Civil Rights Activists

You can choose one of the names on this list or find a name on your own. Your
choice must be approved by your teacher and only one person from each class can
choose an activist, if someone else already has the name you want youll have to
select another name.
1. Ralph Abernathy (19261990) - American activist, Southern Christian Leadership Conference
(SCLC) official, organized the first bus boycott after Rosa Parks was arrested
2. B.R. Ambedkar (18911956) - Indian activist for caste abolition, writer, philosopher, economist,
helped to negotiate Indias independence from Great Britain, co-wrote and influenced Indian
constitution which focused on social rights.
3. Susan B. Anthony (18201906) - worked to fight against slavery, American Women's suffrage
leader, speaker, inspiration, pivotal in getting women the right to vote
4. Daisy Bates (19141999) - American organizer of the Little Rock Nine school desegregation
events.
5. Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) - British philosopher, writer, advocated individual and economic
freedom, the separation of church and state, freedom of expression, equal rights for women, the
right to divorce, abolition of slavery, the abolition of the death penalty, and the abolition of physical
punishment, including that of children
6. James Bevel (19362008) - American organizer and Direct Action leader, SCLC's main strategist,
movement initiator, and movement director, has been called the Father of Voting Rights
7. Antoinette Brown Blackwell (1825-1921) - founded American Woman Suffrage Association with
Lucy Stone in 1869, wrote for Frederick Douglass newspaper, was a female public speaker on
abolition, temperance, and suffrage when women werent usually asked to speak publicly to large
audiences
8. Lucy Burns (18791966) - American women's suffrage/voting rights leader, spent a lot of time in jail
for protesting, led hunger strikes while in jail
9. Stokely Carmichael (19411998) - American SNCC and Black Panther activist, organizer, speaker,
wanted to join the SNCC and Black Panther party which caused him to be targeted by the FBI, who
discredited him to both parties to such an extent he was no longer welcome in either
10. Carrie Chapman Catt (18591947) - suffrage leader, spoke to Congress about allowing the women
to vote, also organized a protest group to protest the treatment of Jews in Germany under Hitler
11. Cesar Chavez (19271993) - Chicano activist, trade unionist, organized farm workers to protest for
better pay
12. Benjamin Chavis - (1948-) American activist, chemist, minister, author, leader of Wilmington 10, a
group who was wrongfully convicted for arson, witnesses at their trial were given gifts for testifying

13. Claudette Colvin (1939) - the first person to be arrested for resisting bus segregation in
Montgomery, AL, at the time she was in high school
14. Frederick Douglass (18181895) - escaped from slavery, became a leader in abolition, became an
articulate public speaker, believed in the equality of all, black, female, Native American, or recent
immigrant
15. W. E. B. Du Bois (18681963) - founder of NAACP, helped to fight for independence of African
colonies from Europe
16. James Farmer (19201999) - Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) leader and activist, started and
organized the Freedom Ride, which was designed to challenge the non-enforcement of the
Supreme Court ruling that segregation of public transportation was unconstitutional
17. Betty Friedan (19212006) - American writer, women's rights activist, feminist, fought for womens
rights in the modern workplace in terms of salary and promotions
18. Kasturba Gandhi (1869 1944) wife of Mohandas Gandhi, activist in South Africa and India, often
led her husband's movements in India when he was imprisoned.
19. Mohandas Gandhi (18691948) - Indian activist, movement leader, writer, philosopher, and
teacher, organized nonviolent civil disobedience which led to Indias independence and inspired
other civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr.
20. Olympe de Gouges (17481793) - French women's rights pioneer, writer, beheaded during French
Revolution, she advocated for the better treatment of slaves in the colonies and for the equality of
men and women
21. Gordon Hirabayashi (19182012) - Japanese-American civil rights hero, resisted the JapaneseAmerican internment camps, was imprisoned for refusing to complete a survey that demanded he
renounce all ties to the Japanese emperor, which he refused because no other ethnic group was
being asked similar questions
22. John Peters Humphrey (19051995) - author of Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was
inspired by experiences during WWII
23. Jesse Jackson (1941) - American civil rights activist, politician, was put in charge of getting
African Americans equal employment and to encourage white owned businesses to work with
black owned businesses in 1967
24. Martin Luther King, Jr. (19291968) - SCLC co-founder/president/chairman, activist, author,
speaker, inspiration
25. Sigmund Livingston (1872-1946) - Jewish rights activist, founder of the Anti-Defamation League,
whose goal is to create equality for all races and religions
26. James Madison (17511836) - American founding father, wrote the first version of the U.S. Bill of
Rights

27. Nelson Mandela (19182013) - South African statesman, leading figure in anti-apartheid
movement in Africa
28. Mamie Till Bradley Mobley - American who held an open casket funeral for her son, Emmett Till,
who was 14 when he was murdered for flirting with a white woman, Mamies insistence on an
open casket funeral brought national attention to racism
29. Rosa Parks (19132005) - American NAACP official, activist, Montgomery Bus Boycott inspiration
30. Alice Paul (18851977) - American 1910s Women's Voting Rights Movement leader, strategist, and
organizer, was instrumental in both getting women the right to vote and getting gender added to
the Civil Rights Act of 1964
31. Thomas Paine (1737-1809) - English-American activist, author, theorist, wrote Rights of Man,
which inspired the American Revolution
32. Eleanor Roosevelt (18841962) - advocated for expanded roles for women in the workplace, the
civil rights of African Americans and Asian Americans, and the rights of World War II refugees in the
U.S. and internationally
33. Aung San Suu Kyi (1945-) - Burmese Politician, was put under house arrest for 15 years of the
past 21 for her efforts to bring democracy to Burma
34. Judy Shepard (1952) - gay rights activist, her son was beaten and died, the motivation for the
attack was his sexual orientation, Judy was instrumental in getting sexual orientation added to the
federal hate crimes legislation
35. Thich Quang Duc (18971963) - Vietnamese monk, freedom of religion self-martyr, protested the
treatment of monks by the South Vietnamese government
36. Booker T. Washington (1865-1915) - American educator, founder of Tuskegee University, and
advisor to Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft.
37. Elie Wiesel - (1928) Jewish rights leader, a Holocaust survivor, continues to fight for civil rights
issues around the world
38. Malcolm X (19251965) - American author, speaker, activist, advocated black supremacy and felt
that African Americans might need to take up arms to force equality
39. Edgar Gardner Murphy (1869-1913) - started the National Child Labor Committee, whose goal was
to end child labor in the U.S.