The Women's L Project Blog

Angie Navedo Rizzo

Angie Navedo Rizzo

The Young Lords began as a Puerto Rican street gang in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood in the early 1960’s. By the late 1960’s it had evolved into the Young Lords...

Ella Flagg Young

Ella Flagg Young

Ella Flagg Young (1845-1918), born in Buffalo NY, moved with her family to Chicago where at age 15 she took a teacher examination. She passed but was too young to...

Ertharin Cousin

Ertharin Cousin

Although Ertharin Cousin (born 1957) lived on Chicago’s West Side, she was one of the first females to attend Lane Tech High School, a previously all-male school on the North...

Isabel Wasson

Isabel Wasson (1897-1995) was a geology graduate student when she led a summer tour of national parks in the western US. The superintendent of Yellowstone was so impressed hearing her...

Edna Stewart

Edna Stewart (1938-2010) opened her namesake restaurant on Chicago’s West Side in 1966. Popular for its great soul food, the restaurant became better known as a meeting spot for political...

Vivian Maier

Born in New York but raised for the most part in France, Vivian Maier (1926-2009) moved to the affluent north suburbs of Chicago to work as a nanny. On her...

Mae Jemison

When Mae Jemison (born 1956) was a toddler, her family moved from Alabama to Chicago. Watching NASA space missions during her childhood, Jemison dreamed of becoming an astronaut but since...

Peggy Terry

In the 1960’s, an estimated 65,000 white migrants from the South lived in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood. Among them was Peggy Terry (1921-2004), the granddaughter of a Klan member, who became...

Guadalupe Reyes

Guadalupe Reyes

Guadalupe Reyes (1918-2000) was the daughter of migrant farmworkers who had emigrated from Mexico to Oklahoma. When she was a young adult, her family moved to Chicago seeking more opportunities....

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