109 articles
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.
Sam Brinton
Sam Brinton (Samuel Otis Brinton, born 1987) is an American nuclear engineer and LGBTQ activist, first openly genderfluid DOE official, fired in December 2022 after airport luggage theft charges; known for anti-conversion therapy advocacy.
Sean Eldridge
Sean Eldridge, American political activist, Freedom to Marry communications and political director (2010-2011), OutRight Action International board member, NY LEAD co-founder, and 2014 Democratic House candidate in New York's 19th District; husband of Chris Hughes.
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.
Swati Maliwal (स्वाति मालीवाल)
Swati Maliwal (स्वाति मालीवाल), Indian activist and Rajya Sabha MP from Delhi since January 2024; former Delhi Commission for Women chairperson (2015-2024), known for anti-rape hunger strikes, the 2024 Bibhav Kumar assault case, and later defection from AAP to the BJP.
Sylvia Rivera
Sylvia Rae Rivera (1951–2002) was an American gay liberation and transgender rights activist who said she took part in the 1969 Stonewall uprising and co-founded STAR to shelter homeless queer youth.
Tom Metzger
Tom Metzger (Thomas Linton Metzger, 1938-2020) was an American white supremacist, California KKK grand dragon, and founder of White Aryan Resistance, known for the cable show Race and Reason and the $12.5 million Seraw judgment.
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.
W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963), American sociologist, historian, and civil-rights activist; author of The Souls of Black Folk and double consciousness, NAACP and Crisis founder-editor, later Pan-Africanist who moved to Ghana in 1961.
Whitney Young
Whitney M. Young Jr. (1921-1971), American social worker and civil rights leader, headed the National Urban League 1961-1971, joined the Big Six, proposed the Domestic Marshall Plan, and won the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Will Stancil
Will Stancil, or William Stancil, is an American attorney and housing policy researcher at the University of Minnesota, a 2024 DFL legislative candidate known for prolific posting on Twitter/X.
William Still
William Still (1821-1902, some sources 1819), African American Philadelphia abolitionist, "Father of the Underground Railroad," aided 600-800 freedom seekers 1847-1865 as Vigilance Committee chairman, and published The Underground Railroad (1872).
Yolanda King
Yolanda Denise King (1955-2007), eldest child of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, American actress and producer, founder of Higher Ground Productions, creator of the one-woman play Tracks, died in Santa Monica in 2007.
Yuri Kochiyama
Yuri Kochiyama (河内山百合子; born Mary Yuriko Nakahara, 1921-2014) was a Japanese American civil rights activist, WWII incarceree at Jerome, friend of Malcolm X, and advocate for redress, Puerto Rican independence, and political prisoners.