１５．Sandra Day O'Connor (1930-Present)
By Kayla Webley
Before Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, there was just one woman cloaked in the black robe of the United States' highest court. Fulfilling a campaign promise to break that gender barrier, President Ronald Reagan nominated Sandra Day O'Connor in 1981. The former Republican Arizona state senator was unanimously confirmed by Congress, ending 191 years of the court as an exclusively male institution. Though she was nominated by a Republican President, O'Connor did not always tow the party line. In her 24 years on the bench, O'Connor was often the court's crucial swing vote, determining 5-4 rulings on important cases involving abortion, affirmative action, election law, sexual harassment and the death penalty, among others. Her tenure was especially meaningful for the woman who, though she finished third in her class at Stanford Law in 1952, could not find work at a law firm upon graduation due to her gender. She said upon her confirmation, "I think the important fact about my appointment is not that I will decide cases as a woman but that I am a woman who will get to decide cases."
１６．Rosa Parks (1913-2005)
By Dan Fastenberg
"The only tired I was, was tired of giving in," Rosa Parks would go on to say about her decision not to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Ala., bus on Dec. 1, 1955. This wasn't the first time the seamstress had chosen not to give in. Parks had been an active member of the local NAACP chapter since 1943 and had marched on behalf of the Scottsboro boys, who were arrested in Alabama in 1931 for raping two white women. But it was her simple act of refusal, a move which landed Parks in prison, that set in motion the Montgomery bus boycott and kicked off the civil rights movement. So when the bulldogs and water hoses were unleashed a decade later in the streets of Birmingham, the protesters knew to stand their ground. "Over my head, I see freedom in the air," they sang.
１７．Jiang Qing (1914-1991)
By Rachelle Dragani
Better known as "the Madame" to Chairman Mao, Jiang Qing never shied away from the grasping of power. After a colorful adulthood that included an acting career, failed marriages and jail time for alleged radical activity — a past she took pains to erase later by ordering that any documents detailing her life be destroyed — Jiang became wife to Mao Zedong in 1938. She made constant bids for power up the ladder of the Communist Party and eventually came to lead the Gang of Four, whose members included Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan and Wang Hongwen. Together they reigned over every cultural institution in China, ordered the destruction of countless ancient books, buildings and paintings and were responsible for the violent persecution of much of China's population. Death tolls from that time are unknown, but numbers run as high as 500,000 from 1966-69. While some historians claim the Gang of Four were the masterminds behind the Cultural Revolution, Jiang blamed Mao when she famously said, "I was Mao's dog; I bit whom he said to bite." Rather than apologize for the criminal charges against her, she spent a decade in prison before taking her life in 1991.
