feature: “10 female revolutionaries that you probably didn’t learn about in history class”

As Films For Action state, history often glosses over “the contributions of female revolutionaries that have sacrificed their time, efforts, and lives to work towards burgeoning systems and ideologies” and so the community-powered learning library has highlighted 10 women whose remarkable contributions to revolution is often lost in the barage of “his story”. Check it out here and see some of the revolutionaries below.

Nwanyeruwa, an Igbo woman in Nigeria, sparked a short war that is often called the first major challenge to British authority in West Africa during the colonial period. 

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Asmaa Mahfouz is a modern-day revolutionary who is credited with sparking the January 2011 uprising in Egypt through a video blog post encouraging others to join her in protest in Tahrir Square. 

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Kathleen Neal Cleaver was a member of the Black Panther Party and the first female member of the Party’s decision-making body. 

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Lakshmi Sahgal, colloquially known as “Captain Lakshmi”, was a revolutionary of the Indian independence movement, an officer of the Indian National Army, and later, the Minister of Women’s Affairs in the Azad Hind government. 

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Blanca Canales was a Puerto Rican Nationalist who helped organize the Daughters of Freedom, the women’s branch of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party. She was one of the few women in history to have led a revolt against the United States, known as the Jayuya Uprising.