Change in society happens in many ways. Learn more about the impact women have made in the Chicago area through fundraising, forging new career paths, creating art, protesting, and more.
African American women have served as nurses and caretakers since the United States’ period of enslavement, work that can be viewed as another form of labor that befell African American women.
Irene McCoy Gaines devoted her career in politics and advocacy to working against segregation and for the rights of Black women.
Margaret Haley was a teacher, suffragist, and advocate for the rights of educators, serving as vice president of the Chicago Teachers Federation for much of her career.
Elizabeth Lindsay Davis not only took the motto of the National Association of Colored Women—“lifting as we climb”—as inspiration for the title of her book, she took it as her personal motto.
Mary Livermore dedicated her life to abolition, temperance, women’s suffrage, and supporting the Union during the Civil War.
