Susan (La Flesche) Picotte was born in 1865 on the reservation of the Omaha Nation in Nebraska. Her father was the leader of the Omaha tribe. He was in favor of some assimilation policies, and this created tension within his tribe. Susan leaned some of the...
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...
Born in 1974, Sean Sherman grew up on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. As an Oglala Lakota Sioux, he was brought up on government commodity foods. The Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR) brought about a shift in the diet of Native...
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...
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...
Wangari Maathai was born in a rural community in central Kenya in 1940. Wangari was an excellent student and was one of 300 students selected to study in the United States pursuant to the short-lived (1959-1963) Kennedy Airlift program. During her time in the US,...
