65 articles
Jesse Jackson
Jesse Jackson (Jesse Louis Jackson Sr., born Jesse Louis Burns), 1941-2026, American civil rights leader, Baptist minister, Operation PUSH and Rainbow PUSH founder, and 1984/1988 Democratic presidential candidate; died February 17, 2026, in Chicago.
Joan Trumpauer Mulholland
Joan Trumpauer Mulholland (born 1941) is an American civil rights activist, Freedom Rider, Parchman Penitentiary inmate, and first white student at Tougaloo College, subject of An Ordinary Hero.
John Lewis
John Robert Lewis (1940–2020), American civil rights leader and Georgia congressman: SNCC chairman, original Freedom Rider, Bloody Sunday marcher, 33-year House member known as the conscience of Congress.
John Pierre Burr
John Pierre Burr (1792-1864) was an African-American Philadelphia barber, abolitionist, and Underground Railroad conductor, son of Vice President Aaron Burr and Mary Emmons of Calcutta; recognized by the Burr family in 2018-2019.
Jonathan Daniels
Jonathan Myrick Daniels (1939-1965), New Hampshire-born Episcopal seminarian and VMI valedictorian, joined the Selma voting rights campaign, was jailed in Hayneville, and was killed August 20, 1965 shielding Ruby Sales from deputy Tom Coleman's shotgun; later named an Episcopal Church martyr.
Khalid Abdul Muhammad
Khalid Abdul Muhammad (Harold Moore Jr., 1948–2001), American black nationalist, Nation of Islam spokesman under Louis Farrakhan, later New Black Panther Party chairman; notorious for the 1993 Kean College antisemitic speech and the 1998 Million Youth March.
Malcolm Shabazz
Malcolm Lateef Shabazz (1984–2013), grandson and first male descendant of Malcolm X, son of Qubilah Shabazz; pleaded guilty at 12 in the 1997 fire that killed Betty Shabazz; beaten to death in Mexico City at 28.
Malcolm X
Malcolm X (El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, born Malcolm Little, 1925–1965) was an American Muslim minister and Black nationalist leader, Nation of Islam spokesman, hajj pilgrim, Sunni convert, OAAU founder, assassinated at Harlem's Audubon Ballroom.
Marian Wright Edelman
Marian Wright Edelman (born June 6, 1939) is an American civil rights lawyer and children's rights activist, first African American woman admitted to the Mississippi Bar, and founder and 45-year president of the Children's Defense Fund.
Martin Luther King III
Martin Luther King III, born 1957, eldest son of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, American civil rights activist; Fulton County commissioner 1986, fourth SCLC president 1997-2003, founder of Realizing the Dream, voting rights march organizer.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968), American Baptist minister and civil rights leader, led the Montgomery bus boycott, Birmingham Campaign, 1963 March on Washington, and Selma marches; won the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize and was assassinated in Memphis.
Mary Williams (activist)
Mary Luana Williams (born 1967), American social activist and author, daughter of Black Panther parents, raised by Jane Fonda; founded the Lost Boys Foundation and wrote The Lost Daughter: A Memoir.
Maulana Karenga
Maulana Karenga (Ronald McKinley Everett, born 1941) is an Africana studies scholar at Cal State Long Beach, founder of the Us Organization and Kawaida philosophy, and creator of Kwanzaa in 1966.
Michael X
Michael X, born Michael de Freitas, was a Trinidad-born civil rights activist, the most publicized figure of Britain's Black Power movement, hanged in Trinidad in 1975 for murder.
Myrlie Evers-Williams
Myrlie Evers-Williams, born Myrlie Louise Beasley in 1933, is an American civil rights activist and journalist, widow of Medgar Evers and NAACP chair from 1995 to 1998.
Patrisse Cullors
Patrisse Cullors, also known as Patrisse Khan-Cullors, is an American artist and activist born in Los Angeles in 1983, best known as a co-founder of Black Lives Matter.
Prince Hall
Prince Hall (c. 1735-1807) was a free Black Bostonian abolitionist who founded African Lodge No. 459 in 1775-1784, the origin of Prince Hall Freemasonry, the oldest continuously active African American organization.
Qubilah Shabazz
Qubilah Shabazz (born 1960), second daughter of Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz, was indicted in 1995 for plotting to kill Louis Farrakhan via FBI informant Michael Fitzpatrick; charges were settled without trial in 1995.
Rachel Dolezal
Rachel Dolezal, later Nkechi Diallo, is an American activist who led the Spokane NAACP chapter until June 2015, when her parents said she was white; she resigned and said she identifies as black.
Ralph Abernathy
Ralph David Abernathy (1926–1990) was a Baptist minister, Martin Luther King Jr.'s closest friend, co-founder of the SCLC, and its second president (1968–1977), leading the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Poor People's Campaign.
Rita Schwerner Bender
Rita Schwerner Bender, American civil rights activist and family law attorney, widow of CORE worker Michael Schwerner, killed by Klansmen in Neshoba County, Mississippi on June 21, 1964 during Freedom Summer; later an ACLU and public defender lawyer in Seattle and prosecution witness at the 2005 Killen trial.
Rohith Vemula (రోహిత్ చక్రవర్తి వేముల)
Rohith Vemula (రోహిత్ చక్రవర్తి వేముల), born 1989, was a Dalit PhD scholar at the University of Hyderabad who died by suicide on 17 January 2016 after suspension and hostel expulsion following a dispute with ABVP students, sparking nationwide caste-discrimination protests.
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks (Rosa Louise McCauley Parks, 1913–2005), American civil rights activist whose December 1, 1955 refusal to yield her Montgomery bus seat sparked the 381-day Montgomery Bus Boycott and ended bus segregation via Browder v. Gayle.
Shabbos Kestenbaum
Shabbos Kestenbaum (Alexander Kestenbaum) is an American Jewish activist and Harvard Divinity School graduate who was lead plaintiff in the 2024 Title VI antisemitism lawsuit against Harvard, settled confidentially in May 2025.
Shaun King
Shaun King, American activist and writer, rose to prominence in the 2014 Ferguson protests, led The North Star, Real Justice PAC, and Grassroots Law Project, and faces recurring fundraising-accountability disputes.
Solomon Northup
Solomon Northup (born c. 1808) was a free New York carpenter kidnapped in Washington, D.C., in 1841, enslaved twelve years in Louisiana, rescued 1853; his memoir Twelve Years a Slave, edited by David Wilson, inspired the 1984 Gordon Parks and 2013 Steve McQueen films.
Stokely Carmichael
Stokely Carmichael, later Kwame Ture (1941–1998), Trinidadian-born American civil rights activist, SNCC chairman from 1966, popularizer of the slogan "Black Power," Lowndes County Freedom Organization organizer, later Pan-Africanist in Guinea.
Van Jones
Van Jones (Anthony Kapel Jones, born 1968, Jackson, Tennessee) is an American CNN commentator, attorney, and social entrepreneur who founded the Ella Baker Center, Color of Change, Green for All, and Dream Corps, championed the Green Jobs Act of 2007 and First Step Act of 2018, and served briefly as Obama's green jobs adviser in 2009.
Van Lathan
Van Lathan Jr. is an American journalist, podcaster, and producer known for his 2018 on-air confrontation with Kanye West at TMZ, who hosts The Ringer's Higher Learning and produced the Oscar-winning short Two Distant Strangers.
Viola Liuzzo
Viola Liuzzo (Viola Fauver Gregg Liuzzo), 1925–1965, Detroit civil rights activist and mother of five murdered by Ku Klux Klansmen on Highway 80 after the Selma-to-Montgomery march, with FBI informant Gary Thomas Rowe in the killers' car.