Rosa Parks (1913 - 2005)

Rosa Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley in Tuskegee, Alabama to James McCauley, a carpenter, and Leona McCauley, a teacher. At the age of two she moved to her grandparents' farm in Pine Level, Alabama with her mother and younger brother, Sylvester. At the age of 11 she enrolled in the Montgomery Industrial School for Girls, a private school founded by liberal-minded women from the northern United States. The school's philosophy of self-worth was consistent with Leona McCauley's advice to "take advantage of the opportunities, no matter how few they were."Opportunities were few indeed. "Back then," Mrs. Parks recalled in an interview, "we didn't have any civil rights. It was just a matter of survival, of existing from one day to the next. I remember going to sleep as a girl hearing the Klan ride at night and hearing a lynching and being afraid the house would burn down." In the same interview, she cited her lifelong acquaintance with fear as the reason for her relative fearlessness in deciding to appeal her conviction during the bus boycott. "I didn't have any special fear," she said. "It was more of a relief to know that I wasn't alone.After attending Alabama State Teachers College, the young Rosa settled in Montgomery, with her husband, Raymond Parks. The couple joined the local chapter of the NAACP and worked quietly for many years to improve the lot of African-Americans in the segregated south.

"I worked on numerous cases with the NAACP," Mrs. Parks recalled, "but we did not get the publicity. There were cases of flogging, peonage, murder, and rape. We didn't seem to have too many successes. It was more a matter of trying to challenge the powers that be, and to let it be known that we did not wish to continue being second-class citizens."The bus incident led to the formation of the Montgomery Improvement Association, led by the young pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The association called for a boycott of the city-owned bus company. The boycott lasted 382 days and brought Mrs. Parks, Dr. King, and their cause to the attention of the world. A Supreme Court Decision struck down the Montgomery ordinance under which Mrs. Parks had been fined, and outlawed racial segregation on public transportation.

In 1957, Mrs. Parks and her husband moved to Detroit, Michigan where Mrs. Parks served on the staff of U.S. Representative John Conyers. The Southern Christian Leadership Council established an annual Rosa Parks Freedom Award in her honor.

After the death of her husband in 1977, Mrs. Parks founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development. The Institute sponsors an annual summer program for teenagers called Pathways to Freedom. The young people tour the country in buses, under adult supervision, learning the history of their country and of the civil rights movement. President Clinton presented Rosa Parks with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996. She received a Congressional Gold Medal in 1999.When asked if she was happy living in retirement, Rosa Parks replied, "I do the very best I can to look upon life with optimism and hope and looking forward to a better day, but I don't think there is any such thing as complete happiness. It pains me that there is still a lot of Klan activity and racism. I think when you say you're happy, you have everything that you need and everything that you want, and nothing more to wish for. I haven't reached that stage yet."

Mrs. Parks spent her last years living quietly in Detroit, where she died in 2005 at the age of 92. After her death, her casket was placed in the rotunda of the United States Capitol for two days, so the nation could pay its respects to the woman whose courage had changed the lives of so many. She is the only woman and second African American in American history to lie in state at the Capitol, an honor usually reserved for Presidents of the United States.

Amelia Earhart (1897 – 1937?)

Amelia Earhart was born on 24 July 1897 in Atchison, Kansas. Her flying career began in Los Angeles in 1921 when, at age 24, she took flying lessons from Neta Snook and bought her first airplane-- a Kinner Airstar. Due to family problems, she sold her airplane in 1924 and moved back East, where she took employment as a social worker. Four years later, she returned to aviation bought an Avro Avian airplane and became the first woman to make a solo-return transcontinental flight. From then on, she continued to set and break her own speed and distance records, in competitive events, as well as personal stunts promoted by her husband George Palmer Putnam.

Earhart's name became a household word in 1932 when she became the first woman, and second person, to fly solo across the Atlantic, on the fifth anniversary of Charles Lindbergh's feat, flying a Lockheed Vega from Harbor Grace, Newfoundland to Londonderry, Ireland. That year, she received the Distinguished Flying Cross from the Congress, the Cross of Knight of the Legion of Honor from the French Government, and the Gold Medal of the National Geographic Society from President Hoover.
In January 1935 Earhart became the first person to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean from Honolulu to Oakland, California. Later that year she soloed from Los Angeles to Mexico City and back to Newark, N.J. In July 1936 she took delivery of a Lockheed 10E "Electra," financed by Purdue University, and started planning her round-the-world flight.
Earhart's flight would not be the first to circle the globe, but it would be the longest, 29,000 miles, following an equatorial route. On March 17, 1937 she flew the first leg, from Oakland, California to Honolulu, Hawaii. As the flight resumed three days later, a tire blew on takeoff and Earhart ground-looped the plane. Severely damaged, the aircraft had to be shipped back to California for repairs, and the flight was called off. The second attempt would begin at Miami, this time to fly from West to East; Fred Noonan, a former Pan Am pilot, would be Earhart's navigator and sole companion in flight for the entire trip. They departed Miami on June 1, and after numerous stops in South America, Africa, the Subcontinent and Southeast Asia, they arrived at Lae, New Guinea on June 29. About 22,000 miles of the journey had been completed. The remaining 7,000 miles would all be over the Pacific Ocean.
On July 2, 1937 at 0000 GMT, Earhart and Noonan took off from Lae. Their intended destination was Howland Island, a tiny piece of land a few miles long, 20 feet high, and 2, 556 miles away. Their last positive position report and sighting were over the Nukumanu Islands, about 800 miles into the flight. The U.S. Coast Guard cutter USCGC Itasca was on station near Howland, assigned on short notice to communicate with Earhart's plane and guide her to the island once she arrived in the vicinity.
But it soon became evident that Earhart and Noonan had little practical knowledge of the use of radio navigation. The frequencies Earhart was using were not well suited to direction finding (in fact, she had left behind the lower-frequency reception and transmission equipment which might have enabled Itasca to locate her), and the reception quality of her transmissions was poor. After six hours of frustrating attempts at two-way communications, contact was lost.
A coordinated search by the Navy and Coast Guard was organized and no physical evidence of the flyers or their plane was ever found. Earhart and Noonan's fate has been the subject of many rumors and allegations which were never substantiated. Modern analysis indicates that after passing the Nukumanu Islands, Earhart began to vector off course, unwittingly heading for a point about 100 miles NNW of Howland. A few hours before their estimated arrival time Noonan calculated a "sun line," but without a successful, radio-frequency range calculation, a precise "fix" on the plane's location could not be established. Researchers generally believe that the plane ran out of fuel and that Earhart and Noonan perished at sea.

Ida B. Wells (1869 - 1932)

Ida B. Wells was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi, months before the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.

She was the oldest of eight children. When her parents died in 1880 as a result of a yellow fever plague in Holly Springs, Wells took it upon herself to become a teacher in Holly Springs in order to support her younger siblings.

In spite of hardship, Wells was able to complete her studies at Rust College and in 1888 became a teacher in Memphis, Tennessee.

While living in Memphis, Wells became an editor and co-owner of a local black newspaper called "The Free Speech and Headlight." She wrote her editorials under the pen-name "Iola."

When a respected black store owner and friend of Barnett was lynched in 1892, Wells used her paper to attack the evils of lynching and encouraged the black townsmen of Memphis to go west.

While attending an editor's convention in New York, Wells received word not to return to Memphis because her life would be in danger. Wells took her cause to England to gain support and earned a reputation as a fiery orator and courageous leader of her people.

Upon returning to the United States, she settled in Chicago and formed the Women's Era Club, the first civic organization for African-American women. The name was later changed to the Ida B. Wells Club in honor of its founder.

She never forgot her crusade against lynching, and, in 1895 Wells published "A Red Record," which recorded race lynching in America.

In June of 1895 she married Ferdinand Barnett, a prominent Chicago attorney. Wells-Barnett kept active until the birth of her second son, Herman. She resigned as president of the Ida B. Wells Club and devoted her time to raising her two young sons and subsequently her two daughters.

However, by the start of the 20th century the racial strife in the country was disturbing. Lynching and race riots abounded across the nation.

In 1909, Barnett was asked to be a member of the "Committee of 40," which established the groundwork for the organization now known as the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), the oldest civil rights organization in the country.

Wells-Barnett continued her tireless crusade for equal rights for African-Americans until her death in 1931.

Marie Curie (1867 – 1934)

Marie Curie, née Maria Sklodowska, was born in Warsaw on November 7, 1867, the daughter of a secondary-school teacher. She received a general education in local schools and some scientific training from her father. She became involved in a students' revolutionary organization and found it prudent to leave Warsaw, then in the part of Poland dominated by Russia, for Cracow, which at that time was under Austrian rule. In 1891, she went to Paris to continue her studies at the Sorbonne where she obtained Licenciateships in Physics and the Mathematical Sciences. She met Pierre Curie, Professor in the School of Physics in 1894 and in the following year they were married. She succeeded her husband as Head of the Physics Laboratory at the Sorbonne, gained her Doctor of Science degree in 1903, and following the tragic death of Pierre Curie in 1906, she took his place as Professor of General Physics in the Faculty of Sciences, the first time a woman had held this position. She was also appointed Director of the Curie Laboratory in the Radium Institute of the University of Paris, founded in 1914.Her early researches, together with her husband, were often performed under difficult conditions, laboratory  arrangements were poor and both had to undertake much teaching to earn a livelihood. The discovery of radioactivity by Henri Becquerel in 1896 inspired the Curies in their brilliant researches and analyses which led to the isolation of polonium, named after the country of Marie's birth, and radium. Mme. Curie developed methods for the separation of radium from radioactive residues in sufficient quantities to allow for its characterization and the careful study of its properties, therapeutic properties in particular.Mme. Curie throughout her life actively promoted the use of radium to alleviate suffering and during World War I, assisted by her daughter, Irene, she personally devoted herself to this remedial work. She retained her enthusiasm for science throughout her life and did much to establish a radioactivity laboratory in her native city - in 1929 President Hoover of the United States presented her with a gift of $ 50,000, donated by American friends of science, to purchase radium for use in the laboratory in Warsaw.Mme. Curie, quiet, dignified and unassuming, was held in high esteem and admiration by scientists throughout the world. She was a member of the Conseil du Physique Solvay from 1911 until her death and since 1922 she had been a member of the Committee of Intellectual Co-operation of the League of Nations. Her work is recorded in numerous papers in scientific journals and she is the author of Recherches sur les Substances Radioactives (1904), L'Isotopie et les Éléments Isotopes and the classic Traité' de Radioactivité (1910).The importance of Mme. Curie's work is reflected in the numerous awards bestowed on her. She received many honorary science, medicine and law degrees and honorary memberships of learned societies throughout the world. Together with her husband, she was awarded half of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903, for their study into the spontaneous radiation discovered by Becquerel, who was awarded the other half of the Prize. In 1911 she received a second Nobel Prize, this time in Chemistry, in recognition of her work in radioactivity. She also received, jointly with her husband, the Davy Medal of the Royal Society in 1903 and, in 1921, President Harding of the United States, on behalf of the women of America, presented her with one gram of radium in recognition of her service to science.

Harriet Tubman (1820 – 1913)

Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Harriet Ross; 1820 – March 10, 1913) was anHarriet Tubman (born Araminta Harriet Ross; 1820 – March 10, 1913) was an African-American abolitionist, humanitarian, and Union spy during the American Civil War. After escaping from slavery, into which she was born, she made thirteen missions to rescue more than 70 slaves[1] using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. She later helped John Brown recruit men for his raid on Harpers Ferry, and in the post-war era struggled for women's suffrage.As a child in Dorchester County, Maryland, Tubman was beaten by masters to whom she was hired out. Early in her life, she suffered a head wound when hit by a heavy metal weight. The injury caused disabling seizures, narcoleptic attacks, headaches, and powerful visionary and dream activity, which occurred throughout her life. A devout Christian, Tubman ascribed the visions and vivid dreams to revelations from God.In 1849, Tubman escaped to Philadelphia, then immediately returned to Maryland to rescue her family. Slowly, one group at a time, she brought relatives out of the state, and eventually guided dozens of other slaves to freedom. Traveling by night, Tubman (or "Moses", as she was called) "never lost a passenger".[2] Large rewards were offered for the return of many of the fugitive slaves, but no one then knew that Tubman was the one helping them. When the Southern-dominated Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, requiring law officials in free states to aid efforts to recapture slaves, she helped guide fugitives farther north into Canada, where slavery was prohibited.When the American Civil War began, Tubman worked for the Union Army, first as a cook and nurse, and then as an armed scout and spy. The first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war, she guided the Combahee River Raid, which liberated more than 700 slaves in South Carolina. After the war, she retired to the family home in Auburn, New York, where she cared for her aging parents. She became active in the women's suffrage movement in New York until illness overtook her. Near the end of her life, she lived in a home for elderly African Americans that she had helped found years earlier.

Florence Nightingale (1820 – 1910)

Florence Nightingale also known as the Lady with the lamp, was born on the 12 May 1820 and sadley died on 13th August 1910. She was as tender as a flower and never let anything faze her. She had a great life by becoming a succesfull writer by writing the book " Care you Baby". She came to Britain for her to study work in nursing during the Crimean War, where she tended to wounded soldiers. She started taking the night shift to make sure her patience were stable and their wasn't going to be a problem for them if they were left in the morning. After her habbit of making rounds at night. Florence Nightingale believed that God had called her to be a nurse, and so she tryed her best to make sure her goal was a success.
Nightingale laid the foundation of professional nursing with the establishment, in 1860, of her nursing school at St Thomas' Hospital in London, the first secular nursing school in the world, now part of King's College London. The Nightingale Pledge taken by new nurses was named in her honour, and the annual International Nurses Day is celebrated around the world on her birthday.

Sacagawea (1787? – 1812)

Shoshone interpreter, member of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Born around 1788. Much about Sacagawea, the only woman on the Lewis and Clark expedition into the American West, is a mystery. Daughter of a Shoshone chief, it is not known exactly when she was born. Some sources say 1788 while others say 1787 and 1786. Around the age of 12, Sacagawea was captured by Hidatsa Indians, an enemy of the Shoshones. She was then sold to a French-Canadian trapper named Toussaint Charbonneau who made her one of his wives.Sacagawea and her husband lived among the Hidatsa and Mandan Indians in the upper Missouri River area (present-day North Dakota). In November 1804, an expedition led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark entered the area. Often called the Corps of Discovery, the expedition planned to explore newly acquired western lands and find a route to the Pacific Ocean. The group built Fort Mandan, and elected to stay there for the winter. Lewis and Clark met Charbonneau and quickly hired him to serve as interpreter on their expedition. Even though she was pregnant with her first child, Sacagawea was chosen to accompany them on their mission. Lewis and Clark believed that her knowledge of the Shoshone language would help them later in their journey.In February 1805, Sacagawea gave birth to a son named Jean Baptiste Charbonneau. Despite traveling with a newborn child during the trek, Sacagawea proved to be helpful in many ways. She was skilled at finding edible plants. When a boat she was riding on capsized, she was able to save some of its cargo, including important documents and supplies. She also served as a symbol of peace - a group traveling with a woman and a child were treated with less suspicion than a group of men alone.Sacagawea also made a miraculous discovery of her own during the trip west. When the corps encountered a group of Shoshone Indians, she soon realized that its leader was actually her brother Cameahwait. It was through her that the expedition was able to buy horses from the Shoshone to cross the Rocky Mountains. Despite this joyous family reunion, Sacagawea remained with the explorers for the trip west.After reaching the Pacific coast in November 1805, Sacagawea was allowed to cast her vote along with the other members of the expedition for where they would build a fort to stay for the winter. They built Fort Clatsop near present-day Astoria, Oregon, and they remained there until March of the following year. Sacagawea, her husband, and her son remained with the expedition on the return trip east until they reached the Mandan villages. During the journey, Clark had become fond of her son Jean Baptiste, nicknaming him "Pomp" or "Pompey." And he even offered to help him get an education.

Abigail Adams (1744 – 1818)

Abigail Adams gave birth to her first child ten days shy of nine months after her marriage, thus working almost immediately as a mother. She also shared with her husband the management of the household finances and the farming of their property for sustenance, while he also practiced law in the nearby city of Boston. When John Adams went to Philadelphia in 1774 to serve as his colony's delegate to the First Continental Congress, Abigail Adams remained home. The separation prompted the start of a lifelong correspondence between them, forming not only a rich archive that reflected the evolution of a marriage of the Revolutionary and Federal eras, but a chronology of the public issues debated and confronted by the new nation's leaders. The letters reflect not only Abigail Adams' reactive advice to the political contentions and questions that John posed to her, but also her own observant reporting of New England newspapers' and citizens' response to legislation and news events of the American Revolution. As the colonial fight for independence from the mother country ensued, Abigail Adams was appointed by the Massachusetts Colony General Court in 1775, along with Mercy Warren and the governor's wife Hannah Winthrop to question their fellow Massachusetts women who were charged by their word or action of remaining loyal to the British crown and working against the independence movement. "…you are now a politician and now elected into an important office, that of judges of Tory ladies, which will give you, naturally, an influence with your sex," her husband wrote her in response to the appointment. This was the first instance of a First Lady who held any quasi-official government position. As the Second Continental Congress drew up and debated the Declaration of Independence through 1776, Abigail Adams began to press the argument in letters to her husband that the creation of a new form of government was an opportunity to make equitable the legal status of women to that of men. Despite her inability to convince him of this, the text of those letters became some of the earliest known writings calling for women's equal rights. Separated from her husband when he left for his diplomatic service as minister to France, and then to England in 1778, she kept him informed of domestic politics while he confided international affairs to her. She joined him in 1783, exploring France and England, received in the latter nation by the king. Upon their return, during John Adams' tenure as the first Vice President (1789-1797), Abigail Adams spent part of the year in the capital cities of New York and Philadelphia, while Congress was in session.As much of her political role was conducted in correspondence, so too was Abigail Adams's active interest in her husband's two presidential campaigns, in 1796 and 1800, when his primary challenger was their close friend, anti-Federalist Thomas Jefferson. Caring for her husband's dying mother; Abigail Adams was unable to attend his March 4, 1797 inaugural ceremony in Philadelphia. She was highly conscious, however, of how their lives would change that day, with "a sense of the obligations, the important trusts, and numerous duties connected with it."Of the four years her husband served as President, Abigail Adams was actually present in the temporary capital of Philadelphia and then, finally, the permanent "Federal City," of Washington, D.C. for a total of only eighteen months. She nonetheless made a strong impression on the press and public. She was unofficially titled "Lady Adams," and encouraged such recognition by assuming a visible ceremonial role. After touring a New Jersey Army encampment, she reviewed the troops stationed there as "proxy" for the President. Often mentioned in the press, her opinions were even quoted at a New England town hall meeting. A highly partisan Federalist, Mrs. Adams helped forward the interests of the Administration by writing editorial letters to family and acquaintances, encouraging the publication of the information and viewpoint presented in them. She was sarcastically attacked in the opposition press, her influence over presidential appointments questioned and there were printed suggestions that she was too aged to understand questions of the day. One anti-Federalist derided her as "Mrs. President" for her partisanship. Indeed, Abigail Adams supported the sentiment behind her husband's Alien and Sedition Acts as a legal means of imprisoning those who criticized the President in public print. Fearful of French revolutionary influence on the fledgling United States, she was unsuccessful in her urging the President to declare war with France. She remained an adamant advocate of equal public education for women and emancipation of African-American slaves. Highly conscious of her role as the president's wife, Abigail Adams saw her role largely as a hostess for the public and partisan symbol of the Federalist Party. Her entertainments were confined to a relatively small home in Philadelphia, turned into a hotel after the capital was moved from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C. Although she did host a dance for her son and his friends, she received visitors formally, seated like a royal figure as she had witnessed at Buckingham Palace. She also attempted to influence fashion, believing that the more revealing Napoleonic-style clothing then popular were too indecorous. Since presidential families were responsible for covering the costs of their entertainments and the Adamses were enduring financial difficulties at the time of his presidency, Abigail Adams's receptions were somewhat Spartan. The first First Lady to live in the White House, she resided there for four months, arriving in November 1800. During that time she famously hung her family's laundry in the unfinished East Room to dry.

Queen Elizabeth I (1533 – 1603)

Elizabeth Tudor is considered by many to be the greatest monarch in English history. When she became queen in 1558, she was twenty-five years old, a survivor of scandal and danger, and considered illegitimate by most Europeans. She inherited a bankrupt nation, torn by religious discord, a weakened pawn between the great powers of France and Spain. She was only the third queen to rule England in her own right; the other two examples, her cousin Lady Jane Grey and half-sister Mary I, were disastrous. Even her supporters believed her position dangerous and uncertain. Her only hope, they counseled, was to marry quickly and lean upon her husband for support. But Elizabeth had other ideas. 

She ruled alone for nearly half a century, lending her name to a glorious epoch in world history. She dazzled even her greatest enemies. Her sense of duty was admirable, though it came at great personal cost. She was committed above all else to preserving English peace and stability; her genuine love for her subjects was legendary. Only a few years after her death in 1603, they lamented her passing. In her greatest speech to Parliament, she told them, 'I count the glory of my crown that I have reigned with your love.' And five centuries later, the worldwide love affair with Elizabeth Tudor continues.

Joan of Arc (1412 – 1431)

At the age of 16, Joan of Arc set out to meet the exiled dauphin in Chinon. Three years earlier, she began hearing voices one day while working outdoors at her home in Domrémy in Champagne region. She identified them as belonging to St. Michael, St. Margaret and St. Catharine. At first, the trio of saints encouraged her in simple things, such as being a good daughter. But then, the messages intensified. They directed Joan to cut her hair short and don men's clothing in order to meet the dauphin and eventually lead the French to victory over the English, bringing Charles VII to the throne. Joan of Arc's father even had dreams of her surrounded by soldiers and urged her brothers to keep their sister from running away.

Joan didn't heed her father's wishes and set out for the dauphin's court with a newly cropped hairdo and an unwavering belief that she was sent by God to put the rightful king on the throne of France. Not surprisingly, the 16-year-old cross-dressing girl's arrival in Chinon didn't go unnoticed. Two days after requesting to meet with Charles, Joan of Arc was granted permission to hold court with the dauphin.
When Joan of Arc arrived to meet him, Charles intentionally hid among the crowd of nobility in the hall. Nevertheless, the 16-year-old recognized him immediately. After a brief, private conversation, Charles announced that he trusted Joan of Arc's divine mission since she was able to tell him a secret about himself that no one else could possibly know (which remains unknown to this day). To ensure that he wasn't about to hand over the fate of France to a soothsayer or witch, Charles sent Joan to be examined by a panel of clerics. They agreed with the dauphin that Joan of Arc had, indeed, heard the word of God. With that, Joan of Arc became a captain in the French military and prepared to rescue the city of Orléans from English occupation.

Cleopatra (68 B.C.-30 B.C.)

As queen of ancient Egypt, Cleopatra is one of the famous female rulers in history. Her family had ruled Egypt for more than 100 years before she was born around 69 BC. The stories and myths surrounding Cleopatra's tragic life inspired a number of books, movies, and plays, including Antony and Cleopatra by Shakespeare. Cleopatra has become one of the most well-known ancient Egyptians.Cleopatra was a direct descendant of the Greek general of Alexander the Great who became Ptolemy I Soter. All of his male successors were called Ptolemy and all of his female successors were called Cleopatra. The clever, ambitious and determined woman who was also known for her beauty. Initially she jointly ruled Egypt with Ptolemy XIII but each vied for total power. Ptolemy angered Julius Caesar by killing General Pompey. Cleopatra took advantage of this and arranged her famous meeting with Julius Caesar by being rolled into a Persian carpet and presented to the Roman in this unusual fashion. She became the mistress ( and possibly married) of Julius Caesar and gave birth to his son, Caesarion. After the assassination of Caesar Cleopatra became the mistress and then the wife of Mark Antony. This alliance ended when they lost the Battle of Actium during which Octavian invaded Egypt. Both committed suicide. The famous death of Cleopatra was from the snakebite of an asp.