Septima Poinsett Clark
Born in 1898, Septima is referred to as the 鈥淢other of the Movement.鈥� She earned her teaching degree and taught for more than 30 years throughout South Carolina. Clark worked with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and participated in a class action lawsuit that led to pay equity for black and white teachers in South Carolina.
Septima taught workshops at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee which was dedicated to social justice. Even Rosa Parks participated in one of these workshops. As the director of workshops, Septima Clark taught people basic literacy skills, their rights and duties as U.S. citizens, and how to fill out voter registration forms.
When Highlander close, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) established the Citizenship Education Program. This was heavily based on Septima鈥檚 workshops, and she became the director of education and teaching.
In 1975 she was elected to the Charleston, South Carolina, School Board. She was given a Living Legacy Award by President Jimmy Carter in 1979 and published her second memoir, Ready from Within, in 1986.
Bayard Rustin
Bayard Rustin (March 17, 1912 鈥� August 24, 1987) was an American political activist, a prominent leader in social movements for civil rights, socialism, nonviolence, and gay rights. Rustin was the principal organizer of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963.
Rustin worked in 1941 with A. Philip Randolph on the March on Washington Movement to press for an end to racial discrimination in the military and defense employment. Rustin later organized Freedom Rides and helped to organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to strengthen Martin Luther King Jr.’s leadership; he taught King about non-violence. Rustin worked alongside Ella Baker, a co-director of the Crusade for Citizenship, in 1954; and before the Montgomery bus boycott, he helped organize a group called “In Friendship” to provide material and legal assistance to people threatened with eviction from their tenant farms and homes. Rustin became the head of the AFL鈥揅IO’s A. Philip Randolph Institute, which promoted the integration of formerly all-white unions and promoted the unionization of African Americans. During the 1970s and 1980s, Rustin served on many humanitarian missions, such as aiding refugees from Vietnam and Cambodia.
Rustin was a gay man and due to criticism over his sexuality, usually advised other civil rights leaders from behind the scenes. During the 1980s, he became a public advocate on behalf of gay causes, speaking at events as an activist and supporter of human rights.
Later in life, while still devoted to securing workers’ rights, Rustin joined other union leaders in aligning with ideological neoconservatism, earning posthumous praise from President Ronald Reagan. On November 20, 2013, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Rustin the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday, often referred to as “Lady Day,” was one of the most influential jazz singers of all time. Her career spanned over two decades, during which she captivated audiences with her unique voice and emotive performances. Beyond her musical prowess, Holiday became a symbol of resistance and activism through her haunting rendition of the song “Strange Fruit.”
“Strange Fruit,” written by Abel Meeropol, is a powerful protest song that vividly depicts the horrors of lynching in the American South. When Holiday first performed it at Caf茅 Society in New York City in 1939, she broke social norms and took a significant personal risk. The song’s chilling lyrics and her emotional delivery brought attention to the brutality and racism faced by Black Americans.
Holiday’s performances of “Strange Fruit” were seen as acts of defiance and courage. Despite facing backlash and threats, she continued to sing the song, using her platform to highlight the deep-seated racial injustices of her time. This bold stance made her a pioneering figure in the fight for civil rights and solidified her legacy as an artist who used her voice not only for music but also for social change.
Stokely Carmichael
Stokely Carmichael was a civil rights activist, Black nationalist leader, author, orator and originator of its rallying slogan, 鈥淏lack Power.鈥� He was a field organizer with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
Carmichael was one of several Freedom Riders who traveled through the South challenging segregation laws in interstate transportation. He played a vital role in the Freedom Summer, a campaign to register black voters in the Deep South. He eventually became disillusioned with the slow pace of progress and continued police violence faced by activists for integration.
In 1966, Carmichael gave the speech wherein he first coined the words 鈥淏lack Power,鈥� calling for cultural, political, and economic self-determination for Black people around the world. He joined the Black Panther Party and journeyed around the world to visit with revolutionary leaders.
Mary Ellen Pleasent
“The Mother of Human Rights in California”
- She was an American entrepreneur, financier, real estate magnate, and abolitionist.
- She was arguably the first self-made millionaire of African-American heritage.
- She worked on the Underground Railroad and expanded it westward during the California Gold Rush era.
- She was a friend and financial supporter of John Brown and was well-known among abolitionists.
- She helped women who lived in California during the California Gold Rush to stay safe and become self-sufficient.
George Jackson
George Jackson was an Black left-wing activist, author, a member of the Black Panther Party, and co-founder of the Black Guerrilla Family.
In 1960, at the age of eighteen, George Jackson was accused of stealing $70 from a gas station in Los Angeles. Though there was evidence of his innocence, he received an indeterminate sentence of one year to life. Jackson spent the next ten years in Soledad Prison, seven and a half of them in solitary confinement. Instead of succumbing to the dehumanization of prison existence, he transformed himself into the leading theoretician of the prison movement and a brilliant writer.
Jackson鈥檚 Soledad Brother was published in the fall of 1970. His book Blood in My Eye was published posthumously in the fall of 1971. These two works stand as his political manifesto 鈥� an unbounded dedication to freedom for the most oppressed people in the world.
In his twenty-eighth year, Jackson and two other black inmates were falsely accused of murdering a white prison guard. According to their attorneys, Jackson, and his codependents were charged with murder not because there was any substantial evidence of their guilt, but because they had been previously identified as black militants by the prison authorities. If convicted, they would face a mandatory death penalty under the California penal code. Within weeks, the case of the Soledad Brothers emerged as a political cause c茅l猫bre for all sorts of people demanding change at a time when every American institution was shaken by Black rebellions in more than one hundred cities and the mass movement against the Vietnam War. Jackson was later shot to death by guards.
Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde was a poet and civil rights activist. She was a self-described “Black, lesbian, intersectional feminist, socialist, mother, warrior, and poet” who dedicated her life and talents to confronting different forms of injustice, as she believed there could be “no hierarchy of oppressions” among those who share the goals of liberation and a workable future for our children.
Fred Hampton
Fred Hampton was an active leader in the NAACP, leading their Youth Council. Hampton joined the Chicago chapter of the Black Panther Party in 1968. He quickly rose to a leadership position, becoming the deputy chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Party at age 21. He organized rallies, established a Free Breakfast program, and negotiated a peace pact among rival gangs. As a rising leader in the Black Panther Party, Hampton became the focus of the FBI. On the evening of December 3, 1969, William O鈥橬eal, who was employed by the FBI to infiltrate the Black Panthers, slipped a powerful sleeping drug into Hampton鈥檚 drink then left. Officers were dispatched to raid his apartment. They stormed in and opened fire, killing his security guard. Then they opened fire on Hampton鈥檚 bedroom where he laid unconscious from the drug with his sleeping, almost nine-month-pregnant fianc茅e. After the gunfire, he was found to only be wounded and not dead. Upon that discovery, an officer shot him twice in the head and killed him.
Jane Matilda Bolin
Jane Matilda Bolin was born on April 11, 1909 in Poughkeepsie, NY, and passed away on January 8, 2007 in Queens, NY. Jane was a trailblazing American lawyer and judge. She made history as the first black woman to earn degree from Yale Law School, the first to become a member of the New York City Bar Association, and the first to work the New York City Law Department. He was also an engaged member of the Smith Metropolitan AME Zion Church as she grew up. She was shaped in her childhood by the articles and images of the murders and lynchings of Black southerners featured in The Crisis, the official magazine of the NAACP.
Mathew Henson
Although history largely ignored Matthew Henson until the late 20th century, his contributions in the field of exploration have made him a significant name today. A gifted seaman, Henson spent many years as a cabin boy, where he learned principles of navigation and other vital knowledge to working as a crewman. Henson later went on to accompany Commander Robert E. Peary to his many expeditions to the Arctic, including the 1909 expedition where their team discovered the North Pole, and Henson planted the American flag.
Dr. Mamie Phipps Clark
Mamie Phipps Clark (April 18, 1917 鈥� August 11, 1983) was a social psychologist who, along with her husband Kenneth Clark, focused on the development of self-consciousness in black preschool children. Clark was born and raised in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Clark received her post-secondary education at Howard University, and she earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees there.
For her master’s thesis, known as “The Development of Consciousness of Self in Negro Pre-School Children,” Clark worked with black Arkansas preschool children. This work included doll experiments that investigated the way African American children’s attitudes toward race and racial self-identification were affected by segregation. According to the study, children who attended segregated schools preferred playing with white dolls over black dolls. The study was highly influential in the Brown v. Board of Education court case.
George Washington Carver
George Washington Carver was an American agricultural scientist and inventor who promoted alternative crops to cotton and methods to prevent soil depletion. He was one of the most prominent black scientists of the early 20th century.
While a professor at Tuskegee Institute, Carver developed techniques to improve types of soils depleted by repeated plantings of cotton. He wanted poor farmers to grow other crops, such as peanuts and sweet potatoes, as a source of their own food and to improve their quality of life. Under his leadership, the Experiment Station at Tuskegee published over forty practical bulletins for farmers, many written by him, which included recipes; many of the bulletins contained advice for poor farmers, including combating soil depletion with limited financial means, producing bigger crops, and preserving food.
Apart from his work to improve the lives of farmers, Carver was also a leader in promoting environmentalism. He received numerous honors for his work, including the Spingarn Medal of the NAACP. In an era of high racial polarization, his fame reached beyond the black community. He was widely recognized and praised in the white community for his many achievements and talents. In 1941, Time magazine dubbed Carver a “Black Leonardo”.
Elizabeth 鈥淏essie鈥� Coleman
Elizabeth Coleman (January 26, 1892 鈥� April 30, 1926) was an early American civil aviator. She was the first African-American woman and first Native American to hold a pilot license and is the earliest known Black person to earn an international pilot’s license. She earned her license from the F茅d茅ration A茅ronautique International on June 15, 1921.
Born to a family of sharecroppers in Texas, Coleman worked in the cotton fields at a young age while also studying in a small segregated school. She attended one term of college at Langston University. Coleman developed an early interest in flying, but African Americans, Native Americans, and women had no flight training opportunities in the United States, so she saved and obtained sponsorships in Chicago to go to France for flight school.
She then became a high-profile pilot in notoriously dangerous air shows in the United States. She was popularly known as “Queen Bess” and “Brave Bessie”, and hoped to start a school for African-American fliers. Coleman died in a plane crash in 1926. Her pioneering role was an inspiration to early pilots and to the African-American and Native American communities.
A. Philip Randolph
A. Philip Randolph brought the gospel of trade unionism to millions of African American households. Randolph led a 10-year drive to organize the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) and served as the organization’s first president. Randolph directed the March on Washington movement to end employment discrimination in the defense industry and a national civil disobedience campaign to ban segregation in the armed forces. The nonviolent protest and mass action effort inspired the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s
Lucy Hicks Anderson
Lucy Hicks Anderson was an American socialite, chef, and philanthropist, best known for her time in Oxnard, California, from 1920 to 1946.
Assigned male at birth, she was adamant from an early age that she was a girl. Her parents, based on advice from doctors, supported her decision to live as one. She later established a boarding house in Oxnard, where she became a popular hostess. In 1945, a year after she married her second husband, she was arrested, tried and convicted of perjury, as the government said she had lied about her sex on her marriage license, 鈥淚 defy any doctor in the world to prove that I am not a woman. I have lived, dressed, acted just what I am, a woman.鈥� She declared.