You Gotta Know These African-American Civil Rights Leaders

Leader of the Pan-African movement and the Black Power movement. He replaced John Lewis as chair of SNCC; under his leadership, SNCC shifted from a policy of nonviolence to a more militant approach. He also served as “honorary Prime Minister” of the Black Panther Party. He ended up changing his name and moving to Guinea.

Democratic politician from New York who achieved a number of firsts. In 1968, she was the first black woman elected to Congress. In 1972, she became both the first black major-party presidential candidate and the first woman to run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.

The NAACP’s field secretary for Mississippi. He advocated ending segregation at the University of Mississippi; after Brown v. Board of Education ruled that segregated public schools were unconstitutional, he applied to law school there, but was rejected because he was black. In 1963, he was assassinated by Byron De La Beckwith, a member of the white supremacist network White Citizens’ Councils.

Civil rights activist and politician who began as a protégé of Martin Luther King, Jr. He helped organize Operation Breadbasket, a department of the SCLC focused on economic issues, and worked on the Poor People’s Campaign after King’s assassination, but clashed with King’s successor, Ralph Abernathy. He founded the civil rights organizations Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity) and the National Rainbow Coalition. He also ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988.

Baptist minister and the most prominent leader of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and ’60s. He delivered the “I Have a Dream” speech at the 1963 March on Washington. As leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), he joined with members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to organize the Selma-to-Montgomery marches. His leadership of the Poor People’s Campaign was cut short in 1968 when James Earl Ray assassinated him at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.

Became the first African-American person admitted to the University of Mississippi in 1962. In 1966, he began the March Against Fear, planning to walk from Memphis to Jackson. On the second day, he was wounded by a sniper; thereafter, thousands of other civil rights activists completed the march in his name.

Arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, disobeying driver James F. Blake’s order to move to the “colored section” of the bus. She collaborated with Edgar Nixon and other leaders of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) to organize the Montgomery bus boycott, which lasted from December 1955 (four days after her arrest) until December 1956.

A Baptist minister and community leader from New York City. He began his activism career working under Jesse Jackson as part of Operation Breadbasket. He has been at the center of many controversies. In 1987, he helped handle publicity for Tawana Brawley, who falsely accused four white men of having raped her. He was also accused of making anti-Semitic remarks during the 1991 Crown Heights riot.

An early investigative journalist and civil rights leader who helped found the NAACP. In the 1890s she investigated lynching, arguing that it was a form of controlling black communities rather than retribution for criminal acts. She documented the results of her research in pamphlets such as Southern Horrors and The Red Record.

A black Muslim civil rights activist who changed his name upon converting to the Nation of Islam. He later repudiated the Nation of Islam and became a mainstream Sunni Muslim, completing the hajj in 1964. He was known for rejecting nonviolent activism, arguing in his speech “The Ballot or the Bullet” that violence might be necessary if the government continued to suppress the rights of African Americans. In 1965, he was assassinated while preparing to give a speech at the Audubon Ballroom.