Four Strong Winds Of Change

In honor of Women's History Month, here are four American women who made history by standing up for their beliefs and principles, even in the face of strong opposition.

• Jeannette Rankin: The first woman in Congress, she was elected to two separate terms in the House of Representatives (1917-1919, 1941-1943). Her first election, in 1916, was four years before ratification of the 19th Amendment gave all women in the U.S. the right to vote; she had been a leader in the movement which led to women's suffrage in her home state of Montana in 1914. As a pacifist, she voted against U.S. entry into World War I in 1917, and again against entry into World War II in 1941, saying: "As a woman, I can't go to war and I refuse to send anyone else." Both votes were unpopular and led to her failure to win re-election to consecutive terms. In between her two terms, she co-founded the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). True to her principles, she spoke out against the Korean War in the early 1950s and the Vietnam War in the 1960s, leading an all-woman protest march in 1968 at the age of 88.

• Helen Keller: Most people know about this deaf and blind girl from the film The Miracle Worker, but she was also active on the political left. Keller was a member of the Socialist Party and supported Eugene Debs in his presidential campaigns on that party's ticket. She wrote frequently on labor struggles, and supported the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, or "wobblies") in contrast to what she saw as the AFL's conservative policies and its emphasis on skilled white male workers. Newspapers and prominent figures who had earlier praised her academic accomplishments, including earning a degree from Radcliffe, attempted to dismiss her socialist pronouncements by reminding people of her disabilities. Keller responded to these critics by observing that, while she was physically blind and deaf, they were "socially blind and deaf" for defending the system that she was working to change. Her activities earned her a thick FBI file, where Director J. Edgar Hoover described her as a "writer on radical subjects" who therefore needed to be monitored by the government.

• Angela Davis: This philosopher, academic, and activist was involved with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Black Panther Party, and the Communist Party (CP). When she started teaching at UCLA in 1969, California Governor Ronald Reagan fired her because she was a CP member. She eventually was able to return to teaching, and is still today on the faculty of the University of California in Santa Cruz. In the early 1970s, Davis was arrested and put on trial for her alleged role in a failed attempt to free a convict. She was acquitted by the jury, and many felt she had been targeted because of her radical politics, including John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who wrote and recorded their song "Angela" about her. Davis ran for Vice-President of the U.S. on the CP ticket in 1980, four years before the Democratic Party nominated their first female VP candidate (Geraldine Ferraro) and twenty-eight years before the Republican Party nominated their first female (Sarah Palin). When her 1980 running mate, Gus Hall, sided with the Soviet Union's reactionary old guard in their 1991 attempted coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, Davis and others who had supported Gorbachev's reforms left the CP and founded the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, where she continues to serve on its Advisory Board.

• Dolores Huerta: This labor leader was a co-founder of the United Farm Workers (UFW) along with Cesar Chavez. Huerta led the UFW's nationwide grape boycott in the 1960s which pressured the California grape industry into negotiating a collective bargaining agreement. She is credited with coming up with the UFW's slogan "Si, se puede", which roughly translates to "Yes, it can be done" or "Yes we can". Barack Obama used the "Yes, we can" version as the slogan of his successful 2008 Presidential campaign, although Huerta officially nominated Hillary Clinton for President at the Democratic National Convention. She currently serves as President of the Dolores Huerta Foundation, and serves as an Honorary Chair of the Democratic Socialists of America.