Lucretia Coffin’s schoolmates used to call her a “spitfire” – and she turned her skill of speaking her truth into a lifelong career, traveling and lecturing on the twin causes of antislavery and women’s rights. Mott’s faith in equality and confidence in female abilities were fostered in her childhood by the family’s Quaker faith, and by the fact that her mother succeeded as a shopkeeper while her sea captain father was away. When she started teaching in her boarding school in New York, she had an important encounter with gender inequality: discovering that the salary of the female instructors was half as much as male colleagues. At the school she met her husband – James Mott. The two had a mutual devotion to be active for abolition while raising six children, one of them died at the age of three. Her public speaking career began in Quaker meetings, and before she turned 30, she was formally recognized as a minister. She noticed the exclusion of women in the organized Abolitionist Movement and turned her anger into action: co-founding the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society and co-organizing the woman’s rights convention at Seneca Falls. There she also delivered the opening and closing addresses. Decades of popular speeches and organizational achievements later, Lucretia Mott delivered her last public speech, at the age of 85, in the 30th anniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention. Read more...

Marie Laveau is an iconic spiritual figure in the history of New Orleans, with her life stories as famous and colorful as a fictional tale. She offered her ceremonies and consultations, a combination of Voodoo and Roman Catholic beliefs, to people of all races. In the black community, in particular, her practice and position were considered politically empowering. She was described as both a good businesswoman and a charitable person, and enjoyed an exceptional position of respect and power, rare for a woman of color in her time. Long after her death, a local tradition has developed around her – tourists would be directed to her tomb in the St. Louis Cemetery #1, and mark an X on it for good luck. The pilgrimage was very popular even though there is no certainty that it is her grave. The custom was criticized as unwelcome behavior which is damaging the tomb. Recently, an International Shrine of Marie Laveau was built to honor her legacy.   Read more...

Born to a family of peasants in 15th-century Domrémy, France, Joan listened to the voices of saints guiding her to drive the English out of French territories. She followed the calling, an unusual act to her age and gender at these old times, and with determination, she made her way into the French army. At only 17 years old, Joan of Arc led the forces towards victory in the battle for Orleans, followed by more victories. Sadly, after several months on the battlefields, she got captured. She was found guilty of heresy in her trial, and burnt alive in front of thousands of people at the marketplace of Rouen. She was only 19 years old. In 16th century France, she was announced as innocent and became a national heroine. About 500 years later, she was declared and canonized a Roman Catholic Saint by the Pope. Joan d’Arc became a symbol of persistence, determination, fearlessness, and leadership, and due to her gender, she is also a contradiction to the notion of inequality. Read more...

Even though she spent the first 28 years of her life in slavery, and English was not her first language, Sojourner Truth became one of the most well-known public speakers of the 19th century, advocating for equality between sexes and races. She became famous for broadening the notion of activism beyond the white, educated, middle-class women who primarily made up the suffrage movement. Born as Isabella Baumfree into slavery, one of 10 or 12 children in a Dutch-speaking community in New York. Most of her siblings were sold to different owners, and she learned about them from her mother’s stories. From childhood, she was sold between four masters and suffered abuse, neglect, and even rape. In 1826, She escaped with her infant daughter, Sophia, after her master broke his promise to free her, leaving her four older children behind. The Van Wagenen family from New Paltz, NY, hosted her after the escape and bought her freedom for $20. When her previous master sold her five-years-old-son, Peter, to a new owner in Alabama, she, with the help of the Van Wagenens, sued him at the New York Supreme Court and won; she is one of the first black people to sue a white man in a United States court and prevail. She spent her first decade as a free woman doing household work in New York City. In 1843, she followed God’s calling to become a preacher, changed her name to Sojourner Truth, and till she passed away, she toured the country advocating for various reform causes, including the abolition of slavery, peace, and women’s suffrage. In 1850, she dictated her biography and William Lloyd Garrison published it, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: a Northern Slave; she bought her first home in Florence, MA, and spoke at the first National Women’s Rights Convention in Worcester, MA. A year later, at Ohio Women’s Rights Convention, she gave her most famous speech, which in later years got the title “Ain’t I a Woman?” This speech was one of the many that followed. Throughout her career, she lectured everywhere she went, from small gatherings to large conventions, advocating for African-American women’s equal rights, voting rights, and property rights. In 1867, Truth made Battle Creek, MI, her home base, purchased a house, and settled there with her daughters. Till her last days, she never stopped preaching her truth. Read more...

Anne was born to the Marbury family in 16th-century England. From a young age, she developed a passion for reading and critical thinking, and after marrying and giving birth to more than ten children, she followed her religious leader and took her family to North America. At the age of 43, Hutchinson settled in Massachusetts Bay Colony – working as a midwife. She then started hosting at her home women from the colonists’ community to Bible reading meetings. The gatherings became popular with both men and women, with up to 80 listeners in an evening. Her exceptional position as a woman who is leading religious discussions challenged gender roles of the time. She was put on trial for heresy and exiled from the colony. Her husband supported her all the way through. After banishment, the family made a six-day journey and moved to Rhode Island colony with dozens of followers. Hutchinson is known as one of the founders of the Rhode Island Colony. Today, opinionated and outspoken Anne is honored as an early feminist icon. In 1987, more than three centuries after her banishment, she officially pardoned by the governor of Massachusetts.   Read more...

Mary Baker Eddy was 44 years old when she made the discovery that changed her life from a farm girl to one of the most powerful women of her day. It was 1866, and she fell on ice in Lynn and knocked unconscious. While her doctors assumed that she was going to die, she was healed after a few days of reading her Bible. Motivated to share her revelation and heal others, she started with her niece as her first patient. She named her innovative ideas “Christian Science” and fast became a popular but controversial speaker about the link between spirituality and health. At the age of 54, Baker Eddy published “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures”. It was an immediate best-seller, with sales of over 10 million copies, but she rewrote it 432 times, compulsively revisiting the book until her last month. Disappointed that existing Christian churches would not embrace her discovery, she started her own “Church of Christ, Scientist,” which today has branches around the world. In 1902 she hosted an international conference of over 15,000 participants in Boston. Despite her tremendous success, she was paranoid and distrusted her own followers. Read more...

Born in Philadelphia to a wealthy family. Her mother died five weeks after she was born, and her father remarried a few years later. She and her two sisters were homeschooled. They lived catholic life and were well known for their philanthropic work, regularly distributing food and clothing as well as rent assistance. The family used to travel throughout the US and Europe, where Kathrine became aware of the difficulties of the Native Americans and African-Americans in the country. After the death of her stepmother and her father very soon after, she was seeking for missionaries in Europe, to mission the Indian-Americans, and was offered by Pope Leo XIII to become one herself. At the age of 29, Drexel decided to become a nun, devoting herself as well as her inheritance to serve God and help the Indian-Americans and African-Americans in the US. She joined the Sisters of Mercy Convent in Pittsburgh, and at the age of 33, professed her vows, took the name ‘Mother Katharine’, and established a religious congregation called the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored. By the time she died, Mother Katharine had established 145 missions, 62 schools for African-Americans and Native-Americans, and assisted in establishing the Xavier University of Louisiana – the only historically black Catholic college in the US. In 1988, 33 years after she passed away, Pope John Paul II beatified Katharine Drexel, and on October 1, 2000, she was canonized, one of the few US-born saints and the second natural-born US citizen Saint. Read more...

Eliza Hart Spalding was born in Kensington, CT. When she was 13 years old, she moved with her family to Oneida County, NY, where they had a farm. A mutual friend introduced between Eliza and Henry Harmon Spalding, and they got married when she was 26 years old. Soon after their marriage, the Spaldings joined the Whitman party, who traveled along the Oregon Trail with the purpose of serving as Presbyterian missionaries. They were among the first white settlers to travel across the western plains, and Eliza and Narcissa Whitman were the only two women in the party. The journey through the Rocky Mountains was not easy; it was a long trip that included steamboats, horseback, and wagon train. The Spalding family decided to leave the party and to settle in Lapwei, Idaho, the land of the Nez Perce. They were the first American settlers in the area, and they brought with them a printing press, the first one in the Northwest. Their house was more than a home; it contained a church and a school, where Eliza, who learned the local language, taught both in English and the Nez Perce language. As opposed to her husband, she sought to understand the Nez Perce people and not vice versa. The natives liked her, especially the women who followed her around and watched the “white woman” cooking, cleaning, and caring for her children. In addition to teaching languages, Hart Spalding taught sewing and knitting, and how to make “civilized” clothing. After the Whitman Massacre in 1847 at Waiilatpu, Washington, the Spaldings had to leave their mission. They moved to Oregon City, Oregon, where Eliza was the first teacher at Tualatin Academy, which later became the Pacific University. 60 years after she has passed away, her body was re-interred in the Lapwei Mission Cemetery. Though the mission didn’t succeed as planned, her impact was tremendous. Not only she left behind her two schools, a spinning and weaving shop, and two print-shops, she also paved the way for other women to migrate by land and to settle over the Rocky Mountains.   Read more...

Born as Maria Francesca Cabrini in Sant’Angelo Lodigiano, Italy, to a family of cherry tree farmers, the youngest of the thirteen children, and one of the four to survive past adolescence. She was born two months premature and was a small and weak child who remained fragile as an adult. At 13, she started attending the Daughters of the Sacred Heart, from which, five years later, she graduated with high honors and a teaching certificate. Cabrini applied for admission to the same congregation that runs the school she just graduated from but was turned down due to her health issues. Instead, she was offered a position as a teacher and the headmistress of an orphanage in Codogno. While teaching at the orphanage, Cabrini encouraged other young women to help her, and they established a women’s religious community. At age 27, Cabrini took religious vows and became “mother Cabrini”. She added Xavier to her name to honor Francis Xavier, the patron saint of missionary service. Cabrini and six other women founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, where she served as the superior general of the institute until her death. The sisters of the congregation took in orphans, and to pay expenses, they opened a day school, taught needlework lessons, and sold their own embroidery. In its first five years, the institute established seven homes, a nursery, and a free school. Frances Xavier Cabrini wanted to establish a mission in China, but when seeking the approval of Pope Leo XIII, he suggested her to go to the US to help the increasing population of Italian immigrants. And so, at the age of 39, Cabrini, along with six other sisters arrived in NYC. At first, they encountered difficulties from the local Archbishop, but they obtained permission to found an orphanage. Cabrini organized catechism and offered classes for the Italian immigrants, and afterward, she opened a school, a hospital, and more orphanages. During the 35 years of living in the US, she founded 67 missionary institutions throughout the country, as well as in Europe, South America, and South Africa. At 59, she was naturalized as a United States citizen. Cabrini died at the age of 67 due to complications of dysentery. Her body was buried at an orphanage she founded in West Park, Ulster County, NY, but it was exhumed as part of the canonization process – her head was removed and is preserved in Rome, her arm is at the national shrine in Chicago, while the rest of the body is at a shrine in New York. 21 years after she passed away, Pope Pius XI beatified her, and on July 7th, 1946, she was canonized by the Roman Catholic Church and became the first US citizen to be canonized and to be declared as a saint. St. Frances Xavier Cabrini is the patron saint of immigrants, religious institute, Servants of the Lord and the Virgin of Matará. Read more...

Anna Pauline Murray was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to parents of mixed racial origins. At age 3, her mother had died of a cerebral hemorrhage, and not long after, her father also passed away in tragic circumstances. She was raised by her mother’s family in North Carolina and then New York City. Her application to Columbia University was declined because of her gender, so she attended Hunter College, as one of few students of color, and earned a degree in English. At the time, she secretly married William Roy Wynn, but she soon regretted that decision, disgusted by the act of having sex, and they parted a few months after. At 28, she applied to the University of North Carolina, this time she was rejected because of her race. Trying to change the university’s position, she wrote to various officials, from the university president to the US President. While on a bus at Petersburg, Virginia, she and her friend moved from the broken seats in the black section and sat in the white section. Refusing to return to the back, they were arrested and convicted of disorderly conduct (15 years before Rosa Parks). The Workers’ Defense League paid for their release. Murray’s personal experience with injustice led her to pursue a career in civil rights law, and at the age of 31, she began to study law at Howard University. Being the only woman in her department, she became utterly aware of sexism and discrimination against women, especially black women. She labeled this behavior as “Jane Crow,” by which she emphasized the struggle of African-American women for racial and gender equality. Murray graduated first in her class, but because of her gender, she was denied the fellowship at Harvard University, traditionally given to the class’s valedictorian. Instead, she did her post-graduate studying at Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. At the age of 36, one year after passing the bar exams, she was hired as the state’s deputy attorney general and became the first African-American person to serve in this position. In that year, she was named “woman of the year” by the National Council of Negro Women.   In 1950, Murray published the book “States’ Laws on Race and Color” – an examination of the segregation laws in the US, in which she encouraged civil rights lawyers to claim segregation laws as unconstitutional instead of unequal. Later the book was credited as “The bible of the civil rights movement” and became a turning point for assessing segregation cases. After coining the term 20 years earlier, in 1965, she published the article “Jane Crow and the Law: Sex Discrimination and Title VII,” in which she examines Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its implications on women, comparing discriminatory laws as applied to women and men under Jim Crow Laws. The next year, she co-founded the National Organization for Women, as a parallel organization to the NAACP, focusing on women’s rights. In 1966, alongside Dorothy Kenyon, she argued a case in which the court ruled that jury selection cannot be discriminated by race or sex. Throughout her life, although she struggled with her sexual and gender identity, she was open about being a gender-nonconforming person, claiming she has an “inverted sex instinct.” She shortened her name to the gender non-specific “Pauli” and wished for a monogamous married life in which she was the man. She cut her hair short and wore pants instead of skirts. During the 1940s, she pursued hormone treatments to correct what she referred to as “personal imbalance,” and she even asked for an abdominal surgery to test if she had hidden male sex organs. Today she is recognized as one of the earliest transgender figures in US history. At the age of 62, Murray resigned from her academic position and enrolled in a General Theological Seminary. Five years later, she became the first African-American woman priest to be ordained by the Episcopal church. For the next seven years until her death in 1985, she ministered to the sick at a parish in Washington, DC.     More About Pauli Murray: Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice Pauli Murray In Her West End Neighborhood Walking Tour   Read more...