Discover the Women of the Hall
These are the Inductees of the National Women’s Hall of Fame. Select any of the women to discover their stories and learn how they have influenced other women and this country.
Gloria Yerkovich
Founder of CHILDFIND, a nationwide organization which helps locate missing children. Yerkovich developed the program after her own daughter was abducted. Her concept was the prototype for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Gertrude Belle Elion
1988 Nobel Prize winner who spent a lifetime creating drugs to combat leukemia, gout, malaria, herpes and other auto-immune diseases. Elion’s work saved many lives, and led to the development of the first major AIDS drug AZT.
Billie Jean King
Dominated the world of tennis for more than 20 years, winning 20 Wimbledon titles, 13 U.S. Open titles and more. King was the founder of the Women’s Tennis Association and helped create the Women’s Sports Foundation.
Florence B. Seibert
Scientist who made it possible to test for tuberculosis and who pioneered safe intravenous therapy. Siebert also devoted many years to cancer research.
Margaret Bourke-White
Trailblazing photographer, recording the Depression, London in the Blitz, Stalin and the Kremlin, World War II and more as the paramount photographer for Life, Fortune and other publications.
Barbara Jordan
First African American woman elected to Congress from the south and the first African American woman to deliver the keynote address at the convention of a major political party (Democratic Convention, 1976). Known as having a brilliant legal mind, Jordan became a professor and lecturer after retiring from Congress.
Gwendolyn Brooks
Poet and novelist. Brooks was the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize (Annie Allen, 1949). She was very active in the Black arts movement.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett
African American leader, anti-lynching crusader, journalist, lecturer and community organizer who fought social injustice all her life. Wells-Barnett sued a railroad over segregated seating, criticized segregated education and became editor and part owner of a newspaper. The horrors of lynching inspired her to lead a major effort to abolish the atrocity.
Sally Ride
First American woman astronaut (1983), when she rode aboard the Challenger into space. A scientist, Ride served as the Director of the California Space Institute at the University of California, San Diego.
Willa Cather
Newspaperwoman and editor who became an outstanding novelist with the publication of O Pioneers in 1913. Cather went on to write other great novels and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1922. Her well-known works include My Antonia and Death Comes for the Archbishop.
Barbara McClintock
Geneticist who pioneered work in maize genetics and the complex mechanisms which control and regulate cell development. McClintock helped to advance scientific understanding of this important field. In 1983 she received the first unshared Nobel Prize in medicine ever awarded to a woman.
Lucy Stone
Early suffrage leader who began as an anti-slavery public advocate, followed by a lifetime of work for women’s right to vote. Stone was a sophisticated political tactician and founded The Women’s Journal, a fascinating archive of women’s history published from 1870 to 1893.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Author and daughter of a minister, Stowe became one of the first women to earn a living by writing, publishing the best-seller Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852. Although she wrote much more, her best-seller was often acclaimed as a major factor in the drive to abolish slavery.
Bessie Smith
One the nation’s great blues singers, Smith earned stardom from her first record 1923’s “Down Hearted Blues,” which sold two million records. The “Empress of the Blues,” made more than 160 recordings with many of the country’s finest jazz musicians.
Mary "Mother" Harris Jones
Labor organizer and agitator who was a major figure in the American labor movement. For decades, Jones spoke out and organized for social justice for workers. She worked on behalf of the United Mine Workers and other groups.
Belva Lockwood
First woman to practice law and argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court (1879). Lockwood became a lawyer when she was 40 and used her knowledge to help secure women’s suffrage, property law reforms, pay equity and world peace. She helped open the legal profession to women.
Lucretia Mott
Quaker anti-slavery advocate, who, after meeting Elizabeth Cady Stanton, became a leader in the women’s rights movement. Mott was a planner of the first Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls in 1848, and she remained true to her sense of justice for African Americans and women throughout her life.
Carrie Chapman Catt
Tenacious women’s suffrage organizer whose efforts at the helm of the National American Women Suffrage Association put forth the “winning plan” that led to state-by-state enactments of suffrage and the final victory in 1920.
Frances Perkins
Public official and first woman to hold a Presidential Cabinet office and first woman Secretary of Labor. Appointed by President Roosevelt in 1932, she served for all of his terms, 1933-1945.
Margaret Sanger
Nurse and social reformer. After seeing many poor women in New York City damaged and dying from attempts to end unwanted pregnancies, she fought for reform. Sanger underwent arrests and imprisonment for distributing information on birth control and contraception.
Sojourner Truth
Abolitionist born a slave who became a Quaker missionary. Truth eventually became a traveling preacher of great influence who worked in the antislavery movement. She learned about women’s rights, and adopted that cause as well. She went on to counsel and help newly freed African Americans.
Alice Paul
Social reformer. Reared a Quaker, Paul found most of the women’s suffrage movement too slow and passive. After earning a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1912, she campaigned aggressively for women’s suffrage, using picketing and demonstrations to draw attention to the issue. Paul founded the women’s party, which demanded passage of the Equal Rights Amendment.
Elizabeth Bayley Seton
The first native-born American woman to be canonized a saint by the Roman Catholic Church. After raising a family, “Mother Seton” became a Sister of Charity and worked as an educator and leader of the order. She was known for her extraordinary virtue and kindness, and incidents of miraculous healing are attributed to her.
Juliette Gordon Low
As a tireless champion of young girls, Juliette Gordon Low founded the Girl Scouts of the USA (1912). Today, there are more than 3 million girl and adult members of the Girl Scouts of the USA.