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a common thread

Feb 28

Black History Month: Pauli Murray

Pauli Murray’s exemplary career as a civil rights lawyer began with a seat on a bus in the whites-only section and a subsequent arrest. The experience of being arrested drove her to begin work with the Workers’ Defense League, which propelled her dream of law school, resulting in a law degree from Howard University, a…

Feb 21

Black History Month: Florynce Kennedy

A cowboy hat, pink sunglasses and fake eyelashes…those were the trademark accessories for Florynce Kennedy, a woman who was recognized equally by her staple uniform as she was by her activism. Growing up in Missouri during a time when the Ku Klux Klan was locally operating, she was no stranger to local prejudice and her…

Nov 17

Native American Heritage Month: Winona LaDuke

Our second feature for #NativeAmericanHeritageMonth is the environmental and Anishinaabe activist Winona LaDuke. Growing up, she was raised in a town in Oregon where neither Jews (her mother’s heritage) nor Native Indians surrounded her, and began to understand what it meant to be “othered”. She wasn’t enrolled in the Ojibwe Nation (her father’s tribe) at the…

Nov 10

Native American Heritage Month: Wilma Mankiller

RHAP’s first feature of #NativeAmericanHeritageMonth is the resilient Wilma Mankiller (1945-2010), the first woman principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, which is the second largest tribe in the United States. Born in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, to a Cherokee father and Dutch-Irish mother, her family relocated to San Francisco under the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Relocation Program.…

Oct 13

Hispanic Heritage Month: Sylvia Rivera

Sylvia Rivera was an Afro-Puerto Rican and Venezuelan pioneer of the modern-day LGBT movement. Along with longtime friend and mentor Marsha P. Johnson, Rivera was one of the individuals leading the charge the night the Stonewall Riots began on June 28, 1969 (though her presence on the first night is still heavily disputed, her contributions…

Oct 03

Hispanic Heritage Month: Rosie Jimenez

October 3rd marks the 40th anniversary of the death of Rosie Jimenez, a young working class Chicana woman from McAllen, Texas who was the first victim of the Hyde Amendment. A few months prior, the legislation was enacted, barring federal funding from paying for abortion through Medicaid, except for cases of rape, incest, or when the…