Born as Frances Levenstein in New Haven, Connecticut. At 18, just after graduating high school, she enrolled in the New York University School of Law, where she met her husband Charles G. Roth. To pay for school, she worked at a settlement house, a law office, and her father’s shoe store in New Haven. At 21, she became the first woman to be admitted to the Connecticut Bar Association. Afterward, she worked for 12 years as an assistant prosecutor at the New Haven city court and became the first female prosecutor in the city. She also worked for the domestic relations department with abused women, wayward girls, and violent husbands. Witnessing thousands of family disputes, she decided to take action and wrote articles presenting practical ways to improve the court system and creating a domestic relations court. At 41, she resigned from her job as a prosecutor to work in the Bureau of Child Welfare. There, she published two reports about juvenile delinquencies and created a form that simplifies the young offenders’ reporting of cases. It was later adapted in more than 160 cities. She then started to advise the juvenile court justices on improving its work methods and legislation interpretation. In 1939, she led 150 women to the Connecticut Senate chamber advocating for the passage of a juvenile court reform bill. When the bill passed two years later, she was assigned to supervise and organize the new juvenile court. During WW2, she was appointed secretary of the Social Protection Committee in the Connecticut War Council and founded an association of policewomen to deal with girls’ misconduct issues. She left the government at the age of 49 and began to work as a defense attorney, representing Connecticut in the American Arbitration Association. Because of her reputation as a “Doer,” she was asked by the New Haven Restaurant Association to direct a new culinary school, which later evolved into what is known today as The Culinary Institute of America. The school offered an education program under the GI Bill, training veterans in the culinary arts. When the school opened on May 22, 1946, it had only sixteen students, and by the time she retired, 18 years later, the school had 300 students. Today the school is considered one of the premier culinary colleges in the world. Upon her retirement from the school management, at the age of 68, she was appointed as a consulted for the Office of Economic Opportunity. She passed away seven years later, at the age of 75. 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...

Bella Savitzky Abzug was born in New York City to a Russian-Jewish immigrants family. She studied political science at Hunter College of the City University of New York and simultaneously attended the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. In 1944, she earned her law degree from Columbia University. As a lawyer, she specialized in labor, civil, and equal rights cases. Alongside being a lawyer, she was an activist that co-founded Women Strike for Peace in 1961. As one of their main actions, they organized a national peace protest attended by 50,000 women in 60 cities around the United States to protest against nuclear weapons testing. In 1971, Abzug won the election to the United States House of Representatives, the ninth woman who represented NY in the House. On her first day, she introduced a bill to remove all US troops from Vietnam. She was also one of the first to propose a bill for gay rights in Congress. Abzug kept her position till 1977 and used her voice to fight for gender equality and worldwide peace. Although failing to reelect to the US House, she continued promoting women’s rights in the US and abroad. In 1991, she co-founded the Women’s Environment and Development Organization, WEDO, organizing women for international conferences and actions for the Women’s Rights Movement. She co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus to increase the number of women in all aspects of political life. In her last years, she traveled worldwide promoting gender equality and lobbied to advance the Women’s Agenda for the 21st Century at the UN Conference on Environment and Development. She gave her last public speech before the UN in March 1998. The same month, she died of heart failure after battling breast cancer. Read more...