Winnie Mandela has died at the age of 81. The longtime wife of South African President Nelson Mandela, she was also known for her political involvement and efforts to combat apartheid, as well as controversial actions that led to convictions for kidnapping and fraud.

Malala Yousafzai defied the Taliban in Pakistan and demanded that girls be allowed to receive an education. She was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman in 2012 but survived. In 2014, she became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

Julian Assange came to international attention as the founder of the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks.

Linda Brown, the child at the center of the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court case, has died. The case dismantled federal education laws that allowed segregated schools for black and white students, although Brown never got the chance to attend unsegregated school.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas was a journalist and environmentalist who helped defend the Florida Everglades.

Dolores Huerta is an activist and labor leader who co-founded what would become the United Farm Workers.

Tarana Burke is a civil rights activist who was the original founder of the "Me Too" movement, which she started in 2006. It later became a global phenomenon that raised awareness about sexual harassment, abuse, and assault in society in 2017.

Sojourner Truth is best known for her extemporaneous speech on racial inequalities, "Ain't I a Woman?" delivered at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in 1851.

Writer, feminist and women's rights activist Betty Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique (1963) and co-founded the National Organization for Women.

Nellie Bly was an American journalist known for her pioneering reporting, including her 1887 expose on the conditions of asylum patients at Blackwell's Island in New York City and her trip around the world in 1889.

Civil rights activist Ella Baker worked with the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

Harriet Tubman escaped slavery to become a leading abolitionist. She led hundreds of enslaved people to freedom along the route of the Underground Railroad.

Coretta Scott King was an American civil rights activist and the wife of 1960s civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

Reverend Bernice A. King is the youngest child of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King. She is chief executive officer of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, Georgia.

Civil rights activist Rosa Parks refused to surrender her bus seat to a white passenger, spurring the Montgomery boycott and other efforts to end segregation.

American educator Helen Keller overcame the adversity of being blind and deaf to become one of the 20th century's leading humanitarians, as well as co-founder of the ACLU.

On the 100th anniversary of women’s right to vote in the U.K., equality campaigners are calling for the pardon of Emmeline Pankhurst and other suffragettes who were imprisoned fighting for women’s suffrage. Meanwhile, Pankhurst’s great-granddaughter warned President Trump may damage men’s perception of women.

Susan B. Anthony was a suffragist, abolitionist, author and speaker who was the president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an early leader of the woman's rights movement, writing the Declaration of Sentiments as a call to arms for female equality.

Harriet Beecher Stowe was an author and social activist best known for her popular anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Clara Barton was an educator, nurse and founder of the American Red Cross.

Fannie Lou Hamer was a civil rights activist who helped African Americans register to vote and who co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.

Diane Nash is an African-American civil rights activist and Freedom Rider whose campaigns during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s were some of the most consequential of their time.

Law professor Anita Hill was thrust into the public eye when she was called to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee during the 1991 confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.