List of civil rights leaders

W.E.B. DuBois

Alice Paul

George Mason

James Bevel

Betty Friedan

John Peters Humphrey

Victoria Woodhull

Karl Heinrich Ulrichs

Jack Herer

Civil rights leaders protect individuals' freedom from infringement and discrimination by governments and private organizations, and expand and ensure everyone's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without repression or discrimination. Civil rights include individual rights to equal protection and service, privacy, thought, expression, speech, assembly, travel and movement, worship, the right to vote, and the right to freely share ideas and opinions through all forms of communication and media. People who motivated themselves and then led others to gain and protect these rights include:

• Ralph Abernathy (1926–1990) clergyman, activist, Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) official
• Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) Women's suffrage leader, speaker, inspiration
• Ella Baker (1903–1986) SCLC activist, initiated Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
• James Baldwin (1924–1987) essayist, novelist, public speaker, SNCC activist
• Daisy Bates (1914–1999)
• Dana Beal (1947– ) pro-hemp activist, organizer, speaker, initiator
• Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) British philosopher, writer, and teacher on civil rights, inspiration
• James Bevel (1936–2008) SCLC's main strategist, organizer, and Direct Action leader
• Claude Black (1916–2009)
• Antoinette Brown Blackwell (1825-1921) - founded American Woman Suffrage Association with Lucy Stone in 1869
• Julian Bond (1940–) activist, politician, scholar, lawyer, NAACP chairman
• Lenny Bruce free speech advocate, comedian, satirist
• Lucy Burns (1879–1966) women's suffrage/voting rights leader
• Stokely Carmichael (1941–1998) SNCC and Black Panther activist
• 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 unionist
• Claudette Colvin (1939–) Montgomery Bus Boycott pioneer, independent activist
• Marvel Cooke (1903–2000), journalist, writer, trade unionist
• Humberto "Bert" Corona (1918–2001) labor and civil rights leader
• Dorothy Cotton (1930–) SCLC activist, organizer, and leader
• Norris Wright Cuney (1846–1898), Texas politician
• Eugene Debs (1855–1926) organizer, campaigner for the poor, women, dissenters, prisoners
• Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) abolitionist, women's rights, writer, organizer
• W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) writer, scholar, founder of NAACP
• Charles Evers (1922–) Civil Rights Movement activist
• Medgar Evers (1925–1963) NAACP official
• James Farmer (1920–1999) Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) leader and activist
• Louis Farrakhan (1933–) Minister, National Representative of the Nation of Islam
• James Forman (1928–2005) SNCC official and activist
• Marie Foster (1917–2003) activist, local leader in Selma Voting Rights Movement
• Betty Friedan (1921–2006) writer, activist, feminist
• Mohandas Gandhi (1869–1948) activist, writer, philosopher, inspiration
• William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879) writer, organizer, feminist, initiator
• Dick Gregory civil rights movement, free speech advocate, comedian
• Olympe de Gouges (1748–1793) women's rights pioneer, writer, beheaded after French Revolution
• Prathia Hall (1940–2002) SNCC activist, civil rights movement 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–) activist, local leader in Birmingham Movement
• Jack Herer (1939–) pro-hemp activist, speaker, organizer, author
• Gordon Hirabayashi (1918–2012) Japanese-American civil rights hero
• Myles Horton (1905–1990) teacher of nonviolence, pioneer activist, Highlander Folk School
• T.R.M. Howard (1908–1976) founder of Mississippi's Regional Council of Negro Leadership
• Julia Ward Howe (1818–1910) writer, organizer, suffragette
• Dolores Huerta (1930– ) labor and civil rights activist
• John Peters Humphrey (1905–1995) author of Universal Declaration of Human Rights
• Jesse Jackson (1941–) clergyman, activist, politician
• Nellie Stone Johnson (1905–2002) labor and civil rights activist
• Abby Kelley (1811–1887) abolitionist and suffragette
• Coretta Scott King (1927–2006) SCLC leader, activist
• Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) SCLC co-founder/president, activist, author, speaker, inspiration
• James Lawson (1928–) teacher of nonviolence, activist
• Bernard Lafayette (1940–) SCLC and SNCC activist and organizer
• John Lewis (1940–) Nashville Student Movement, SNCC activist, organizer, speaker, politican
• Joseph Lowery (1921–) SCLC leader and co-founder, activist
• Clara Luper (1923–2011) sit-in movement leader, activist
• James Madison (1751–1836) introduced and lobbied for the U.S. Bill of Rights
• Nelson Mandela (1918–) South African statesman, leading figure in anti-apartheid movement
• George Mason (1725–1792) wrote Virginia Declaration of Rights, influenced U.S. Bill of Rights
• Rigoberta Menchú (1959) - Guatemalan indigenous rights leader, co-founder Nobel Women's Initiative
• James Meredith (1933–) independent student leader and self–starting activist
• Mamie Till Bradley Mobley held open casket funeral for son, Emmett Till; speaker, activist
• Charles Morgan, Jr. (1930–2009) attorney, established principle of "one man, one vote"
• Harvey Milk (1930–1978) politician, gay rights activist
• Bob Moses (1935–) leader, activist, and organizer
• Diane Nash (1938–) SNCC and SCLC activist and organizer
• Edgar Nixon (1899–1987) Montgomery Bus Boycott organizer, civil rights activist
• James Orange (1942–2008) SCLC activist and organizer, trade unionist
• Emmeline Pankhurst (1858-1928) one of the founders and the leader of the British Suffragette Movement
• Rosa Parks (1913–2005) NAACP official, activist, Montgomery Bus Boycott inspiration
• Alice Paul (1885–1977) women's suffrage/women's rights leader
• Elizabeth Peratrovich (1911–1958) Alaska activist for native people
• A. Philip Randolph (1889–1979) socialist, labor leader
• Amelia Boynton Robinson (1911–) voting rights activist
• Jo Ann Robinson (1912–1992) Montgomery Bus Boycott activist.
• Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) women's rights, human rights activist in United Nations
• Bayard Rustin (1912–1987) civil rights activist
• Al Sharpton (1954–) clergyman, activist, media
• Charles Sherrod 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) clergyman, activist, SCLC co-founder, initiated Birmingham Movement
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) women's suffrage/women's rights leader
• Gloria Steinem (1934–) writer, activist, feminist
• Lucy Stone (1818–1893) women's suffrage/voting rights leader
• Thich Quang Duc (1897–1963) Vietnamese monk, freedom of religion self-martyr
• Desmond Tutu (1931–) South African anti-apartheid organizer, advocate, inspiration
• Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825-1895) German writer, organizer, and the pioneer of the modern gay rights movement.
• C.T. Vivian (1924–) American student civil rights leader, SNCC activist
• Wyatt Tee Walker activist with NAACP, CORE, and SCLC
• Ida B. Wells (1862–1931) journalist, women's suffrage/voting rights activist
• Walter Francis White (1895–1955) NAACP executive secretary
• Roy Wilkins (1901–1981) NAACP executive secretary/executive director
• Frances Willard (1839–1898) women's rights, suffrage/voting rights leader
• Hosea Williams (1926–2000) civil rights activist, SCLC organizer
• Robert F. Williams (1925–1996) organizer
• Victoria Woodhull (1838–1927) suffragette organizer, women's rights leader
• Malcolm X (1925–1965) author, activist
• Andrew Young (1932–) clergyman, SCLC activist and executive director
• Whitney M. Young, Jr. (1921–1971) Exec. Director National Urban League, advisor to U.S. Presidents

See also

• African-American Civil Rights Movement (1896–1954)
• African American Civil Rights Movement (1955–1968)
• Chicano Movement
• Civil and political rights
• Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women
• Convention on the Political Rights of Women
• Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
• Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen
• Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women
• Equality before the law
• Founding Fathers of the United States
• Free Speech fight
• Free Speech Movement
• History of human rights
• Human rights
• Human rights awards
• International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
• LGBT rights by country
• LGBT social movements
• List of human rights organizations
• List of indigenous rights organizations
• List of LGBT rights activists
• List of LGBT rights organizations
• List of peace activists
• List of suffragists and suffragettes
• List of women's rights activists
• Magna Carta
• National human rights institutions
• Seneca Falls Convention
• Status of same-sex marriage
• Suffrage
• Timeline of the African-American Civil Rights Movement
• Timeline of first women's suffrage in majority-Muslim countries
• Timeline of women's rights (other than voting)
• Timeline of women's suffrage
• United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
• United Nations Human Rights Committee
• United Nations Human Rights Council
• United States Bill of Rights
• Universal Declaration of Human Rights
• Universal suffrage
• Virginia Declaration of Rights
• Women's rights
• Women's Suffrage

External links

• BlackHistoryDaily.com – Activists