PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: civil rights
American civil rights activist and religious leader
Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Baptist minister and social activist who led the civil rights movement in the United States from the mid-1950s until his death by assassination in 1968. His leadership was...
35th president of the United States
John F. Kennedy was the 35th president of the United States (1961–63), who faced a number of foreign crises, especially in Cuba and Berlin, but managed to secure such achievements as the Nuclear Test-Ban...
34th president of the United States
Dwight D. Eisenhower was the 34th president of the United States (1953–61), who had been supreme commander of the Allied forces in western Europe during World War II. Eisenhower was the third of seven...
36th president of the United States
Lyndon B. Johnson was the 36th president of the United States (1963–69). A moderate Democrat and vigorous leader in the United States Senate, Johnson was elected vice president in 1960 and acceded to the...
Tibetan Buddhist monk
14th Dalai Lama is the title of the Tibetan Buddhist monk Tenzin Gyatso, the first Dalai Lama to become a global figure, largely for his advocacy of Buddhism and of the rights of the people of Tibet. Despite...
Ugandan politician, performer, and activist
Bobi Wine is a Ugandan politician, performer, and activist who first garnered acclaim for his popular hits and socially conscious songs he called “edutainment”—the fusion of education and entertainment....
president of South Korea
Moon Jae-In is a South Korean lawyer and civil rights activist who was the president of South Korea (2017–22) and leader of the liberal Democratic Party of Korea (2015–16). Moon’s parents were refugees...
Canadian businesswoman and civil libertarian
Viola Desmond was a Canadian businesswoman and civil libertarian who built a career as a beautician and was a mentor to young Black women in Nova Scotia through her Desmond School of Beauty Culture. However,...
Indian engineer and activist
Sonam Wangchuk began his professional life as an engineer working to reform education in his native Ladakh, in the Indian Trans-Himalayas, gaining international recognition as an innovator and a climate...
American civil rights activist, lawyer, and writer
Pauli Murray was a key figure who helped define the intellectual foundations of the 20th-century civil rights and women’s rights movements. The legal analysis and research by the activist, lawyer, nonbinary...
American singer-songwriter
Buffy Sainte-Marie is an American singer-songwriter, guitarist, political activist, and visual artist known especially for her use of music to promote awareness of issues affecting Native Americans. Since...
American Indian activist
Leonard Peltier is a Native American (mostly Ojibwa) activist who, after becoming one of the best-known indigenous rights activists in North America, was convicted in 1977 of having murdered two Federal...
civil rights leader, presidential candidate, and orator
Jesse Jackson was one of the most significant leaders of the 20th-century American civil rights movement, whose reputation as a peacemaker, troublemaker, groundbreaker, and iconoclast helped pave the way...
South African journalist, activist, and politician
Helen Zille is a South African journalist, activist, and politician who served as the national leader (2007–15) and chairperson of the federal council (2019–26) of the Democratic Alliance (DA) party, and...
American sociologist, historian, and activist
W.E.B. Du Bois was an American sociologist, historian, author, editor, and activist who was the most important Black protest leader in the United States during the first half of the 20th century. He shared...
American minister and civil rights activist
James Lawson was an American minister who was instrumental in the founding of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and trained a generation of civil rights activists in the Gandhian tactics...
American minister and civil rights activist
Fred Shuttlesworth was an American minister and civil rights activist who established, with Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Abernathy, Ella Baker, and others, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference...
American lawyer, activist, and military officer
Dovey Johnson Roundtree was an American lawyer, civil rights activist, military officer, minister, and an important figure in the U.S. civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s. A member of the first...
American activist and Black nationalist leader
Malcolm X was an African American leader and prominent figure in the Nation of Islam who articulated concepts of race pride and Black nationalism in the early 1960s. After his assassination, the widespread...
Canadian-born American writer and feminist
Mary MacLane was a Canadian-born American writer and pioneering feminist whose frank autobiographical account of her life—written at age 19 and published as The Story of Mary MacLane—by Herself in 1902—became...
American civil rights activist
Rosa Parks was an American civil rights activist whose refusal to relinquish her seat on a public bus precipitated the 1955–56 Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama, which became the spark that ignited the...
Soviet physicist and dissident
Andrey Sakharov was a Soviet nuclear theoretical physicist, an outspoken advocate of human rights, civil liberties, and reform in the Soviet Union as well as rapprochement with noncommunist nations. In...
American journalist and social reformer
Born into slavery, Ida B. Wells would in her lifetime become the most famous Black woman in the United States for her meticulous, data-driven reporting that exposed the systematic killing of Black men...
Australian activist, athlete, minister, and politician
Douglas Nicholls was a Yorta Yorta activist, athlete, minister, and politician who sought to establish the rights of Australian Aboriginal peoples. After early success as an athlete, Nicholls used his...
associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court
Thurgood Marshall was a lawyer, civil rights activist, and associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1967–91), the Court’s first African American member. As an attorney, he successfully argued before...
American civil rights leader and politician
John Lewis was an American civil rights leader and politician best known for his chairmanship of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and for leading the march that was halted by police...
American educator and activist
Mamie Till-Mobley was an American educator and activist who helped galvanize the emerging civil rights movement after her son, Emmett Till, was murdered in 1955 for allegedly flirting with a white grocery...
Australian activist
Lowitja O’Donoghue is an Australian activist whose lifelong advocacy for Aboriginal rights and reconciliation made her one of the most respected and influential Aboriginal people in Australian history....
associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court
William O. Douglas was a public official, legal educator, and associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, best known for his consistent and outspoken defense of civil liberties. His 36 1 2 years of service...
American activist and scholar
Maulana Karenga is an American activist, scholar, and author. He is best known as the creator of Kwanzaa, the seven-day African American and Pan-African holiday. Ronald McKinley Everett was born to Levi...
American lawyer
Oliver Hill was an African American attorney and prominent civil rights activist, best known for his outspoken advocacy of desegregation in public schools and his role in bringing to the U.S. Supreme Court...
associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court
Hugo Black was a lawyer, politician, and associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (1937–71). Black’s legacy as a Supreme Court justice derives from his support of the doctrine of total...
associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court
Owen Josephus Roberts was an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (1930–45). Roberts was the son of hardware merchant Josephus R. Roberts and Emma Lafferty Roberts. He graduated...
Mexican American journalist, teacher, and activist
Jovita Idár was a Mexican American journalist, teacher, and activist who devoted her life to fighting the racism and discrimination that she witnessed during her life in Texas. She was also a staunch advocate...
American editor and activist
Charlotta Spears Bass was an American editor, the first Black woman to run for vice president of the United States, and a civil rights activist whose long career was devoted to aggressively publicizing...
American attorney, entrepreneur, and diplomat
Frederick Bee was an American attorney, entrepreneur, and diplomat who was one of the principal advocates for the civil rights of Chinese immigrants in the United States in the 1870s and ’80s. Bee—whose...
Torres Strait Islander activist
Eddie Koiki Mabo was a Meriam activist who fought for and established land rights for Torres Strait Islander peoples in the 1980s and ’90s. He brought before the High Court of Australia what became known...
Australian civil rights activist
Faith Bandler was an Australian civil rights activist who advocated for the rights of Indigenous Australians and South Sea Islander people—those who were brought to Australia, often forcibly, from the...
American civil rights activist
Diane Nash is an American civil rights activist who was a leading figure in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s, especially known for her involvement in sit-ins and the Freedom Rides. Nash’s...
American philosopher and political activist
Cornel West is an American philosopher, scholar of African American studies, and political activist. His influential book Race Matters (1993) lamented what he saw as the spiritual impoverishment of the...
American activist
Reies Tijerina was an American radical and civil rights activist who led a land-grant movement in northern New Mexico from 1956 to 1976. Dubbed “King Tiger” and “the Malcolm X of the Chicano Movement,”...
American civil rights activist
Bayard Rustin was an American civil rights activist who was an adviser to Martin Luther King, Jr., and who was the main organizer of the March on Washington in 1963. After finishing high school, Rustin...
Indian political leader
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar was an Indian political leader who played a pivotal role in drafting the Constitution of India. As a social reformer, he championed the rights of the Dalits (Scheduled Castes; formerly...
Australian livestock worker and activist
Vincent Lingiari was an Australian livestock worker and activist who fought for Aboriginal land rights. He is best known for leading the 1966 strike of Aboriginal workers at the Wave Hill cattle station...
Australian politician
William Ferguson was an Australian activist who fought for the rights of Australian Aboriginal peoples. He was a strong opponent of the New South Wales Aborigines Protection Board, a government-run organization...
Indian political activist
Kasturba Gandhi was an Indian political activist who was a leader in the struggle for civil rights and for independence from British rule in India. She was the wife of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Kasturba...
American lawyer and official
Loretta Lynch is an American lawyer who was the first African American woman to serve as U.S. attorney general (2015–17). Lynch’s grandfather, a sharecropper, assisted those seeking to escape punishment...
American politician and lawyer
Robert F. Kennedy was a U.S. attorney general and adviser during the administration of his brother Pres. John F. Kennedy (1961–63) and later a U.S. senator (1965–68). He was the son of Rose and Joseph...
Australian activist
Margaret Tucker was an Australian activist who fought for the civil rights of Aboriginal people. Tucker was the first Aboriginal woman to be appointed to the Victorian Aborigines Welfare Board and to join...
Dutch-born American clergyman
A.J. Muste was a Dutch-born American clergyman best known for his role in the labour and left-wing movements of the 1920s and ’30s and for his leadership of the American peace movement from 1941 until...
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