Famous Civil Rights Activists a to z

Considered one of the best baseball players of all time, Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth's home run record when he hit his 715th home run in 1974, before setting a new Major League Record with 755 home runs in the same year.

Ralph D. Abernathy was a Baptist minister who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and was a close adviser to Martin Luther King Jr.

Born into slavery in 1760, Richard Allen bought his freedom at age 17 and went on to found the first national black church in the United States, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, in 1816.

Susan B. Anthony was a prominent American civil rights activist and leader during the women's suffrage movement of the 1800s.

Joan Baez is an American folk singer, songwriter and activist who is best known for her distinctive voice and for her role in popularizing the music of Bob Dylan.

Civil rights activist Ella Baker worked with the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

Josephine Baker was a dancer and singer who became wildly popular in France during the 1920s. She also devoted much of her life to fighting racism.

Roger Baldwin was an American civil rights activist who co-founded the American Civil Liberties Union.

Civil rights activist Marion S. Barry Jr. has served four terms as mayor of D.C., with his career surviving numerous scandals.

Daisy Bates was an African American civil rights activist and newspaper publisher who documented the battle to end segregation in Arkansas.

Harry Belafonte has achieved lasting fame for such songs as "The Banana Boat Song (Day-O)," and for his humanitarian work.

Mary McLeod Bethune was an educator and activist, serving as president of the National Association of Colored Women and founding the National Council of Negro Women.

Mum Betts (Elizabeth Freeman) was the first slave to successfully sue for her freedom, encouraging Massachusetts to abolish slavery.

Ruby Bridges was the first African-American child to attend an all-white public elementary school in the American South.

John Brown was a 19th-century militant abolitionist known for his raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859.

Linda Brown was the child associated with the lead name in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education, which led to the outlawing of U.S. school segregation in 1954.

Prolific author Pearl S. Buck earned a Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Good Earth. She was also the first female to win a Nobel Prize for Literature.

Stokely Carmichael was a Trinidadian-American political activist, best known as the leader of the civil rights group SNCC in the 1960s.

As Secretary of the Treasury under Lincoln, Salmon P. Chase implemented the National Banking Act and was the sixth chief justice of the Supreme Court.

Psychologist and educator Kenneth Bancroft Clark was the first black president of the American Psychological Association.

Septima Poinsette Clark was a pioneering educator and activist who championed teacher’s rights with organizations like the NAACP.

Teacher Marva Collins was one of the most influential education activists of the 20th century, working to gain equal access for minorities to quality education.

Claudette Colvin was a civil rights activist in Alabama during the 1950s. She refused to give up her seat on a bus months before Rosa Parks' more famous protest.

Angela Davis is an activist, scholar and writer who advocates for the oppressed. She has authored several books, including Women, Culture & Politics.

Ossie Davis was an American actor, writer, social activist and humanitarian. He often performed with wife Ruby Dee in plays, in film and on television.

Ruby Dee is an American actress, playwright, screenwriter, activist, poet and journalist, perhaps best known for starring in the 1961 film A Raisin in the Sun. She's also known for her civic work with husband Ossie Davis.

Abolitionist Martin Robison Delany was both a physician and newspaper editor, and became one of the most influential and successful anti-slavery activists of the 19th century.

Frederick Douglass, a former slave and eminent human rights leader in the abolition movement, was the first black citizen to hold a high U.S. government rank.

W.E.B. Du Bois was one of the most important African-American activists during the first half of the 20th century. He co-founded the NAACP and supported Pan-Africanism.

Shirin Ebadi is an Iranian lawyer and human-rights activist. She was the first female judge in Iran, and won the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize.

Medgar Evers was a civil rights activist who organized voter-registration efforts, demonstrations and boycotts of companies that practiced discrimination.

Author and activist Myrlie Evers-Williams was the wife of slain civil rights activist Medgar Evers, and served as chair of the NAACP 1995–1998.

Louis Farrakhan has led the Nation of Islam, an African American movement that combined elements of Islam with black nationalism since 1978.

Father Divine was a prominent African-American religious leader of the 1930s who founded the Peace Mission, an important precursor of the Civil Rights Movement.

Matilda Joslyn Gage was an author and one of the leading figures in the women's rights and suffrage movement that began in the mid-1800s.

Marcus Garvey was a proponent of the Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism movements, inspiring the Nation of Islam and the Rastafarian movement.

Richard Gere is an American actor best known for his status as an American sex symbol and his leading film roles, including in Report to the Commissioner, American Gigolo, An Officer and A Gentleman, Pretty Woman and Chicago.

The poems of Nikki Giovanni helped to define the African American voice of the 1960s, '70s and beyond. She was also a major force in the Black Arts movement.

Abolitionist and feminist Sarah Moore Grimké and her sister Angelina were the first women to testify before a state legislature on the issue of blacks' rights.

Fannie Lou Hamer was a civil rights activists who helped African Americans register to vote and who cofounded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.

Tom Hayden is a political activist and writer who served in the California State Assembly and State Senate. He is also the former husband of actress Jane Fonda.

Dorothy Height was a civil rights and women's rights activist focused primarily on improving the circumstances of and opportunities for African-American women.

Actress and singer Lena Horne was one of the most popular performers of her time, known for films such as The Wiz and her trademark song, "Stormy Weather."

Charles H. Houston was an attorney and vice-dean who worked in important civil rights cases, ultimately helping to end Jim Crow laws.

Dolores Huerta is an activist and labor leader who co-founded what would become the United Farm Workers.

Anthropologist and novelist Zora Neale Hurston was a fixture of the Harlem Renaissance before writing her masterwork, Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Roy Innis is an American Civil Rights Activist best known as the former National Chairman of Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).

Jesse Jackson is an American civil rights leader, Baptist minister and politician who twice ran for U.S. president.

20th century recording artist Mahalia Jackson, known as the Queen of Gospel, is revered as one of the greatest musical figures in U.S. history.

In 1951, Barbara Johns led her fellow students in a walkout to protest school segregation. She then started a lawsuit that became part of Brown v. Board of Ed.

James Weldon Johnson was an African-American writer, politician, educator and lawyer. He was also an early civil rights activist and leader of the NAACP.

Barbara Jordan was a U.S. congressional representative from Texas and was the first African American congresswoman to come from the Deep South.

African-American chemist Percy Julian was a pioneer in the chemical synthesis of medicinal drugs such as cortisone, steroids and birth control pills.

John F. Kennedy, the 35th U.S. president, negotiated the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty and initiated the Alliance for Progress. He was assassinated in 1963.

Coretta Scott King was an American civil rights activist and the wife of 1960s civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

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.

Musician and activist Fela Kuti pioneered Afrobeat music and was repeatedly arrested and beaten for writing lyrics that questioned the Nigerian government.

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States. He preserved the Union during the U.S. Civil War and brought about the emancipation of slaves.

Viola Gregg Liuzzo was an activist in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. She was murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan for her efforts.

Civil rights leader, social activist and minister Joseph Lowery has fought against prejudice and discrimination against African-Americans for more than 50 years.

Mary Mahoney became the first black woman to complete nurse's training in 1879.

Miriam Makeba, also known as "Mama Africa," was a popular South-African singer who introduced Xhosa and Zulu songs to Western audiences. She is best known for the songs "Pata Pata," "The Click Song" and "Malaika."

Nelson Mandela became the first black president of South Africa in 1994. A symbol of global peacemaking, he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.

Thurgood Marshall was instrumental in ending legal segregation and became the first African-American justice of the Supreme Court.

Claude McKay was a Jamaican-born poet and novelist whose Home to Harlem (1928) was the most popular novel written by an American black to that time.

Ian McKellen is a revered, award-winning British actor of stage and screen known for many roles, including The Lord of the Rings and X-Men series.

James Meredith is a civil rights activist who became the first African American to attend the University of Mississippi in 1962.

Kweisi Mfume is the former President and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Anne Moody is an African-American author whose writings about her personal and political struggles during the American Civil Rights Movement became classic.

Constance Baker Motley was a legal advocate in the Civil Rights Movement. She became the first female African-American federal judge in 1966.

Lucretia Mott was a leading social reformer of her time and helped to form the Free Religious Association.

African-American hairdresser and inventor Lyda Newman patented an improved hairbrush design in New York City in 1898.

Huey P. Newton was an African-American activist best known for founding the militant Black Panther Party in 1966, along with co-founder Bobby Seale.

Civil rights activist and ACLU alum Eleanor Holmes Norton serves as a non-voting delegate to Congress from the District of Columbia.