The Women's L Project Blog

Ruth Duckworth

As Hitler’s power in Germany grew in the 1930’s, the Jewish mother and Christian father of Ruth Duckworth (1919-2009) sent their 17 year old daughter to live in England. A...

Chaka Khan

Chaka Khan, born in Chicago in 1953, was raised in a family that embraced jazz, opera, R&B and political activism. She started her first musical group, The Crystalettes, when she...

Jackie Taylor

Jackie Taylor (born 1951) grew up in the Cabrini-Green housing project on Chicago’s Near North Side. She got involved in drama via a Chicago Park District drama teacher. Those drama...

Margaret Anderson

Margaret Anderson

Margaret Anderson (1886-1973) was raised in Indianapolis. Those early years would be the only ones in which Anderson lived an ordinary life. Leaving home as a young woman, she headed...

Michelle Obama

Michelle Robinson Obama (born 1964), the daughter of a water filtration plant worker and a secretary, grew up on Chicago’s South Side in the South Shore neighborhood. After attending Chicago Public...

Mamie Till Mobley

Mamie Till Mobley

Because she was just two years old when her family moved to Illinois from Mississippi, Mamie Till-Mobley (1921-2003) only heard stories of Jim Crow laws and lynching in the South....

Rachel Barton Pine

Rachel Barton Pine

Think back to what you were doing when you were 10 years old. When she was 10, Chicago native Rachel Barton Pine (born 1974) made her Chicago Symphony Orchestra debut....

Melissia Ann Elam

Melissia Ann Elam

Melissia Ann Elam (1853-1941), the daughter of former slaves, was born in Missouri. When she moved to Chicago in 1876, the city had only about 5,000 Black residents. She first...

Katharine Bushnell

Katharine Bushnell

Even though Katharine Bushnell (1855-1946) planned to become a physician, she studied Greek during her undergraduate years at Northwestern University (where Frances Willard, another Women's L Project honoree) was one...

Mavis Staples

Mavis Staples (born 1939 in Chicago) is a civil rights activist who uses music to proclaim her message. Her musical vocation began in the 1950’s as the lead voice of...

Esther Saperstein

Esther Saperstein

Esther Saperstein (1901-1988), the daughter of immigrants, began her public service vocation as a PTA president. She made a run at becoming the city’s first female alderman in 1955 but...

Bertha Honore Palmer

Bertha Honore Palmer

Bertha Palmer (1849-1918), wife of real estate developer and hotel owner Potter Palmer, was the queen of society in Chicago and a 19th century “influencer.” The grande dame of Chicago...

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