List of civil rights leaders

Civil rights leaders are influential figures in the promotion and implementation of political freedom and the expansion of personal civil liberties and rights. They work to protect individuals and groups from political repression and discrimination by governments and private organizations, and seek to ensure the ability of all members of society to participate in the civil and political life of the state.

George Mason
Olympe de Gouges
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs
Victoria Woodhull
W.E.B. Du Bois
Mahatma Gandhi
Alice Paul
B. R. Ambedkar
Walter P. Reuther
Dorothy Height
Nelson Mandela
Betty Friedan
Frank Kameny
Elie Wiesel
Martin Luther King Jr.
Desmond Tutu
James Bevel

List

People who motivated themselves and then led others to gain and protect these rights and liberties include:

Name Born Country Notes
George Mason 1725 1792  United States wrote the Virginia Declaration of Rights and influenced the United States Bill of Rights
Thomas Paine 1737 1809  United States English-American activist, author, theorist, wrote Rights of Man
Elizabeth Freeman 1744 1829  United States also known as Mum Bett – first former slave to win a freedom suit in Massachusetts
Olaudah Equiano 1745 1797  United Kingdom
 Nigeria		 purchased his freedom, helped found the Sons of Africa, and wrote the influential The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano depicting the horrors of the slave trade
Jeremy Bentham 1748 1832  United Kingdom British philosopher, writer, and teacher on civil rights, inspiration
Olympe de Gouges 1748 1793  France women's rights pioneer, writer, beheaded during French Revolution
Ottobah Cugoano 1757 1791  United Kingdom
 Ghana		 captured from West Africa, he became a member of the Sons of Africa and argued against slavery on Christian and philosophical grounds
William Wilberforce 1759 1833  United Kingdom leader of the British abolition movement
Mary Wollstonecraft 1759 1797  United Kingdom British author of A Vindication of the Rights of Men and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Thaddeus Stevens 1792 1868  United States representative from Pennsylvania, anti-slavery leader, originator of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
Lucretia Mott 1793 1880  United States women's rights activist, abolitionist
John Neal 1793 1876  United States feminist essayist and lecturer active 1823–1876; first American women's rights lecturer[1][2]
John Brown 1800 1859  United States abolitionist, orator, martyr
Angelina Grimké 1805 1879  United States advocate for abolition, woman's rights
William Lloyd Garrison 1805 1879  United States abolitionist, writer, organizer, feminist, initiator
Lysander Spooner 1808 1887  United States abolitionist, writer, anarchist, proponent of Jury nullification
Charles Sumner 1811 1874  United States Senator from Massachusetts, anti-slavery leader
Abby Kelley 1811 1887  United States abolitionist and suffragette
Harriet Jacobs 1813 or 1815 1897  United States Her autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, considered an "American classic." Founded schools for fugitive and free slaves.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton 1815 1902  United States women's suffrage/women's rights leader
Lucy Stone 1818 1893  United States women's suffrage/voting rights leader
Frederick Douglass 1818 1895  United States abolitionist, women's rights and suffrage advocate, writer, organizer, black rights activist, inspiration
Julia Ward Howe 1818 1910  United States writer, organizer, suffragette
Susan B. Anthony 1820 1906  United States Women's suffrage leader, speaker, inspiration
Harriet Tubman 1822 1913  United States African-American abolitionist and humanitarian
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs 1825 1895  Germany writer, organizer, and the pioneer of the modern LGBT rights movement
Antoinette Brown Blackwell 1825 1921  United States founded American Woman Suffrage Association with Lucy Stone in 1869
Luís Gama 1830 1882  Brazil former slave, a journalist, poet and an autodidact lawyer who defended enslaved people and was among the earlier proponents of the abolitionist and republican movements in 19th-century Brazil.
Victoria Woodhull 1838 1927  United States suffragette organizer, women's rights leader
Frances Willard 1839 1898  United States women's rights activist, woman suffrage leader
Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin 1842 1924  United States suffragist, editor, co-founder of the first chapter of the NAACP
Kate Sheppard 1848 1934  New Zealand suffragist in first country to have universal suffrage
Eugene Debs 1855 1926  United States organizer, campaigner for the poor, women, dissenters, prisoners
Booker T. Washington 1856 1915  United States educator, founder of Tuskegee University, and adviser to Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft
Emmeline Pankhurst 1858 1928  United Kingdom founder and leader of the British Suffragette Movement
Charles Grafton 1869 1948  United States Reverend Charles Grafton Archdioceses of Wisconsin Fond Du Lac. Responsible for Rescue helping the Slaves. Under Ground Railroad Initiator Wisconsin Boston, New York, and the Southern States civil rights, known abolitionist. Brought the Convent of the Holy Nativity Nuns to Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin activist, movement leader, writer, philosopher, and teacher Responsible for helping to establish townships all over Wisconsin, and other parts of the United States
Carrie Chapman Catt 1859 1947  United States suffrage leader, president National American Woman Suffrage Association, founder League of Women Voters and International Alliance of Women
Jane Addams 1860 1935  United States reformer, co-founder of the Hull House and American Civil Liberties Union, 1931 Nobel Peace Prize laureate
Ida B. Wells 1862 1931  United States journalist, early activist in 20th-century civil rights movement, women's suffrage/voting rights activist
W.E.B. Du Bois 1868 1963  United States writer, scholar, founder of NAACP
Kasturba Gandhi 1869 1944  India wife of Mohandas Gandhi, activist in South Africa and India, often led her husband's movements in India when he was imprisoned
Mahatma Gandhi 1869 1948  India The Father of India, greatest unifier of Indians pre-Independence and peaceful activist, Pan-Indian Freedom movement Leader, writer, philosopher, social awakening reg Dalits and teacher/inspiration to many like Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr.
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel 1875 1950  India activist, movement leader, followed and trusted Mahatma Gandhi's Ideology and peaceful movement.
Muhammad Ali Jinnah 1876 1948  Pakistan lawyer, politician, and the founder of Pakistan; lead Pakistan Movement for the rights of Muslims in the subcontinent
Lucy Burns 1879 1966  United States women's suffrage/voting rights leader
Homer G. Phillips 1880 1931  United States Republican political figure, and a prominent advocate for civil rights.[3]
José do Patrocínio 1854 1905  Brazil Journalist, one of the main leaders of the abolitionist movement in Brazil.
Eleanor Roosevelt 1884 1962  United States women's rights and human rights activist both in the United States and in the United Nations
Alice Paul 1885 1977  United States Women's Voting Rights Movement leader, strategist, and organizer
Marcus Garvey 1887 1940  Jamaica political activist, publisher, journalist
Sonia Schlesin 1888 1956  Russia worked with Mohandas Gandhi in South Africa and led his movements there when he was absent
Toyohiko Kagawa 1888 1960  Japan labor activist, Christian reformer, author
Bernard J. Quinn 1888 1940  United States Roman Catholic priest
Jawaharlal Nehru 1889 1964  India first Prime Minister of India, central figure in Indian politics before and after independence, advocate for freedom of the press
A. Philip Randolph 1889 1979  United States labor and civil rights movement leader
B. R. Ambedkar 1891 1956  India social reformer, civil rights activist, and scholar and who drafted Constitution of India, campaigned for Indian independence, fought for the women's rights, fought discrimination and inequality among the people.
Walter Francis White 1895 1955  United States NAACP executive secretary
Maria L. de Hernández 1896 1986  United States Mexican-American rights activist
Thich Quang Duc 1897 1963  South Vietnam monk, freedom of religion self-martyr
Albert Lutuli 1898 1967  South Africa President of the African National Congress,[4] against apartheid in South Africa,[5] 1960 Nobel Peace Prize laureate[5]
Edgar Nixon 1899 1987  United States Montgomery bus boycott organizer, civil rights activist
Roy Wilkins 1901 1981  United States NAACP executive secretary/executive director
Harriette Moore 1902 1951  United States Civil rights activist, and part of the only married couple to be assassinated during the Civil Rights Movement
Ella Baker 1903 1986  United States SCLC activist, initiated the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
Marvel Cooke 1903 2000  United States civil rights leader
Myles Horton 1905 1990  United States teacher of nonviolence, pioneer activist, founded and led the Highlander Folk School
John Peters Humphrey 1905 1995  Canada author of Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Jack Patten 1905 1957  Australia Aboriginal Australian civil rights activist, journalist, founder of first Aboriginal newspaper, led the Cummeragunja Walk-Off in 1939, protested the persecution of Jewish people, President and co-founder of Aborigines Progressive Association, led the first Aboriginal delegation to meet with a sitting Prime Minister.
Nellie Stone Johnson 1905 2002  United States labor and civil rights activist
Harry T. Moore 1905 1951  United States Civil rights activist, leader, and the first martyr of the Civil Rights Movement
Willa Brown 1906 1992  United States civil rights activist, first African-American lieutenant in the US Civil Air Patrol, first African-American woman to run for Congress
Walter P. Reuther 1907 1970  United States labor leader and civil rights activist
T.R.M. Howard 1908 1976  United States founder of Mississippi's Regional Council of Negro Leadership
Winifred C. Stanley 1909 1996  United States First member of Congress to introduce legislation prohibiting discrimination in pay on the basis of sex
Pauli Murray 1910 1985 United States American civil rights activist who became a lawyer, gender equality advocate, Episcopal priest, and author
Elizabeth Peratrovich 1911 1958  United States Alaskan activist for native people
Amelia Boynton Robinson 1911 2015  United States Selma Voting Rights Movement activist and early leader
Dorothy Height 1912 2010  United States activist and advocate for African-American women
Bayard Rustin 1912 1987  United States civil rights activist
Jo Ann Robinson 1912 1992  United States Montgomery bus boycott activist
Harry Hay 1912 2002  United States early leader in American LGBT rights movement, founder Mattachine Society
Rosa Parks 1913 2005  United States NAACP official, activist, Montgomery bus boycott inspiration
Daisy Bates 1914 1999  United States organizer of the Little Rock Nine school desegregation events
Viola Desmond 1914 1965  Canada Black Canadian civil rights activist and businesswoman
George Raymond 1914 1999  United States civil rights activist, head of the Chester, Pennsylvania branch of the NAACP
Claude Black 1916 2009  United States civil rights activist
Frankie Muse Freeman 1916 2018  United States civil rights attorney, first woman appointee to United States Commission on Civil Rights
Fannie Lou Hamer 1917 1977  United States leader in the American Civil Rights Movement; co-founder of the National Women's Political Caucus and Freedom Democratic Party
Marie Foster 1917 2003  United States voting rights activist, a local leader in the Selma Voting Rights Movement
Humberto "Bert" Corona 1918 2001  United States labor and civil rights leader
Gordon Hirabayashi 1918 2012  United States Japanese-American civil rights hero
Nelson Mandela 1918 2013  South Africa statesman, leading figure in Anti-Apartheid Movement
Fred Korematsu 1919 2005  United States Japanese internment resister during World War II
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman 1920 1975  Bangladesh Father of the nation of Bangladesh.
James Farmer 1920 1999  United States Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) leader and activist
Golden Frinks 1920 2004  United States civil rights organizer in North Carolina, field secretary of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
Betty Friedan 1921 2006  United States writer, women's rights activist, feminist
Joseph Lowery 1921 2020  United States SCLC leader and co-founder, activist
Del Martin 1921 2008  United States co-founder of Daughters of Bilitis, first social and political organization for lesbians in the US
Mamie Elizabeth Till-Mobley 1921 2003  United States held an open casket funeral for her son, Emmett Till; speaker, activist
Whitney M. Young, Jr. 1921 1971  United States Executive director of National Urban League, adviser to U.S. presidents
Charles Evers 1922 2020  United States civil rights activist
Fred Shuttlesworth 1922 2011  United States clergyman, activist, SCLC co-founder, initiated the Birmingham Movement
Clara Luper 1923 2011  United States sit-in movement leader in Oklahoma, activist
James Baldwin 1924 1987  United States essayist, novelist, public speaker, SNCC activist
Phyllis Lyon 1924 2020  United States co-founder of Daughters of Bilitis, first social and political organization for lesbians in the U.S.
C.T. Vivian 1924 2020  United States student civil rights leader, SNCC and SCLC activist
Lenny Bruce 1925 1966  United States free speech advocate, comedian, political satirist
Medgar Evers 1925 1963  United States NAACP official in the Mississippi Movement
Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga 1925 2018  United States activist in Japanese-American redress movement
Frank Kameny 1925 2011  United States gay rights activist
Malcolm X 1925 1965  United States author, speaker, activist, inspiration
Ralph Abernathy 1926 1990  United States activist, Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) official
Reies Tijerina 1926 2015  United States Hispano activist
Jackie Forster 1926 1998  United Kingdom English lesbian rights activist
Hosea Williams 1926 2000  United States civil rights activist, SCLC organizer and strategist
Cesar Chavez 1927 1993  United States Chicano activist, organizer, trade unionist
Coretta Scott King 1927 2006  United States SCLC leader, activist
James Forman 1928 2005  United States SNCC official and civil rights activist
James Lawson 1928  United States American minister and activist, SCLC's teacher of nonviolence in civil rights movement
Elie Wiesel 1928 2016  United States writer, Holocaust survivor, Jewish rights leader
Martin Luther King Jr. 1929 1968  United States SCLC co-founder/president/chairman, activist, author, speaker
Edison Uno 1929 1976  United States leader for Japanese-American civil rights and redress after World War II
Wyatt Tee Walker 1928 2018  United States activist and organizer with NAACP, CORE, and SCLC
Dorothy Cotton 1930 2018  United States SCLC official, activist, organizer, and leader
Dolores Huerta 1930  United States labor and civil rights activist, initiator, organizer
Harvey Milk 1930 1978  United States politician, gay rights activist, and leader for the LGBT community
Rupert Richardson 1930 2008  United States civil rights activist and civil rights leader who served as president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from 1992 to 1995
Charles Morgan, Jr. 1930 2009  United States attorney, established principle of "one man, one vote"
Desmond Tutu 1931 2021  South Africa anti-apartheid organizer, advocate, first black archbishop of Cape Town
Barbara Gittings 1932 2007  United States lesbian rights activist
Dick Gregory 1932 2017  United States free speech advocate, civil rights activist, comedian
Lola Hendricks 1932 2013  United States activist, local leader in Birmingham Movement
Miriam Makeba 1932 2008  South Africa singer, anti-apartheid activist
Victor Jara 1932 1973  Chile teacher, theater director, poet, singer-songwriter and Communist[2] political activist
Andrew Young 1932  United States civil rights activist, SCLC executive director
Stanley Branche 1933 1992  United States civil rights activitst, founder of the Committee For Freedom Now
James Meredith 1933  United States independent student leader and self–starting Mississippi activist
Violeta Zúñiga 1933 2019  Chile human rights activist
Roy Innis 1934 2017  United States activist, longtime leader of CORE
Jane Goodall 1934  United States scientist, activist, ecologist
Gloria Steinem 1934  United States writer, activist, feminist
Bob Moses 1935 2021  United States leader, activist, and organizer in '60s Mississippi Movement
James Bevel 1936 2008  United States organizer and Direct Action leader, SCLC's main strategist, movement initiator, and movement director
Barbara Jordan 1936 1996  United States legislator, educator, civil rights advocate
Charles Sherrod 1937 2022  United States civil rights activist, SNCC leader
Fela Kuti 1938 1997  Nigeria multi-instrumentalist, musician, composer, pioneer of the Afrobeat music genre, human rights activist, and political maverick
Diane Nash 1938  United States SNCC and SCLC activist and official, strategist, organizer
Claudette Colvin 1939  United States Montgomery bus boycott pioneer, independent activist
Jack Herer 1939 2010  United States pro-hemp activist, speaker, organizer, author
Julian Bond 1940 2015  United States activist, politician, scholar, NAACP chairman
Prathia Hall 1940 2002  United States SNCC activist, a leading speaker in the civil rights movement
Bernard Lafayette 1940  United States SCLC and SNCC activist, organizer, and leader
Muhammad Yunus 1940  Bangladesh Bangladeshi social entrepreneur, banker, economist and civil society leader who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for founding the Grameen Bank and pioneering the concepts of microcredit and microfinance.}
John Lewis 1940 2020  United States Nashville Student Movement and SNCC activist, organizer, speaker, congressman
Stokely Carmichael 1941 1998  United States SNCC and Black Panther activist, organizer, speaker
Jesse Jackson 1941  United States civil rights activist, politician
James Orange 1942 2008  United States SCLC activist and organizer, a voting rights movement leader, trade unionist
Gerd Fleischer 1942  Norway human rights activist
Peter Tosh 1944 1987  Jamaica Marijuana legalization activist, promoter of the rights of Africans within Africa as well as Black people across the diaspora, reggae musician.
Marsha P. Johnson 1945 1992  United States Gay liberation activist, STAR co-founder, AIDS activist with ACT UP
Heather Booth 1945  United States SNCC activist, women's movement organizer, and founder of the Midwest Academy
Angelina Atyam 1946  Uganda human rights activist for the Aboke abductions
Dick Oosting 1946  Netherlands human rights lawyer and activist
Dana Beal 1947  United States pro-hemp activist, organizer, speaker, initiator
Ashok Row Kavi 1947  India LGBT rights activist, gay rights pioneer, founder of Humsafar Trust
Benjamin Chavis 1948  United States activist, chemist, minister, author, leader of Wilmington Ten, led Commission for Racial Justice of the United Church of Christ, campaigned against environmental racism, executive director of NAACP, national director of Million Man March
Fred Hampton 1948 1969  United States NAACP youth leader and Black Panther activist, organizer, speaker
Richard C Boone 1937  United States Civil Rights activist SCLC, Chaplain, Major US Army
Sylvia Rivera 1951 2002  United States Gay liberation and transgender rights activist, STAR house co-founder
Cedric Prakash 1951  India Jesuit Priest, Human Rights Activist, Organizer, Journalist, and Speaker
Judy Shepard 1952  United States gay rights activist, public speaker
Barbara May Cameron 1954 2002  United States advocate for the rights of Native Americans, lesbians, and women
Bobby Sands 1954 1981  United Kingdom hunger striker for better conditions for Irish prisoners in British prisons
Al Sharpton 1954  United States clergyman, activist, media
Will Roscoe 1955  United States gay rights activist
Rigoberta Menchú 1959  Guatemala indigenous rights leader, co-founder of Nobel Women's Initiative
Eulalie Nibizi 1960  Burundi Human rights activist, trade unionist
Steven Goldstein 1962  United States gay rights advocate, political activist
Chee Soon Juan 1962  Singapore politician, former political prisoner, democracy and human rights activist
Manasi Pradhan 1962  India women's rights activist, founder of Honour for Women National Campaign
Céline Narmadji 1964  Chad human and women's rights activist, active in improving conditions for the local population
Deborah Parker 1970  United States Indigenous rights and women's rights activist who was critical in ensuring the passage of the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013[6][7]
Mariela Belski 1971  Argentina Executive Director, Amnesty International Argentina
Gloria Casarez 1971 2014  United States Latina lesbian civil rights leader and LGBT activist in Philadelphia
Harish Iyer 1979  India gender and sexuality rights activist, campaigner against child sexual abuse and for animal rights
Edvin Kanka Ćudić 1988  Bosnia and Herzegovina human rights activist, founder and coordinator of UDIK in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Malala Yousafzai 1997  Pakistan advocate for education for girls, 2014 Nobel Peace Prize laureate

See also

References
  1. Daggett, Windsor (1920). A Down-East Yankee From the District of Maine. Portland, Maine: A.J. Huston. p. 30.
  2. Sears, Donald A. (1978). John Neal. Boston, Massachusetts: Twayne Publishers. p. 98. ISBN 080-5-7723-08.
  3. O'Neil, Tim (2010-06-20). "A look back: Homer G. Phillips was a leader among blacks in St. Louis". The St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Archived from the original on March 24, 2021.
  4. "The Nobel Peace Prize 1960". Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 2008-11-12.
  5. Lundestad, Geir (2001-03-15). "The Nobel Peace Prize, 1901–2000". Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 2011-10-06.
  6. Lane, Temryss MacLean (2018). "The frontline of refusal: indigenous women warriors of standing rock". International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education. Routledge (published January 15, 2018). 31 (3): 209. doi:10.1080/09518398.2017.1401151. eISSN 1366-5898. ISSN 0951-8398. S2CID 149347362. Her courage in sharing her personal story of sexual violence with congress was vital in the passing of the 2013 Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). [...] Her dignified poise and presence was pivotal and necessary to pass the tribal provisions that protect Native women and their communities in the VAWA.
  7. Nichols, John (May 24, 2016). "The Democratic Platform Committee Now Has a Progressive Majority. Thanks, Bernie Sanders". Democrats. The Nation. Katrina vanden Heuvel. ISSN 0027-8378. Archived from the original on June 3, 2018. Retrieved June 3, 2018. The Sanders selections are all noted progressives: [...] Native American activist and former Tulalip Tribes Vice Chair Deborah Parker (a key advocate for reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act) [...].

See each individual for their references.

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