Every student should be familiar with these amazing and important individuals, both on their own merits and for the reasons they have been silenced for so long. Most of the individuals featured on the Early American Heroes List are Africans, some Native Americans and African-Americans, some of whom are women, who resisted and rebelled against their own enslavement. Some are Europeans who wrote, spoke, or acted in opposition to slavery. Juana Inez de la Cruz wrote about the rights of women.