Discover the Women of the Hall

Co-founder (with Carrie Chapman Catt) of the League of Women Voters in 1920, after ratification of the 19th Amendment. A graduate of MIT in 1904, she funded MIT’s first on-campus residence for women. She devoted her late husband’s wealth to contraceptive research and her own resources and energy to opening up doors for women in science and engineering.

Political activist central to the campaign to pass the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Serving as National Campaign Director as well as in her home state of Tennessee, she led a march of 2,000 women in the South’s first suffrage parade in 1914.

Nurse and social reformer. After seeing many poor women in New York City damaged and dying from attempts to end unwanted pregnancies, she fought for reform. Sanger underwent arrests and imprisonment for distributing information on birth control and contraception.

The founder of the Junior League, she helped author the Social Security Act, chaired the first consumer’s rights groups, and was instrumental in the creation of public playgrounds in New York’s Central Park.

One the major leaders of the women’s right to vote and equal rights movements, she was co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union and author of the first national labor safety law guidelines. In 1919, she organized the First Feminist Congress, and she was one of the four authors of the Equal Rights Amendment proposed in 1923.

A woman of extraordinary vision and drive, Mother Mary Joseph Rogers, MM founded the Maryknoll Sisters, the first United States based Catholic congregation of religious women dedicated to a global mission. While attending Smith College in 1904, Rogers was inspired by graduating Protestant students preparing to leave for missionary work in China, and following her graduation, she returned to Smith and started a mission club for Catholic students (1905). It was while organizing the club that she met Father James A. Walsh, director of Boston’s Office for the Propagation of the Faith, later founder of Maryknoll Fathers & Brothers, through whom she was inspired to establish a mission congregation for women. The Maryknoll Sisters were founded in 1912, and by the time of Rogers’ death in 1955, there were 1,065 sisters working in twenty countries and several cities in the United States.

Trailblazing First Lady and wife of President Franklin Roosevelt. She spent her adult years working in politics and social reform. Her warmth and compassion inspired the nation, and she later became U.S. Delegate to the United Nations. The U.N. Declaration of Human Rights was largely her work, and she chaired the first-ever Presidential Commission on the Status of Women (1961).

Founded the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) to help older Americans cope effectively in their later years. Her organization, now 36 million members strong and a political lobbying force, helps with health insurance, career assistance and discounts for senior citizens.

Social reformer. Reared a Quaker, Paul found most of the women’s suffrage movement too slow and passive. After earning a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1912, she campaigned aggressively for women’s suffrage, using picketing and demonstrations to draw attention to the issue. Paul founded the women’s party, which demanded passage of the Equal Rights Amendment.

Widely considered one of the great Catholic lay leaders of the 20th century. As co-founder of The Catholic Worker, Day spearheaded the movement that continues to promote pacifism, civil rights, and relief for the homeless.

She was instrumental in the creation of the Atomic Energy Commission and later established an endowment for what has become one of the single most significant sources of private support for women in science, mathematics, and engineering.

Premier behind-the-scenes organizer and co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), headed by Martin Luther King, Jr. Baker also helped establish the civil rights movement’s foremost student organization, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.

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.

A pioneer in international adoption, Bertha and her husband adopted 8 Korean children in addition to their own 6 children. The Holt Adoption program, later called Holt International Children’s Services, was established in 1956 to help those interested in inter-country adoptions.

Following a forced retirement at age 65, Kuhn began work forming the Gray Panthers, an organization which addressed age discrimination and pension rights. Kuhn also addressed large public issues, including nursing home reform, forced retirement and fraud against the elderly.

Catalyst for change in the labor, women’s and consumer movements. The driving force behind President Kennedy’s creation of the first Presidential Commission on Women in 1962, Peterson headed the Women’s Bureau in the Department of Labor. She also served Presidents Johnson and Carter, and served at the United Nations under President Clinton.

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.

Known as “the mother of the Civil Rights Movement,” when, in 1955, she refused to give up her seat on a public bus to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama. The event sparked the Montgomery bus boycott, the first major effort in the Civil Rights struggle.

“The midwife of the contemporary women’s movement,” as described by Betty Friedan. East was a key staffer on President John F. Kennedy’s first-ever Presidential Commission on the Status of Women in the 1960s. East persuaded Friedan and others to create the National Organization for Women to lead the drive to eliminate gender discrimination.

Mississippi sharecropper and organizer of the Mississippi Freedom Party, which challenged the white domination of the Democratic Party. Hamer succeeded in integrating the state delegation, and she was a tireless champion for poor minorities in her state and nationwide.

A groundbreaking First Lady, Betty Ford is often remembered for her candor in addressing the controversial issues of her time. Shortly after she became the First Lady of the United States in 1974, Ford was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a radical mastectomy. Rather than suppressing the diagnosis, Ford courageously shared her personal story and inspired countless women across the nation to get breast examinations. In 1978, following a family intervention, Ford underwent successful treatment for addiction to alcohol and prescription drugs. She again used her story to raise public awareness of addiction, and in 1982, she co-founded the Betty Ford Center to treat victims of alcohol and chemical dependency. Ford was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991 and the Congressional Gold Medal, with President Gerald R. Ford, in 1999.

A Methodist bishop, Leontine T.C. Kelly was the first African American woman to be elected bishop in the United Methodist Church. She served as bishop of the California-Nevada Annual Conference and the president of the Western Jurisdiction College of Bishops. Committed to peace and justice, she was arrested several times for protesting nuclear weapons, and was one of 18 bishops who signed a letter to the Methodist Church in response to its policy toward gays and lesbians in the church.

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.

Reshaped American attitudes toward women’s lives and rights through decades of social activism, strategic thinking and powerful writing. Her book The Feminine Mystique (1963) triggered the contemporary women’s movement. Her latest work is the best-selling The Fountain of Age.