Ann Clare Boothe Luce was born and raised in NYC. Her mother wanted her to become an actress, and from the age of 10, she studied at Mary Pickford on Broadway, playing first in Broadway by the age of 11. At the age of 20, she married George Tuttle Brokaw, a millionaire heir who was 23 years older than her. They had one daughter before they got divorced. At 27 years old, Luce started to work at Vogue as a caption writer, and later as associate editor, managing editor, and column writer at Vanity Fair. In 1931, she published her first book, a volume of short stories titled “Stuffed Shirts.” In 1935, her first playwright, “Abide with Me,” was staged but failed. Soon after, she wrote the satirical comedy, “The Women,” with an all-female cast of 40 characters. This pioneer play was a Broadway hit and soon was adapted into a movie. Following the success, she wrote two more plays that were adapted into movies – Kiss the Boys Goodbye and Margin for Error. At the age of 32, she married Henry Luce, the publisher of Time, Life, and Fortune. In 1939, when WW2 has erupted, she traveled to Europe as a correspondent for Life magazine. In 1941, she and her husband went to China to report on the status of the war with Japan. When the US entered the war, Luce visited military installations in Africa, China, India, and Burma. In 1942, at the age of 39, Luce won a seat representing Connecticut in the US House of Representatives, the first woman from Connecticut to be elected to Congress. During her term, she called for the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act, advocated aid for war victims abroad, and lobbied for issues such as infant-care, maternity appropriations for the wives of enlisted men, the Equal Rights Amendment, and the development of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps. She was a member of the House Military Affairs Committee and had a pivotal role in creating the Atomic Energy Commission. She co-authored the Luce–Celler Act of 1946 to permit Filipinos and Indians permission to immigrate to the US, and she proposed a bill to create a Labor Department bureau to ensure equal pay for equal work for women and minorities. In 1944, her 19 years old daughter, Ann Clare Brokaw, died in a car accident. Dealing with the tragedy, she began to explore religion and received into the Roman Catholic Church. She did not run for re-election. When WW2 ended, Luce became a loud advocate against international Communism. During the presidential election of 1952, she campaigned on behalf of Republican candidate Dwight Eisenhower, giving more than 100 speeches nationwide. Thanks for her contribution, she was appointed as the US ambassador to Italy – the first American woman to serve in a major ambassadorial post abroad. She resigned from her position after three years due to arsenic poisoning that impacted her physically and mentally. In 1973 Luce was appointed by President Nixon to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. She remained on the board until 1977, and then again in 1981, was appointed by President Reagan. In 1983, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the first female Congress member to receive the award. Three years later, at the age of 84, she died of brain cancer. Read more...

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was born in the Bronx borough of NYC to a Puerto Rican family. Her political tendencies were recognized from a young age, and in high school, she participated in the National Hispanic Institute’s Lorenzo de Zavala Youth Legislative Session and later served as its Secretary of State. She attended Boston University, graduating cum laude with a BA degree in international relations and economics. While studying in college, she was an intern in Senator Ted Kennedy’s section of foreign affairs and immigration issues. As the only Spanish speaker in the office, she was the one to assist the families who were separated by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). After college, Ocasio-Cortez returned to the Bronx and worked at the nonprofit National Hispanic Institute, as well as a community organizer, a waitress, and a bartender, helping her mother with fighting a Foreclosure on their home. In 2016, she was a volunteered organizer at Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign. She became active with the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, traveling across the country speaking to the communities that have been affected by the change of drinking water in the area. The encounter with the local activists inspired her to work for her community. Not long after, she received a call from Brand New Congress, recruiting her as a progressive candidate for the congressional district election. In April 2018, still working as a waitress, Ocasio-Cortez launched her primary campaign for NYC’s 14th congressional district election – the first person in 14 years to challenge Joe Crowley’s seat in US congress. Under the slogan “The Courage to Change,” she organized an all-volunteer grassroots campaign and did not take corporate donations. With a strong social media presence, she defeated her opponent by almost 15%, becoming the youngest woman ever to serve in the US Congress. Arriving at the House of Representatives with millions of followers on social media, Ocasio-Cortez was appointed by her colleagues to give them social media lessons. In congress, she runs on a progressive platform. She is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America and a loud advocate for social policies, such as abolishing ICE, universal healthcare, gun control, cancellation of student debt, tuition-free public college and trade school, criminal justice reform, and ending the privatization of prisons. She is also promoting climate policies, and together with Senator Ed Markey, she introduced the “Green New Deal” – a plan to switch to renewable energy sources for the entire country to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. 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 as Shirley Anita St. Hill in Brooklyn, NY, to a family of immigrants from the Caribbean region. Due to financial problems, Chisholm and her sisters were sent to live with their grandmother in Barbados, where she attended a one-room schoolhouse for five years before returning to the US. At 22, she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Brooklyn College, where she was recognized for her debating skills. Three years later, she married Conrad O. Chisholm. While studying at Columbia University for MA in elementary education, she worked and developed from a nursery school teacher to the director of the Friends Day Nursery in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and educational consultant at NYC Division of Day Care. By serving in those positions, Chisholm witnessed gender and racial inequalities, her interest in politics grew, and she began to volunteer for various organizations, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the League of Women Voters and the National Association of College Women. In 1965 Chisholm became a Democratic member of the New York State Assembly, and three years later, she made history by becoming the first African-American Congresswoman in the US Congress. In her seven terms in the House of Representatives, she advocated for racial and gender equality, expanding the food stamp program, and promoted the ending of the Vietnam War. During her time in office, she hired women-only staff, claiming she faced discrimination more as a woman than as a person of color. On January 25, 1972, Chisholm announced her bid for the upcoming presidential elections. By that, she became the first African-American candidate of a major party to run for the US presidency, as well as the first woman to run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. During the campaign, she faced many challenges; she wasn’t regarded as a serious candidate, received little support from her African-American male colleagues, and was blocked from participating in the televised primary debates. She lost the elections to George McGovern, who later was defeated by Richard Nixon. After the elections, Chisholm continued her work at the House of Representatives, served for four years as Secretary of the House Democratic Caucus, and in 1977, became the first African-American woman and the second woman to serve on the House Rules Committee. In 1982 Chisholm retired from Congress to take care of her second husband, who was injured in an accident. She moved to Williamsville, NY, and returned to work in education at Mount Holyoke Women’s College, teaching politics and sociology. She traveled all across the US, giving speeches at colleges and visiting different minority groups to empower them. In 1990, alongside 15 other black women and men, Chisholm established the African-American Women for Reproductive Freedom and served as its first chair. Chisholm died in her house in Florida after suffering from several strokes.   Dive deeper into the inspiring story of Shirley Chisholm with our fun and engaging printable worksheet! Available now on Etsy and Teachers Pay Teachers. 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...

Harriet Tubman was born as Araminta Ross into an enslaved family on the eastern shore of Maryland, her exact year of birth unknown, estimated between 1815 and 1825. As a child, her tasks were collecting and killing muskrats from traps and working in the fields. She was separated from her family several times when she was sent to work in different white families’ houses. As a teenager, she witnessed an enslaved person trying to escape, she blocked the door with her body to prevent his capture, and her master hit her in the head with a heavy metal weight. The injury has caused her hallucinations, and she would suddenly fall asleep. Tubman got married, but her determination to be free did not leave her. On September 17th, 1849, she escaped, traveled by foot from Maryland to Pennsylvania, and became free. She returned to Maryland 19 more times over a decade as a conductor of the Underground Railroad – a secret network of routes to escape slavery. Among the hundreds of people who she led to freedom was her family. Guiding people into freedom got her the nickname the Black Moses. During the Civil War, Tubman served as a nurse, a cook, and a spy. Her service was not acknowledged officially, and she struggled financially while being generously philanthropic, supporting former slaves on their first steps in the free world. She led a 34-year campaign against the government to get her veteran pension, sold vegetables from her garden and published two biographies with the help of friends to raise funds. She traveled the country delivering speeches in support of women’s suffrage, abolitionism, and human rights. She was married twice, once before her escape. She changed her name, taking her mother’s first name Harriet, and her first husband’s family name, Tubman. In her sixties, she married Nelson Davis, who was about 20 years younger than her. She never had children, and with Davis, they adopted a daughter, her niece. Before her death in her nineties, she established a home for elderly black people. She was buried with military honors in Auburn’s Fort Hill Cemetery.   Dive deeper into the inspiring story of Harriet Tubman with our fun and engaging printable worksheet! Available now on Etsy and Teachers Pay Teachers.   Read more...