Edith Turner, chief of the Nottoway, successfully navigated nineteenth-century Nottoway and Anglo-American societies while she strove to keep the tribe’s children on the reservation.
As a teenager, Edwilda Allen Isaac helped lead a walkout of students from R. R. Moton High School that contributed to ending school segregation in the United States.
Concerned about the plight of orphaned girls, Elizabeth Ambler Brent Carrington helped establish the Female Humane Association of the City of Richmond at a time when women rarely played a role in public affairs.
Setting a charitable example, Elizabeth Henry Campbell Russell fostered the fledgling Methodist Church in southwestern Virginia as a devoted adherent and through material and compassionate support of the church.
Elizabeth Pfohl Campbell's belief in the value of education and the power of public broadcasting led her to help create the successful public educational television station, WETA.