Rebecca Ketcher was three years old when soldiers rounded up her entire family and forced them to abandon their family home. Her father wanted to put up a fight, but her mother dissuaded him. He’d only end up dead. The family was driven from their land and forced...

Mike had been a concern to his parents ever since he started school. His teachers were constantly mentioning his lack of attention. Even with his attention issues, Mike generally had the best grades of his classmates. In fact, the times when Mike was best able to...

Dorothy Thompson was born in 1893. After her mother died when she was seven, Dorothy was sent to live with her two aunts. She was able to go to college, a rarity for women at the time, and this gave her a sense of obligation to other women. She became a devoted...

Trying to sort out your thinking about what's on the ballot this year? Why not make a party of it, a Voting Study Party? Here's an introduction to the idea from the good folks at Voting Study Party, a small group of friends who decided to pull together some DIY...

Isabella Baumfree was born in New York around the year 1797, one of 10 or 12 children born to enslaved parents. When she was 9 years old, she was sold to another owner who beat her every day. She was sold twice more, including one owner who raped her repeatedly....

In 1925 Jack Geiger was born in New York City to Jewish immigrants from Austria and Germany. Jack was a quick learner, graduating high school at the age of 14. He wasn’t old enough to go to college, so he got a job with the New York Times. Jack was a fan of jazz...

  In 1959, Jadav (Molai) Payeng was born into the Mising tribe in India. As a teenager he became concerned about the environment when he saw the forest where he played being destroyed by erosion. The forest had become a desert. Jadav began working with the...

A fourth grade geography textbook with pictures of Africa helped set the course for Janice McLaughlin’s life. She sensed that Africa would become her life’s passion. She joined the Maryknoll Sisters at age 18. Maryknoll is the Catholic order that focuses its...

Pioneers in School Desegregation Gonzalo Mendez came to America from Mexico and later became a naturalized US citizen. In 1936, he married Felicitas Mendez, a native of Puerto Rico. They first opened a restaurant in Santa Ana, California and later moved to...