65 articles
Akua Njeri
Akua Njeri, born Deborah Johnson, is an American activist and writer, a former Black Panther and the widow of Fred Hampton, killed in a 1969 police raid.
Al Sharpton
Al Sharpton is an American Baptist minister, civil rights activist, and MS NOW host who founded the National Action Network in 1991, led protests in cases such as Howard Beach, Diallo, Garner, and Floyd, and ran for president in 2004.
Alberta Williams King
Alberta Williams King (1903–1974), mother of Martin Luther King Jr., organist and choir founder at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta; shot dead there June 30, 1974 by Marcus Wayne Chenault while playing the organ.
Alicia Garza
Alicia Garza (born 1981, Oakland) is an American civil rights organizer who co-founded Black Lives Matter after her July 2013 Facebook post following Zimmerman's acquittal; she later founded Black Futures Lab and co-founded Supermajority.
Amanda Nguyen
Amanda Nguyen (born 1991), Vietnamese-American activist and bioastronautics scientist, founded Rise, championed the 2016 Sexual Assault Survivors' Rights Act, and became the first Vietnamese woman in space on Blue Origin's NS-31 flight, April 14, 2025.
Ann Atwater
Ann Atwater (1935–2016) was a Durham, North Carolina civil rights and housing activist who co-chaired the 1971 school desegregation charrette with Klansman C.P. Ellis, converting him into a lifelong friend and civil rights ally.
Assata Shakur
Assata Shakur (JoAnne Chesimard), Black Panther and Black Liberation Army member, convicted 1977 of killing a NJ trooper, escaped prison 1979, lived in Cuban asylum from 1984, FBI first female Most Wanted Terrorist; died 2025 in Havana at 78.
Bayard Rustin
Bayard Rustin (1912–1987), American Quaker pacifist, socialist, and openly gay civil rights strategist; co-founder of CORE, advisor to Martin Luther King Jr., and chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington.
Bobby Seale
Bobby Seale (Robert George Seale, born October 22, 1936) co-founded the Black Panther Party with Huey P. Newton in Oakland in 1966, served as Chairman, faced the Chicago Eight and New Haven trials, ran for Oakland mayor in 1973, and wrote Seize the Time.
Bushra Shaikh
Bushra Shaikh, born 1982, is a British-Pakistani media commentator and former fashion entrepreneur who competed on The Apprentice in 2017 and founded the anti-racism organization Run Racism Out.
C. P. Ellis
C.P. Ellis (Claiborne Paul Ellis, 1927–2005), Durham KKK Exalted Grand Cyclops who co-chaired the 1971 school desegregation charrette with Ann Atwater, renounced the Klan, and became a civil rights activist and union organizer.
Carrie Best
Carrie Best (1903–2001) was a Black Canadian journalist and civil rights activist from New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, who co-founded The Clarion and publicized Viola Desmond's 1946 case.
Charlayne Hunter-Gault
Charlayne Hunter-Gault (born 1942) is an American journalist who desegregated the University of Georgia with Hamilton Holmes in 1961, then worked at the New York Times, The New Yorker, PBS NewsHour, NPR, and CNN, winning two Emmys and two Peabody Awards.
Coretta Scott King
Coretta Scott King (1927-2006), American civil rights leader, author, and wife of Martin Luther King Jr.; founding president of the King Center, holiday campaign chair, and advocate for peace, women's rights, and anti-apartheid causes.
Daisy Bates (activist)
Daisy Lee Gatson Bates (1914–1999), Arkansas civil rights leader, NAACP state president, and co-publisher of the Arkansas State Press, mentored the Little Rock Nine during the 1957 Central High desegregation crisis; honored with a Capitol statue and Daisy Gatson Bates Day.
Denmark Vesey
Denmark Vesey (c. 1767–1822), also known as Telemaque, was a free Black Charleston carpenter hanged in 1822 for allegedly plotting a large slave insurrection set for Bastille Day; 35 were executed, and historians still dispute whether the plot was real.
DeRay Mckesson
DeRay Mckesson (born 1985, Baltimore) is a civil rights activist, former school administrator, and co-founder of Campaign Zero who rose to prominence during the 2014 Ferguson protests, hosted Pod Save The People, and ran sixth in Baltimore's 2016 mayoral primary.
Dexter King
Dexter Scott King (1961-2024), younger son of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King; chaired the King Center, led the King estate's intellectual property, met James Earl Ray, and died of prostate cancer.
Diane Nash
Diane Judith Nash (born 1938, Chicago) is an American civil rights leader, SNCC co-founder, and Nashville sit-in chair who coordinated the 1961 Freedom Rides and co-planned the Selma voting-rights campaign; awarded the 2022 Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Elizabeth Eckford
Elizabeth Ann Eckford (born 1941), Little Rock Nine member who desegregated Little Rock Central High School in 1957; her solo walk through a mob on September 4, 1957, photographed by Will Counts, became an iconic civil rights image.
Ella Baker
Ella Josephine Baker (1903–1986), American civil rights organizer; NAACP director of branches, SCLC executive secretary, and organizer of the April 1960 Shaw University conference that founded SNCC, advocating group-centered, grassroots leadership.
Fred Hampton Jr.
Fred Hampton Jr. (born 1969) is a Chicago activist, son of slain Illinois Black Panther chairman Fred Hampton and Akua Njeri. He leads the Black Panther Party Cubs, founded the Prisoners of Conscience Committee, served nine years in prison, and consulted on Judas and the Black Messiah.
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass, born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, was an American abolitionist, orator, and publisher who escaped from slavery in Maryland in 1838 and became a leading spokesman for abolition.
Harriet Tubman
Harriet Tubman, born Araminta Ross, was an American abolitionist who escaped slavery in Maryland in 1849 and then made about 13 return trips to rescue others.
Hosea Williams
Hosea Lorenzo Williams (1926-2000), American civil rights leader, SCLC executive director and King aide; co-led Bloody Sunday in Selma with John Lewis, led the 1987 Forsyth County march, served in Georgia politics, founded Hosea Helps.
Ibram X. Kendi
Ibram X. Kendi (born Ibram Henry Rogers, 1982), also Ibram Xolani Kendi, American historian of racism and antiracist scholar; National Book Award winner for Stamped from the Beginning, author of How to Be an Antiracist, founding director of BU's Center for Antiracist Research, now at Howard University.
James Chaney
James Earl Chaney (1943–1964), Meridian, Mississippi CORE civil rights worker murdered with Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman during Freedom Summer in Neshoba County; 1967 federal conspiracy convictions, 2005 Killen manslaughter conviction, 2014 posthumous Medal of Freedom.
James Farmer
James Farmer (1920–1999), American civil rights leader, co-founder and national director of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), architect of the 1961 Freedom Rides, later HEW assistant secretary and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient.
James Reeb
James Reeb (1927–1965) was a white Unitarian Universalist minister from Boston beaten to death in Selma, Alabama, on March 9–11, 1965; his killers were acquitted, and his death spurred the Voting Rights Act.
Jane Elliott
Jane Elliott (born 1933), American teacher from Riceville, Iowa, creator of the Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes discrimination exercise first run with her third-grade class on April 5, 1968, later a diversity trainer.