Where changemakers and activists grew up and lived

Andrei Sakharov1921–1989

📍 48B Zemlyanoy Val (Chkalov Street), Moscow 109004, Russia

I was born in 1921 in Ulyanovsk and grew up in Moscow, the son of a physicist. I became the Soviet Union's most important nuclear weapons designer — the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb …

Brigitte Bardot1958–2025

📍 La Madrague, Saint-Tropez, Var, France

I grew up in a strict, comfortable family in Paris's 16th arrondissement, where I trained as a ballet dancer at the Conservatoire and was expected to be a well-behaved young lady. A…

Cesar Chavez1971–1993

📍 Nuestra Señora Reina de la Paz, 29700 Woodford-Tehachapi Road, Keene, CA 93531, USA

I grew up on my family's small farm near Yuma, Arizona, in the North Gila Valley, until we lost it during the Depression when I was ten. After that we became migrant farm workers in…

Charles Lindbergh1906–1920

📍 Charles A. Lindbergh Historic Site, 1620 Lindbergh Drive South, Little Falls, MN 56345, USA

My father, a lawyer and later a congressman, bought a farm on the bluffs above the Mississippi River just south of Little Falls, Minnesota, before I was born. Our first house there burned…

Chiune Sugihara1939–1940

📍 Sugihara House, Vaižganto gatvė 30, 44229 Kaunas, Lithuania

I grew up in Japan and defied my father, who wanted me to become a doctor; I deliberately failed the entrance exam and studied English instead. I joined the foreign ministry, learned…

Clara Barton1821–1912

📍 Clara Barton Birthplace, North Oxford, Massachusetts, USA

I was born in North Oxford, Massachusetts in 1821, the youngest of five children, and the farmhouse where I grew up gave me the self-reliance and the practical competence that would later…

Corrie ten Boom1892–1944

📍 Barteljorisstraat 19, 2011 RA Haarlem, Netherlands

I grew up in the Beje — our family's name for the narrow, crooked house at 19 Barteljorisstraat in the centre of Haarlem — living with my father, my sisters, my brother and my aunts in…

Dame Whina Cooper1895–1994

📍 West Coast Road, Panguru, Hokianga, Northland 0473, New Zealand

My home for many years was at Panguru, on the West Coast Road above the Hokianga Harbour, where my husband William and I raised our children. It was a real country house — a wood stove, a…

Dorothea Dix1802–1887

📍 Hampden, Maine, USA

I was born in Hampden, Maine in 1802, the daughter of a farmer, and the poverty and hardship of rural New England gave me an early education in what it meant to lack the most basic…

Dorothy Day1897–1980

📍 36 East 1st Street, New York, NY 10003, USA

I was born in 1897 in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in a working-class family. I became a journalist, then a socialist, then a Catholic convert, and in 1933 I co-founded the Catholic…

Eddie Mabo1959–1992

📍 Townsville, QLD 4810, Australia

In 1959 I came to Townsville, on the North Queensland coast, and made my life there — working the railways and the docks, raising my children, sweeping floors at the university where I was…

Eleanor Roosevelt1926–1962

📍 Val-Kill Lane, Hyde Park, New York 12538, USA

Val-Kill was the only home I ever owned myself — a stone cottage on the Roosevelt estate at Hyde Park that Franklin had built for me and my friends Nancy Cook and Marion Dickerman in 1926…

Elie Wiesel1928–1944

📍 Strada Dragos Voda, Sighetu Marmației, Maramureș, Romania

I was born in 1928 in Sighet, a small Transylvanian city then part of Romania, in a Hasidic Jewish community of extraordinary spiritual richness. In 1944, when I was fifteen, the entire…

Elizabeth Fry1786–1800

📍 Earlham Hall, Earlham Road, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK

I grew up at Earlham Hall, outside Norwich, in a wealthy Quaker banking family, the fourth of twelve children of John Gurney and Catherine Bell. Earlham was a large old house set in…

Emmeline Pankhurst1898–1907

📍 Pankhurst Centre, 62 Nelson Street, Manchester M13 9WP, UK

I was raised in Manchester in a family who believed in reform. My father was a businessman who supported the abolition of slavery, and my mother took me, at fourteen, to my first meeting on…

Florence Nightingale1820–1910

📍 Embley Park, Wellow, Romsey, Hampshire SO51 6ZE, United Kingdom

I grew up at Embley Park in Hampshire, a comfortable country house where my family spent their winters, and it was there that I first understood the contradiction at the heart of my…

Frederick Douglass1877–1895

📍 Cedar Hill, 1411 W Street SE, Washington, DC 20020, USA

I was born into slavery on Maryland's Eastern Shore and never knew my birthday; my mother walked twelve miles at night to see me, and I barely knew her. I taught myself to read in secret on…

Greta Thunberg2003–2018

📍 Södermalm, Stockholm, Sweden

Greta Thunberg grew up in Stockholm, the elder of two daughters of the opera singer Malena Ernman and the actor Svante Thunberg. Her early childhood was busy and creative, sometimes spent…

Harriet Tubman1859–1913

📍 Harriet Tubman Home, 180 South Street, Auburn, New York, USA

I was born into slavery on a plantation in Dorchester County, Maryland, around 1822, and I escaped north to freedom in 1849 — alone, on foot, following the North Star through swamps and…

Harvey Milk1973–1978

📍 575 Castro Street, San Francisco, CA 94114, USA

I grew up in Woodmere, on Long Island, in a Jewish family that ran a department store, and I kept my sexuality hidden for most of my early life — in the Navy, on Wall Street, in jobs and…

Helen Keller1880–1888

📍 Ivy Green, 300 North Commons Street West, Tuscumbia, AL 35674, USA

I was born at Ivy Green in June 1880, in a white clapboard house my grandfather built in Tuscumbia, in the far north of Alabama, its walls and fences covered in English ivy. At nineteen…

Henri Dunant1828–1867

📍 Rue du Puits-Saint-Pierre 4, 1204 Geneva, Switzerland

I was born in Geneva in 1828 into a prosperous Calvinist family, and Geneva — with its tradition of civic responsibility and its position at the crossroads of European culture — shaped…

I Gusti Ngurah Rai1917–1946

📍 Taman Pujaan Bangsa Margarana, Desa Kelaci, Kecamatan Marga, Kabupaten Tabanan, Bali 82181, Indonesia

I knew by the autumn of 1946 that the Dutch intended to restore colonial control over Bali regardless of what Sukarno had proclaimed in August 1945. When they surrounded my Ciung Wanara…

Ida B. Wells1862–1878

📍 Ida B. Wells-Barnett Museum, 220 North Randolph Street, Holly Springs, MS 38635, USA

I was born into slavery in Holly Springs, Mississippi, in July 1862, during the Civil War, probably on the property of the architect Spires Boling, whose fine house on North Randolph Street…

Irena Sendler1935–1943

📍 6 Ludwiki Street, Czyste district, Warsaw 01-226, Poland

I was born in Warsaw in 1910 and I lived there through the German occupation, working as a social worker with access to the Warsaw Ghetto. Between 1942 and 1943 I organised a network that…

Jane Addams1889–1935

📍 800 S Halsted Street, Chicago, IL 60607, USA

I co-founded Hull House on the Near West Side of Chicago in 1889 with Ellen Gates Starr, in a rundown mansion in one of the city's most impoverished immigrant neighbourhoods. We moved in…

John Lewis1940–1957

📍 Troy, Pike County, Alabama, USA

I grew up on my family's farm outside Troy, in Pike County, Alabama, the third of ten children of sharecroppers who saved to buy 110 acres of their own. We grew cotton, peanuts and corn…

Kate Sheppard1888–1902

📍 83 Clyde Road, Ilam, Christchurch 8041, New Zealand

In 1888 Walter and I built a house at 83 Clyde Road in Christchurch, and it became the headquarters of a revolution. Around my drawing-room table the suffragists planned, wrote and gathered…

Keith Haring1958–1976

📍 Kutztown, PA 19530, USA

I grew up in Kutztown, a small Pennsylvania Dutch town of farms, churches and a college, the eldest of four children and the only boy. My father, Allen, was an engineer, but his hobby was…

Langston Hughes1947–1967

📍 20 East 127th Street, Harlem, New York, NY 10035, USA

I grew up mostly with my grandmother in Lawrence, Kansas, a proud, poor woman who told me stories of the fight against slavery; my parents had separated, and I moved between Kansas…

Mahatma Gandhi1936–1948

📍 Sevagram, Wardha, Maharashtra 442102, India

I founded Sevagram — the village of service — in 1936 in the heart of India, in a poor agricultural district three hundred miles from Bombay. I was sixty-seven, my health was failing, and…

Malala Yousafzai1997–2012

📍 Mingora, Swat, Pakistan

Malala Yousafzai was born in Mingora, the largest town in the Swat Valley in north-western Pakistan, in July 1997. Her father, Ziauddin, ran a school and campaigned openly for girls'…

Malcolm X1941–1946

📍 72 Dale Street, Roxbury, Boston, MA 02119, USA

I was born Malcolm Little in Omaha. My father, a preacher for Marcus Garvey's movement, was lost when I was six, and our family was broken apart in Michigan, where my mother was taken into…

Maria Catarina Sumarsihfrom 2007

📍 Jalan Medan Merdeka Utara, Gambir, Jakarta Pusat, DKI Jakarta 10110, Indonesia

My son Wawan was twenty years old when soldiers shot him on the thirteenth of November 1998, near Semanggi. He was an economics student at Atma Jaya University, not a soldier, not a threat…

Martin Luther King Jr1929–1948

📍 501 Auburn Avenue NE, Atlanta, GA 30312, USA

I was born on the 15th of January 1929 at 501 Auburn Avenue in Atlanta, Georgia — a two-storey Queen Anne house in the Sweet Auburn neighbourhood, the heart of Atlanta's Black professional…

Mary Seacole1805–1850

📍 East Street, Kingston, Jamaica

I was born in Kingston, the daughter of a Scottish soldier and a free Jamaican woman, a doctress who healed with Creole and African herbal medicine. My mother ran Blundell Hall, a boarding…

Māui Pōmare1876–1930

📍 Ōnaera, near Urenui, Taranaki, New Zealand

Ko au ko Māui Wiremu Pita Naera Pōmare. I was born around 1876 at Ōnaera, near Urenui in Taranaki, of Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Toa descent, and I became one of the Young Māori Party…

Maya Angelou1931–1941

📍 Stamps, AR 71860, USA

When I was three, my brother Bailey and I were put on a train in California with labels on our wrists and sent to Stamps, a small, segregated town in southern Arkansas, to live with our…

Millicent Fawcett1847–1929

📍 Aldeburgh, Suffolk, United Kingdom

I was born in Aldeburgh on the Suffolk coast in 1847, the daughter of a corn merchant, and the sea and the flatness of the East Anglian landscape shaped my temperament in ways I recognised…

Munir Said Thalib1965–2004

📍 Jalan Bukit Berbunga No. 2, Sidomulyo, Kecamatan Batu, Kota Batu, Jawa Timur 65317, Indonesia

I began as a legal aid lawyer in Surabaya in 1989, and I spent fifteen years documenting what the Indonesian military did to people in East Timor, Aceh, and Papua — disappearances, torture…

Nelson Mandela1946–1962

📍 8115 Vilakazi Street, Orlando West, Soweto, Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa

I moved to 8115 Vilakazi Street in 1946, the year I joined the ANC Youth League. The house was modest — a matchbox house, the government called such things, as if to emphasise how little…

Nicholas Winton1939–2015

📍 Maidenhead, Berkshire, United Kingdom

I lived most of my adult life in Maidenhead in Berkshire, where I worked as a stockbroker and lived what appeared to be a quietly comfortable English life. What almost nobody knew …

Nina Simone1933–1945

📍 30 E Livingston Street, Tryon, NC 28782, USA

I was born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in February 1933 in a small, three-room clapboard house at 30 East Livingston Street in Tryon, a little town in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains…

Nkosi Johnson1989–2001

📍 Soweto, Johannesburg, Gauteng 1818, South Africa

I was born Xolani Nkosi Johnson in 1989 in Johannesburg, South Africa, HIV-positive from birth. My mother Daphne was HIV-positive and died when I was twelve. I was raised by Gail Johnson, a…

Noam Chomsky1928–1951

📍 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

Avram Noam Chomsky was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in December 1928, the elder son of William Chomsky, a distinguished scholar of Hebrew who had emigrated from Ukraine, and Elsie…

Oodgeroo Noonuccal1920–1933

📍 One Mile, Dunwich, North Stradbroke Island (Minjerribah), QLD 4183, Australia

I was born Kathleen Ruska at One Mile on Minjerribah — North Stradbroke Island — Noonuccal country in Quandamooka. My father Ted taught us to respect our heritage, to hunt and fish only for…

Paul Farmer1983–2022

📍 Zanmi Lasante Hospital, Cange, Haiti

I first went to Haiti in 1983 as a young Harvard medical student, and what I found in the Central Plateau — specifically in the village of Cange in the Artibonite valley — determined the…

Raden Adjeng Kartini1879–1904

📍 Jalan RA Kartini No. 1, Jepara, Kabupaten Jepara, Jawa Tengah 59413, Indonesia

At twelve, the pingitan tradition required that I leave school and enter seclusion — I could not leave the family compound, could not study, could not speak publicly. My father the Regent…

Raoul Wallenberg1912–1947

📍 Lidingö, Stockholm, Sweden

I grew up on the island of Lidingö outside Stockholm, in a comfortable upper-middle-class Swedish family, and my childhood there gave me the security and the values that I later put to…

Rigoberta Menchú1959–1981

📍 Uspantan, Quiche, Guatemala

Rigoberta Menchú Tum was born in January 1959 in Laj Chimel, a village near Uspantán in the Quiché highlands of Guatemala, into a K'iche' Maya family of farmers. As a child she travelled…

Rosa Parks1951–1957

📍 Cleveland Court, Montgomery, AL 36108, USA

I grew up on my grandparents' farm in Pine Level, a small country community in southern Alabama, where my grandfather, who had been born into slavery, would sit up at night with his shotgun…

Ruth Bader Ginsburg1933–1950

📍 Midwood, Brooklyn, NY 11230, USA

I grew up in a working-class neighbourhood of Flatbush and Midwood in Brooklyn, in a small house on East 9th Street, a few blocks from Ocean Parkway. My parents, Nathan and Celia Bader…

Setsuko Thurlow1932–2026

📍 1-10 Ōtemachi, Naka Ward, Hiroshima 730-0051, Japan

Setsuko Thurlow was born Setsuko Nakamura in Hiroshima in January 1932. On 6 August 1945, at thirteen, she was one of a group of schoolgirls mobilised to work decoding messages at the army…

Sojourner Truth1857–1883

📍 Battle Creek, Michigan, USA

I was born into slavery in Ulster County, New York around 1797, and I gained my legal freedom in 1827 when New York State abolished slavery — though I had walked away from my enslaver a…

Sophie Scholl1932–1942

📍 Münsterplatz, 89073 Ulm, Germany

My family moved to Ulm when I was eleven, in 1932, and in 1939 we settled in a spacious flat on the fourth floor of an Art Nouveau building at Münsterplatz 33, looking out on the great…

Steve Biko1946–1977

📍 Ginsberg, Qonce (King William's Town), Eastern Cape, South Africa

I grew up in Ginsberg, a small township outside King William's Town in the Eastern Cape, where my family moved when I was a baby. My father, Mzingaye, worked as a policeman and then as a…

Susan B. Anthony1866–1906

📍 17 Madison Street, Rochester, NY 14608, USA

I was raised in a Quaker family in Massachusetts and upstate New York, where my father, a cotton mill owner and abolitionist, taught that men and women were equal before God. My family…

Te Puea Hērangi1883–1952

📍 Ngāruawāhia, Waikato, New Zealand

Ko au ko Te Puea Hērangi. I was born on the 9th of November 1883 at Ngāruawāhia, granddaughter of King Tāwhiao, and I dedicated my life to the restoration of Waikato dignity after the…

Thurgood Marshall1908–1925

📍 1632 Division Street, Baltimore, MD 21217, USA

I was born at 1632 Division Street in West Baltimore in 1908, in a thriving Black neighbourhood of churches, shops and rowhouses. My mother, Norma, was a kindergarten teacher who believed…

William Wilberforce1759–1768

📍 Wilberforce House, 25 High Street, Hull HU1 1NQ, UK

I was born in this merchant's house on the High Street in Hull in 1759, in a grand brick mansion beside the River Hull where ships unloaded their cargoes. My grandfather and father had made…