Black History Month Figures/Movements

"She is an internationally recognized Puerto Rican environmental/climate justice leader of African and Indigenous ancestry, born and raised in New York City. She is co-chair of the Climate Justice Alliance, a national frontline led organization and Executive Director of UPROSE, Brooklyn's oldest Latino community-based organization. She was the 1st Latina Chair of the USEPA National Environmental Justice Advisory Council and opening speaker for the first White House Council on Environmental Quality Forum on Environmental Justice under President Obama."

"In 2013, three radical Black organizers — Alicia Garza, Patrisse Khan-Cullors, and Opal Tometi — created a Black-centered political will and movement building project. It was in response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer, George Zimmerman. The project is now a member-led global network of more than 40 chapters. Our members organize and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes. "

"She was an educator and civil rights and women's rights activist. President of the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years, working with Harlem’s Young Women's Christian Association for 33 years, and serving as National President of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. for 11 years, she was one of the most influential women in the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. She worked with Martin Luther King Jr., A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young, John Lewis and James Farmer—sometimes called the ""Big Six"" of the Civil Rights Movement—on different campaigns and initiatives. "

"After fleeing political persecution in Ghana, he founded Black History Month in the UK in 1987. For over 30 years, the month of October has been set aside for various functions to highlight Black History Month, including talk shows and food festivals across the country. "

This was a revolutionary movement that occurred in the 1960s and 1970s. Emphasized racial pride, economic empowerment, and the creation of political and cultural institutions. During this era, there was a rise in the demand for black history courses, a greater embrace of African culture, and a spread of raw artistic expression displaying the realities of African Americans.

"The common goal of [all] Afro-Americans is respect as human beings, the God-given right to be a human being. You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it. The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. If you have no critics you’ll have no success. You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom."

"The first African American to address the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1868, he appeared to have won a special election to succeed the late James Mann, whose district encompassed New Orleans—a victory that would have made him the first African American to serve in Congress. But, he was denied his seat by the House."

"Tremendous amounts of talent are lost to our society just because that talent wears a skirt." First African-American to earn election to Congress, where she worked on the Education and Labor Committee and helped form the Black Caucus. In 1972, she made history again by becoming the first black woman of a major party to run for a presidential nomination. After serving seven terms in the House, she retired from office to become a teacher and public speaker. She is the author of two books, Unbought and Unbossed (1970) and The Good Fight (1973).

Created and managed by Nikole Hannah-Jones, this is an ongoing initiative from The New York Times Magazine that began in August 2019, the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative. Due to the popularity of the Project there is now an online curriculum for educators, panels to discuss race across the country and essays, there are even plans in the works for a series of children books.

This was a political organization founded in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in the wake of the assassination of black nationalist Malcolm X and after police in San Francisco shot and killed an unarmed black teen named Matthew Johnson. Their goal was to get more African Americans elected to political office. They also started a number of popular community social programs, including free breakfast programs for school children and free health clinics in 13 African American communities across the United States.

"This is a comfortable digital space for the black community to congregate to discuss the issues and narratives that are often absent from the national conversation. But there’s more, much more, to this than social justice activism. It is free therapy, a place to form friendships, be shady, spill tea, and set the bar for who gets invited to the BBQ. "

She is a civil rights lawyer and advocate, legal scholar and author of the New York Times best seller “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.” The book helped to start a national debate about the crisis of mass incarceration in the United States and inspired racial-justice organizing and advocacy efforts nationwide.

"The fearless cook who secretly funded the Civil Rights Movement. She organized black women to cook without raising suspicions of their white employers, and poured the proceeds into an alternative transportation system for Montgomery bus boycotters."

"The first of these two women was an American educator and civil rights advocate. She was the wife of Malcolm X. Left with the responsibility of raising six daughters as a single mother, she pursued higher education, and went to work at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, New York. The second of these two women was an American author, activist, civil rights leader, and the wife of another civil rights leader. She played a prominent role in the years after MLK’s assignation in 1968 when she took on the leadership of the struggle for racial equality herself and became active in the Women's Movement. "

Her career has been marked by history-making campaigns and a relentless determination to advance a political agenda focused on women and girls and breaking cycles of poverty and violence. She is the first African American woman to represent Massachusetts in Congress. Echoing her courage and determination, Pressley recently admitted that she suffered from alopecia and bravely confronted the female stereotype that baldness is not beautiful. Her decision to forego wigs led to a groundswell of support from many and particularly women who suffer from the same disease.

"She stood at the center of New York City's gay liberation movement for nearly 25 years. But LGBTQ rights weren't her only cause. She was on the front lines of protests against oppressive policing. She helped found one of the country's first safe spaces for transgender and homeless youth. And she advocated tirelessly on behalf of sex workers, prisoners and people with HIV/AIDS. Learn more about her life in a Netflix documentary."

"The first African-American congresswoman to come from the deep South and the first woman ever elected to the Texas Senate (1966). She won election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1972. As a member of the House Judiciary Committee, she was thrust into the national spotlight during the Watergate scandal. In 1994, President Bill Clinton appointed her to head up the Commission on Immigration Reform. He also honored her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom."

"In 2016, she became the first Somali-American, Muslim legislator in the United States. In 2018, she was elected to the Congress representing the 5th Congressional District of Minnesota. Upon her first three months in office, she introduced the No Ban Act, combating Donald Trump’s xenophobic Muslim Ban, she also co-sponsored the Yemen War Powers Resolution that would end U.S. involvement in the war in Yemen, she pushed to extend DED status for the Liberian community in Minnesota, joined the Black Maternal Health Caucus as a founding member and she has consistently worked to show that the American Dream is for everyone. "

"With the people, for the people, by the people. I crack up when I hear it; I say, with the handful, for the handful, by the handful, cause that's what really happens." She was an African-American civil rights activist who led voting drives. In 1964, she co-founded and ran for Congress as a member of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, drawing national attention to their cause at that year's Democratic Convention.

In 1920, she took some schoolchildren to meet the train when Republican Warren G. Harding was campaigning for the presidency. After seeing him shake hands only with the white children, she became a Democrat. She was one of the few African American suffragists in Texas. A church and community leader, she devoted her life to the work of gaining equal rights for blacks and women. When she tried to vote in the early 1920s, she discovered that, by law, Black people could not vote in primaries. To change this, she became an early member of the Houston branch of the NAACP to fight for civil rights. She went on to become the first black democrat Committee woman in Texas and was named to the Texas Women's Hall of Fame in 1984.