Ralph Abernathy (1926–1990) was a leader of the Civil Rights Movement and a close friend to Martin Luther King, Jr. After King's death, Abernathy assumed leadership of the Southern Christian...

Elaine Brown (1943–) is a writer, singer, and political activist who served as Chairperson of the Black Panther Party from 1974 to 1977.In 1974, Elaine Brown became the second-ranking member of t...

Stokely Carmichael (1941–1998) was a civil rights activist and national chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1966 and 1967. He is credited with popularizing the ter...

James Chaney (1943–1964) was an African-American volunteer in the "Freedom Summer" voter registration drives. In August 1964, Chaney and two white volunteers, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schw...

Kathleen Cleaver (1945–) was a secretary for the New York branch of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. She left the organization in 1967 after meeting Eldridge Cleaver, the Minister o...

Fannie Lou Hamer (1917–1977) was a sharecropper who, in 1964, became the key delegate for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.In early August 1964, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party h...

Bobby Hutton (1950–1968) was a mere 16 years old when he became the first person recruited to the Black Panther Party for Self Defense.In April 1968, 17-year-old Hutton was killed in a shootout b...

Maynard Jackson (1938–2003) was the first African American to be elected mayor of Atlanta, Georgia, and the first Black mayor of any major southern city.Elected mayor in 1973, Maynard Jackson wor...

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) was the 36th president of the United States, assuming the office after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963. Prior to serving as Kenn...

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) was the 35th president of the United States. Elected in 1960 at the age of 43, he became the youngest person ever to be voted into the White House. Kennedy served...

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) was the young pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama who rose to prominence in the movement for civil rights. He remains to this day a s...

Viola Liuzzo (1925–1965) was a white civil rights activist from Detroit, Michigan. A wife and a mother of five, Liuzzo was murdered by Klansmen after the 1965 voting rights march in Selma, Alabam...

Malcolm X (1925–1965) was a Black leader who, as a key spokesman for the Nation of Islam, epitomized the "Black Power" philosophy. By the early 1960s, he had grown frustrated with the nonvio...

Thurgood Marshall (1908–1993) was a student of Charles Houston, special counsel to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He followed in his mentor's footste...

James Meredith (1933–) was a student at the all-Black Jackson State College who became the first Black student to enroll at the all-white University of Mississippi.In September 1962, the National...

Bob Moses (1935– ) was a Harlem-born member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the early 1960s. Moses spent four years working on voter registration in Mississippi and pla...

Huey P. Newton (1942–1989) was one of the founders of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense.Newton was the child of Black migrants who had left the Jim Crow South in the early 1950s in search...

Richard M. Nixon (1913–1994) was a Republican senator from California and the 37th President of the United States. Prior to his presidency, he also served as Dwight Eisenhower's vice president fr...

Bobby Seale (1937–) is one of the founders of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense.In the early 1960s, Bobby Seale attended Oakland's Merritt College, where he studied engineering and politic...

George C. Wallace (1919–1998) was a pro-segregation Democrat elected governor of Alabama in 1962, 1970, 1974, and 1982. He also ran for President of the United States as a Democratic candidate in...