Mary Violet Leontyne Price was born in Laurel, Mississippi. From an early age, she showed musical talent. At the age of four, she already played the piano, and growing up, she sang with the choir of her community church. At the age of 9, she went on a school trip to listen to Marian Anderson sing. The experience inspired her to pursue a professional music career. She attended Oak Park Vocational High School, where she stood out as a pianist and a member of the glee club, and in her free time, she earned extra money by singing at funerals and community events. After graduation, Price studied music education at the College of Education and Industrial Arts in Wilberforce, Ohio, but later changed to voice studies following the advice of the university president. In 1948, at 21, she moved to NYC and joined the studio of Florence Page Kimball at Juilliard. Her lyric soprano voice gained her many leading roles in school opera productions. Her performance as Alice Ford in Giuseppe Verdi’s Falstaff caught the attention of the composer Virgil Thomson, who cast her as St. Cecilia in his all-black production of Four Saints in Three Acts, and in 1952, 25 years old Price made her Broadway debut. Only a few weeks later, she sang the opening performance as Bess in George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, for which she received acclaim for both her flawless vocal and her interpretation of the role. Before the show embarked on a European tour, Price married her Porgy, the opera singer William Warfield. The couple divorced in 1973. Even though her voice was praised, she had limited opportunities in formal opera houses as a Black singer, and she mostly performed in duo concerts with her husband. In 1954, she made her recital debut at NYC’s Town Hall, and afterward, she went on a tour across North America as part of the Columbia Artists roster. Price made her TV debut as Floria in NBC’s televised production of Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca the following year. Afterward, she starred in three more NBC Opera broadcasts, singing the roles of Pamina in Mozart’s The Magic Flute, Madame Lidoine in Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites, and Donna Anna in Mozart’s Don Giovanni. In 1957, at 30, Price performed Verdi’s Aida, which became her signature role. That same year, she finally had her opera stage debut at the San Francisco Opera as Madame Lidoine in Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues des carmélites. Her performance made her famous, and she received invitations from the best opera houses and venues in Europe. In 1961, at 34, she made her debut performance at the Metropolitan Opera House as Leonora in Il Trovatore. It was the beginning of her residency as a prima donna at the prestigious establishment, and during the coming decades, she sang a series of leading roles, such as Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly, Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, Minnie in La Fanciulla del West, Liu in Turandot, and Cleopatra in r Samuel Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra, a role that was written especially for her. Price became the first African-American prima donna to receive an international reputation, opening the opera season and a box-office sell-out. She was featured on the cover of Time magazine and was paid the highest fee for a woman vocalist. Because of her extraordinary talent, the Met included her in their national tour, which included the segregated South, and in 1964, after a two-year boycott of segregated houses, Price became the first African-American to sing in the Deep South. By 1970, Price had reduced her operatic performances, and in the next two decades, she focused on recitals and concerts both in the US and abroad. In 1985, after 21 seasons with the Met, 16 roles, and 201 performances, she made her operatic farewell in her most recognized role of Aida, for which she received 25 minutes of a standing ovation. She continued performing in recitals that included operatic arias, French melodies, and spirituals. She also gave masterclasses at Juilliard and other schools and recorded numerous award-winning albums. In 1997, at the age of 70, Price officially retired from the stage, but four years later, she made one last performance in a memorial concert for the victims of the September 11 attacks, singing her favorite spiritual, This Little Light of Mine. Read more...

Ella Josephine Baker was born in Norfolk, Virginia. At the age of seven, following a race riot in which black shipyard workers were beaten, her mother took the family to her hometown, Littleton, North Carolina, and her father stayed in Norfolk to continue working on a steamship. Growing up, Baker listened to her maternal grandmother’s stories about slavery, slave revolts, and women in the old days. Learning first-hand about the oppression of black people has shaped her sense of social injustice. After high school, Baker attended Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, graduating as valedictorian of her class. In 1927, at 24, she moved to NYC, where she worked as a domestic and waitress before she got a job as an editorial assistant at the Negro National News. Living in NYC during the Harlem Renaissance, Baker’s point of view evolved into actions, and she began her life-long dedication to political activism. In 1931, she became a member of the Young Negroes Cooperative League (YNCL), which formed cooperatives that provided affordable services to its members. Soon, she was appointed the national director of the YNCL. She also taught classes on consumer education, African history, and labor history as part of the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration. In 1938, Baker became active at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), first as a field secretary. Within two years, she became director of branches and the highest-ranking woman in the organization. Through this position, she put into practice her belief that social change occurs from the bottom up, and the success of an organization depends on the commitment of its members, not its leaders, emphasizing the importance of women and young people to its success. As its director, Baker traveled throughout the South to recruit new members, earning the people’s trust with her personalized approach, sleeping in their homes, and attending church services. Over time, she built a network of people who played a significant role in the struggle for civil rights in the South. In 1946, at 43, Baker took custody of her niece and left her position at the NAACP but continued to be active as a volunteer at the New York branch. There, she mainly worked on the desegregation of schools and improving the education of black children. When she was 54, she moved to Atlanta to establish and serve as the executive director of Martin Luther King’s new organization – the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Its goal was to promote nonviolent actions to achieve racial justice and social progress. First, they organized education and church ceremonies to encourage people to register to vote. The campaign was not successful as hoped for, but it laid the foundations for local activist centers. In 1960, following the Greensboro sit-ins, when black college students refused to leave a segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter, Baker left the SCLC to assist the Greensboro Four. She organized a meeting at Shaw University, where she formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Under her guidance, the SNCC became one of the leading human rights organizations in the US, initiating some of the most successful nonviolent protests of the time. Including the Freedom Rides of 1961, when buses of civil rights activists rode through the segregated Southern states, and the Freedom Summer of 1964, when hundreds of volunteers arrived in Mississippi protesting against the intimidation and discrimination against registered black voters. In addition to her work with the SNCC, Baker worked with the Southern Conference Education Fund (SCEF), promoting social justice and interracial desegregation via the education of the southern white population. In 1964, she co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), served as its coordinator, and led its delegation to the National Democratic Party convention. At the age of 64, Baker returned to NYC, continuing her fight for social justice for two more decades. She consulted various organizations, such as the Puerto Rican Solidarity Committee, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and the Third World Women’s Coordinating Committee. She remained a prominent figure in the fight for human rights until her death on her 83rd birthday. Read more...

Elizabeth Gertrude Britton was born in NYC and grew up in Cuba, where her family owned a furniture factory and sugar plantation. After finishing private high school in NYC, she attended Normal College, and at 17, after receiving a degree in critic and natural sciences, she joined the school’s faculty. At 21, she joined the Torrey Botanical Club, and two years later, she published her first paper in the organization’s journal. She became fascinated with bryology – the study of mosses, and at 25, she published her first scientific work on the subject. At 27, she married Nathaniel Lord Britton, a geologist at Columbia College, and resigned from her teaching position. After the wedding, Britton took an unpaid position at Columbia as a moss collector. In addition, she got appointed the editor of the Torrey Botanical Club’s journal, where, in 1889, she published a series of papers called Contributions to American Bryology. Britton and her husband traveled through the US and the West Indies to collect botanical specimens, and she published her finding and observations in various professional magazines. In 1888, on a trip to England, the Brittons visited the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and decided to establish a comparable institute in NYC. On their return to the US, they proposed their initiative to the Torrey Botanical Club, and within two years, the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) was founded. Britton’s Knowledge of liverworts and mosses contributed to the garden’s collection, and in 1912 she was named Honorary Curator of the Mosses. In 1898, at the age of 40, Britton co-founded the Sullivant Moss Society, later renamed the American Bryological Society, and served as its president from 1916 to 1919. In the early 1900s, Britton became a loud advocate for the conservation of wildflowers. In 1902, when the Wild Flower Preservation Society of America was founded, she was appointed to the Board of Managers, and later she served as the organization’s secretary and treasurer. Devoted to the cause, Britton published papers, gave lectures, and conducted a campaign to adopt regional legislation to preserve and protect wildflowers. Thanks to her efforts, numerous endangered wildflower species were saved throughout the country, including the Wild American holly used as a Christmas decoration. Throughout her life, Britton published more than 300 scientific papers, half of them about mosses. She died at the age of 76 from an apoplectic stroke. Read more...

Hannah Elias was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, one of nine children of mixed-race parents. In 1884, at the age of 19, while working as a servant, she stole a ball gown for her sister’s wedding. She was sent to prison. To support herself, she worked as a sex worker in a brothel in Manhattan, NYC. There, she met John R. Platt, a wealthy white man who was 45 years older than her. A few years later, Elias, who was already married, met Platt once again. This time, their connection developed into a love affair. He gave her money, paid for her divorce, and appointed her as a boarding house manager. Later, she moved into a five-story and twenty-room mansion in Central Park West, purchased for her by Platt, who continued to shower her with gifts, money, and jewelry, including his deceased wife’s watch. In 1903, Cornelius Williams, a man who rented a room at the boarding house Elias owned and was in love with her, shot and murdered a prominent NYC figure who Williams mistakenly believed was Platt. This incident exposed Elias and Platt’s relationship. Pressured by his children, Platt accused Elias of extortion of $685,385. As a result, Elias, then 39 years old, was arrested by four policemen who broke into her home.   She was jailed but made the bail of $30,000. When she gave her testimony in court, detailing the true nature of her relationship with Platt, she revealed that she has 15 bank accounts, lands and property worth $150,000, furniture worth $100,000, and many valuable jewels. Elias’s list of fortune and assets determined that she is one of the richest black women in the U.S and probably the world. With no evidence of extortion, Elias was acquitted in court. However, Platt’s filed a suit against her in civil court, which also ruled in her favor. The story of the black prostitute who blackmailed her 84 years old lover made the headlines. The local tabloids referred to Elias as “ebony enslaver” and “The Negro Enchantress,” and her neighbors, who until then thought she is Cuban or East Indian because of her light skin, realize that a black woman is living in their prestigious neighborhood. After the trails, Elias moved to Harlem. She purchased several properties and became the real estate empress of the neighborhood. She teamed up with the real estate developer John Nail, and together they turned Harlem into a safe zone for black New Yorkers. By the end of the 1910s, Elias left for Europe, never to return. Her death date is unknown. Read more...

Born Ada Louise Landman in NYC, an only child in a middle-class Jewish family. Growing up in Manhattan, Huxtable loved strolling along the streets, fascinated by its building, such as the Grand Central Terminal, the Metropolitan Museum, and the Museum of Natural History. She studied art at Hunter College, graduating magna cum laude, and then architectural history at NYU Institute of Fine Arts. At the time, she worked in Bloomingdale’s furnishings department, where she met her soon-to-be husband, Garth Huxtable. In 1946, at 25, Huxtable landed a job as an assistant curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art. After five years, she left her job to study Italian architecture in Italy for a year. Upon her return, she began writing as a contributing editor for various art and architectural journals. At the age of 37, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship, in which she examined the structural and design advances of American architecture. In 1963, 42 years old Huxtable was hired as the first architecture critic at The New York Times, a position she held for almost 20 years. In her column, she wrote about new and old buildings, threatened buildings, and bad-designed buildings. She also mentioned emerging architects, architectural trends, movements, and exhibitions. Huxtable encouraged the everyday readers to look at buildings from a new perspective, not as an assembly of bricks and pilasters but as a public statement with history and meaning. Raising awareness of the city’s heritage, the urban environment, and civic engagement, she set the tone for modern architecture criticism, for which, at the age of 49, she was the first-ever to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. In 1981, at the age of 60, Huxtable received a MacArthur grant that allowed her in-depth research on subjects she was interested in, such as the development of the skyscraper, the negative impact of postmodernism building, and preservation vs. modernity. At 76, she returned to writing for the public as an architecture critic for The Wall Street Journal, publishing columns for the next 15 years. Throughout her career, Huxtable was involved in various committees, serving as a fellow at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the Architectural Selection and Building Design Committees for the Getty Center, Getty Villa, and as a Jury member for The Pritzker Architecture Prize. She published more than 10 books on architecture, including “Kicked a Building Lately?,” “Goodbye History,” “Hello Hamburger,” and a biography of Frank Lloyd Wright. Huxtable died in NYC at 91. Read more...

Born Jane Isabel Butzner in Scranton, Pennsylvania. At 19, she moved with her sister to NYC and settled in Greenwich Village. She worked as a stenographer while writing as a freelance for different magazines, writing about the working districts of NYC. To deepen her knowledge, she registered for an interdisciplinary program at Columbia University, taking classes in history, culture, environment, and economic geography. In her 20s, she worked as a reporter for a publication of the US State Department, where she met her future husband, an architect named Robert Hyde Jacobs. They settled in Greenwich Village, raising their three children there. In 1952, the 36 years old Jacobs began working as an associate editor at the Architectural Forum magazine. She covered topics of urban planning and urban development, as well as criticized rebuilding projects. In 1961 she published her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities. The book was translated into several languages and became one of the most influential texts about the failings of cities. Following the book’s successes, Jacobs became known as the voice of modern urban planning. She was an active leader in the fight to Save Washington Square Park, and she was appointed as chairman of the Joint Committee to Stop the Lower Manhattan Expressway. In this position, she worked to stop New York City Parks Commissioner Robert Moses from building a highway through the West Village and Washington Square Park. Thanks to her campaign, which included her arrestment, Moses’ plans got canceled. When she was 46 years old, Jacobs left her job at the Architectural Forum to focus on her next book, The Economy of Cities. In 1969, opposing the Vietnam war and fearing her sons will be drafted, Jacobs moved with her family to Toronto, Canada. There, she advocated for community-based urban planning, opposing the expansion of the Toronto Island Airport, and led the Stop Spadina Campaign to prevent the highway construction through residential neighborhoods. Jacobs published seven more books, exploring various aspects of urban planning and the importance of community facilities, such as parks, sidewalks, and retail areas. In her writing, Jacobs applied not only to planners and developers but also to the residents themselves, encouraging them to become familiar with the places they live, work, shop, and play. Jacobs died of a stroke at the age of 89. Read more...

Born Karola Ruth Siegel in Wiesenfeld, Germany, to an Orthodox Jewish family. When she was 10 years old, a week after Kristallnacht, her father was taken by the Nazis. Been too dangerous for her to stay in Germany, Westheimer was sent on a Kindertransport in Switzerland. She never saw her family again. There, she lived at an orphanage for Jewish refugee girls, taking care of the younger children. At 17, after WW2 ended, Westheimer emigrated to Mandatory Palestine and joined the Haganah – a Jewish military underground organization, and was trained as a sniper and scout. During the 1947-1949 Palestine war, she got wounded by an exploding shell that took off the top of one of her feet. In 1950, at the age of 22, she married a fellow soldier, moved to Paris, and studied psychology at the Sorbonne. At 26, with her newborn daughter from her second husband, Westheimer moved to NYC. She attended the New School, earning her M.A. degree in sociology while working as a housemaid and taking English evening lessons. In 1961, at the age of 33, she met and married Manfred Westheimer. During the 1960s, Westheimer began working at Planned Parenthood in Harlem, and within a few years, she was appointed project director. At 40, after receiving an Ed.D. degree in family and sex counseling from Columbia University, Westheimer continued her research at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital, where she worked as an adjunct associate professor for a few years. In 1980, after giving a lecture to broadcasters about the importance of sex education programming, Westheimer was offered a slot on a local radio show. At the age of 52, she embarked on her broadcasting career, which began as a 15-minute show at midnight on Sunday called Sexually Speaking. Her show attracted a quarter of a million listeners every week and soon expanded to a one-hour slot with open calls from the audience. Four years later, the show was syndicated nationally as the Dr. Ruth Show and ran till 1990. At the time, Westheimer hosted several TV programs, first the Good Sex! With Dr. Ruth Westheimer on Lifetime TV, then a teen advice show called What’s Up, Dr. Ruth?, and a call-in show named You’re on the Air with Dr. Ruth. In her shows, Westheimer communicated the joy of human sexuality while educating about safe sex, sexually transmitted diseases, and the responsibilities of having sex. During the 1990s, Westheimer’s expertise became known worldwide, hosting TV and radio shows in Israel, the UK, France, Switzerland, and Germany. With her distinctive accent, non-judgmental approach, and advocacy for sexual openness, Westheimer has revolutionized the attitude toward sex and sexuality in the US and abroad. She made people comfortable with their sexual tendencies and allowed them to talk openly about their problems, difficulties, and struggles in their sex lives. Read more...

Since childhood, Stacey Cunningham loved math and science, so after high school, she went to study industrial engineering at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. In 1994, while still a student, Cunningham looked for a summer job as a waitress, but no place would hire her due to lack of experience. Her father, a trader at a brokerage firm, arranged for her a summer internship at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Two years later, and after receiving her Bachelor’s degree, Cunningham was hired for a full-time job at the NYSE as a trading floor clerk, becoming one of the few dozen women on the floor among the thousand male employees. For the next 8 years, she worked as a specialist for the Bank of America. At 31, Cunningham decided that she wants to become a better cook, so in 2005 she left the NYSE to study at the Institute of Culinary Education and worked as a restaurant chef. In 2007, she returned to the finance field as director of capital markets at the Nasdaq stock exchange and soon got promoted to Head of Sales for US transaction services. In 2012, Cunningham returned to the NYSE, first as vice president of sales and relationship management and then as the head of the division. In 2014, she was appointed president of NYSE Governance Services. In the following year, at the age of 41, she was appointed Chief Operating Officer, managing the exchange’s equities, internal governance services, and exchange-traded products. In 2018, at the age of 43, Cunningham was nominated the 67th president of the NYSE, becoming the second woman president of the New York Stock Exchange and the first to have full leadership of the exchange. In this position, Cunningham oversees the exchange’s operations for its issuers, investors, and global financial institutions, assuring the exchange’s constant improvement and innovation. Read more...

Aretha Louise Franklin was born in Memphis, Tennessee. Her father was a Baptist minister and a preacher, and her mother was a piano player and a gospel vocalist. By the age of 5, her parents separated, and she lived with her father and grandmother in Detroit. Franklin’s musical talent was apparent from an early age, learning to play the piano by ear and singing solo in front of her father’s congregation at the New Bethel Baptist Church. At the age of 12, her father began managing her, and they traveled and performed in various churches throughout the country. At 14, she recorded and released her first album, Spirituals. At 18, she moved to NYC and signed with Columbia Records, releasing her first single, Today I Sing the Blues, in that same year. At 19, she issued her first secular album, Aretha: With The Ray Bryant Combo, which included the single Won’t Be Long, which was entered to the Billboard Hot 100, as well as the R&B chart. She also scored her first international hit with her rendition of Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody. In the following year, Franklin released two more albums – The Electrifying Aretha Franklin and The Tender, the Moving, the Swinging Aretha Franklin. In 1966, at the age of 24, Franklin signed with Atlantic Records, which allowed her to return to her gospel-blues roots. Under the label, she recorded her first million-seller hit I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You). In that same year, she released her version of Respect, which became her signature song and later was recognized as a civil rights and women’s rights anthem. By the end of the 1960s, Franklin has recorded 7 records, releasing top-ten hits such as Chain of Fools, Think, and I Say a Little Prayer, for which she earned her first two Grammy awards. In 1972, at the age of 30, she recorded a live-church album titled Amazing Grace, which sold in more than 2 million copies. It is considered one of the great gospel albums in history. Her success continued to grow during the following decade, releasing albums year after year, with singles such as Spanish Harlem and Day Dreaming. At the age of 40, under her new label Arista Records, Franklin made a comeback with the hits- Jump to It and Freeway of Love. During the 1990s, Franklin juggled between different genres, recording gospel, pop, and R&B albums. At the time, she also played Aunt Em in the musical The Wiz. In 1998, 56 years old Franklin had another commercial success with her gold-selling record A Rose Is Still a Rose. For the next two decades, she recorded 7 more albums and appeared in historical events, such as President Obama’s inauguration in 2009, where she performed My Country ’Tis of Thee. In November 2017, she had her final public performance at the 25th anniversary gala for the Elton John AIDS Foundation. Throughout her career, Franklin recorded 38 studio albums and 8 live albums and released almost 60 compilation albums. She retired after been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, from which she died at the age of 76. Read more...

Born Adena Robinson Testa in Baltimore, Maryland. She earned her BA in political science from Williams College in Massachusetts and an MBA from Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management. In 1993, at the age of 24, she married Michael Cameron Friedman. In that same year, she joined Nasdaq as an intern and soon began moving up. In her first 18 years at Nasdaq, Friedman served in various positions, such as marketing manager, head of data products, head of corporate strategy, and Chief Financial Officer. In 2011, at 42, Friedman left Nasdaq to join Carlyle Group, a private investment firm in Washington DC. There, she served as Chief Financial Officer and Managing Director. After three years, she returned to Nasdaq as president and Chief Operating Officer. In 2017, in addition to her role as president, 48 years old Freidman was appointed CEO of the Nasdaq. The first woman in this position and the first woman to lead a global exchange. She oversees the company’s business segments, focusing on efficiency, product development, expansion, and growth. Under her leadership, Nasdaq transformed into a leading global exchange and technology solutions company, operating across six continents. In addition to her work in Nasdaq, Freidman is also a member of several boards. Among them are – the board of directors at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the board of FCLTGlobal – a non-profit organization that works on ways to encourage long-term investing, and the board of Greater Washington, DC. A Chapter of Junior Achievement – a non-profit organization that supports teens in their way to financial independence. Freidman often speaks about women in leadership positions, advocating for mentoring and creating career opportunities for women in the financial industry. Read more...