A great-granddaughter of President John Adams, Sarah F. Norton (1840-1910) was a noted philanthropist and suffragist whose membership in the Working Women’s Association focused on equal education for girls, and equal job opportunities and pay for women. In 1869, Norton and Susan B. Anthony successfully lobbied Cornell University to admit women. Throughout her life, Norton […]

The daughter of wealthy philanthropists, Jane Addams (1860-1935) was raised to value social responsibility and political action. Addams attended the prestigious Rockford Female Seminary and aspired to become a doctor, but when ill health curbed her medical studies, she co-founded (with Ellen G. Starr) a missionary school. Hull House was distinct from other charities in

Harlem Renaissance writer Angelina Weld Grimké (1880-1958) was the biracial daughter of Archibald Grimké, himself the son of a white man and a slave. Archibald named Angelina in honor of his aunt, abolitionist and suffragist Angelina Emily Grimké; she had housed and supported him in becoming the second African American ever to graduate from Harvard

Eliza Bisbee Duffey (d. 1898) was an outspoken advice columnist who gained national acclaim with No Sex in Education, her biting response to Harvard professor Edward H. Clarke’s Sex in Education (1873). According to Dr. Clarke, females were anatomically unsuited for the rigors of academia; he claimed learned women would face dire consequences, like hysteria