Boudica was a Celtic queen of the Iceni tribe in England who led a rebellion against the Romans around 60 A.D. that resulted in the destruction of at least two Roman settlements, including Londinium (modern London) and almost drove Rome's imperial occupation forces off the island.
During her lifetime, Zora Neale Hurston published four novels; Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934), Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939), Seraph on the Suwanee (1948) and more than 50 published short stories, plays, and essays. Her most popular novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, was written in rented a house in Port-au-Prince, Haiti in September 1936 and completed in seven weeks.
Nationally, American contralto Marian Anderson broke barriers. Her first record featured spirituals “DeepRiver” and “My Way’s Cloudy.” She was the first African American to perform with the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, the first African American to perform at the Metropolitan Opera. Despite, she was still subject to racial bias.
Through her work as a teacher, Susan B. Anthony quickly became aware of the wage gap between men and women in the profession. In 1848, the first Women’s Rights Convention in the United States, launching the Suffrage movement. She died 14 years before the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920.
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was born on October 11, 1884 to Elliott Roosevelt and Anna Hall. She worked on social, education, and cultural issues and in 1947 was elected head of the 18-nation U.N. Human Rights Commission. She even published her own newspaper column, called “My Day,” which ran in newspapers across the country, six days a week for nearly 30 years.
