Caterina di Jacopo di Benincasa, known as Catherine of Siena, was an Italian mystic and a member of the Third Order of Saint Dominic of the Roman Catholic Church. Canonized in 1461, she is revered as a saint and as a Doctor of the Church due to her extensive theological authorship. She is also considered to have influenced Italian literature.
Abigail Adams was the wife and closest advisor of John Adams, as well as the mother of John Quincy Adams. She was a founder of the United States, and was both the first second lady and second first lady of the United States, although such titles were not used at the time. She and Barbara Bush are the only two women to have been married to U.S. presidents and to have been the mothers of other U.S. presidents.
Eugene Joseph McCarthy was an American politician, writer, and academic from Minnesota. He served in the United States House of Representatives from 1949 to 1959 and the United States Senate from 1959 to 1971. McCarthy sought the Democratic presidential nomination in the 1968 election, challenging incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson on an anti-Vietnam War platform. McCarthy unsuccessfully ran for U.S. president four more times.
James Edward Quigley was a Canadian-born prelate of the Catholic Church. He served as bishop of the Diocese of Buffalo in New York (1897–1903) and archbishop of the Archdiocese of Chicago in Illinois (1903–1915).
Kateri Tekakwitha, given the name Tekakwitha, baptized as Catherine, and informally known as Lily of the Mohawks, is a Catholic saint and virgin who was an Algonquin–Mohawk. Born in the Mohawk village of Ossernenon, in present-day New York State, she contracted smallpox in an epidemic; her family died and her face was scarred. She converted to Catholicism at age nineteen. She took a vow of perpetual virginity, left her village, and moved for the remaining five years of her life to the Jesuit mission village of Kahnawake, just south of Montreal. She was beatified in 1980 by Pope John Paul II and canonized by Pope Benedict XVI at Saint Peter's Basilica on 21 October 2012.
The University of St. Thomas is a private Roman Catholic university in St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota. Founded in 1885 as a Catholic seminary, it is named after Thomas Aquinas, the medieval Catholic theologian and philosopher who is the patron saint of students. As of fall 2021, St. Thomas enrolled 9,347 students, making it Minnesota's largest private, nonprofit university.
Kay Boyle was an American novelist, short story writer, educator, and political activist. She was a Guggenheim Fellow and O. Henry Award winner.
George Washington Adams was an American attorney and politician. He was the eldest son of John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States. Adams served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives and on the Boston City Council. He is believed to have died by suicide at age 28.
Louis Francis Budenz was an American activist and writer. He began as a labor activist and became a member of the Communist Party USA. In 1945, Budenz renounced Communism and became a vocal anti-Communist, appearing as an expert witness at governmental hearings and writing about his experiences.
Margaret Frances Culkin Banning was a best-selling American writer of thirty-six novels and an early advocate of women's rights.
Camille Olivia Cosby is an American television producer, philanthropist, and the wife of comedian Bill Cosby. The character of Clair Huxtable from The Cosby Show was based on her. Cosby has avoided public life, but has been active in her husband's businesses as a manager, as well as involving herself in academia and writing. In 1990, Cosby earned a master's degree from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, followed by a Doctorate of Education (Ed.D.) in 1992.
Marjorie "Midge" Miller was an American politician and activist for peace, nuclear non-proliferation, and women's rights. She was a member of the Wisconsin State Assembly for 14 years, from 1971 until 1985, and ran the Wisconsin primary campaign of U.S. Senator Eugene McCarthy in his 1968 anti-Vietnam War bid against incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson.
Julia Catherine Beckwith was credited as being Canada's first novelist.
Catherine Clark Kroeger was an American writer, professor, New Testament scholar, and a leading figure within the biblical egalitarian movement. She founded the worldwide organization Christians for Biblical Equality (CBE), and its papers are housed at her family home. As a speaker, Kroeger traveled the globe opposing violence and the abuse of women, while also advancing the biblical basis for the shared leadership and authority of males and females.
Mary P. Sinclair was an American environmental activist and "one of the nation’s foremost lay authorities on nuclear energy and its impact on the natural and human environment".
Mary Aloysia Molloy was president of the College of Saint Teresa from 1928 through 1946.
Agnes Elizabeth Ernst Meyer was an American journalist, philanthropist, civil rights activist, and art patron. Throughout her life, Meyer was engaged with intellectuals, artists, and writers from around the world. Meyer's marriage to the financier Eugene Meyer, son of Marc Eugene Meyer, provided her with wealth and status that enabled her to influence national policy, such as social welfare programs. Meyer lobbied for the creation of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare and for the U.S. government to provide federal aid to states for education. President Lyndon Johnson credited Meyer for building public support for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, which for the first time directed federal assistance towards school districts that served children from low-income families. She advocated for equal employment and educational opportunities, regardless of race. Meyer's investigative journalism showed the inequities of racial segregation in schools in the Washington metropolitan area.
Nellie F. Griswold Francis was an African-American suffragist, civic leader, and civil rights activist. Francis founded and led the Everywoman Suffrage Club, an African-American suffragist group that helped win women the right to vote in Minnesota. She initiated, drafted, and lobbied for the adoption of a state anti-lynching bill that was signed into law in 1921. When she and her lawyer husband, William T. Francis, bought a home in a white neighborhood, they were the targets of a Ku Klux Klan terror campaign. In 1927, she moved to Monrovia, Liberia, with her husband when he was appointed U.S. envoy to Liberia. He died there from yellow fever in 1929. Francis is one of 25 women honored for their roles in achieving the women's right to vote in the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Memorial on the grounds of the State Capitol.
Lillian Anderson Turner Alexander (1876–1957) was an educator, social worker, civil rights activist, and club woman active in St. Paul, Minnesota, and New York City. Before 1918, she was known as Lillian A. Turner with her first husband's surname. After 1918, she used her second husband's surname and was known as Lillian A. Alexander.
Arleen McCarty Hynes (1916–2006) was a librarian, and later a Roman Catholic sister, who pioneered bibliotherapy. Hynes received the Dorothea Dix award for her contributions, including an important book that remains standard. She is, in the words of Shifra Baruchson-Arbib, "the person credited for creating the practical concept of modern bibliotherapy," and in the words of Dr. Nicholas Mazza, "one of the pioneers of biblio/poetry therapy."
