Peace College

Raleigh, NC

Born in 1858, Anna J. Cooper rose from the Reconstruction-era South to become a renowned educator, orator, and early Black feminist. A graduate of St. Augustine's in Raleigh, she published A Voice from the South in 1892, a landmark of Black feminist thought that argued the progress of the race depended on the education of its women. She lived to 1964, her grave now resting blocks from here.

Edgecombe County, NC

In 1908 Anna Easter Brown helped found Alpha Kappa Alpha, the first Greek-letter sorority established by and for African American women, born at Howard University as Black students built their own institutions of leadership and service. A history teacher by profession, Brown embodied the era's belief that education and organization were paths to uplift. Her grave lies a quarter mile east.

Raleigh, NC

Jane McKimmon built North Carolina's home demonstration program, which she organized and led from 1911 to 1937. Working under the era's Cooperative Extension movement, she carried practical science in nutrition, food preservation, and household economy to rural women across the state. Her work turned isolated farm households into a connected network of learning.

Raleigh, NC

From this house, Fannie E. S. Heck emerged as a leading social activist and writer in turn-of-the-century North Carolina. She led the Baptist Woman's Missionary Union after 1892, organizing women for religious and charitable work on a broad scale, and became a benefactor of what is now Meredith College. Her career shows the growing public leadership of women in the era before suffrage.