Black Lives Matter founders, Rosa Parks and other civil rights activists among USA TODAY Women of the Century
Scroll below through the list of our Women of the Century from Civil Rights, and it’s no surprise that women were granted the right to vote. The activists on this list – from Gloria Steinem to Dorothy Height to Dolores Huerta – have spent their entire lives fighting to better the world for other people, refusing to be swayed or discouraged by the obstacles in their path. Women like Marsha P. Johnson, Felicitas Mendez and Marcia Greenberger have created a better life for young girls today. Some of these women, like Rosa Parks, are household names. Others, like Cristina Jiménez Moreta, are in the early days of their activism.
As USA TODAY, in commemoration of the 100 year anniversary of the 19th Amendment, recognizes Women of the Century in Civil Rights, all of these fearless leaders are ones to follow.
Jane Addams
First American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize
(1860-1935)
Born in the small farming town of Cedarville, Illinois, Jane Addams in 1931 became the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Addams was active in the women’s suffrage movement and a well-known pacifist, especially after America’s entry into World War I. She gave lectures on peace, rising to chair of the Women’s Peace Party in 1915 and helping found the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in 1919.
Black Lives Matter founders
Alicia Garza (1981- ), Patrisse Cullors (1983- )
Opal Tometi (1984- )
In 2013, after Trayvon Martin’s killer was acquitted, three organizers started Black Lives Matter, a political group that’s responsible for the largest civil rights movement since the 1960s. Black Lives Matter has grown into a global organization spanning more than 40 chapters. In addition to founding BLM, Alicia Garza is the special projects director for the National Domestic Workers Alliance; Patrisse Cullors’ memoir, “When They Call You a Terrorist,” is a New York Times bestseller; and Opal Tometi is the former executive director of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration.
Mary McLeod Bethune
Education pioneer
(1875-1955)
A former cotton picker born into an enslaved family in South Carolina, Mary McLeod Bethune began a school for Black girls that became Bethune-Cookman College in 1929. Once women earned the right to vote, she taught reading so voters could pass the literacy test, which was put in place to suppress Black voting. She served on President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s unofficial “Black Cabinet” and became the highest-ranking African American woman in government when FDR named her director of the Negro Affairs of the National Youth Administration.
Marca Bristo
Disability rights activist
(1953-2019)
Paralyzed from the chest down when she was 23, Marca Bristo became a passionate disabilities activist. She helped write the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, which made discrimination against Americans with disabilities illegal. Before that, she founded Access Living in Chicago, an organization that promotes independent living for disabled adults, and the National Council on Independent Living. For more than four decades, Bristo refused to be limited by her disabilities and demanded equal treatment to her able-bodied peers, paving the way for millions.
Ruby Bridges
Civil rights activist
(1954- )
Among the first African American children to desegregate Southern schools, Ruby Bridges was born in Mississippi and later moved to New Orleans. Six years after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling, Bridges and her mother were escorted into William Frantz Elementary School by four federal marshals. Bridges, then 6, faced racial slurs and screaming crowds, and was in a class by herself all year. She graduated from a desegregated high school. In 1999, she established the Ruby Bridges Foundation, which specializes in conflict management and diversity education.
Tarana Burke
Founder of the #MeToo movement
(1973- )
More than a decade after Tarana Burke started using the phrase “Me Too” on social media to raise awareness about sexual assault, the hashtag #MeToo became a rallying cry against sexual harassment and assault, launching a global movement. Burke was raped and sexually assaulted as a child and as a teen in New York City. Soon after, she became involved in working with girls living in marginalized communities. In 2018, she founded the organization 'me too.' International to further the work she started more than a decade ago.
Q&A: Tarana Burke on the power of empathy, the building block of the Me Too movement
Marcia Greenberger
Women’s rights advocate
(1946- )
Founder and co-president emerita of the National Women’s Law Center, Marcia Greenberger was the country’s first full-time women’s rights legal advocate. An expert on women and the law – especially when it comes to sex discrimination – Greenberger also specializes in the law as it relates to education, employment, health, reproductive rights and family economic security. She played a crucial role in passing the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987, the Civil Rights Act of 1991 and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009.
Fannie Lou Hamer
Civil rights activist
(1917-1977)
The youngest of 20 children born to sharecroppers in Mississippi, Fannie Lou Hamer was a cotton picker until she was fired at age 44 – because she tried to register to vote. She became a towering civil rights activist, co-founding the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and giving a powerful speech at the 1964 Democratic National Convention, which rallied thousands to her cause. She captivated audiences with her passion and spoke frankly about the beatings she suffered after being arrested for trying to vote. She was a titan of the civil rights era.
Dorothy Height
Civil rights activist
(1912-2010)
Dorothy Height fought the tide of lynchings in the early 20th century and advocated for criminal justice reform despite resistance in so many quarters – sometimes from other civil rights leaders. Even though she had co-organized the March on Washington, was a strong speaker and sat close to Martin Luther King Jr. during the event, she wasn’t asked to speak that day. She was the president of the National Council of Negro Women for four decades and worked for many years at the YWCA. Her primary causes were unemployment, illiteracy and voter awareness.
Dolores Huerta
Labor leader
(1930- )
Dolores Huerta is a longtime labor leader and civil rights activist who co-founded what eventually became the United Farm Workers of America. She worked side by side with Cesar Chavez fighting for farmworkers’ rights and won, ensuring workers received safety protections, health care and the right to unionize. In 2012, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Huerta continues her work today, traveling the country to advocate for legislation that promotes equality and civil rights, and speaking about social justice and public policy.
Cristina Jiménez Moreta
Immigration reform advocate
(1984- )
An advocate for immigration reform, Cristina Jiménez Moreta moved to the United States from Ecuador as a 13-year-old undocumented immigrant. She is a strong voice for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), protecting children who were brought to the country from being deported. Jiménez Moreta is the co-founder and former executive director of United We Dream, a network that seeks to address the needs of young immigrants and families. In 2017 she was named a MacArthur Fellow, and Time magazine named her one of the most influential people of 2018.
Q&A: Cristina Jiménez Moreta helped get DACA, now she helps young immigrants find their voice
Marsha P. Johnson
LGBTQ activist
(1945-1992)
An important figure in the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City, Marsha P. Johnson, who was transgender, was among a group of Black activists who in the 1960s stood on the front lines of the LGBT liberation movement. Johnson co-founded STAR, or Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, a New York City organization that served young, homeless trans people at a time when the term “transgender” was barely in use. She later became involved with the AIDS charity ACT UP in the 1980s.
Helen Keller
Disability rights activist
(1880-1968)
An example of courage and tenacity in the face of overwhelming odds, Helen Keller’s story is one of the most frequently told. After a childhood illness left her blind and deaf, Keller defied the odds to learn how to speak. Her voice became one of the most powerful of her time, as an advocate for the rights of people with disabilities, a suffragist and an outspoken critic of World War I. She was one of the founding members of the ACLU and the first woman to receive an honorary doctorate from Harvard.
Bernice King
Civil rights activist
(1963- )
The youngest child of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, Bernice King was the only child to follow her father’s footsteps into the ministry. Born in Atlanta, she is the chief executive officer of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. She formed a dedication to ministry after learning about her father’s history and gave her first speech at just 17 at the United Nations. She was the first woman elected to the presidency of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Coretta Scott King
Civil rights activist
(1927-2006)
An accomplished activist during the civil rights movement, Coretta Scott King worked alongside her husband after they met in Boston. After his assassination in 1968, she founded the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. Scott King worked to become an influential advocate for racial equality and justice, and she was a vocal advocate for LGBTQ rights before it was a mainstream cause. One of her most significant accomplishments was successfully lobbying for Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday to be a federal holiday.
Yuri Kochiyama
Civil rights activist
(1921-2014)
Born in San Pedro, California, Yuri Kochiyama and her Japanese American family were sent to an internment camp in Arkansas in 1943 after Executive Order 9066. After being released, she became a civil rights activist, allying with African Americans and becoming friends with Malcolm X. She was part of some of the biggest civil rights movements of the 20th century, including the Black Liberation movement and the struggle for Puerto Rican independence. Her advocacy for Japanese Americans led to reparations payments of $20,000 to each surviving internee.
Candace Lightner
Founder of Mothers Against Drunk Driving
(1946- )
After her 13-year-old daughter was killed by a drunken driver in Fair Oaks, California, Candace Lightner stepped up and helped save countless lives by starting Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) in 1980. Her work with MADD included the 1984 legislation that required states to raise the drinking age to 21 or lose federal highway funds. She later left MADD, broadening her work to advocate for highway safety as well as victim and survivor rights.
Felicitas Mendez
Civil rights activist
(1916-1988)
A Puerto Rican immigrant, Felicitas Mendez and her husband took on California school segregation laws in 1946 and won, forcing schools to integrate. They became civil rights activists after their three children were denied entry at a local elementary school because of their skin color. The Mendezes responded by taking the Orange County school district to court. They are considered forgotten civil rights heroes; their victory paved the way for the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education.
Constance Baker Motley
Civil rights activist
(1921-2005)
A child of working-class immigrants from the West Indies, Constance Baker Motley is an unsung civil rights hero. One of the lead trial lawyers for the NAACP, she was the first African American woman to argue a case before the Supreme Court, serve as a federal judge and be elected to the New York State Senate. She began her career as a law clerk for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Legal Defense and Education Fund under Thurgood Marshall. A graduate of Columbia Law School, Motley argued 10 Supreme Court cases, winning nine of them.
Rosa Parks
Civil rights activist
(1913-2005)
Often referred to as “the first lady of civil rights,” Rosa Parks was working as a seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955 when she refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger, sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott and ultimately ending segregation on public transit systems. She later said she refused not because she was physically tired but because she was tired of giving in. Before the boycott, Parks worked for the Montgomery NAACP chapter. In 1996, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Alice Paul
Suffragist
(1885-1977)
A tenacious proponent for the women’s suffrage movement, Alice Paul was the oldest of four siblings born in Mount Laurel, New Jersey. Paul became active in the fight for women's rights while in England, where she joined the women’s suffrage movement and learned protest tactics such as picketing and hunger strikes. In the U.S., she fought ceaselessly for white women’s rights and was arrested, imprisoned, beaten and force fed. Her most significant accomplishment was helping secure passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, granting women the right to vote.
Frances Perkins
Workers’ rights advocate
(1880-1965)
Sometimes called “the woman behind the New Deal,” Frances Perkins was a sociologist and workers rights advocate who became the first woman in the U.S. Cabinet when she served as secretary of Labor from 1933 to 1945 under Franklin D. Roosevelt. She helped shape the New Deal and was responsible for formulating and implementing many of its policies. She almost single-handedly designed America’s unemployment and Social Security systems and is credited with creating the 40-hour workweek and minimum wage while also ending child labor.
Amelia Boynton Robinson
Civil rights activist
(1911-2015)
Amelia Boynton Robinson was a prominent civil rights activist who marched at the front on Edmund Pettus Bridge during the "Bloody Sunday" march in 1965. She was gassed, beaten and left for dead in the march for civil rights to Montgomery, Alabama. She championed rights for African Americans by holding voter registration drives for decades in Selma, Alabama, and fighting for voting, property and education rights in the state. Boynton Robinson also was the first Black woman to run for office in Alabama.
Gloria Steinem
Feminist icon
(1934- )
A trailblazing feminist, journalist and social activist, Gloria Steinem co-founded Ms. Magazine in 1972 and was a columnist for New York magazine, writing political articles. She gained national attention in 1963 when she went undercover as a Playboy Bunny. Her expose revealed the sexist and underpaid life of the waitresses. In 1972, Steinem – along with U.S. Reps. Bella Abzug and Shirley Chisholm and feminist Betty Friedan – formed the National Women’s Political Caucus. In 2013, Steinem was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Mary Church Terrell
Founding member of the NAACP
(1863-1954)
The daughter of formerly enslaved people, Mary Church Terrell was one of the first African American women to earn a college degree. She was a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the National Association of Colored Women. Terrell championed civil rights until the end of her life. At age 86, she protested segregation at the John R. Thompson Restaurant in Washington, D.C. Three years later, in 1953, the Supreme Court ruled that segregated dining facilities were unconstitutional.
Augmented reality: See Mary Church Terrell’s suffrage speech come to life
Contributing: USA TODAY reporters Lindsay Schnell, Jenna Ryu, Elinor Aspegren, Autumn Schoolman, Sarah Elbeshbishi, Ella Lee and Camille Caldera. Illustration: Andrea Brunty.
Sources used in the Women of the Century list project include newspaper articles, state archives, historical websites, encyclopedias and other resources.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Women of the Century civil rights: BLM founders, activists make list
