Women in Activism

Tarana Burke (1973): Activist most known for starting the Me-Too movement.

Rosa Parks (1913): American activist who played a pivotal role in the Civil rights Movement of the 1960’s. 

Marsha P Johnson (1945-1992)

American gay liberation activist who advocated for gay rights and was a prominent figure in the Stonewall Uprisings of 1969

Laura Cornelius Kellogg (1880 – 1947)

Native American activist who helped found the Society of American Indians (1913) and challenged the American education system.

Dorothea Dix (1802-1887)

Advocate for the mentally ill and poor through lobbying state legislatures as well as later served as a nurse in the Civil War 

Women in Science

Rosalind Franklin- 1920-1958; using x-ray crystallography, she discovered DNA is a double-helix shape (1952). 

Kizzmekia Corbett, PhD (1986): Developed the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine

Kalpana Chawla (1962-2003): Engineer and astronaut who was the first Indian woman to go to space.

Katherine Johnson-1918-2020; African American mathematician and the first black woman to work as a NASA scientist. Her calculations helped put the first U.S. man on the moon (1961). 

Dorothy Vaughan (1910-2008)

Promoted to lead the group in 1949, making her the NACA’s first black supervisor and one of the NACA’s few female supervisors. 

Mary Jackson 1921-2005

Aeronautical engineer at NASA Langley Research Center and the only black female aeronautical engineer in the field in the 1050s