American Women Biographies

Against the backdrop of the call to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, the National Women’s Football League was founded as something of a gimmick. However, their star team, the Toledo Troopers, emerged to challenge traditional gender roles and amass a win-loss record never before or since achieved in American football. The players were housewives, factory workers, hairdressers, former nuns, high school teachers, bartenders, mail carriers, pilots, and would-be drill sergeants. Most of all, they were athletes who had been denied the opportunity to play a game they were born to play.

John Brown was fiercely committed to the militant abolitionist cause, a crusade that culminated in Brown’s raid on the Federal armory at Harpers Ferry in 1859 and his subsequent execution. Less well known is his devotion to his family, and they to him. Two of Brown’s sons were killed at Harpers Ferry, but the commitment of his wife and daughters often goes unacknowledged. As detailed by Laughlin-Schultz, Brown’s second wife and his daughters were in many ways the most ordinary of women. However, they also lived extraordinary lives.

Two unsung women whose power using food as a political weapon during the civil rights movement was so great it brought the ire of government agents working against them.

From 1955 to 1975, Vera Pigee (1924-2007) put her life and livelihood on the line with grassroots efforts for social change in Mississippi, principally through her years of leadership in Coahoma County's NAACP. Known as the "Lady of Hats," coined by NAACP executive secretary Roy Wilkins, Pigee was a businesswoman, mother, and leader. Her book, The Struggle of Struggles, offers a detailed view of the daily grind of organizing for years to open the state's closed society.

This memoir, written by Chuong and her daughter, Mayly Tao, pays homage to the arduous journey faced by millions of immigrants who arrive in the United States annually—penniless, without an education, and unable to speak English. Chuong Lee recounts her journey of homelessness, malnutrition, and labor enslavement in Cambodia. Upon arriving in America, Chuong found herself a part of donut royalty as she married into the family of the Donut King, Ted Ngoy, who opened up hundreds of donut shops for Khmer refugees.

In these essays, stories, and reflections, trailblazing Yankton Dakota writer and artist Zitkála-Šá honors the rich heritage of Sioux oral tradition. She muses on her childhood and early schooling, shares warrior tales of ancient spirits, and tells of the foreboding appearance of white settlers and missionaries. As a committed activist and a seminal voice for change, Zitkála-Šá also explores the oppressive forces that sought to erase her culture and remove her people from their land.

“I am opposed to heart disease and cancer the way one is opposed to sin.” With that as her battle cry, health activist and philanthropist Mary Woodard Lasker had a singular goal: saving lives by increasing medical research. Together with her husband, advertising genius Albert, they created the Lasker Foundation, bestowing the Lasker Awards. But the real increase in medical research funding occurred when Mary discovered a revolutionary source: the federal government. “I’m just a catalytic agent,” she would insist, while she tirelessly lobbied Congress and presidents alike.

The life of Queen Elizabeth I was dramatic and dangerous: cast out of her father's court at the age of three and imprisoned at 19, Elizabeth was crowned queen in 1558, when she was only 25. A tough, intelligent woman who spoke five languages, Elizabeth ruled for over 40 years and led England through one of its most prosperous periods in history.

For a long time, the main role of First Ladies was to act as hostesses of the White House...until Eleanor Roosevelt. Born in 1884, Eleanor was not satisfied to just be a glorified hostess for her husband, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Eleanor had a voice, and she used it to speak up against poverty and racism. She had experience and knowledge of many issues, and fought for laws to help the less fortunate. She had passion, energy, and a way of speaking that made people listen, and she used these gifts to campaign for her husband and get him elected president - four times!

Prieta is a term of endearment. When I tell people who don’t speak Spanish what prieta means—dark or the dark one—their eyes pop open and a small gasp escapes. I see the offense they feel for me sprinkled on their faces like the freckles I will never have. How do I tell them that when I heard Ita say Prieta, I felt the caress of her strong hands on the top of my head as she braided my hair?

Fleeing the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989 and fueled by a burning desire for a better life, Apple embarks on a daring journey to pursue her doctoral education in America. With no backup plan, Apple has to make this journey work. But she has no idea that her starting place, Las Cruces, NM, is a quiet desert town—a far cry from the bustling metropolis she envisioned. Anxious, ignorant, broken, lost, and homesick, Apple is also excited, curious, and open-minded. Will she simply survive the fish-out-of-the-water situation many immigrants experience, or will she thrive?

Opal Lee grew up as a Black girl in Texas at a time when Black and white people were kept separate and Black people had fewer opportunities than white people did. She knew that this wasn’t right, and she grew up to be a teacher and a community leader, determined to help create a better future for all people. A big part of her work and life was making Juneteenth a national holiday to mark the end of enslavement for Black Americans. She loved this day as both a celebration and as a way of teaching about the past.

A careful snip, a delicate fold. Fabric the color of new petals. Skirts that flare like upside-down blossoms. A garden bursts into bloom! There is no "good enough." For Ann, only the best will do. Award-winning author Kate Messner and costume historian Margaret E. Powell tell the powerful story of the ground-breaking Ann Lowe, who grew up in a small Alabama dress shop and became the first nationally known African American fashion designer.

Life sure was difficult for the men during the Civil War. They had to choose whether to protect the country or stay at home for their families. If life was difficult for the heads of the household, how much more so for the women and children? In this history book, we will take a look at how life was like for the vulnerable members of society during the period.

The wife of Martin Luther King, Jr., Coretta Scott King was a civil rights leader in her own right, playing a prominent role in the African American struggle for racial equality in the 1960s. Here's a gripping portrait of a smart, remarkable woman. Growing up in Alabama, Coretta Scott King graduated valedictorian from her high school before becoming one of the first African-American students at Antioch College in Ohio. It was there that she became politically active, joining the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

From the editor of the best-selling anthology The Meaning of Michelle, a celebration of one of the greatest stars of our time, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter.

A mixed-race orphan, Murray grew up in segregated North Carolina before escaping to New York, where she attended Hunter College and became a labor activist in the 1930s. When she applied to graduate school at the University of North Carolina, where her white great-great-grandfather had been a trustee, she was rejected because of her race. She went on to graduate first in her class at Howard Law School, only to be rejected for graduate study again at Harvard University this time on account of her sex. Undaunted, Murray forged a singular career in the law.

Ida B. Wells committed herself to the needs of those who did not have power. In the eyes of the FBI, this made her a “dangerous negro agitator”. In the annals of history, it makes her an icon. Ida B. the Queen tells the awe-inspiring story of a pioneering woman who was often overlooked and underestimated - a woman who refused to exit a train car meant for White passengers; a woman brought to light the horrors of lynching in America; a woman who cofounded the NAACP.

In 1910, Crystal Eastman was one of the most conspicuous progressive reformers in America. By the 1920s, her ardent suffragism, insistent anti-militarism, gregarious internationalism, and uncompromising feminism branded her "the most dangerous woman in America" and led to her exile in England. Yet a century later, her legacy in shaping several defining movements of the modern era-labor, feminism, free speech, peace - is unquestioned.

Born into slavery in 1862, Ida Bell Wells was freed as a result of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1865. Yet she could see just how unjust the world she was living in was. This drove her to become a journalist and activist. Throughout her life, she fought against prejudice and for equality for African Americans. Ida B. Wells would go on to co-own a newspaper, write several books, help cofound the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and fight for women's right to vote.