Born in New York City to an affluent and politically dominant family, she became an orphan at the age of 8 and was raised by her grandmother. At 15 she was sent to London to study languages and arts in a private school, where her headmistress Marie Souvestre inspired her political and social awareness. After returning to New York, she married her distant cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who later became the 32nd president of The United States. By his side, she was a politically active First Lady for no less than 12 years. The couple had six children. In addition to advising her husband in his political career, she was an active member of various organizations promoting equal rights for women, racial and social justice. Her vast activity is said to have been boosted after finding out about her husband’s affair: she decided to stay by his side but availed herself to independent activism, and her own affairs with both women and men. She was the author of several books, contributed content to many publications and radio shows, including the popular newspaper column “My Day,” which was published six days a week for 26 years, and delivered many speeches during her nationwide travels. At 62 she was appointed to the first US delegation to the United Nations, where she was central in creating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Until her death, she was involved in policy making, notably chairing the President’s Commission on the Status of Women. Read more...

Mary Ellen Lawson Dabbs was born in Rusk County, Texas. Her family owned a cotton plantation, and she participated in activities usually reserved only for men. She received her education at the county school and later attended the Furlow Masonic College in Georgia. She graduated first in her class. Back in Texas, she met her husband – a widower merchant with four children who was twenty years older than her. While taking care of his children and giving birth to five more, she helped him in his business. When his sons were older enough, he deeded over his property to them, and Dabbs realized she needs to be independent with an income of her own, so at the age of 33, she decided to end her tempestuous marriage and pursue medicine. The first step was not to have more children, and she stopped having sex with her husband. He physically abused her for that until she reported him to the authorities and moved to Sulphur Springs filing for divorce on the grounds of cruelty. Next, she began to study at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Keokuk, Iowa, then midwifery in St. Louis. At the age of 37, she completed her medical degree. At the time, her divorce was not finalized, and her husband bribed the local sheriff and the district clerk not to notify her about the date of the final hearing, which caused the dismission of the divorce case. She moved to Dallas to practice medicine, but that attempt was unsuccessful, so she returned to Sulphur Springs, where she set up a practice presenting herself as a widow. With her own experience of the unequal results of the divorce prosses, Dabbs began to pay interest in the women’s rights movement. She moved to Fort Worth, where there were already seven women who practiced medicine. She was Texas delegate at the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and was chosen as the state chair of the Woman’s Southern Council. A year later, she co-founded the Texas Equal Rights Association –the Texan women’s suffrage society. At age 41, she was chosen as the president of the “Women’s Congress,” and promoted legislation concerning women’s welfare, such as age-of-consent and the establishment of a women’s industrial school, that became Texas Woman’s University. During the Spanish–American War, Dabbs volunteered for six months as a contract nurse at Camp Cuba Libre, where she contracted tuberculosis. It affected her health for the rest of her life. In 1899, after her house was destroyed by fire, she returned to Rusk, but eventually, she traded her farm and moved to Oklahoma, where she continued to practice medicine. When her tuberculosis was getting worse, she moved to New Mexico in the hope of being cured, but she took her own life when she realized the stage of the disease. She is buried in an anonymous grave for victims of tuberculosis. Read more...

Kim Kardashian was born in Los Angeles, California, the second of four children. When she was 9 years old, her parents got divorced, and not long after, her mother married the Olympic gold medalist Bruce Jenner (later Caitlyn). She and her siblings were educated to be independent and to earn their own money, so during her school years (the all-girls Catholic), she worked in her father’s company, which she inherited with her siblings after her father passed away in 2003. At 19, she eloped with her boyfriend, the music producer Damon Thomas. They divorced after three years because he abused her physically and emotionally. During the early 2000’s she became known as the stylist for her childhood friend, Paris Hilton, frequently appearing on The Simple Life reality show. At 26, Kardashian had her first business endeavor when she and her sisters, Kourtney and Khloé, opened a boutique store named D-A-S-H, selling their clothing and fragrances collections. In 2007, a sex tape of her and her boyfriend, the R&B singer Ray J, leaked online and was distributed as Kim Kardashian, Superstar. With her growing fame, alongside the debut of the new reality show “Keeping up with the Kardashians,” which followed her and her extended family, she was able to channel her status as socialite into a business of its own. She began featuring in films and TV shows, such as “How I Met Your Mother,” “30 rock,” “CSI: NY,” and “90210.” She was a guest judge at “America’s Next Top Model” and a guest host at “WrestleMania XXIV.” “Keeping up with the Kardashians”’ success led to several spin-offs, including “Kourtney and Kim Take Miami,” and “Kourtney and Kim Take New York.” In 2008, she founded Kimsaprincess Productions and became involved in various business ventures, including a workout DVD series and different product endorsements, from beauty products to credit cards. Kardashian became the face of the Seven Bar Foundation’s campaign for funding women entrepreneurs while launching an online shoe company. In 2011, Kardashian married the NBA player, Kris Humphries. Their wedding preparations and celebration were televised in a two-part special on E!. Sadly, 72 days after the ceremony, the couple filed for an annulment. The following year, she began dating the rapper, Kanye West, and they married two years later. Kardashian was always open and sincere about her pregnancies, sharing her experiences with preeclampsia and the early birth of her first child, and with the fertility issues she dealt with in her second pregnancy, which afterward she was advised not to become pregnant again, and her third and fourth child were born via a surrogate. In 2014, she made a sensation when she appeared nude on the cover of Paper’s magazine with the caption “Break the Internet.” The response to this photo is recognized as a landmark of the new era of social media. In that same year, she released a mobile game, in which the user mission is to become a Hollywood star. The game gained US$1.6 million in less than a week. Following her enormous successes, she began charging between $75,000 and $300,000 for an endorsement post on social media, and within four years, she was paid $720,000 for a single post. In addition to been a social media icon and influencer, she kept on opening new businesses, including the KKW beauty and perfume line, an OPI nail polish line, a contemporary jewelry line, and the Skims shapewear. Read more...

Jovita Idar was born in Laredo, Texas. Her parents advocated for Mexican Americans’ civil rights, and she and her seven siblings grew up in a socially and politically active household. Idar attended the Methodist Holding Institute in Laredo, earning her teaching certificate in 1903. Afterward, she moved to Los Ojuelos, where she taught Chicano children (Mexican-Americans with no Anglo heritage). There, she experienced the segregation and poor conditions of this community. Upon the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in 1910, Idar resigned from her teaching position and returned to Laredo to work in her father’s newspaper, La Crónica (The Chronicle), which advocated for Mexican-American rights. Using a pseudonym, she focused on the loss of Mexican culture and the use of the Spanish language, Mexican-Americans’ poor living and working conditions, and lynching. She also used this platform to promote women’s suffrage and wrote articles encouraging women to vote. In 1911, the Idar family organized the First Mexican Congress to unite Mexicans to fight injustice. That same year, she founded and served as the first president of the feminist organization La Liga Feminil Mexicaista (the League of Mexican Women), which encouraged women to break out of the domestic sphere, offered study sessions for women, and established bilingual schools for children. Over time, the organization provided food and clothes to those in need. She also founded the El Etudiante, a bilingual education newspaper for teachers which offered practical methods for bilingual education. During the Mexican Revolution in 1913, 28 years old Idar crossed the border to help people injured in the attack on the city of Nuevo Laredo. She joined the La Cruz Blanca (the White Cross) and volunteered as a nurse. In 1914, on her return to the US, she began to write for the El Progreso newspaper. Following a criticizing article she published about US President Woodrow Wilson’s decision to send US troops to the border, the Texas Rangers came to newspaper offices to shut it down. However, Idar argued that per the First Amendment, the newspaper could publish opinion articles and physically block the entrance to the office. The Texas Rangers left but returned the next day while Idar was away and destroyed the newspaper’s presses. The incident did not hold her back, and she continued to publish her articles in other papers. Several months afterward, her father died, and she became the editor of La Crónica. Two years later, she founded another paper called Evolución. In 1917, at 32, she married Bartolo Juárez, and soon after, they moved to San Antonio, Texas. There, she became active in the Democratic Party, co-founded with her husband the Democratic Club, and served as editor of the Methodist Church publication El Heraldo Cristiano. She continued to promote equal rights for women and established a free kindergarten. She also volunteered as a translator at the county hospital and taught hygiene and childcare classes to women. She died at 61 from a pulmonary hemorrhage caused by advanced tuberculosis. Read more...

Sheila Crump was born in Pennsylvania and grew up in Illinois. She found her love for music at an early age, becoming an accomplished violinist by 9. In 1970, at the age of 21, she received her B.A. in music performance and education from the University of Illinois and moved to Washington, DC, with her first husband, Robert Johnson. There, she worked as a violin instructor at a private school and gave private violin lessons to supplement her income. Within four years, her private lessens business grew, and when she had 100 students, she left her position at school and founded a youth orchestra called Young Strings in Action, which performed both in the US and abroad. In 1980, Johnson and her husband founded Black Entertainment Television (BET), a cable network that approached African American viewers. She closed her music business and became the network’s community relations manager and the producer of teenagers’ talk shows. By the late 1990s, BET took a raunchy direction, and Johnson became concerned about its sexually explicit content and how it portrays and influences young women. In 1999, she began to pursue other business opportunities and sold BET to Viacom for an overall sum of $3 billion, making her, at the age of 53, the first black woman billionaire in the US. In 2005, Johnson married William T. Newman, Jr., divorcing her first husband three years earlier. She purchased a 350-acre estate in Middleburg, Virginia, and built the Salamander Inn & Spa, founding Salamander Hospitality LLC, a hotel resort and spa management firm. During this period, Johnson became the majority owner of the WNBA’s Washington Mystics, serving as its President and Managing Partner. A woman of varied interests, Johnson is also involved in the film industry. Since 2008, she has produced numerous films, all with humanitarian messages – Kicking It, A Powerful Noise, She Is the Matador, The Other City, and the critically acclaimed film The Butler. Throughout the years, Johnson spent much of her time and fortune on philanthropic work. She donated money to various institutes, including the United Negro College Fund, Howard University, and the Parsons School of Design. She founded the Sheila Crump Johnson Institute at the State University of New York to support the college community diversity and co-founded the WE Capital consortium to aid female-led enterprises. Johnson sits on the boards of many organizations; among them are the Americans for the Arts, the University of Illinois Foundation, the Curry School of Education, VH1’s Save the Music Foundation, and the Greater Washington Partnership. Read more...

Born in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Her parents were administrators of Indian affairs and supported Native Americans in need. She completed her undergraduate studies in music and education in the Tennessee State Agricultural and Industrial College, and continued to graduate school at the University of Chicago. In Chicago, she became active in the Civil Rights Movement, working undercover for the National Urban League, investigating racial discrimination for African-American employees. At that time, she met her first husband, Ed Clayton, who was also a civil rights activist. In 1965, upon the request of Martin Luther King, the Claytons’ moved to Atlanta, GA, where she continued her political and activism work. Along with Coretta Scott King, she organized events for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and they traveled together for Mrs. Kings’ concert tours across the state. In the following years, she was appointed as a coordinator for the Doctors’ Committee for Implementation, advocating for the desegregation of hospital facilities in Atlanta. The project became a model for desegregation throughout the country, receiving national honor from the National Medical Association. Through the program, she met Calvin Craig, the Grand Dragon of the Georgia Ku Klux Klan, and persuade him to denounce the KKK. In 1968 Clayton became the first African-American in the South to host a daily prime time television show when she started hosting her talk show – “The Xernona Clayton Show,” which ran for seven years. In 1979, she joined Turner Broadcasting as a documentary producer and retired after 30 years as the director and vice-president of public affairs. In 1993 she founded the Trumpet Awards Foundation Inc, honoring accomplishments of African-Americans every year. After retiring from Turner Broadcasting, she began serving on boards of various organizations, including the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change and the Board of Review for the state of Georgia’s Department of Labor. In 2004 she initiated the International Civil Rights Walk of Fame at the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site in Atlanta.   Read more...

Caitlyn Marie Jenner was born William Bruce Jenner in Mount Kisco, New York. As an undiagnosed dyslectic boy, Jenner struggled at school but found an outlet in sports. After high school’s sophomore year, Jenner’s family moved to Newtown, Connecticut, where he began his athletic career, playing basketball and gridiron football and practicing waterskiing independently, winning the East Coast all-over champion three times. After graduating, Jenner earned a football scholarship at Graceland College in Lamoni, Iowa, and studied physical education. A few months into freshman year, Jenner had a knee injury and was forced to stop playing football. His coach recognized his talent and encouraged him to switch to track. In 1970, at the age of 21, Jenner debuted as a decathlete, reaching 5th place in the Drake Relays decathlon. Less than two years later, he participated in the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, West Germany, finishing in 10th place. In the next Olympics in Montreal, Canada, 27 years old Jenner won the gold medal in the decathlon and set a new world record with a score of 8,634 points. Following his Olympic success, Jenner became a television sports commentator and a spokesperson for Wheaties breakfast cereal. In the next few decades, he made television commercials, starred in several television programs, published numerous books, became a motivational speaker, and headed the aircraft company Bruce Jenner Aviation. In 2007, Jenner’s fame renewed when he starred on the reality show Keeping Up with the Kardashians alongside his (then) wife Kris Kardashian and their children. In 2015, at the age of 66, Jenner revealed that she identifies herself as a woman and adopts the name Caitlyn Marie Jenner. Her transition was documented in the reality series I Am Cait. Her coming out as a trans woman and her public gender reassignment process became a cultural milestone, breaking many stereotypes and prejudices for American people. Jenner became a transgender rights activist advocating for transgender rights. Read more...

Lucille Désirée Ball was born in Jamestown, New York. When she was 3 years old, her father had died, and she moved with her mother and little brother to her grandparents’ house in Celoron, New York. At the age of 12, while auditioning for the chorus line of her stepfathers’ Shriner’s organization, Ball discovered her passion for performing, realizing that this was a great way to earn praise and recognition. At 17, Ball came to NYC, auditioning for various productions while working as a house model for Hattie Carnegie. At 21, after two years of hiatus due to rheumatoid arthritis, she landed some chorus work on Broadway, using the name Diane Belmont. Afterward, she moved to Hollywood and acted in various minor movie roles. In 1937, at the age of 26, Ball was cast in her first credited part, starring alongside Ginger Rogers and Katharine Hepburn in the film The Three Musketeers. During the 1940s, Ball became known as the current “Queen of the B’s” for starring in numerous B-movies. One of them was the musical Too Many Girls, where she and Desi Arnaz, who already played together in her previous movie, became a couple. They got married that same year. Between one acting job to another, Ball gained exposure working in radio shows, including The Phil Baker Show and CBS’s My Favorite Husband. Ball’s portray of the wacky wife caught the attention of the producers, who asked her to develop a TV show. Insisting on working with her real-life husband, the network rejected the pilot, claiming that the audience will not believe that a Cuban and a red-haired Caucasian is a couple. Instead, Ball and Arnaz created a vaudeville act, in which she played a housewife who wants to get into her husband’s show. In light of the act’s successes, I Love Lucy got into the CBS lineup. The show was produced by Desilu – the production company that Ball and Arnaz had founded, for which Ball became the first woman to head a TV production company. In I Love Lucy, Ball played a witty housewife who finds creative ways to leave the house. Ball charmed the audience with her range, physical comedy, and timing. Premiered on October 15, 1951, the show immediately became the #1 watched sitcom, with a record of an overall of 67.3 on Nielsen ratings over its six years course. The show was innovative in television broadcasting, being the first production to film before a live studio audience and to use three cameras. While I Love Lucy was on the air, Ball was also teaching a comedy workshop at the Brandeis-Bardin Institute. During the show’s time off, she and Arnaz starred together in two films and produced various movies and TV shows, including The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Untouchables, Mission: Impossible, and Star Trek. In 1957, after the show ended, 46 years old Ball returned to Broadway and the radio, hosting a radio talk show called Let’s Talk to Lucy. She continued to star in two more successful sitcoms – The Lucy Show (1962-1968) and Here’s Lucy (1968-1974). In 1960, she and Arnaz got divorced, and in the following year, she married her second husband, Gary Morton, who was 13 years younger than her. During the 1980s, Ball performed in various television specials and had a TV comeback with the sitcom Life with Lucy. Ball died at the age of 78 from a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm, leaving behind her a legacy of joy and laughter, inspiring many comediennes and actresses to follow her path. Read more...

Born in Nebraska as Catherine Elizabeth Woods in 1947, and nowadays she is one of the most successful women in the US, but it didn’t come easy. As a child, her family lived in a housing project, and at the age of 14, she lied about her age to get a job. At 18 she got married and had a son, which became a turning point in her life. In her words – “It was the reason I took my life seriously for the first time as a teenager and made a promise to myself, my son and God that he would not become a black statistic.” Her journey in the media started in a local newspaper in Omaha (NE). In 1971, She moved to DC to lecture at the School of Communications at Howard University. She became general sales manager of the university’s radio station, WHUR-FM, and led to increasing the station revenue from $250,000 to $3 million in her first year. By 1975, Hughes became the first woman Vice President and General Manager of a station in the nation’s capital. In 1980, Hughes purchased her first radio station, WOL, DC, and founded “Radio One”. At first, she faced severe financial problems, which eventually led her to lose her home and move with her son to live at the radio station. After pioneering an innovative format – “24-Hour Talk from a Black Perspective” with the theme “Information is Power,” the station began to rise and succeed, and she served as the station’s morning show host for 11 years. Radio One became a huge success and went on to own 70 radio stations in nine major markets in the US, which made it the first African-American company in radio history to dominate several major markets and the first woman-owned radio station to rank number one in any major market. In 1999, Cathy Hughes became the first African-American woman to chair a publicly held corporation, when Radio One went public under the NASDAQ. Today Radio One, renamed to Urban One, includes a cable TV network, radio stations, and digital media platforms. Her son, Alfred Liggins III, is the CEO and president of Radio One, while Hughes serves as a Chairperson. Read more...

Born the youngest of 13 children to former slaves, in Wichita, Kansas. When at the age of 7 she moved with her family to Colorado, she was one of only two black children in her class. As a young girl, she used to sing everywhere, and when turning 17, McDaniel left school to become a performer at her brother’s minstrel show. One year later she got married and left her brother’s show to organize an all-women minstrel show and to tour with a black ensemble. After a few years, McDaniel embarked on a radio career as a performer and was among the first African-American women to perform on the radio in the US. In the Great Crash of 1929, McDaniel, 36 years old at that time, had a hard time finding a job, so she started working as a waitress in Milwaukee, and thanks to her persistence, she shortly became a regular performer on the club’s stage. After a few years, McDaniel joined her siblings in Los Angeles, worked with her brother on a radio program and played small roles as an extra on various Hollywood productions. Between one role to another, she worked as a cook and a maid. Only one year later, she had made her first film appearance and eventually joined the Screen Actors Guild, and her career started to take off. She played alongside the biggest actors and filmmakers of that era, including Shirley Temple, John Ford, and Lionel Barrymore. In 1939, at 46, Hattie McDaniel was the first African-American to be nominated for an Oscar and the first one to win it. The Academy Awards ceremony took place in a segregated hotel, where McDaniel and her escort were allowed in, but they had to sit in a segregated table. In addition to her acting career, McDaniel was committed to community service. During WW2 she was the chairman of the Hollywood Victory Committee, which entertained soldiers, raised funds for the Red Cross relief programs. McDaniel remained active both in radio and TV, and she was the first African-American to star in her own radio show. During her lifetime, she recorded 16 blues sides, performed on radio programs, and TV shows, and appeared in more than 300 films. Read more...