VOICES

Celebrating Women's History Month

Presented by Clerk Debra DeBerry and Sheriff Melody M. Maddox\

In 1971, feminist activists Dorothy Pitman-Hughes and Gloria Steinem raised their fists in solidarity while posing for photographer Dan Wynn. The image, which first ran in Esquire Magazine, remains one of the most iconic visual representations of women’s empowerment and the ongoing struggle for equal rights. 

Portraits of Courage

Gloria Steinem & Dorothy Pitman-Hughes 1971 & 2014

More than 40 years later, Pitman-Hughes and Steinem reunited in 2014 to recreate the influential image, this time for Florida photographer Daniel Bagan. The two feminist warriors assume their lauded positions, fists lifted high, their formerly stern expressions giving way to gentle smiles. 

Members of the Texas Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs, who worked for suffrage.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Early Women’s Rights Activists (Suffragists)

President Jimmy Carter signs document at the White House in Washington on Feb. 28, 1980, proclaiming March 2-8 "National Women's History Week.

The 6 Triple Eight Batallion 

Madam C. J. Walker

Viola Liuzzo

Viola Fauver Liuzzo was a housewife and mother of five. In March 1965, Liuzzo heeded the call of Martin Luther King Jr and traveled from Detroit, Michigan, to Selma, Alabama in the wake of the Bloody Sunday attempt at marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

Victoria Claflin Woodhull, later Victoria Woodhull Martin, was an American leader of the women's suffrage movement. In 1872, she ran for President of the United States.

Maya Lin

Maya Ying Lin is an American designer, architect, and artist who works in sculpture and land art. She achieved national recognition at the age of 21 while still an undergraduate at Yale University, when her design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. was chosen in a national competition.

Joan Trumpauer Mulholland

First woman to run for President before women could vote!

Joan Trumpauer Mulholland, a recipient of the 2015 National Civil Rights Museum Freedom Award, is a Civil Rights Icon who participated in over 50 sit-ins and demonstrations by the time she was 23 years old. She was a Freedom Rider, a participant in the Jackson Woolworth’s Sit-in, the March on Washington, the Meredith March and the Selma to Montgomery March. For her actions she was disowned by her family, attacked, shot at, cursed at, put on death row and hunted down by the Klan for execution.

Joan Trumpauer Mulholland at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee, where she sits beside the statue that commemorates her participation in the Jackson Woolworth’s Sit-in.
​​​​​​​Photo by DeShawn Lewis.

Ms. Jo Ann Robinson

 

Jo Ann Robinson organized a city bus boycott by African Americans in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955 that changed the course of civil rights in America.

Fannie Lou Hamer

Rosa Parks 

Former sharecropper Fannie Lou Hamer's Congressional testimony is so powerful that President Johnson calls an impromptu press conference to get her off the air. But his plan backfires.

Mrs. A.W. (Irene) West

Irene West was an active participant in the African American freedom struggle who, according to Jo Ann Robinson, dedicated her life to “fighting for the cause of first-class citizenship” for blacks (Robinson, 70). A prominent woman in Montgomery, Alabama, who was married to Dr. A. W. West, Sr., a wealthy dentist, Martin Luther King referred to West as “the real mother of the Movement.” 

“If I fall, I’ll fall five feet four inches forward in the fight for freedom.
I’m not backing off.” – Fannie Lou Hamer

"Without community service, we would not have a strong quality of life. It's important to the person who serves as well as the recipient. It's the way in which we ourselves grow and develop."

- Dorothy Height

 Officers of the National Council of Negro Women. Dorothy Height stands behind Founder Mary McLeod Bethune, center.

Dorothy Height

Dorothy Irene Height was an American civil rights and women's rights activist. Height specifically focused on the issues of African-American women, including unemployment, illiteracy, and voter awareness. She was the president of the National Council of Negro Women for forty years.

Georgia Ann Hill Robinson

Georgia Ann Robinson was an American police officer and community worker who was the first African American woman to be appointed a police officer at the Los Angeles Police Department.

    

Alice Allison Dunnigan was an African-American journalist, civil rights activist and author. Dunnigan was the first African-American female correspondent to receive White House credentials, and the first black female member of the Senate and House of Representatives press galleries.

Alice Allison Dunnigan
 (1906-1983)

Alice Allison Dunnigan was the first African American female correspondent at the White House and the first black female member of the Senate and House of Representatives press galleries.

Ethel Waters

Mary Eliza Mahoney

Mary Eliza Mahoney was the second African American to study and work as a professionally trained nurse in the United States, graduating in 1879. Mahoney was one of the first African Americans to graduate from a nursing school, and she prospered in a predominantly white society.

Queen Lili‘uokalani

Queen Liliuokalani (1838-1917) was the last sovereign of the Kalākaua dynasty, which had ruled a unified Hawaiian kingdom since 1810. Born Lydia Kamakaeha, she became crown princess in 1877, after the death of her youngest brother made her the heir apparent to her elder brother, King Kalākaua.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

“I am braver than I was because I have lost all; and he who has nothing to lose can afford all risks.”

― Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin

Florence Rae Kennedy 

Florence Rae Kennedy was an American lawyer, feminist, civil rights advocate, lecturer and activist.

Flo Kennedy has had a remarkably long and visible career as a lawyer, militant activist, and feminist. Since the 1950s, when as an attorney she fought for royalty rights due the estates of musical legends Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker, Kennedy has unflinchingly attacked racism, inequity, and hypocrisy wherever she has found it. An original member of the National Organization for Women (NOW) and the founder of the Feminist Party, Kennedy has been a vocal spokesperson for women, blacks, homosexuals, and other minorities, and a staunch defender of civil rights. Variously called outspoken, outrageous, profane, and a woman of “immeasurable spirit,” Kennedy was once described in People as “the biggest, loudest, and indisputably, the rudest mouth on the battleground where feminist activists and radical politics join in mostly common cause.” Fellow feminist and friend, Gloria Steinem, has said that for those in the black movement, the women’s movement, the peace movement, and the consumer movement, “Flo was a political touchstone—a catalyst.” Steinem, founder of Ms. magazine, also claimed that “Five minutes with Flo will change your life.”

Big Mama Thorton 

​​​​​​​

Sarah Parker Remond was born free in Massachusetts and became known as a lecturer, abolitionist, and agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society. An international activist for human rights and women's suffrage, she made her first speech against slavery when she was 16 years old.

Sarah Parker Redmond

Wilma Rudolph 

Dorothy Bell

April 4, 1963 | College student Dorothy Bell, 19, of Birmingham, Alabama, waits in a downtown lunch counter for service that never came. She was later arrested with 20 other demonstrators.

Gail Harris  was the highest-ranking female African American in the U.S. Navy upon her retirement in December 2001. She served as the first female intelligence officer in a Navy aviation squadron in 1973.

Captain Gail Harris

Matice Wright 

Matice Wright was the first African-American female naval flight officer.

Amelia Earhart

Sally Kristen Ride (May 26, 1951 – July 23, 2012) was an American astronaut and physicist. Born in Los Angeles, she joined NASA in 1978 and became the first American woman in space in 1983.

Sally Ride

Mae Jemison, First Black Woman in Space

Simone Biles

is the most decorated American gymnast, with more than two dozen Olympic and World Championship medals to her name.

Kathrine Switzer

Kathrine Virginia Switzer is an American marathon runner, author, and television commentator. In 1967, she became the first woman to run the Boston Marathon as an officially registered competitor. During her run, race manager Jock Semple assaulted Switzer, trying to grab her bib number and stop her from competing.

United States Women's National Soccer Team

The United States women's national soccer team represents the United States in international women's soccer. The team is the most successful in international women's soccer, winning four Women's World Cup titles, four Olympic gold medals, and eight CONCACAF Gold Cups.

Hattie McDaniel 

Hattie wins Best Supporting Actress 

"I'm letting no man handle my bank account."

 - Hattie McDaniel

Shirley Chisholm

Anne Frank

Fearless Girl

“Always go with the choice that scares you the most, because that’s the one that is going to require the most from you.”    – Caroline Myss

Erin Jackson

First Black Woman To Woman To Win An Olympic Speedskating Gold Medal

Althea Gibson

"No matter what accomplishments you make, somebody helped you."      - Althea Gibson

Billie Jean King

Women of the Black Panther Movement

Kathleen Cleaver

Kathleen Neal Cleaver is an American professor of law, known for her involvement with the Black Power movement and the Black Panther Party.

Angela Davis 

Angela Davis, activist, educator, and scholar, was born on January 26, 1944, in the “Dynamite Hill” area of Birmingham, Alabama.  The area received that name because so many African American homes in this middle class neighborhood had been bombed over the years by the Ku Klux Klan. 

Judith Ann Jamison is an American dancer and choreographer, best known as a modern based dancer though she early on studied ballet and as the Artistic Director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

Judith Jamison

“Dance is the hidden language of the soul of the body.”

– Martha Graham

Phylicia Rashad and Debbie Allen

Former First Lady, Michelle Obama

"You cannot take your freedoms for granted. Just like generations who have come before you, you have to do your part to preserve and protect those freedoms... you need to be preparing yourself to add your voice to our national conversation," Mrs. Obama said during her final speech as First Lady of the United States in 2017.

Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde was an American writer, feminist, womanist, librarian, and civil rights activist. She was a self-described “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet, ” who dedicated both her life and her creative talent to confronting and addressing injustices of racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia.

Maya Angelou

"We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty." - Maya Angelou

Toni Morrison

Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison, known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist, essayist, book editor, and college professor. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed Song of Solomon brought her national attention and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1993, Toni was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. 

Listen to Toni Morrison's Nobel Lecture  

"If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, you must be the one to write it."                                     - Toni Morrison

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of Women’s Suffrage in the United States, record numbers of women march along 5th Avenue, past a banner that reads ”Women of the World Unite!’, New York, New York, August 26, 1970. (Photo by Fred W. McDarrah/Getty Images)

Betty Friedan

Gloria Steinem

Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg FRSGS is a Swedish environmental activist who has gained international recognition for promoting the view that humanity is facing an existential crisis arising from climate change.

"To all the little girls who are watching this, never doubt that you are valuable and powerful, and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams."

- Hillary Clinton

  Women of the Supreme Court ​​​​​​​

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson

Ketanji Brown Jackson is the first black woman and the first former federal public defender to serve on the Supreme Court.

Justice Jackson was born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Miami, Florida. She received her undergraduate and legal education at Harvard University, where she served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review, and clerked for Justice Stephen Breyer, whose seat she later assumed on the Supreme Court.[3] From 2010 to 2014, Jackson was the vice chairwoman of the United States Sentencing Commission. In 2013, President Barack Obama appointed her as a district judge for the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, where she served until 2021. Since 2016, Jackson has been a member of the Harvard Board of Overseers.

Sandra Day O'Connor

September 25, 1981 – January 31, 2006

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is the 102nd person to sit on the Supreme Court. Born in El Paso, Texas on March 26, 1930, she graduated from Stanford Law School in 1952, where she was a classmate of future Justice William H. Rehnquist. Her career included civilian and private practice, and, after moving to Arizona, she became active in Republican politics. She was an assistant attorney general in Arizona and ran for and won a state judgeship before being appointed for the Arizona Court of Appeals. 

When Ronald Reagan nominated her for the Supreme Court, he was fulfilling a campaign promise to nominate a woman. After a unanimous confirmation vote in the Senate, O'Connor took her seat on August 19, 1981. She generally took a middle road on many issues, finding in favor for state's rights and tough rules on crime, and was a swing vote on rulings for affirmative action, abortion, and religious neutrality. Her most controversial vote was that which helped suspend Florida's presidential ballot recount in 2001, ending Al Gore's candidacy and making George W. Bush president. She retired from the court on January 31, 2006. 

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the 107th justice, was born March 15, 1933, in Brooklyn, New York, and studied law at Harvard and Columbia University Law schools, graduating from Columbia in 1959. She worked as a law clerk, and then at the Columbia Project on International Civil Procedure in Sweden. She also taught law at Rutgers and Columbia universities, before heading up the Women's Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). 

Ginsburg was appointed a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals by Jimmy Carter in 1980, and was nominated to the Supreme Court by Bill Clinton in 1993. The Senate confirmed her seat by a vote of 96 to 3, and she was sworn in on August 10, 1993. Her important opinions and arguments reflect her lifelong advocacy for gender equality and equal rights, such as Ledbetter versus Goodyear Tire & Rubber, which led to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009; and Obergefell v. Hodges, which ruled same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RBG)
August 10, 1993 – September 18, 2020

Sonia Sotomayor

The 111th Justice, Sonia Sotomayor was born on June 25, 1954, in the Bronx, New York City and earned her law degree from Yale Law School in 1979. She served as a prosecutor in the New York County District Attorney's office and was in private practice from 1984 to 1992. 

She became a federal judge in 1991, after nomination by George H. W. Bush, and joined the U.S. Court of Appeals in 1998 nominated by Bill Clinton. Barack Obama nominated her for the Supreme Court, and after a contentious Senate battle and a vote of 68–31, she took her seat on August 8, 2009, as the first Hispanic justice. She is considered part of the liberal bloc of the court, but places Constitutional and Bill of Rights principles ahead of any partisan considerations.

Justice Elena Kagan is the 112th justice on the court, born April 28, 1960 on the Upper West Side of New York City. She earned her law degree from Harvard University in 1986, and worked as a law clerk for Justice Thurgood Marshall, was in private practice, and taught at the University of Chicago and Harvard Law Schools. From 1991–1995, she worked at the White House as a counsel for Bill Clinton, eventually achieving the role of Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council.

Justice Kagan was Dean of the Harvard Law School in 2009 when she was selected as Solicitor General by Barack Obama. She was nominated to the Supreme Court by Obama, and after a battle in the Senate, she was confirmed by a 63–37 vote and took the seat on August 7, 2010. She has had to recuse herself on many decisions, the result of having worked in the executive branch for Bill Clinton, but voted to support the Affordable Care Act in King v. Burwell and same sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges. 

Elena Kagan

Amy Coney Barrett

The Supreme Court held a special sitting on October 1, 2021, for the formal investiture ceremony of Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett. On October 27, 2020, Justice Barrett took the oaths of office to become the 103rd Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Leah Ward Sears is an American jurist and former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia.

Judge Sears was the first African-American female chief justice of a state supreme court in the United States.

First Ladies of The White House

Eleanor Roosevelt

Jacqueline Lee Kennedy Onassis was First Lady of the United States during the presidency of John F. Kennedy and was regarded as an international icon of style and culture. Bouvier was born in 1929 in Southampton, New York, to Wall Street stockbroker John Vernou Bouvier III and his wife, Janet Lee Bouvier.

Rosalynn Carter

Hillary Clinton

Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton is an American politician, diplomat, lawyer, writer, and public speaker. She served as First Lady of the United States from 1993 to 2001, as a United States senator from New York from 2001 to 2009, and as the 67th United States secretary of state from 2009 until 2013.

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama (née Robinson; born January 17, 1964) is an American lawyer and author who was the first lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017. She is married to the 44th President of the United States Barack Obama. She is the first African American First Lady of the United States.

Jill Biden, Ed.D., is the First Lady of the United States, a community college educator, a military mother, a grandmother, and bestselling author. Dr. Biden also served as Second Lady of the United States from 2009–2017.

Ilhan Omar

U.S. Representative

Rep. Ilhan Omar represents Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives, which includes Minneapolis and surrounding suburbs.

An experienced Twin Cities policy analyst, organizer, public speaker and advocate, Rep. Omar was sworn into office in January 2019, making her the first Somali-American Member of Congress, the first woman of color to represent Minnesota, and one of the first two Muslim-American women elected to Congress.

Elizabeth Warren

United States Senator

Elizabeth Warren, a fearless consumer advocate who has made her life's work the fight for middle class families, was re-elected to the United States Senate for a second term on November 6, 2018, by the people of Massachusetts.

Elizabeth is one of the nation’s leading progressive voices, fighting for big structural change that would transform our economy and rebuild the middle class.

Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley is an advocate, a policy-maker, an activist, and a survivor. On November 6, 2018, Congresswoman Pressley was elected to represent Massachusetts’ 7th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives, making her the first woman of color to be elected to Congress from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The Massachusetts 7th is the most diverse and most unequal district in the state, requiring a representative whose experiences are reflective of the people.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, also known by her initials AOC, is an American politician and activist. She has served as the U.S. representative for New York's 14th congressional district since 2019, as a member of the Democratic Party.

MADAM VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA DEVI HARRIS

 KAMALA DEVI HARRIS

is an American politician and attorney who is the 49th and current vice president of the United States. She is the first female vice president and the highest-ranking female official in U.S. history, as well as the first African American and first Asian American vice president.

Shirley Anita Chisholm

Shirley Anita Chisholm was an American politician, educator, and author. In 1968, she became the first black woman elected to the United States Congress. Chisholm represented New York's 12th congressional district, a district centered on Bedford–Stuyvesant, for seven terms from 1969 to 1983.

Barbara Jordan

Barbara Charline Jordan (February 21, 1936 – January 17, 1996) was an American lawyer, educator, and politician. A Democrat, she was the first African American elected to the Texas Senate after Reconstruction, the first Southern African-American woman elected to the United States House of Representatives, and one of the first two African Americans elected to the U.S. House from the former Confederacy since 1901, alongside Andrew Young of Georgia.

Stacey Abrams

Stacey Abram's Ted Talk ​​​​​​​

Stacey Yvonne Abrams is an American politician, lawyer, voting rights activist, and author who served in the Georgia House of Representatives from 2007 to 2017, serving as minority leader from 2011 to 2017.

Mary McLeod Bethune

Mary Jane McLeod Bethune was an American educator, philanthropist, humanitarian, womanist, and civil rights activist.