Most people know about Parks and the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott that began in 1955, but few know that there were a number of women who refused to give up their seats on the same bus system. Most of the women were quietly fined, and no one heard much more.

Colvin was the first to really challenge the law.

Now a 69-year-old retiree, Colvin lives in the Bronx. She remembers taking the bus home from high school on March 2, 1955, as clear as if it were yesterday.

The bus driver ordered her to get up and she refused, saying she'd paid her fare and it was her constitutional right. Two police officers put her in handcuffs and arrested her. Her school books went flying off her lap.

"All I remember is that I was not going to walk off the bus voluntarily," Colvin says.

Meghan was also an active ambassador for World Vision Canada, one of her many philanthropic initiatives. “In 2016, the actress became the Global Ambassador for World Vision Canada, and has since traveled to Rwanda and India to support campaigns for clean water and women's education". She's also worked with the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women as an Advocate.

Fun Fact: During the pandemic, Meghan and her husband, Prince Harry, helped give out supplies to families at one of our very own LAUSD schools, Knox Elementary in South LA.

Ride felt responsible for paving the way for women in space. Her performance and skill, alongside her four male crewmates, made her a symbol of equality.

Fun Fact: Ride presented her in-flight suit to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in a ceremony shortly after the STS-7 mission. It can be seen on display in the National Air and Space Museum's Moving Beyond Earth exhibition.

White rose to become the star and producer of her own national talk and variety TV program, "The Betty White Show." In 1954, White invited a Black tap dancer named Arthur Duncan to perform on the program -- an inclusion that did not sit well with a number of TV stations in the racially segregated American South. After they tried to intimidate White into firing Duncan by threatening to boycott the show, White responded to their demands with an unblinking, "Live with it." She proceeded to give Duncan as much airtime as possible.

White, who died on December 31, 2021, just seventeen days before she would have turned 100, was a groundbreaking proponent of gender justice, racial equity, and animal rights.
 

Fun Fact: If Betty hadn't been an actress, she said she would have been a zookeeper. She tried to visit local zoo's wherever she traveled.

America recently launched She Se Puede, a digital lifestyle community for Latinas. America continues to be involved in projects that help the greater good. 

Famous quote: “To me, the tragedy about this whole image-obsessed society is that young girls get so caught up in just achieving that they forget to realize that they have so much more to offer the world.”

She is an advocate for racial and gender equality, immigrants, and relief for Puerto Rico. Rita is a shining example of what can happen when you show up, work hard, be yourself, and give back to your community.

Gloria has millions of fans, and she opened the door for many  Latina artists. She started her musical career with the Miami Sound Machine and her music reached the top charts for years. 

Gloria has also produced Broadway musicals. And she was the chairperson for a campaign that raised $40 million to build the Lois Pope LIFE Center and the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis.

Famous quote:

“As an immigrant, I appreciate, far more than the average American, the liberties we have in this country. Silence is a big enemy of morality. I don’t want our blunders in history to get repeated.”

In 2005, she was awarded the GE / Science Young Scientist Award for her breakthrough in understanding the mechanism of spliceosomes – “akin to finding the Holy Grail of the splicing catalysis field” – a critical area of research, given that “20 percent or 30 percent of all human genetic diseases are caused by mistakes that the spliceosome makes” .

As a result of this success, Valadkhan received many invitations by universities to take up a research post. In 2004 she joined the Center for RNA Molecular Biology, one of the top research centers of its kind located at Case Western Reserve University. She is currently a biomedical scientist and assistant professor and RNA researcher there.