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Harriet Tubman was an American abolitionist and social activist. After escaping slavery, Tubman made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 enslaved people, including her family and friends, using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known collectively as the Underground Railroad. -
Amelia Earhart was an American aviator known for being the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. She took her first flight in 1920. Later, she became the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to California. -
Undeterred by deafness and blindness, Helen Keller rose to become a major 20th century humanitarian, educator and writer. She advocated for the blind and for women’s suffrage and co-founded the American Civil Liberties Union in 1920. -
Anne Frank is a symbol of the Holocaust, famous for her diary, in which she detailed what it was like to live in hiding in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. She hid in 1942 from the Nazis and two years later was discovered and put into concentration camps. She died in 1945 in the concentration camp. Her diary, which was turned into a book known as The Diary of a Young Girl, has sold roughly 30 million copies to date. -
Eleanor Roosevelt may have been President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s wife, but she's known well beyond that. Before, during, and after her stint as the longest-serving First Lady, Eleanor established herself as an activist, diplomat, and humanitarian—advocating for civil rights and women's rights—and an eventual spokesperson in the United Nations. -
ary Teresa Bojaxhiu MC, better known as Mother Teresa, was an Albanian-Indian Catholic nun and the founder of the Missionaries of Charity. She was born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in Skopje, part of the Ottoman Empire at the time. At the age of 18, she moved to Ireland and then to India, where she lived most of her life. n 1950, she founded the Missionaries of Charity, choosing a white sari with two blue borders as the order's habit. -
Rosa Parks is famous for being the catalyst of the Civil Rights Movement. In 1955, Rose refused to give up her front seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, which she was jailed and fined for. The experience led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott and countless other Civil Rights protests, and cemented Rosa as a symbol of dignity and strength amidst racial segregation. -
She is considered the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees, after 60 years of studying the social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees. Goodall first went to Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania to observe its chimpanzees in 1960. -
Barbara Charline Jordan (February 21, 1936 – January 17, 1996) was an African American lawyer, educator,[1] and politician. A Democrat, she was the first African American elected to the Texas Senate after Reconstruction and the first Southern African-American woman elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1966 -
Mexican artist Frida’s striking works span gender, class, identity and race in Mexican society. She was the first Mexican artist to be displayed at the Louvre in Paris, had many successful exhibitions and was well known for her eccentric personality in social and political circles, but she remained relatively unrecognised until the 1970s. -
Wangari was a Kenyan social, environmental and political activist who founded the Green Belt Movement, which campaigned for the planting of trees, environmental conservation and women’s rights. She was active in the National Council of Women in Kanya in 1976-1987 She later served in parliament as assistant minister for environment and natural resources, and in 2004 became the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for her contribution to sustainable development and democracy. -
Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a women's rights activist, not to mention the second female justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1993 until her death in 2020. As a pioneer of gender equality, RBG co-founded the Women's Rights Project at the ACLU, which "empowers poor women, women of color, and immigrant women who have been subject to gender bias and who face pervasive barriers to equality." -
Greta Thunberg may only be 20 years old, but she's making history as we speak. The young woman is a well-respected environmental activist who is working to ensure the next generation is well-equipped for the climate fight. In 2018, she founded Fridays for Future a youth-led climate strike movement that aims to keep the world informed.