List of Civil Rights Leaders

Below is a list of some (chiefly American) civil rights leaders:

  • Abernathy, Ralph (1926–1990) clergyman, activist, Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) official
  • Anthony, Susan B. (1820–1906) women's suffrage/voting rights leader
  • Baker, Ella (1903–1986) Member of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
  • Bates, Daisy (1914–1999)
  • Bevel, James (1936–2008) SCLC's main strategist, organizer, and Direct Action leader
  • Black,Claude (1916–2009)
  • Bond, Julian (1940–) activist, politician, scholar, lawyer, NAACP chairman
  • Burns, Lucy (1879–1966) women's suffrage/voting rights leader
  • Carmichael, Stokely (1941–1998)
  • Chavez, Cesar (1927–1993) Chicano activist, organizer, trade unionist
  • Colvin, Claudette (1939–) pioneer student and independent activist
  • Cooke, Marvel (1903–2000), journalist, writer, trade unionist, civil rights activist
  • Corona, Humberto Noe "Bert" (1918–2001) labor and civil rights leader
  • Cotton, Dorothy (1930–) SCLC activist and leader
  • Cuney, Norris Wright (1846–1898), Texas politician and leader of the Texas Republican Party
  • Debs, Eugene (1855–1926), American Labor Union organizer and Socialist, campaigned for the rights of the poor, women, dissenters, and prisoners
  • Du Bois, W. E. B. (1868–1963), writer, scholar, founder of NAACP
  • Evers, Charles (1922–)
  • Evers, Medgar (1925–1963) NAACP official
  • Farmer, James (1920–1999) CORE leader and activist
  • Farrakhan, Louis (1933–) National Representative of the Nation of Islam
  • Forman, James (1928–2005) SNCC official and activist
  • Foster, Marie (1917–2003) activist, local leader in Selma Movement
  • Friedan, Betty (1921–2006) writer, activist, feminist
  • Hall, Prathia (1940–2002) SNCC activist, civil rights movement speaker
  • Hamer, Fannie Lou (1917–1977) activist in Mississippi movements
  • Hendricks, Lola (1932–) activist, local leader in Birmingham Campaign
  • Herer, Jack (1939–) pro-hemp activist, organizer, author
  • Hill, Robert (1892–?)
  • Hobson, Julius Wilson (1919–1977) organizer, agitator, researcher, plaintiff
  • Horton, Myles (1905–1990) teacher of nonviolence, pioneer activist
  • Howard, T.R.M. (1908–1976) founder of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership in Mississippi.
  • Huerta, Dolores (1930– ) labor and civil rights activist
  • Hurley, Ruby (1909–1980) NAACP administrator, Director of NAACP Youth Council 1943–1952, activist
  • Jackson, Jesse (1941–) clergyman, activist, politician
  • Johnson, Nellie Stone (1905–2002), labor and civil rights activist, counselor to Hubert Humphrey
  • Jordan, June (1936–2002), writer, poet, civil rights activist, feminist
  • King, Coretta Scott (1927–2006)
  • King Jr., Martin Luther (1929–1968) clergyman, SCLC co-founder and president, activist
  • Lawson, James (1928–) teacher of nonviolence, activist
  • Lafayette, Bernard (1940–) SCLC and SNCC activist and organizer
  • Lewis, John (1940–)
  • Lincoln, Abraham (1809–1865), 16th President of the United States, promulgated Emancipation Proclamation
  • Lowery, Joseph (1921–) SCLC leader, activist
  • Luper, Clara (1923–2011) Sit-in movement leader, activist
  • McIntosh, William S. (1921–1974) Dayton, Ohio leader, activist, and organizer
  • Meredith, James (1933–) independent student leader and self–starting activist
  • Mobley, Mamie Till Bradley held open casket funeral for son, Emmett Till, 50,000 people came; speaker, activist
  • Morgan, Charles Jr. (1930–2009) Alabama civil rights attorney, established principle of "one man, one vote"
  • Milk, Harvey (1930–1978) politician, gay rights activist
  • Moses, Robert "Bob" (1935–) leader, activist, and organizer
  • Nash, Diane (1938–) SNCC and SCLC activist and organizer
  • Nixon, Edgar (1899–1987)
  • Orange, James (1942–2008) SCLC activist and organizer, trade unionist
  • Parks, Rosa (1913–2005) NAACP official, activist
  • Paul, Alice (1885–1977) women's suffrage/voting rights leader
  • Peratrovich, Eizabeth (1911–1958) Alaska civil rights activist, working on behalf of equality for Alaska Native peoples.
  • Randolph, A. Philip (1889–1979) socialist, labor leader
  • Robinson, Amelia Boynton (1911–) voting rights activist
  • Robinson, Jo Ann (1912–1992) Founder of Montgomery Al. Bus Boycott, Pres. of Women's Political Council, Exec. board of Montgomery Improvement Association.
  • Rustin, Bayard (1912–1987), civil rights activist
  • Sharpton, Al (1954–) clergyman, activist
  • Sherrod, Charles civil rights activist, SNCC leader
  • Shepard, Judy (1952–) gay rights activists, public speaker
  • Shuttlesworth, Fred (1922–2011) clergyman, activist
  • Stanton, Elizabeth Cady (1815–1902) women's suffrage/voting rights leader
  • Steinem, Gloria (1934–) writer, activist, feminist
  • Stone, Lucy (1818–1893) women's suffrage/voting rights leader
  • Vivian, C.T. (1924–) student leader, SNCC activist
  • Williams, Hosea (1926–2000) civil rights activist, chief field organizer for SCLC, led Selma to Montgomery campaign
  • Walker, Wyatt Tee, clergyman, activist: NAACP and CORE in Virginia, Executive Dictator, SCLC (1960–1964)
  • Wells, Ida B. (1862–1931) journalist, women's suffrage/voting rights activist
  • White, Walter Francis (1895–1955) NAACP executive secretary
  • Wilkins, Roy (1901–1981), NAACP executive secretary/executive director
  • Willard, Frances 1839–1898) women's rights, suffrage/voting rights leader
  • Williams, Robert F.(1925–1996), organizer
  • X, Malcolm (1925–1965), author, activist
  • Young, Andrew (Andy) Jr. (1932–) clergyman, SCLC activist and executive director.
  • Young, Whitney M., Jr. (1921–1971), Executive Director of National Urban League; advisor to Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon
  • Gordon Hirabayashi Japanese-American civil rights hero


Famous quotes containing the words list of, list, civil, rights and/or leaders:

    “Thirty—the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair.”
    —F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)

    “My list of things I never pictured myself saying when I pictured myself as a parent has grown over the years.”
    —Polly Berrien Berends (20th century)

    “They have been waiting for us in a foetor
    Of vegetable sweat since civil war days,
    Since the gravel-crunching, interminable departure
    Of the expropriated mycologist.”
    —Derek Mahon (b. 1941)

    “Rights! There are no rights whatever without corresponding duties. Look at the history of the growth of our constitution, and you will see that our ancestors never upon any occasion stated, as a ground for claiming any of their privileges, an abstract right inherent in themselves; you will nowhere in our parliamentary records find the miserable sophism of the Rights of Man.”
    —Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)

    “Signal smokes, war drums, feathered bonnets against the western sky. New messiahs, young leaders are ready to hurl the finest light cavalry in the world against Fort Stark. In the Kiowa village, the beat of drums echoes in the pulsebeat of the young braves. Fighters under a common banner, old quarrels forgotten, Comanche rides with Arapaho, Apache with Cheyenne. All chant of war. War to drive the white man forever from the red man’s hunting ground.”
    —Frank S. Nugent (1908–1965)