Serena Williams and Ruby Bridges will be inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame announced that it is adding tennis great Serena Williams and civil rights icon Ruby Bridges to its inductees next year.
They are joining previously announced groundbreakers Peggy McIntosh, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Judith Plaskow, Loretta Ross and Allucquére Rosanne “Sandy” Stone, who will all be honored during Women’s History Month in March. Dr. Patricia Bath (1942-2019), Dr. Anna Wessels Williams (1863-1954) and Elouise Pepion Cobell, known as “Yellow Bird Woman” (1945-2011) will also be inducted posthumously.
“The 2024 class of inductees are scientists, activists, performers, and athletes who are the changemakers of today and inspiration for the women of tomorrow,” Jennifer Gabriel, the Hall of Fame’s chief executive, said in a statement. “Their dedication, drive, and talent got them here, and we’re thrilled to honor them on the national stage.”
Williams, 42, is a 23-time Grand Slam tennis champion who holds the record for the longest player ranked No. 1. She retired from playing tennis last year and earlier this month became the first athlete to win the Fashion Icon award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America.
Bridges, 69, was a 6-year-old first-grader when she became one of the first Black students at racially segregated schools in New Orleans in 1960. In 1963, painter Norman Rockwell recreated the scene in the painting “The Problem We All Live With.” The Ruby Bridges Foundation she established 24 years ago, promotes tolerance and change through education.
Others in the class include McIntosh, 88, an activist known for her explorations of privilege; Crenshaw, 63, who helped develop the academic concept of critical race theory, the idea that racism is systemic in the nation’s institutions; and Plaskow, 76, regarded as the first Jewish feminist theologian for calling out an absence of female perspectives in Jewish history.
Also to be inducted are Loretta Ross, 69, founder of the National Center for Human Rights Education in Atlanta, and Allucquére Rosanne “Sandy” Stone, a transgender woman born in 1936 and considered a founder of the academic discipline of transgender studies.
For the first time, the induction ceremony will be broadcast nationally in prime time from New York City, according to the Hall of Fame. The previous 30 ceremonies have taken place at venues around Seneca Falls, the upstate New York site of the first Women’s Rights Convention, where the National Women’s Hall of Fame is located.
“The 2024 inductee class has broken barriers, challenged the status quo, and left an impact on history,” the Hall of Fame said in its announcement.
The public nominates women to be considered for the Hall of Fame. The nominations are then reviewed by an expert selection committee.
