Boyle, Kay (19 February 1902–27 December 1992), writer, educator, and political activist, was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, the daughter of Howard Peterson Boyle, a lawyer, and Katherine Evans, a literary and social activist. Her grandfather had founded the West Publishing Company, and the financial security afforded by this background allowed the Boyle family to travel extensively. Boyle’s education was sporadic, culminating in two years of architecture classes at the Ohio Mechanics’ Institute (1917–1919). In 1922 Boyle joined her sister Joan in New York City, where she began to work for ...
12
Article
Boyle, Kay (1902-1992), writer, educator, and political activist
Chris Andre
Image
Boyle, Kay (1902-1992)
In
Kay Boyle. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-113309).
Article
Bronson, Ruth Muskrat (3 Oct. 1897–12 June 1982), Cherokee activist, educator, and federal official
Kirby Brown
Bronson, Ruth Muskrat (3 Oct. 1897–12 June 1982), Cherokee activist, educator, and federal official, was born Ruth Muskrat, the fourth of seven children, on a small farm in the Delaware District of the Cherokee Nation near what is now Grove, Oklahoma. Her mother, Ida Lenora Kelly, was the child of English-Irish immigrants who entered the Cherokee Nation on work permits from Missouri. Her father, James Ezekiel Muskrat, was a descendant of both Old Settler Cherokees and those forcibly removed from their homes in Georgia two decades later during what has come to be known as the Trail of Tears. A language speaker and conservative traditionalist, James was a committed Cherokee nationalist in a time when Cherokee sovereignty was increasingly under assault by industrial interests, territorial advocates, and proponents of allotment, assimilation, and Oklahoma statehood. With the passage of the Curtis Act in ...
Article
Bruce, William Cabell (1860-1946), author, municipal politician, reformer, and U.S. senator
Eric R. Jackson
Bruce, William Cabell (12 March 1860–09 May 1946), author, municipal politician, reformer, and U.S. senator, was born at “Staunton Hill,” his father’s plantation, in Charlotte County, Virginia, the son of Charles Bruce, a planter, Virginia state senator, and captain during the Civil War, and Sarah Alexander Seddon, both members of established, affluent families in Virginia. Although the Bruce family lost much of their wealth during the Civil War, William still grew up surrounded by maids, servants, tailors, and tutors. Bruce’s mother, a devout Christian, instilled in William strong religious beliefs that influenced his character throughout his formative years....
Article
Cabeza De Baca, Fabiola (16 May 1894–Oct. 1991), educator, activist, and writer
Janett Barragán Miranda
Cabeza De Baca, Fabiola (16 May 1894–Oct. 1991), educator, activist, and writer, was born in Las Vegas, New Mexico to Graciano Cabeza de Baca and Indalecia Delgado. The family traced their ancestry back to the Spanish conqueror Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Baca. Fabiola’s family on both maternal and paternal sides was prominent and elite in New Mexico. In ...
Article
Carlson, Grace Holmes (13 Nov. 1906–7 July 1992), Trotskyist partisan, Catholic lay activist, and educator
Donna T. Haverty-Stacke
Carlson, Grace Holmes (13 Nov. 1906–7 July 1992), Trotskyist partisan, Catholic lay activist, and educator, was born Grace Holmes in St. Paul, Minnesota. Her German-born mother, Mary Nuebel, had worked as a clerk in a grocery store until 1904, when she married James Holmes, an Irish-American boilermaker employed by the Great Northern Railroad. Grace Holmes had one sister, Helen Dorsey (known as Dorothy), born in ...
Article
Dean, Vera Micheles (1903-1972), international affairs specialist and teacher
Emily S. Rosenberg
Dean, Vera Micheles (29 March 1903–10 October 1972), international affairs specialist and teacher, was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, the daughter of Alexander Micheles, a Russian of German-Jewish background who immigrated to the United States in 1888 and later returned to Russia as a sales representative for the U.S.-based Gillette Company, and Nadine Kadisch, a translator of English novels into Russian. Growing up in Russia, the Micheles children received private tutoring and became fluent in seven languages. After the 1917 revolution, the family had to move to London for political reasons, and Vera was sent to Boston. There she attended business school, worked briefly as a stenographer, and then enrolled at Radcliffe College. After graduating with distinction in 1925, she earned an M.A. from Yale University. In 1928 she received her Ph.D. from Radcliffe in international law and international relations and became a U.S. citizen....
Article
Du Bois, W. E. B. (1868-1963), African-American activist, historian, and sociologist
Thomas C. Holt
Du Bois, W. E. B. (23 February 1868–27 August 1963), African-American activist, historian, and sociologist, was born William Edward Burghardt Du Bois in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, the son of Mary Silvina Burghardt, a domestic worker, and Alfred Du Bois, a barber and itinerant laborer. In later life Du Bois made a close study of his family origins, weaving them rhetorically and conceptually—if not always accurately—into almost everything he wrote. Born in Haiti and descended from Bahamian mulatto slaves, Alfred Du Bois enlisted during the Civil War as a private in a New York regiment of the Union army but appears to have deserted shortly afterward. He also deserted the family less than two years after his son’s birth, leaving him to be reared by his mother and the extended Burghardt kin. Long resident in New England, the Burghardts descended from a freedman of Dutch slave origin who had fought briefly in the American Revolution. Under the care of his mother and her relatives, young Will Du Bois spent his entire childhood in that small western Massachusetts town, where probably fewer than two-score of the 4,000 inhabitants were African American. He received a classical, college preparatory education in Great Barrington’s racially integrated high school, from whence, in June 1884, he became the first African-American graduate. A precocious youth, Du Bois not only excelled in his high school studies but contributed numerous articles to two regional newspapers, the Springfield ...
Image
Du Bois, W. E. B. (1868-1963)
Maker: Carl Van Vechten
In
W. E. B. Du Bois Photograph by Carl Van Vechten, 1946. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-42528).
Article
Elliott, Harriet Wiseman (1884-1947), educator, political organizer, and government official
Barbara L. Ciccarelli
Elliott, Harriet Wiseman (10 July 1884–06 August 1947), educator, political organizer, and government official, was born in Carbondale, Illinois, the daughter of Allan Curtis Elliott, a merchant who extended easy credit to poor coal miners, and Elizabeth Ann White, a staunch supporter of ...
Article
Franklin, John Hope (2 January 1915–25 March 2009), historian, author, civil rights activist, and public intellectual
Paul Finkelman
Franklin, John Hope (2 January 1915–25 March 2009), historian, author, civil rights activist, and public intellectual, was born in the all-black town of Rentiesville, Oklahoma, the son of Mollie (Parker) Franklin, an elementary school teacher, and Buck Colbert Franklin, an attorney, local postmaster, and store owner who had attended Roger Williams College in Nashville and Atlanta Baptist College (later renamed Morehouse College). Buck Franklin’s father had been a slave owned by members of the Choctaw Nation and served in a United States Colored Troops regiment during the Civil War. When John Hope Franklin was about five years old his father moved to Tulsa, where he opened a law practice. He planned to move his family there in ...
Article
Garfield, Harry Augustus (1863-1942), lawyer, educator, and public official
Robert D. Cuff
Garfield, Harry Augustus (11 October 1863–12 December 1942), lawyer, educator, and public official, was born in Hiram, Ohio, the son of James A. Garfield, the twentieth president of the United States, and Lucretia Rudolph (Lucretia Rudolph Garfield). A witness to the fatal shooting of his father in 1881, Garfield grappled with the implications of that tragedy for the rest of his life. He earned a B.A. at Williams College, 1881–1885, and after teaching briefly at St. Paul’s, a private school for boys, he studied law at Columbia University, 1886–1887, and in England at Oxford University and the Inns of Court, 1887–1888. In the latter year he married Belle H. Mason; they had four children....
Article
Gildersleeve, Virginia Crocheron (1877-1965), college administrator and international affairs expert
Cynthia Farr Brown
Gildersleeve, Virginia Crocheron (03 October 1877–07 July 1965), college administrator and international affairs expert, was born in New York City, the daughter of Henry Alger Gildersleeve, a judge, and Virginia Crocheron. She received her early education at home and was affected by such experiences as attending court with her father and visiting the Columbia University library. The death of her much-loved brother, Harry, Jr., when she was fourteen devastated her. In part to distract her from her grief, her parents enrolled her in New York City’s exclusive Brearley School....
Article
Le Sueur, Marian (1877-1954), teacher and radical politician
Sue Holbert
Le Sueur, Marian (02 August 1877–26 January 1954), teacher and radical politician, was born Marian Lucy in Bedford, Iowa, the daughter of (first name unknown) Lucy, a lawyer, and Antoinette McGovern. Le Sueur’s parents apparently had nontraditional views and strong streaks of independence. Her father reportedly fled home for long periods preceding the birth of each child. Her mother eventually reared the children alone, going west in 1899 to claim land in Oklahoma, where she built a house and became a temperance leader....
Article
Lovett, Robert Morss (1870-1956), educator, writer, and reformer
James M. Wallace
Lovett, Robert Morss (25 December 1870–08 February 1956), educator, writer, and reformer, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Augustus Sidney Lovett, an insurance broker, and Elizabeth Russell. Lovett grew up in the Roxbury section of Boston and then went to Harvard, where he graduated at the head of his class with an A.B. in English in 1892....
Image
Lovett, Robert Morss (1870-1956)
Maker: Arnold Genthe
In
Robert Morss Lovett. Photograph by Arnold Genthe, 1930. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-G39-T-5691-019).
Article
Marcuse, Herbert (1898-1979), author, professor, and political activist
Douglas Kellner
Marcuse, Herbert (19 July 1898–29 July 1979), author, professor, and political activist, was born in Berlin, Germany, the son of Carl Marcuse, a prosperous Jewish merchant, and Gertrud Kreslawsky, the daughter of a wealthy German factory owner. Marcuse studied at the Mommsen Gymnasium in Berlin before World War I and served with the German army in the war. Transferred to Berlin early in 1918, he observed and sympathized with the German revolution that drove Kaiser Wilhelm II out of Germany and established a Social Democratic government....
Article
Mills, Harriet May (9 Aug. 1857–16 May 1935), suffragist, political party activist, and educational reformer
Karen Pastorello
Mills, Harriet May (9 Aug. 1857–16 May 1935), suffragist, political party activist, and educational reformer, was born in Syracuse, New York. Her parents, Harriet Ann Smith and Charles de Berard Mills, bestowed her middle name “May” on her to honor Unitarian preacher and noted abolitionist ...
Image
Mills, Harriet May (9 August 1857-16 May 1935)
Corp author Bain News Service
In
Harriet May Mills, by unknown photographer
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540
Article
Prichard, Edward Fretwell, Jr. (1915-1984), lawyer, public official, and educational reformer
Arthur M. Schlesinger
Prichard, Edward Fretwell, Jr. (21 January 1915–23 December 1984), lawyer, public official, and educational reformer, was born in Paris, Kentucky, the son of E. F. Prichard, a horse-breeder, beer distributor, and sometime politician, and Aileen Power. A precocious boy and voracious reader, young Prichard skipped grades and spent his afternoons not at the playground but at the Bourbon County courthouse soaking up Kentucky legal and political lore....
12
