TODAY THE HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY REPUBLICAN PARTY WOULD LIKE TO REMIND US OF SOME OF THE GREAT WOMEN IN HISTORY.  THE WORLD WOULD NOT BE THE SAME WITHOUT THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF THESE PIONEERING WOMEN WHO AGAINST ALL ODDS, SUCCEEDED AND FOUGHT FOR THEIR VALUES AND ACHIEVEMENTS. 

Sojourner Truth is one of the most inspirational black women in America’s history and her words belong to one of the most famous speeches by any woman.  An African-American abolitionist and women’s rights activist, Truth delivered a now famous speech at the Ohio Women’s Right’s Convention in Akron, 1851, that has come to be known as “Ain’t I a Woman?”

Truth was separated from her family at the age of nine and was subsequently sold for auction as a slave along with a flock of sheep for $100. In 1829, Truth escaped to freedom with her infant daughter Sophia, but her other two children had to be left behind.

Truth began to advocate for the rights of women and African Americans in the late 1840’s and was known for giving passionate speeches about women’s rights, prison reform and universal suffrage.  Truth, who died in Michigan in 1883, is known as one of the foremost leaders of the abolition movement and one of the earliest advocates for women’s rights.

Rosa Parks was on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955, when the bus driver asked her to stand up and give her seat to a white man. Parks, a black seamstress, refused and in doing so sparked an entire civil rights movement in America.

Born in 1913, Parks moved to Alabama at age 11, and attended a laboratory school at the Alabama State Teachers’ College for Negroes, until she had to leave in 11th grade to care for her ill grandmother.

Before 1955, Parks was a member of Montgomery’s African-American community and in 1943 joined the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP, where she became chapter secretary.

In 1955, Alabama was still governed by segregation laws and had a policy for municipal buses where white citizens only were allowed to sit in the front, and black men and women had to sit in the back. On December 1st, there were no more seats left in the white section, so the bus conductor told the four black riders to stand and give the white man a whole row. Three obeyed, Parks did not.

Parks was subsequently arrested, and her actions sparked a wave of protests across America. When she died at the age of 92 on October 24, 2005, she became the first woman in the nation’s history to lie in state at the U.S. Capitol.

Malala Yousafzai (1997 - Present)

“I tell my story not because it is unique, but because it is the story of many girls.” 

Malala Yousafzai displays her medal and diploma during the Nobel Peace Prize awards ceremony in 2014

Malala Yousafzai was born in Pakistan on July 12, 1997. Yousafzai’s father was a teacher and ran an all-girls school in her village, however when the Taliban took over her town they enforced a ban on all girls going to school. In 2012, at the age of 15, Malala publicly spoke out on women’s rights to education and as a result, a gunman boarded her school bus and shot the young activist in the head.

Malala survived.

Yousafzai moved to the UK where she has become a fierce presence on the world stage and became the youngest ever recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014, at 17 years old. Malala is currently studying Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford.

Marie Curie (1867 – 1934)

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”

Marie Curie in 1906

Polish-born Marie Curie was a pioneering physicist and scientist, who coined the term radioactivity, discovered two new elements (radium and polonium) and developed a portable x-ray machine.

Currie was the first person (not woman) who has won two separate Noble Prizes, one for physics and another for chemistry, and to this day Curie is the only person, regardless of gender, to receive Noble prizes for two different sciences.

Currie faced near constant adversity and discrimination throughout her career, as science and physics was such a male-dominated field, but despite this, her research remains relevant and has influenced the world of science to this day.

This is an excerpt from marieclaire.com.au

https://www.marieclaire.com.au/famous-women-in-history