In 1849 Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910) became the first woman to receive a medical degree from an American medical school and in 1859 became the first woman on the British medical register. She was ardently anti-abortion and pro-woman, choosing to enter the field of medicine partly because she was repulsed that the term “female physician” […]

Susan B. Anthony was born on February 15, 1820, in Adams, Massachusetts, in what is now the Susan B. Anthony Birthplace Museum lovingly restored and owned by Carol Crossed. After the family moved to Rochester, New York, they became active in the abolitionist movement, often welcoming Frederick Douglass and William Wilberforce. While Douglass became most

The assertion that suffragists do not care for children and prefer notoriety to the joys of maternity is so fully contradicted by the lives of the women who are trying to make the world a safer place for both sons and daughters, that no defense is needed. Having spent my own life from fifteen to

Jane Addams (1860-1935) exemplified activism dedicated to creating holistic solutions to the challenges faced by real people. Inspired in part by the Toynbee Hall settlement house in London’s East End, where university graduates lived in community with working class and poor people, Jane Addams and Ellen Starr founded their own settlement house on Chicago’s West