Mary Seacole was born as Mary Jane Grant over 200 years ago in Kingston, Jamaica. While her mother was Black Caribbean, her father was white and so she was born a free person, unlike most Black Jamaicans of the time. When she was young she learnt Caribbean medicine from her mother (a doctress), mainly practicing on animals such as dogs and birds. Her mother owned a boarding house called Blundell Hall, and from the age of 12 Mary began to help run it and care for many of its injured inhabitants.

Emma Gonzalez is a 20-year-old American activist and advocate for gun control. She is a survivor of the 2018 Florida Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. She has since spoken against gun violence and helped organise the ‘March for our Lives’ on March 24th 2018. This was a student lead demonstration organised by Emma and other members of her school against the lack of laws which has led to prevalence of gun violence in the US. The estimated turnout for the demonstration was 1.2 million people:making it one of the largest demonstrations in US history.

Umeko Tsuda was a pioneer in education for women in Japan. She is most well-known for founding Joshi Eigaku Juku (now known as Tsuda University), one of the oldest and most prestigious schools for girls. Tsuda is the third woman to be on the Japanese banknote, planned to start issuing in 2024, due to her revolutional steps towards educational opportunity for women in Japan.

May 17th, 1954. The U.S Supreme Court finally ruled that the “segregation of America’s public schools was unconstitutional”. This seemed to be a huge step forward in the right direction but, of course, it was faced with much resistance. Take Little Rock Central High School, for example. Like many school boards, the Little Rock, Arkansas School Board had decided to adopt a plan for gradual integration. The first group of schools to integrate would be high schools in September of 1957. However two main groups aimed to stand in the way of this: the Capital Citizens Council and the Mother’s League of Central High School. However, despite this clear opposition, it didn’t stop the Little Rock Nine. The Little Rock Nine were a group of schoolchildren, who were the first African Americans due to attend Central High Shool. They had all planned to arrive at the school together on that fateful Septemeber day. However, one of the nine, Elizabeth Eckford, never found out that these plans had in fact changed. So, Elizabeth arrived at school all alone.

Chief Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti was born in Nigeria in 1900, and went on to be an activist and political voice on a wide range of issues such as women’s suffrage, reforming the colonial tax system, social services, healthcare, education, international peace, and the representation of women in political spheres. She was a living incarnation of her ideals in the latter category: the title ‘chief’ denotes her participation in the parliamentary Western House of Chiefs, one of the first women to attain chieftaincy.