Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, also known as Winnie Mandela, was a South African anti-apartheid activist and politician, and the ex-wife of Nelson Mandela. She served as a Member of Parliament from 1994 to 2003, and from 2009 until her death, and was a deputy minister of arts and culture from 1994 to 1996. A member of the African National Congress (ANC) political party, she served on the ANC's National Executive Committee and headed its Women's League. Madikizela-Mandela was known to her supporters as the "Mother of the Nation".
Nadine Gordimer was a South African writer, political activist and recipient of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature. She was recognized as a woman "who through her magnificent epic writing has – in the words of Alfred Nobel – been of very great benefit to humanity".
Elaine Brown is an American prison activist, writer, singer, and former Black Panther Party chairwoman who is based in Oakland, California. Brown briefly ran for the Green Party presidential nomination in 2008. She currently lives in Oakland, California.
Mary Ann Shadd Cary was an American-Canadian anti-slavery activist, journalist, publisher, teacher, and lawyer. She was the first Black woman publisher in North America and the first woman publisher in Canada.
Helen Suzman, DBE was a South African anti-apartheid activist and politician. She represented a succession of liberal and centre-left opposition parties during her 36-year tenure in the whites-only, National Party-controlled House of Assembly of South Africa at the height of the apartheid era. She hosted the meeting that founded the Progressive Party in 1959, and was its only MP in the 160-member House for a period of 13 years.
USS Arthur Middleton (AP-55/APA-25) was a transport launched as the commercial cargo/passenger ship African Comet serving in the United States Navy during World War II. The ship, along with later sister ships SS African Meteor and SS African Planet, was at the time the largest all welded passenger/cargo ship. The ships, of 9,000 GRT and varying only in interior decorations, were designed for New York to South and East African service with accommodations for 116 passengers.
Tituba was an enslaved woman, owned by Samuel Parris of Danvers, Massachusetts. Although her origins are debated, research has suggested that she was a South American native and sailed from Barbados to New England with Samuel Parris. Tituba was the first to be accused of practicing witchcraft during the 1692 Salem witch trials. Little is known regarding Tituba's life prior to her enslavement. However, she became a pivotal figure in the witch trials when she confessed to witchcraft while also making claims that both Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne participated in said witchcraft. She was imprisoned and later released by Samuel Conklin, but little to nothing is known about Tituba's life following her subsequent release.
Margaret Anne Kirkpatrick is an Australian actress who is best known for her portrayal of the character Joan Ferguson, a sinister and cold lesbian prison officer, nicknamed "The Freak", in the popular Australian television soap opera Prisoner. More recently, she performed as Madame Morrible in an Australian production of the musical Wicked. Kirkpatrick has appeared in such popular series as Water Rats, Home and Away and All Saints.
Olive Schreiner was a South African author, anti-war campaigner and intellectual. She is best remembered today for her novel The Story of an African Farm which has been highly acclaimed since its first publication in 1883 for the bold manner in which it deals with some of the burning issues of the day, including agnosticism, existential independence, individualism, the professional aspirations of women, and the elemental nature of life on the colonial frontier. In more recent studies she has also been identified as an advocate for those sidelined by the forces of British Imperialism, such as the Afrikaners, and later other South African groups like Blacks, Jews and Indians – to name but a few. Although she showed interest in socialism, pacifism, vegetarianism and feminism amongst other things, her true views escape restrictive categorisations. Her published works and other surviving writings promote implicit values like moderation, friendship and understanding amongst all peoples and avoid the pitfalls of political radicalism which she consciously eschewed. Although she may be called a lifelong freethinker, she continued to adhere to the spirit of the Christian Bible and developed a secular version of the worldview of her missionary parents, with mystical elements.
Cora Mae Brown, was the first African-American woman elected to a state senate in the United States. She won her seat in the Michigan State Senate in 1952, beating a male candidate for the position. Brown was a Democrat who represented Detroit.
Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson worked with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) from its earliest days in 1960 until her death in October 1967. She served the organization as an activist in the field and as an administrator in the Atlanta central office. She eventually succeeded James Forman as SNCC's executive secretary and was the only woman ever to serve in this capacity. She was well respected by her SNCC colleagues and others within the movement for her work ethic and dedication to those around her. SNCC Freedom Singer Matthew Jones recalled, "You could feel her power in SNCC on a daily basis". Jack Minnis, director of SNCC's opposition research unit, insisted that people could not fool her. Minnis was convinced that she had a "100 percent effective shit detector". Over the course of her life, she served 100 days in prison for the movement.
Jean Comaroff is Professor of African and African American Studies and of Anthropology, Oppenheimer Fellow in African Studies at Harvard University. She is an expert on the effects of colonialism on people in Southern Africa. Until 2012, Jean was the Bernard E. & Ellen C. Sunny Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology and of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago and Honorary Professor of Anthropology at the University of Cape Town.
Ayşe Nur Zarakolu was a Turkish author, publisher and human rights advocate. She was co-founder, with her husband Ragıp Zarakolu, of notable Turkish publishing house Belge and, in the 1980s, became the director of book-distribution company Cemmay, the first woman in the nation to hold such a position. Zarakolu's publications brought her into frequent conflict with Turkish press laws; in 1997, The New York Times identified Zarakolu as "one of the most relentless challengers to Turkey's press laws". Issues Zarakolu helped publicize in Turkey include the Armenian Genocide and human rights of Kurdish people in Turkey. Imprisoned multiple times for her publications, she was designated a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International and her legacy continued to face legal challenge in Turkey after her death. She has received multiple awards and honors for her work and the Human Rights Association of Turkey bestows the Ayşe Zarakolu Freedom of Thought prize in her honor.
Capital punishment in South Africa was abolished on 6 June 1995 by the ruling of the Constitutional Court in the case of S v Makwanyane, following a five-year and four-month moratorium since February 1990.
Rasmea Yousef Odeh in Arabic رسمية يوسف عودة is a Palestinian Jordanian and former American citizen who was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine convicted by Israeli military courts for her role in the murder of two students, Leon Kanner and Eddie Joffe in the 1969 Jerusalem Supermarket bombing. After her release in a prisoner exchange, she immigrated to the United States, became a U.S. citizen, and she served as associate director at the Arab American Action Network in Chicago, Illinois.
Marie Gisèle Aimée Rabesahala was born May 7,1929 and died June 27, 2011. She was a Malagasy politician and activist who was the first woman to hold a ministerial position in the government of Madagascar. She entered politics at the age of 17, campaigning on behalf of political prisoners, and becoming Madagascar's first woman municipal councilor, before becoming the first Malagasy woman to establish and lead a political party. She was a committed Marxist and co-founded the communist Congress Party for the Independence of Madagascar, which took power in 1975. In 1977 she became Madagascar's first female minister, responsible for promoting revolutionary art and culture, but lost her job in 1991 when her ministry was abolished in the course of Madagascar's return to multi-party democracy. She remained an active political campaigner and journalist until her death in 2011.
Theresa Manuel was an African American basketball player and track athlete who competed in the 80-meter hurdles, javelin, and 4x440 yard relay in the 1948 Olympics in London. She attended Middleton High School in Tampa, Florida and the Tuskegee Institute. She taught and coached at Middleton High School and Hillsborough High School for a total of 38 years.
Jean Murrell Capers was an American judge, educator, and politician.
Annie Silinga was a South African anti-pass laws and anti-apartheid political activist. She is known for her role as the Cape Town African National Congress Women's League President, a leader in the 1956 anti-pass Women's March to the Union Buildings in Pretoria, South Africa and the only African woman in the 1956 treason trial in South Africa.
Sonia Bunting, OLS was a South African journalist, and a political and anti-apartheid activist. After being charged with treason and imprisoned, being detained a second time, and barred from publishing, she and her husband went into exile in London, where she joined the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) and organised the World Campaign for the Release of South African Political Prisoners. When the African National Congress (ANC) ban was lifted in 1991, she returned to South Africa where she was involved in political activism until her death in 2001. She was posthumously honored by the government of South Africa with the Order of Luthuli in Silver in 2010.
