281 articles
Auma Obama
Auma Obama (born 1960), Kenyan sociologist and half-sister of Barack Obama, founder of the Sauti Kuu Foundation for disadvantaged youth in Kenya and author of the memoir And Then Life Happens.
Aviva Chomsky
Aviva Chomsky (born 1957), daughter of Noam Chomsky, is an American historian at Salem State University and author of Undocumented, They Take Our Jobs!, Central America's Forgotten History, and Is Science Enough?, active in Latin American solidarity and immigrants' rights movements since the 1980s.
Baba Amte
Baba Amte (Murlidhar Devidas Amte, 1914–2008), Indian Gandhian lawyer and social activist, founded the leprosy rehabilitation community Anandwan in Maharashtra, led the Knit India marches and Narmada anti-dam campaigns, and won the Magsaysay, Templeton, and Gandhi Peace awards.
Barbara Bush (born 1981)
Barbara Pierce Bush (born 1981), daughter of George W. Bush, is an American social entrepreneur who co-founded Global Health Corps in 2009 and served as its CEO for nine years; author of Sisters First with her twin sister.
Basava (ಬಸವ)
Basava (ಬಸವ, Basavanna), twelfth-century Kannada vachana poet and Kalachuri commander at Kalyana, central figure of the Lingayat/Virashaiva tradition; founder-versus-reformer debate and 2018 Karnataka minority-religion politics distinguish him.
Batya Ungar-Sargon
Batya Ungar-Sargon, American journalist and author, former opinion editor of The Forward and deputy opinion editor of Newsweek; wrote Bad News (2021) and Second Class (2024); hosts NewsNation's Batya!; self-described MAGA lefty.
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.
Bella Abzug
Bella Abzug (Bella Savitzky, 1920–1998), "Battling Bella," American labor and civil rights lawyer, antiwar activist, and three-term Democratic congresswoman from New York, 1971–1977; first federal gay rights bill, Child Development Act, NWPC cofounder, 1977 National Women's Conference presiding officer.
Beth Holloway
Beth Holloway, also Beth Holloway Twitty, is the American teacher and advocate, mother of Natalee Holloway, who vanished in Aruba in 2005; she founded the Natalee Holloway Resource Center and International Safe Travels Foundation and faced Joran van der Sloot's 2023 confession.
Betty Williams
Betty Williams, born Elizabeth Smyth, was a Northern Irish peace activist who co-founded the Peace People in 1976 and shared the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize with Mairead Corrigan.
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.
Brigitte Gabriel (حنان قهوجي)
Brigitte Gabriel (حنان قهوجي), Lebanese-born American activist and founder of ACT for America (2007), an SPLC-designated anti-Muslim group; former Middle East TV anchor, author, and 2025 Menachem Begin Prize recipient.
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.
Camila Batmanghelidjh
Camila Batmanghelidjh, also known as Kamylā Batmanghelych, was an Iranian-born British psychotherapist and charity leader who founded Kids Company in London in 1996 and led it until its 2015 closure.
Camille Étienne
Camille Étienne (born 1998) is a French climate and social justice activist, Sciences Po and Oxford alumna, spokesperson of On Est Prêt, author of Pour un soulèvement écologique (2023), and PFAS campaigner.
Carlos Eduardo Espina
Carlos Eduardo Espina, Uruguayan-American immigration activist and Spanish-language TikTok creator with over 20 million followers; Vassar 2020, UNLV law 2024; founder of Migrantes Unidos; 2024 DNC speaker.
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.
Carrie Nation
Carrie Nation (Carry A. Nation, 1846–1911), American temperance activist known as the saloon smasher who attacked Kansas bars with a hatchet, was arrested 30 times, sold souvenir hatchets, and lectured until 1911.
Cecile Richards
Cecile Richards (1957–2025), American political organizer and activist, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Action Fund 2006–2018; daughter of Texas Governor Ann Richards; grew supporters from 3 to 11 million; later co-founded Supermajority; received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2024.
Chad Varah
Chad Varah (Edward Chad Varah, 1911–2007), Anglican priest and founder of the Samaritans, the 1953 London crisis telephone helpline for people considering suicide, pioneer of confidential volunteer befriening spread worldwide via Befrienders International.
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.
Charles Mzingeli
Charles Mzingeli (1905–1980) was a Zimbabwean labor activist and politician whose Reformed Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union dominated African urban politics in Salisbury, now Harare, from 1945 to the early 1950s.
Charlotte Laws
Charlotte Laws, American author and anti-revenge porn activist, 'Erin Brockovich of revenge porn'; fought Hunter Moore's isanyoneup.com after her daughter's hacked photo appeared there, and championed California SB 255.
Chelsea Manning
Chelsea Manning (born 1987), formerly Bradley Manning, is an American former Army intelligence analyst who leaked hundreds of thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks in 2010, was sentenced to 35 years in 2013, and was released in 2017 after Obama commuted her sentence.
Cheryl Thomas
Cheryl Thomas is a Minneapolis human rights lawyer, founder of Global Rights for Women (2014) and former director of the Women's Human Rights Program at The Advocates for Human Rights; distinct from UCL jury scholar Cheryl Thomas.
Christian Walker (media personality)
Christian Walker (born 1999) is an American conservative social media personality, podcast host, and son of Herschel Walker, known for Starbucks drive-through political rants and his October 2022 public denunciation of his father's Senate campaign.
Claire Wineland
Claire Wineland, also known as Claire Lucia Wineland, was an American activist with cystic fibrosis who founded Claire's Place Foundation and died in 2018 at age 21.
Clement Payne
Clement Osbourne Payne (1904–1941) was a Trinidad-born Barbadian labor organizer whose deportation in July 1937 triggered four days of rioting known as the 1937 Disturbances.
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.