Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, Nigerian Women’s Rights Leader
Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti united thousands of women against unfair colonial taxes and helped win them a place in Abeokuta’s government.
Women worth knowing
All Stories
Extraordinary women, overlooked stories, and a more complete history. Explore the lives, ideas, and achievements that changed the world.
women in civil rights
Women who have fought for civil rights.
Juanita Jackson Mitchell: Breaking Barriers in Law and Civil Rights
She broke barriers in the legal profession and used her expertise to challenge segregation, carrying community organizing into the courtroom and expanding the fight for civil rights.
The Spy Who Wore Red: Josephine Baker
She used celebrity to support wartime resistance and challenge racism, turning the access granted by fame into a means of gathering intelligence and demanding justice.
The Role of Women In the 1963 March on Washington
Women helped organize a defining civil rights demonstration while facing exclusion from its public platform, exposing the gap between their essential work and the recognition they received.
Mary Ann Shadd Cary, Famous Abolitionist and Pioneering Publisher
She built schools and a newspaper to advance Black freedom and opportunity, using education and publishing to challenge slavery and support communities across national borders.
Fannie Lou Hamer, the Civil Rights Activist Who Fought for Black Political Power
After risking her home and enduring a brutal jail beating, Fannie Lou Hamer took Mississippi’s fight for Black political representation to the 1964 Democratic convention.
Ida B. Wells: Fierce Anti-Lynching Activist and Abolitionist
She used investigative writing to expose lynching and the lies used to justify it, carrying the fight against racial violence to audiences across national borders.
Clara Barton, Humanitarian and Founder of the American Red Cross
She brought care to wartime battlefields, then built a relief organization that extended its work to communities facing floods, famine, epidemics, and other disasters.
Henrietta Dugdale, Australian women’s rights and suffrage pioneer
Her writing and organizing helped build a women’s suffrage movement, turning anger at inequality into sustained pressure for the right to participate in politics.
Huda Shaarawi, Egyptian feminist & activist
She brought women into public life through education, organizing, and demands for political rights, helping turn restrictions on their independence into a cause for reform.
Wilma Rudolph, Olympic gold medalist & civil rights pioneer
Olympic victories gave her a platform she used to challenge segregation, turning athletic fame into a powerful example for women athletes and civil rights campaigners.
Ella Baker: The Woman Who Helped Build the Civil Rights Movement
Ella Baker helped student protesters build SNCC and connected generations of organizers who changed the civil rights movement from the ground up.