Although raised on a slave-owning plantation, Angelina Grimké Weld became an ardent abolitionist.

Phillis Wheatley Peters is broadly recognized as the first African American and the second U.S. woman to publish a book of poetry

Harriet Tubman escaped enslavement and helped others reach freedom.

Sojourner Truth, once an enslaved woman, became a fearless advocate for abolition, temperance, and civil and women’s rights in the nineteenth century. Her work during the Civil War earned her an invitation to meet President Abraham Lincoln in 1864.

Julia Ward Howe was a writer, lecturer, abolitionist and suffragist.

Prudence Crandall bravely defied prevailing patterns of racial discrimination when she opened one of the first schools for African American girls in Connecticut in 1833.

Clara Barton was an educator, humanitarian, and founder of the American Red Cross.

Isabella “Belle” Boyd was was one of the most famous female Confederate spies, hailed by some as the “Cleopatra of Secession.”