“The fight for equality is not a sprint, it’s a marathon,” said Lilly Ledbetter, the American civil rights activist who died in 2024, at 86. “Pace yourself and keep going.” Her fight for equality took a decade. In 1998, Ledbetter first looked into possible sex discrimination by her employer; she sued later that year, claiming pay discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Pay Act of 1963. In 2006, she lost the Supreme Court case Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. (The result was that employers could not be sued over race or gender pay discrimination if the claims were based on decisions made by the employer 180 days or more before the claim.) The court decision was reversed during the first term of President Barack Obama, when he enacted the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 into law. Ledbetter’s story is retold in the movie Lilly, starring Patricia Clarkson. —Carolina de Armas