Discover the Women of the Hall

Locke worked for decades to preserve American Indian languages and became a pioneer in an effort to grant the tribes greater authority in the education of their children. Locke was a 1991 MacArthur Fellow for her work to save dying tribal languages. In 1993, she became the first Native American woman elected to the national governing body of the Baha’i faith.

Founder of the Malki Museum at the Morongo Reservation in California. Born on a reservation in great poverty, Saubel became determined to preserve her tribe’s culture and language, despite overwhelming odds. A learned ethno anthropologist, Saubel was a founder of this first museum run by Native Americans.

Founder of the Literacy Volunteers of America, a group which she began in her upstate New York home. The organization has now taught nearly half a million people to read. Its unique approach, designed by Colvin, employs community tutors.

Began as a volunteer with the National Council of Negro Women. As its president and leader for forty years, she followed in the footsteps of her mentor, Mary McLeod Bethune. The NCNW represents organizations with more than four million members, works to create stong families as well as to assist young people and the needy.

Pioneering sex educator and acknowledged “mother of sex education.” She established the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States, which established sexuality as a healthy entity. Dr. Calderone was President of the SIECUS board, as well as author and co-author of several books, professional journals and magazine articles.

Author and lecturer. An illness at the age of 19 months left her deaf, blind and mute. Through the work of teacher Anne Sullivan, she learned to overcome these daunting handicaps and became a powerful and effective national spokesperson on behalf of others with similar disabilities.

African American teacher who, with only $1.50, began a school to help educate young African American women. After developing it into a college, she became a powerful leader, and through her leadership of the National Council of Negro Women, worked to end discrimination and increase opportunities for African Americans.

Best known as the woman who taught Helen Keller to read, write and minimally speak, Anne Sullivan lost her own sight to trachoma at an early age. She went on to graduate from Perkins School for the Blind in Boston and eventually receive medical treatment that restored her sight. Both Sullivan and Keller became role models for thousands of physically challenged people around the world.

Founded the first college for women, Mount Holyoke (1837). Mount Holyoke became the model for institutions of higher education for women nationwide. Lyon based her school on sound finances and high quality education in all disciplines, encouraging and educating women to reach beyond teaching and homemaking.

Born to a family known for its frugality and thrift, she was left at the age of 65 as the sole survivor of her immediate family, and with the funds to endow the establishment of Smith College, an institution that she hoped would provide undergraduate education for young women equal to that provided at the time for young men.

During her lifetime, Emma Hart Willard blazed an extraordinary trail on behalf of women’s education. A teacher by trade, Willard opened a girls’ school in her home in 1814 and was struck by the contrast between the education she could offer her women students and the education provided to men at nearby Middlebury College. She crafted A Plan for Improving Female Education, a document in which she advocated equal education for women at the academy level. In 1819, at the encouragement of Governor DeWitt Clinton, Willard opened a school in Waterford, New York which closed shortly afterward due to a lack of funding. Two years later, she founded Troy Female Seminary in Troy, New York (1821), the first school of higher learning for women. The seminary was renamed the Emma Willard School in her honor in 1895.