PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: civil rights
American religious leader and civil-rights activist
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...
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,...
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 activist and educator
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 Muslim 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...
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...
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...
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...
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....
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 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...
South African journalist, activist, and politician
Helen Zille is a South African journalist, activist, and politician who served as the national leader (2007–15) of the Democratic Alliance (DA), South Africa’s official opposition party, and as the premier...
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...
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 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,”...
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...
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...
Australian inventor, writer, and activist
David Unaipon Australian inventor, author, and political activist who was the first Australian Aboriginal person to publish his writing in English. To emphasize the importance of his contribution to Australia,...
American politician
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...
abolitionist and writer
Olaudah Equiano was an abolitionist and writer whose autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano; or, Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself (1789), became the first...
Australian politician
William Cooper was an Australian activist who fought for civil rights for Australian Aboriginal people. He founded the Australian Aborigines’ League (AAL), which became one of the most important Aboriginal...
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 civil rights leader
Daisy Bates was an American journalist and civil rights activist who withstood economic, legal, and physical intimidation to champion racial equality, most notably in the integration of public schools...
American writer
Zitkala-Sa was a writer and reformer who strove to expand opportunities for Native Americans and to safeguard their cultures. Gertrude Simmons was the daughter of a Yankton Sioux mother and a Euro-American...
Australian activist
Pearl Gibbs was an Australian activist who fought for the rights of Australian Aboriginal people for some 50 years. She was especially skilled in organizing and promoting campaigns for social reform. Pearl...
associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court
Harry A. Blackmun was an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1970 to 1994. Blackmun graduated in mathematics from Harvard University in 1929 and received his law degree from that...
Australian Aboriginal athlete and activist
Michael Long is an Australian Aboriginal athlete and activist who brought attention to racism in Australian rules football. He also undertook the Long Walk in 2004 to raise awareness of the mistreatment...
Guatemalan-born labor organizer and civil rights activist
Luisa Moreno was a Guatemalan-born labour organizer and civil rights activist who, over the course of a 20-year career in public life, became one of the most prominent Latina women in the international...
associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court
John Marshall Harlan was an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1877 until his death and one of the most forceful dissenters in the history of that tribunal. His best known dissents...
6th chief justice of the United States
Salmon P. Chase was a lawyer and politician, antislavery leader before the U.S. Civil War, secretary of the Treasury (1861–64) in Pres. Abraham Lincoln’s wartime Cabinet, the sixth chief justice of the...
American politician
Bella Abzug was a U.S. congresswoman (1971–77) and lawyer who founded several liberal political organizations for women and was a prominent opponent of the Vietnam War and a supporter of equal rights for...
American civil rights lawyer
Morris Dees is an American lawyer and civil rights activist who is known for founding the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) with American attorney Joseph Levin in 1971 in Montgomery, Alabama. Under Dees’s...
American civil rights activist and nurse
Sylvia Mendez is an American civil rights activist and nurse who was at the centre of the court case Mendez v. Westminster, in which a federal court ruled in the mid-1940s that the school segregation of...
American civil-rights activist
Coretta Scott King was an American civil rights activist who was the wife of Martin Luther King, Jr. Coretta Scott graduated from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and in 1951 enrolled at the New...
Egyptian American professor and civil rights activist
Saʿd al-Dīn Ibrāhīm is an Egyptian American professor and civil rights activist known for his vocal criticism of Egyptian president Hosnī Mubārak. Ibrāhīm graduated from Cairo University (B.A., 1960) and...
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