The social reformer's 40-year campaign sought to end the abuse of people with mental illness that she found "chained, naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into obedience."

At a time when people with mental illness were often abused and kept in inhumane conditions, Dorothea Dix's 40-year-long crusade for the reform of mental asylums in the US, Canada, and Europe made her renowned worldwide as a beacon of compassion and advocate for the voiceless. To transform the care of the mentally ill, the American social reformer had to first confront the attitude that nothing could be done to help people with mental illness and that such brutal treatment was the only option available. "They say, 'nothing can be done here!'" Dix once declared. "I reply, 'I know no such word in the vocabulary I adopt!'" Continue reading → Continue reading

A Mighty Girl's top picks of books for children about trailblazing female environmentalists of the past and present.

With Earth Month comes a special opportunity to teach kids about the people all around the world doing important work to care for our environment and the life within it! In addition to the day-to-day activities that we can all do to reduce our impact on the planet, it's important to recognize the scientists and activists, both past and present, who have encouraged us to see our planet in a new way: not as a set of resources for us to extract when we please, but as a precious and delicate system that sustains all life that we must strive to protect. Continue reading → Continue reading

At 8 years old, Jennifer Keelan-Chaffins joined the "Capitol Crawl" with other disability rights activists demanding passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

On March 12, 1990, over 1,000 disability rights activists marched from the White House to the U.S. Capitol to demand the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which had been stalled in Congress. To illustrate the barriers that many people with disabilities faced every day, over 60 activists cast aside their wheelchairs and crutches and began crawling up the 83 stone steps that lead to the Capitol building — among them was Jennifer Keelan-Chaffins, an 8-year-old girl with cerebral palsy who declared "I’ll take all night if I have to" as she pulled herself up the steps. In honor of the anniversary of the historic "Capitol Crawl" — which helped drive the successful passage of the ADA, the world's first comprehensive civil rights law protecting the rights people with disabilities — we're sharing the story of this determined young activist whose actions helped transform the lives of people with disabilities across the nation. Continue reading → Continue reading

Over 60 years, over 60,000 women have been treated for free for this devastating childbirth injury at Dr. Hamlin's fistula hospital.

When Dr. Catherine Hamlin and her husband, Reg, first arrived in Ethiopia in 1959, a fellow gynecologist warned them that "the fistula patients will break your hearts." They did — but also they ignited the Hamlins' determination to help. Hamlin and her husband co-founded the non-profit Catherine Hamlin Fistula Foundation, and in the decades since, over 60,000 women have been treated free of charge at their hospitals. Hamlin, died in 2020 at the age of 96 in Addis Ababa, hoped to inspire people around the world to help eliminate this devastating and entirely preventable childbirth injury which affects more than two million young women worldwide. "This terrible condition has been eradicated in the West," the Nobel Peace Prize nominee said. "In countries like Ethiopia it is a common condition.... [Here] women come into labor and there's nobody to help them." Continue reading → Continue reading

Remembering the forgotten history of the Women's Suffrage Movement's "Night of Terror"

The Silent Sentinels picketing the White House in 1917.

When we tell our children about the fight for women's suffrage in America, we often tell a sanitized version of the story. We talk about letter-writing campaigns, activist conferences, and stirring speeches — and occasionally, we mention defiant suffragists being hauled to jail. But we often shy away from the darker truths about the sacrifices and suffering many suffragists had to endure in the fight for women's right to vote. Continue reading → Continue reading

Dr. Patricia Bath was an early pioneer of laser eye surgery whose cataract-removal invention has saved the vision of millions of people around the world.

A Renaissance woman in the world of vision, the pioneering ophthalmologist Dr. Patricia Bath not only founded the discipline of community ophthalmology to help underserved populations  have better access to vision care, she invented a device that quickly and easily dissolves cataracts, becoming the first African American female physician to receive a medical patent. Her invention of the Laserphaco Probe was recognized by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 2014 as "one of the most important developments in the field of ophthalmology" for having "helped restore or improve vision to millions of patients worldwide." A trailblazer for both women and African Americans in medicine, Bath always considered the people she helped her greatest accomplishment, asserting that "the ability to restore vision is the ultimate reward." Continue reading → Continue reading

Dr. Shuping Wang faced violence and intimidation for exposing the truth about epidemics in China that killed more than one million people.

In the early 1990s, Dr. Shuping Wang discovered a shockingly high rate of contaminated blood at collection centers in China's Henan province. Despite threats, intimidation, and violence, Wang became a two-time whistleblower, exposing first China's hepatitis C epidemic and later its raging HIV epidemic, which killed over one million people in the country during this period. Wang said that there was never any question that she would persevere in exposing the truth about the epidemics even in the face of severe personal consequences. "Being a medical doctor, my primary interest is to my patients and to the public, not to myself," she said in an interview shortly before her death. "Speaking out cost me my job, my marriage and my happiness at the time, but it also helped save the lives of thousands and thousands of people." Continue reading → Continue reading

The top books and films for children and adults about the 72-year fight for women's suffrage in the United States.

For children today, it's hard to imagine a time when women couldn't vote; realizing that they've had that right for only just over 100 years is astounding. It's equally shocking when they learn that women had to fight for 72 years before the 19th Amendment — which stated that no citizen could be denied the right to vote on account of sex — became law. So it's imperative that we teach today's children about the struggle for women's suffrage, not only to honor the dedication and sacrifices of the women who led the Women's Suffrage Movement, but also to ensure that future generations don't take the right to vote for granted. Continue reading → Continue reading

These powerful stories for tweens and teens explore the grim realities of life under dictatorships, and why protecting our democracy by becoming an informed and engaged citizen is more important than ever.

There are many rights we take for granted in a democracy, from freedom of speech to the opportunity to vote, from the freedom to criticize the government to the peaceful transition of power after free and fair elections. Tragically, throughout history, many people have discovered how fragile their rights — and their democracies — can be when extreme polarization leads to mob rule and the erosion of democratic norms. Time after time, in countries around the world, would-be autocrats and authoritarian regimes have used these fractures in weakened democracies to assert absolute control, often violently suppressing any opposition. Continue reading → Continue reading

The Lovings' landmark civil rights case overturned bans against interracial marriage in 16 states.

One morning in 1958, the county sheriff and two deputies burst into Mildred and Richard Loving's bedroom in Central Point, Virginia. Their crime? Mildred was Black and Richard was White; the couple had broken Virginia's anti-miscegenation law, which criminalized interracial marriages. The couple decided to fight the ban, becoming plaintiffs in a milestone civil rights case that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. When the court sided with the Lovings in their unanimous decision on June 12, 1967 after a nine-year legal battle, the historic ruling overturned bans on interracial marriage in 16 states. Fifty years after the historic change they brought about, the Lovings' granddaughter, Eugenia Cosby, succinctly summed up the lesson they taught the world: "If it's genuine love, color doesn't matter." Continue reading → Continue reading