In 2009, Bronx-born Latina Sonia Sotomayor became the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice of the United States. Sotomayor holds a B.A. from Princeton and a law degree from Yale University. Her long career includes time spent as assistant district attorney for New York County, being a judge to the U.S. District Court (appointed by George H.W. Bush), and serving as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Sotomayor has been outspoken about how her unique experience as a Latina has contributed to her work as a judge.

Originally from Puerto Rico, Roberto Clemente Walker came to the United States to play major league baseball in 1954. He spent his career as a right fielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Although he was an elite athlete, achieving more than 3,000 base hits by the end of his career, Clemente faced racial bias in the United States. This led Clemente to become an advocate for Latino and Black players’ rights in baseball. He died in a plane crash in 1972, en route to bring relief to earthquake-stricken Nicaragua. He believed in a life of serving others. “Any time you have an opportunity to make a difference in this world and you don’t, then you are wasting your time on Earth.” Clemente was the first Hispanic baseball player to be inducted into the MLB Hall of Fame, and he helped pave the way for future generations of Latino ballplayers to join the game.

Born in Los Angeles and raised in La Mesa, California, Ellen Ochoa, PhD, was the first Hispanic woman in space. After earning her doctorate in engineering from Stanford University, Ochoa joined NASA in 1988 as a research engineer and was selected to be an astronaut in 1990. Her first mission in space was aboard the shuttle Discovery in 1993. She went on to serve three more missions, spending almost 1,000 hours in orbit. Ochoa was the 11th director of the Johnson Space Center and the center’s first Hispanic director.

As the proverb goes, when you educate a woman, you educate a family. Jovita Idár believed that wholeheartedly. While working at her father’s newspaper, La Crónica, she used the platform to speak out against racism and in support of women’s and Mexican-Americans’ rights. After writing an article condemning Woodrow Wilson’s decision to send U.S. troops to the border, the Texas Rangers showed up at her door to shut down the paper. But she refused to let them in, literally putting her body between them and the door, and they left. Although the Rangers eventually succeeded in shutting down the paper, Idár continued to stand up for women and Mexican-Americans her entire life.

As the first-generation American son of farmworkers in Arizona, he was drawn to a life of activism. After serving in the Navy in 1946, Chavez returned home and became a community organizer, first as a leader in the San Jose Community Service Organization (CSO), and then by establishing the National Farm Workers Association. Chavez led successful marches, strikes, fasts, and protests, and was inspired by peaceful resistance movements and leaders including Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi. His legacy lives on in Latinx and workers’ rights movements going on today.

Born as Dolores Clara Fernandez in northern New Mexico in 1930, Dolores Huerta found her voice while serving as an organizer for the Stockton Community Service Organization (CSO). It was during this time that she met a fellow organizer, Cesar Chavez. The two bonded, and in 1962, they formed the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA). Throughout her long career, Huerta has advocated for workers’ rights, women’s rights, and Latinx rights, and continues to do so to this day, at age 90. Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign slogan was taken from Huerta’s words from NFWA strikes: “Sí se puede,” which translates to “Yes we can.”

Not many know that seven years before 1954’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling integrated America’s schools, a young California girl’s family fought for her to attend an “all-White” school. Sylvia Mendez was a small girl when she tried to register to attend school in Westminster, California. The school’s superintendent testified that those of Mexican descent were “intellectually, culturally, and morally inferior to European Americans.” Sylvia Mendez’ parents, Gonzalo and Felicitas, would have none of it. They united with other local Chicano families and hired a lawyer. They won their case, and in 1946, California schools became integrated by law.

Born as Lucila de María del Perpetuo Socorro Godoy Alcayaga in Chile in 1889, poet and educator Gabriela Mistral was the first Hispanic person to win a Nobel Prize in Literature. Although she was no stranger to tragedy, she used her pain to create lasting works of poetry. Throughout her career, Mistral traveled the world as a writer and educator, teaching at Columbia University, Vassar College, and the University of Puerto Rico. She died in New York in 1957, 12 years after winning the Nobel Prize.

Critically acclaimed chef José Andrés came to the United States from Spain in 1991 and began a long career of award-winning culinary innovation. After the tragic 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Andrés formed the World Central Kitchen (WCK), an organization that provides hot meals to those affected by natural disasters. After Hurricane Maria ravaged Puerto Rico in 2017, he gathered 19,000 volunteers to serve 3.5 million meals to distraught residents who had limited access to electricity, clean water, and food. In 2019, Andrés fed furloughed workers during a month-long government shutdown. “We have shown that there is no place too far or disaster too great for our chefs to be there with a hot plate of food when it’s needed most,” Andrés wrote on the WCK website. Andrés has won the James Beard Award for both Outstanding Chef and Humanitarian of the Year and was nominated for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize.

Ruben Salazar was just an infant when his family immigrated to the United States from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. He would go on to become one of the first Mexican-American journalists in mainstream media. His work was particularly significant because it highlighted the lives of Chicanos. Salazar was raised in El Paso and served in the army before becoming a journalist for the Los Angeles Times. In his career, he focused on injustices being done to those in the Chicano community. While covering a protest of the Vietnam War, the Chicano Moratorium in 1970, his life was cut short by a tear gas projectile thrown by the police.