To mark International Women’s Day and with Women’s History Month in full swing, we wanted to shine a spotlight on some oft-overlooked but incredible women who really did make history.
Claudette Colvin
Too tired to give up her seat on the bus home from high school, on March 2, 1955, Claudette Colvin refused to move for a white passenger nine months before Rosa Parks would do the same. Later she said that she felt inspired by the memories of earlier pioneers to stand or sit her ground.
The 15-year-old Colvin was arrested for violating Montgomery, Alabama’s segregation laws, and her family feared for their safety as news of the incident spread. Colvin pled not guilty and was given probation. While Colvin wasn’t selected by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to challenge segregation laws in the south due to her youth, she later became one of the four plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, which ruled that the Montgomery segregated bus system was unconstitutional.
Florence Nightingale
If there was ever a true hero who dedicated her life to helping others, Florence Nightingale is it. She had born in Italy in 1820. Florence went against what was traditionally expected of her, by becoming a war-hero nurse.
She was born in Florence – which was the inspiration for her name – into a very wealthy family who frowned upon her entering into the nursing profession.
She moved to London to work before receiving a letter from the Secretary of War asking her to put a team together to go to work in a place called Crimea during the Crimean War and look after British soldiers. This was the first time that women had been officially allowed to serve in the army.
The conditions there were terrible. For example, there weren’t enough beds, everything was filthy, there wasn’t proper loose and there were rats everywhere.
Mother Teresa
In September 2016, it was announced that Mother Teresa was being named as a Saint – so she is certainly deserving of a place on this list. At the age of 12, she was a Roman Catholic – decided that she wanted to go to India to spread the Christian message and help people.
In 1929, she traveled to India and she ended up dedicating her life to helping poor people, particularly in the Indian city of Kolkata. She described her work as God’s work. While she was there, she started something called the Missionaries of Charity. This group now has thousands of people in almost 90 countries helping people living in poverty all over the world.
In 1979 she received the Nobel Peace Prize for her work. She asked that the big dinner to mark this be canceled and all of the money given to the poor people of Kolkata.
Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Winfrey is the woman who is rarely away from the headlines is a media legend. She started off her TV career when she was just a teenager, becoming the youngest person – and first African-American woman – to read the main news on a channel in the city of Nashville America at the age of 19.
Now, she is one of the world’s most famous and most-loved interviewers. She first became famous in 1986 with the Oprah Winfrey Show. It ran for 25 years before she turned her success into her own TV channel – the Oprah Winfrey Network. She has also done a huge amount of charity work, including setting up two of her own foundations and donating millions of her own money.
Sojourner Truth
Born into slavery in Swartekill, New York, Sojourner Truth escaped to freedom with her infant daughter in 1826. Six feet tall, with a powerful voice and driven by deep religious conviction, Truth was an ardent abolitionist and women’s rights activist. Among many of Truth’s legacies, the tone and substance of her language loom large. She stumped the country speaking on emancipation, politicians, political action, racism, women’s rights, and segregation.
Perhaps her best-known speech was the stirring “Ain’t I a Woman?” delivered at a women’s convention in Ohio in 1851. When Truth died in 1883, her funeral in Battle Creek, Michigan was the largest the town had ever seen, a testimony to how her heroic and courageous life touched so many around her.
