ‘protection for women’ paragraph. Paul was considered professionally demanding and personally conservative, including being criticized for elitism and racism within the suffragist movement. Among the many biographies of her life, little is mentioned about her personal life. Paul passed away at 92 years old in New Jersey. Read more...