Ida B. Wells

Better known for exposing lynching, Wells also built Black women's voting power from the ground up. In 1913 she founded Chicago's Alpha Suffrage Club, which canvassed wards after Illinois gave women a partial vote and helped elect Oscar De Priest as the city's first Black alderman in 1915. That same spring of 1913 she refused to march at the back of the national suffrage parade in Washington, as white organisers had asked, and joined the Illinois delegation mid-route.