Gertrude bell

She was born the 14th of July 1868 to a rich family because of her grandfather’s inheritance.
After giving birth to her brother Maurice, her mother Mary died. Her father devoted every
spare moment to them. In 1876 from pressure from Hugh’s sister Ada, he remarried to a
woman named Florence who believed in education for girls which impacted Gertrude in the
sense that she began to read a lot and she proved to be quite an intelligent little girl.

Even if Florence believed in education, she was still conservative and didn’t consider school to
be for a girl but luckily, after realising how bright she was she accepted that she had to go to a
school to receive further education. She wasn’t shy at all and even entered conversations
about politics.

Gertrude hatted the dress code but she enjoyed school. Later on, in 1886 she went to Oxford
to study and was the first woman to achieve with first-class honours but she wasn’t allowed to
graduate. There, she met David Hogarth a friend who would be very important later on.

She was sent to Romania and discovered her passion to travel and to learn languages, she
specially liked the balls that she attended. She stayed with her aunt and uncle

After her uncle got a job as an ambassador to Theran, she moved there and immediately learnt
Persian.

There, she met Henry Cadogan and fell in love but she was heartbroken after discovering that
their family didn’t approve her marriage.

She was ready for every adventure and even learnt to climb. She even climbed Mount Meije in
the French Alps.

David Hogarth, his friend, proposed her as an archaeologist to investigate German actions with
the Ottoman empire.

In 1899 she was destined to Jerusalem. By this time, she knew French, German, Italian, Persian
and some Turkish.

To make her work believable she studied archaeology and cartography to learn how to draw
maps.

She managed to earn the Bedouin sheiks trust by reciting poems she had learnt by heart

She fell in love Charles Doughty Wylie but she wasn’t able to because his wife threatened to kill
herself if he married with Gertrude.

In 1911 she met Lawrence of Arabia and they shared the interest in the deserts of Arabia

In 1913 she made her most dangerous trip, she went to Hayyil only to impress Charles and
because the government wanted some intelligence about the area. She was arrested there but
she managed to get out only using her persuasion skills.

In 1914 she had already been 10 years in the Middle East.

In 1915, in a dinner in London she discovered that Charles died in Gallipoli.

She helped create the UAE and helped them gain their independence. She even taught the next
king about the place and she was basically proclaimed as the Queen of Arabia.

In between her adventures, she discovered her love for photography, a love that would carry
on all her live.

Helen Keller

Helen Keller was born in 1880 but unfortunately, she contracted a disease that she barely
survived but the consequences were horrendous, she was left blind and deaf. Her family
managed to hire a woman that helped them educate Helen on how to communicate and to
understand the world around them. Her name was Anne Sullivan and she would accompany
Helen all her life.

She managed to teach her the symbols that represented things by giving Helen things in one
and doing the symbol of the thing on the other hand.

Her family wasn’t as rich as Gertrude’s family but luckily, they were aided financially by
Alexander Graham Bell because his wife was also deaf

Helen went to the Perkins school for the blind in 1888 and she was hungry for learning.

At school she learnt the Braille alphabet and so was able to read books.

In 1896 his father would pass away.

She wanted to go to Harvard but women weren’t allowed in there so she went to Radcliff
University which is a section of Harvard that allowed women to study. She learnt how to speak
and she even gave lots of lectures. She spoke about social justice; the suffragette movement
and she wrote several books.

She had a lot of power and spoke to every president of the US about policies regarding the
visually impaired.

She was even in some films and in some plays. During WWI she established several
organizations to help the blind and she met and hired Polly Thompson.

In 1936 Annie Sullivan died and she became quite sad.

During WWII she visited the injured soldiers and, due to her actions, The American
Foundations for the Blind became the Helen Keller International.

After that she travelled to lots of places to spread awareness about blindness

In 1968 she died due to a heart attack.

Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks was born the 4th of February 1913 to an African-American family. Her grandparents
had been slaves and, little did she know, her whole life was going to be marked by racism.

The situation regarding segregation in the USA was pretty bad. Coloured people as they would
call African-Americans were segregated to an absurd extreme. The Klu Klux Klan appeared as a
white supremacist clan and many lynchings occurred to young African-Americans.

When 4 years old and the USA entered the First World War, many African-Americans fought to
defend Europe and, even if they had fought, they were severely mistreated when they got
home and the first silent protest arrived to the USA.

Rosa was almost never intimidated by bullies and she fought back when they verbally assaulted
her even when she was just a small kid.

Even with the mistreatment that she suffered she still knew that not all white people were evil
thanks to a soldier from the north and a kind white woman who took her on fishing trips.

Regarding education, we must remember that it was still segregated in every aspect, even
water.

Leona, Rosa’s mother, was a teacher and she attended summer classes at the State Normal
School for Coloured Students in Montgomery. She even had some interesting situations such as
the time Ida Nobles, Rosa’s Grandma Rose’s first cousin wanted to adopt her or when she was
11 and she got her tonsils taken out.

Rosa herself attended Montgomery Industrial School for Girls. The school even gave her a
scholarship to cover some fees. There, she began to realise the racism that had always been
present in the country. Even hair or water was racialized but she did also make some friends
such as Mahala Ashley Dickerson who went to become the first African-American female
lawyer to be admitted to the Alabama State Bar Association and who she talked several hours
about segregation and racial injustice.

In 1931, when she was 18, she met Raymond Parks who was 28 and would end up being her
husband but, most importantly, he would introduce her to the NAACP.

It was at this time that several false trials against young men had occurred so she was
determined to act.

In 1934 she became part of the few African-Americans who had a high-school diploma and she
was convinced to earn the right to vote. This battle began in 1940 and would take several years
to win since, according to the state, she always failed the exam.

It was one of this time, in November of 1943 that she was met with the brutal reality of
segregation. It was raining and freezing outside so she took the bus. The first seats were
reserved for whites but she sat on the front of the bus. The driver made her get off the bus in
the middle of the rain just to walk to the coloured entrance and, when she was out, he drove
off without her. She was also rejected that same year from voting

In 1945, after taking to the exam an extra pen and paper with her to prove she answered
correctly, she was granted the right to vote at age 32.
She went on to work for a white family in 1950 and they became good friends. They even
recommended that she attended the Hihglander Folk School in 1955 to learn how to stand up
to tyranny.

The 1st of December 1955 Rosa boarded a bus that was being driven by the same man who had
left her in the rain in 1943. She decided to sit in the front of the bus where, apparently, only
white people could seat. Later, she was arrested. The NAACP decided that this would be the
last straw and organised a boycott to not use the buses the day of Rosa’s Trial. Coloured
communities followed through and people were encouraged not to take the bus. This boycott
lasted until December of 1956 when the Supreme Court declared segregation on buses illegal..

This battle took a heavy toll, both Rosa and Raymond lost their jobs and were threatened but
they moved to Detroit to be near Rosa’s brother Sylvester.

She continued campaigning for civil rights and became an icon of the African-American rights
movement with extremely famous people admiring her such as Nelson Mandela.

She was also awarded several awards including the Medal of Freedom in 1996 and the
Congressional Gold Medal in 1999.

In 2004 she was diagnosed with progressive dementia and died on 24th October 2005