Emmeline Pankhurst

(1858 - 1928)

At the age of five, Emmeline Pankhurst attended a fundraiser for newly emancipated American slaves. “Young as I was,” she later recalled, “I knew perfectly well the meaning of the words slavery and emancipation,” noting that the experience taught her about “that spirit of fighting and heroic sacrifice by which alone the soul of civilization is saved.” In 1889 she founded the Women’s Franchise League, which in 1894 secured married women’s right to vote in local elections; in 1903 she founded the militant Women’s Social and Political Union in Manchester.