CIVIL RIGHT ACTIVIST
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) – American Baptist minister and activist who was one of the most prolific prominent leaders during the Civil Rights Movement from 1955 until his assassination on April 4, 1968. SCLC co-founder/president/chairman, activist. He advanced the civil rights for all people of color in the United States through nonviolence from the Jim Crow law era to the point of his death. He was an author, speaker, motivational speaker.
Coretta Scott King (1927–2006) – Wife of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. An advocate for black equality, she was a leader during the Civil Rights Movement with her husband and afterwards. American SCLC leader, Inspirational singer.
Malcolm X birth Name Malcolm Little – (May 19,1925 -February 21, 1965) He was an American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a prominent figure during the Civil Rights Movement. A spokesman for the Nation of Islam until 1964, he was a vocal advocate for Black empowerment and the promotion of Islam within the Black community. He was Assassinated on February 21, 1965 in front of his family.
Betty Shabazz– (May 28, 1934- June 23, 1997) She was the wife of Malcolm X. She was an educator and Civil Rights Advocate.
Amelia Boynton Robinson (1911– August 26, 2015) – She was an American Activist who was a leader of the American Civil Rights Movement in Selma, Alabama, and a key figure in the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches. In 1994 she became founding Vice President of the Schiller Institute affiliated with Lyndon LaRouche. She was awarded the Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Medal in 1990. She as a centenarian reaching the age of 104.
B.R. Ambedkar (1891–1956) – Indian activist for caste abolition, writer, philosopher,
economist, co-wrote and influenced Indian constitution which focused on social rights.
Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) – American Women suffrage leader, speaker,
inspiration
Ella Baker (1903–1986) – American SCLC activist, initiated the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
James Baldwin (1924–1987) – American essayist, novelist, public speaker, SNCC activist
Daisy Bates (1914–1999) – American organizer of the Little Rock Nine school
desegregation events.
Dana Beal (1947–) – American pro-hemp activist, organizer, speaker, initiator
Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) – British philosopher, writer, and teacher on civil rights,
inspiration
James Bevel (1936–2008) – American organizer and Direct-Action leader, SCLC main
strategist, movement initiator, and movement director.
Claude Black (1916–2009) – American civil rights movement activist
Antoinette Brown Blackwell (1825–1921) – founded American Woman Suffrage
Association with Lucy Stone in 1869
Julian Bond (1940–2015) – American activist, politician, scholar, lawyer, NAACP chairman
Lenny Bruce (1925–1966) – American free speech advocate, comedian, political satirist
Lucy Burns (1879–1966) – American women suffrage/voting rights leader
Stokely Carmichael (1941–1998) – American SNCC and Black Panther activist,
organizer, speaker
Carrie Chapman Catt (1859–1947) – suffrage leader, president National American
Woman Suffrage Association, founder League of Women Voters and International
Alliance of Women
Cesar Chavez (1927–1993) – Chicano activist, organizer, trade union leader activist,,inspiration
Benjamin Chavis – (1948-) American activist, chemist, minister, author, leader of
Wilmington 10, Director Commission for Racial Justice of the United Church of Christ,
campaigner against Environmental Racism, Executive Director of NAACP, National
Director of the Million Man March
Claudette Colvin (1939– ) – American Montgomery Bus Boycott pioneer, independent
activist
Cooke (1903–2000) – American journalist, writer, trade unionist
Humberto Corona (1918–2001) – labor and civil rights leader
Dorothy Cotton (1930– 2018) – American SCLC official, activist, organizer, and leader
Eugene Debs (1855–1926) – American organizer, campaigner for the poor, women,
dissenters, prisoners
Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) – American abolitionist, women rights and suffrage
advocate, writer, organizer, black rights activist, inspiration
W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) – American writer, scholar, founder of NAACP
Charles Evers (1922– 2020) – American civil rights movement activist
Medgar Evers (1925–1963) – American, NAACP official in the Mississippi Movement
James Farmer (1920–1999) – Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) leader and activist
Louis Farrakhan (1933–) – American, Controversial Minister and National Representative
of the Nation of Islam
James Forman (1928–2005) – American SNCC official and civil rights movement activist
Marie Foster (1917–2003) – American voting rights activist, a local leader in the Selma
Voting Rights Movement
Frankie Muse Freeman (1916- 2018) American civil rights attorney, and the first woman to be
appointed to the United States Commission on Civil Rights
Golden Frinks (1920–2004) American civil rights organizer in North Carolina and field
secretary of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Betty Friedan (1921–2006) – American writer, womens rights activist, feminist
Kasturba Gandhi (1869–1944) wife of Mohandas Gandhi, activist in South Africa and
India, often led her husband movements in India when he was imprisoned.
Mohandas Gandhi (1869–1948) – Indian activist, movement leader, writer, philosopher,
and teacher.
William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879) – writer, organizer, feminist, initiator
Olympe de Gouges (1748–1793) – French women rights pioneer, writer, beheaded
during French Revolution
Dick Gregory (1932-2017 ) – American comedian Civil Rights leader free speech advocate and activist in the civil rights. Business owner and entrepreneur and vegetarian activist. He became popular among the blacks in the southern United States communities. He would speak about social justice always and nutritional health, he died at the age of 84 and suffered from a severe bacterial infection.
Tenzin Gyatso (1935- ) – Highest spiritual leader and head of Tibet, 14th Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists,
advocate for nonviolence, compassion, and Tibetan autonomy.
Ben Frazier (1950 – 2023) Civil Rights Activist, veteran Journalist, News Anchor, Host Producer, and Narrator and Community Activist. He was president and founder of the Northside Coalition of Jacksonville, FL. He passed away one day after his 73rd birthday from a long battle with cancer on June 24, 2023.
Prathia Hall (1940–2002) – American SNCC activist, a leading speaker in the civil rights
movement
Fred Hampton (1948–1969) – American NAACP youth leader and Black Panther activist,
organizer, speaker
Fannie Lou Hamer (1917–1977) – activist in Mississippi movements
Harry Hay (1912–2002) – early leader in American LGBT rights movement, founder
Mattachine Society
Lola Hendricks (1932– 2013) – activist, local leader in Birmingham Movement
Jack Herer (1939–2010) – American pro-hemp activist, speaker, organizer, author
Gordon Hirabayashi (1918–2012) – Japanese-American civil rights hero
Myles Horton (1905–1990) – American teacher of nonviolence, pioneer activist, founded
and led the Highlander Folk School
T.R.M. Howard (1908–1976) – founder of Mississippi Regional Council of Negro
Leadership
Julia Ward Howe (1818–1910) – American writer, organizer, suffragette
Dolores Huerta (1930– ) – American labor leader and civil rights activist, initiator, organizer co founder of the United Farmworkers association with Cesar Chavez.
John Peters Humphrey (1905–1995) – author of Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Harish Iyer (1979–) – Indian gender and sexuality rights activist, campaigns against child
sexual abuse and for animal rights, inspiration.
Jesse Jackson (1941–) – American civil rights activist, politician
Nellie Stone Johnson (1905–2002) – labor and civil rights activist
Toyohiko Kagawa (1888–1960) – Japanese labor activist, Christian reformer, author
Meir Kahane – (1932 – 1990) controversial Jewish rights leader, founder of the Jewish Defense League
Ashok Row Kavi (1947–) – Indian LGBT rights activist, pioneer Indian gay rights
movement, founder of Humsafar Trust
Abby Kelley (1811–1887) – American abolitionist and suffragette
Fred Korematsu (1919–2005) – American, Japanese internment resister during WWII
James Lawson (1928–) – American minister and activist, SCLC leader and teacher of nonviolence
in late 1950s and early 1960s civil rights movement
Bernard Lafayette (1940–) – American SCLC and SNCC activist, organizer, and leader. He played a leading role in the early organization of the Selma Voting Rights Movement and was a member tot the Nashville student movement.
John Lewis (1940– 2020) – American Nashville Student Movement and SNCC activist,
organizer, speaker, inspiration
Sigmund Livingston (1872–1946) – Jewish rights activist, founder of the Anti-
Defamation League
Joseph Lowery (1921–2020) – American SCLC leader and co-founder, activist
Clara Luper (1923–2011) – American sit-in movement leader in Oklahoma, activist
Phyllis Lyon (1924- 2008) – American co-founder of first social and political organization for
lesbians in the US
Madison (1751–1836) – American founding father, introduced and lobbied for the
U.S. Bill of Rights
Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) – South African statesman, leading figure in anti-apartheid
movement, inspiration
Del Martin (1921–2008) – American co-founder of first social and political organization
for lesbians in the US and influenced U.S. Bill of Rights
Rigoberta Menchú (1959) – Guatemalan indigenous rights leader, co-founder Nobel
Women Initiative
James Meredith (1933–) – American independent student leader and self–starting
Mississippi activist
Mamie Till Bradley Mobley – November 23, 1921 – January 6, 2003) was an American educator and activist. She was the mother of Emmett Till the 14-year-old boy murdered on August 28, 1955 in Mississippi, American who held an open casket funeral for her son.
Charles Morgan, Jr. (1930–2009) – American attorney activist
Harvey Milk (1930–1978) – American politician, gay rights activist and leader,
inspiration
Bob Moses (1935–2021) – leader, activist, and organizer in the 60s Mississippi Movement
Diane Nash (1938– ) – American SNCC and SCLC activist and official, strategist,
organizer
Edgar Nixon (1899–1987) – Montgomery Bus Boycott organizer, civil rights activist
James Orange (1942–2008) – American SCLC activist and organizer, a voting rights
movement leader, trade unionist
Emmeline Pankhurst (1858–1928) – founder and leader of the British Suffragette
Movement
Rosa Parks (1913–2005) – American NAACP official, activist, Montgomery Bus Boycott
inspiration
Vallabhbhai Patel (1875–1950) Indian activist, movement leader
Alice Paul (1885–1977) – American 1910s Women's Voting Rights Movement leader,
strategist, and organizer
Thomas Paine (1737–1809) – English-American activist, author, theorist, wrote Rights of
Man
Elizabeth Peratrovich (1911–1958) – Alaska activist for native people
A. Philip Randolph (1889–1979) – American labor and civil rights movement leader
Jo Ann Robinson (1912–1992) – Montgomery Bus Boycott activist.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) – women rights and human rights activist both in the
United States and in the United Nations
Bayard Rustin (1912–1987) – American civil rights activist
Aung San Suu Kyi (1945-) – Burmese Politician, former political prisoner, democracy
and human rights activist
Sonia Schlesin (1888–1956) – worked with Mohandas Gandhi in South Africa and led his
movements there when he was absent.
Al Sharpton (1954–) – American clergyman, activist, media
Charles Sherrod – ( 1937 – 2022) American minister and civil rights activist, SNCC leader
Judy Shepard (1952–) – gay rights activist, public speaker
Kate Sheppard (1847–1934) – New Zealand suffragist in first country to have universal
suffrage
Fred Shuttlesworth (1922–2011) – American clergyman, activist, SCLC co-founder,
initiated the Birmingham Movement
Lysander Spooner (1808–1887) – American abolitionist, writer, anarchist, proponent of
Jury nullification
Winifred C. Stanley (1909-1996) – First member of Congress to introduce legislation.
prohibiting discrimination in pay based on sex
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) – American women's suffrage/women's rights leader
Gloria Steinem (1934–) – American writer, activist, feminist
Lucy Stone (1818–1893) – American women's suffrage/voting rights leader
Thich Quang Duc (1897–1963) – Vietnamese monk, freedom of religion self-martyr
Desmond Tutu (1931–2021) – South African anti-apartheid organizer, advocate, inspiration
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825–1895) – German writer, organizer, and the pioneer of the
modern LGBT rights movement
Edison Uno (1929–1976) – American, leader for Japanese-American civil rights and
redress after WW II
C.T. Vivian (1924– 2020) – He was a American Minister, author and close friend of Martin Luther King Jr. Vivian resided in Atlanta Georgia, and founded the C.T. Vivian Leadership Institute, Inc. He was a member of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. American student civil rights leader, SNCC and SCLC activist.
Wyatt Tee Walker – (1928 – 2018) He was and American activist and organizer with NAACP, CORE, and SCLC. He was a pastor, National leader of Civil Rights, Theologian, and cultural historian. He was the chief of staff for Martin Luther King Jr.
Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) – American educator, founder of Tuskegee
University, and advisor to Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft.
Ida B. Wells (1862–1931) – American journalist, early activist in 20th Century Civil
Rights Movement, women suffrage/voting rights activist
Walter Francis White (1895–1955) – American NAACP executive secretary
Elie Wiesel – (1928–) – American, writer, Holocaust survivor, Jewish rights leader
William Wilberforce (1759–1833) – leader of the British abolition movement
Roy Wilkins – (1901–1981) American NAACP executive secretary/executive director
Victoria Woodhull (1838–1927) – American suffragette organizer, women rights leader
Andrew Young (1932–) – American SCLC activist and executive director and diplomat.
Malala Yousafzai (1997- ) – Pakistani, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, advocate for education
for girls