Do You Know These Famous Women in American History?

In 1922, Alaska Packard Davidson became the first female FBI special agent. She and other women hired in the 1920s primarily worked on cases related to the Mann Act, which criminalized human trafficking. Two years later, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover requested her resignation after deciding there were no roles that demanded a female agent. Women would not join the FBI again until 1972, when the Equal Employment Opportunity Act was passed.

Before Rosa Parks sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Claudette Colvin took the same action when a bus driver demanded she give up her seat for a white woman. Colvin refused, and was arrested. Civil rights leaders did consider organizing the bus boycott around her, but decided Rosa Parks was a stronger figurehead for the movement.

Growing up on an Omaha reservation (in Nebraska and Iowa) in the 1860s, Susan La Flesche watched white doctors refuse to treat Native Americans. She was inspired to earn her medical degree in 1889 and focus her work on treating Omaha people. She also advocated for the Omaha to retain control of their own land, and worked to raise funds to open a hospital that was named in her honor.

The first woman to circumnavigate the globe did so disguised as a man. Jeanne Baret was the assistant for the botanist Philibert Commerson, who joined French explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville on a round-the-world expedition in 1766. He brought along a person he claimed was his valet, “Jean Bonnefoy,” who was in fact Jeanne Baret. The ruse was eventually found out, but not before Baret and Commerson made several important discoveries.

When Victoria Woodhull decided to run for President in 1872, the odds were stacked against her. Women didn’t yet have the right to vote, and at 31, Woodhull was below the legal age to hold the nation’s highest office. What’s more, her Equal Rights Party nominated abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass as her running mate — a bold, though ultimately unsuccessful move. Though Woodhull failed to make it onto the presidential ballot, her daring campaign paved the way for the many women who would run after her.

If you look closely, you’ll find one woman's name on the Declaration of Independence. While she didn't sign the document, Mary Katharine Goddard did publish it. Congress approached the Baltimore postmaster to print the second copy of the Declaration in 1777. To ensure her name would go down in history, she added, “Baltimore, in Maryland: Printed by Mary Katharine Goddard," at the bottom of the document.

Often called “the most beautiful actress in film,” Hedy Lamarr was also an inventor. She created a method of frequency hopping that made a radio signal move between different channels on its way to its destination, helping disguise radio transmissions. It was a revolutionary invention for World War II, but her work has an even broader impact today, as the basis for Wi-Fi and wireless technology.

Ella Fitzgerald became the first Black woman to be awarded a Grammy when she won for Best Vocal Performance, Female, and Best Jazz Vocal Performance, Individual, in 1958. Known as the “First Lady of Song,” Fitzgerald had a troubled childhood and used jazz music as a way to escape. After debuting at the Apollo Theater in 1934, where she competed in an amateur contest and was discovered by record executives, she went on to win 13 Grammys and sell over 40 million albums.

Marsha P. Johnson, a Black transgender woman, is often credited with throwing the first brick of the Stonewall Uprising in New York City in 1969, kicking off the LGBTQ+ movement as we know it. Along with Sylvia Rae Rivera, Johnson founded several organizations to advocate for LGBTQ+ people across the country. Their work has led to the passing of LGBTQ+ rights legislation nationwide.

Polish physicist Marie Curie is famous for her work with radioactivity, and she discovered two elements, radium and polonium. Her discoveries led to X-ray technology, as well as the development of a new type of cancer treatment. She and her husband, Pierre Curie, were awarded the 1903 Nobel Prize for physics for their studies in radiation. In 1911, she received her second Nobel Prize, for chemistry, for her studies in radioactivity, becoming the only woman (to date) to be awarded the honor twice.

Eleanor Roosevelt remains one of the most impactful First Ladies in history, thanks in large part to her commitment to human rights. Her famous speech, “The Struggle for Human Rights,” was a major impetus for the U.N. to pass the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in December of 1948. She also served on the board of human rights organizations such as the NAACP.

Katherine Johnson showed exceptional aptitude for math, starting high school at age 10. When she was hired among a group of other Black women to be “computers” at NASA, she again excelled. She calculated the route a spacecraft would take to reach the moon, contributing to the 1969 moon landing. Actress Taraji P. Henson portrayed Johnson in the 2016 film “Hidden Figures.”

As only the second woman to serve on the Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was aware of the importance behind everything she did. She began to wear specific collars with her black justice robes to feminize the wardrobe and indicate her opinion. Her “dissent” collar was a spiky bejeweled necklace on a black band, and it became “notorious” when she wore it for the Bush v. Gore decision, the case that determined the outcome of the 2000 presidential election.

Patsy Mink, a Japanese American woman from Hawaii, was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1964. She was the first Asian American woman to serve in Congress. For the four years she served, Mink advocated for the rights of immigrants and minorities, and played a significant role in passing Title IX legislation, preventing gender-based discrimination in education.

Amelia Earhart achieved many feats during her time as a pilot, including becoming the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean and the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to the continental United States. After embarking on the ultimate course to fly around the world in 1937, Earhart disappeared over the Pacific Ocean, and what happened remains a mystery to this day.

The first woman in space was cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, who flew aboard the Soviet Union's Vostok 6 on June 16, 1963. Almost exactly two decades after her historic trip, on June 18, 1983, Sally Ride became the first American woman in space, and the third overall (following Svetlana Savitskaya, also from the Soviet program). Ride, an astrophysicist as well as an astronaut, made her first flight into space alongside four other crew members on the Challenger space shuttle's mission STS-7.

After escaping from slavery herself, Harriet Tubman became the most well-known Underground Railroad “conductor” in history. With a vast network of safe houses and contacts, she used various strategies to help over 300 enslaved people escape to freedom. Tubman is quoted as saying she, unlike most other Railroad conductors, “never lost a passenger.”

From 1851 on, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton traveled all over the country to give speeches about women’s rights. Their topics included voting rights, equal pay for equal work, labor rights, and abolition. In 1872, Anthony even went to the polls and got arrested for voting. It wasn’t until 1920 that the 19th Amendment was finally passed, stating that the right to vote couldn’t be denied or abridged on the basis of sex.

Nominated by President Bill Clinton in December 1996 and confirmed by the Senate the following month, Madeleine Albright became the first woman to serve as U.S. secretary of state. Albright served as U.S. secretary of state for four years, during which time she was the highest-ranking female official in the nation's history, helping to break the glass ceiling in American politics.

Sacagawea was a Shoshone interpreter who accompanied explorers Lewis and Clark as they explored the Louisiana Purchase territory between 1804 and 1806.