Black Activists You Should Know

How do you celebrate #BlackHistoryMonth? While we celebrate the incredible achievements of Black Americans year-round, we can take time during February to critically examine the links between oppression and sexual violence and what we can do about them. For #BlackHistoryMonth this year, we have identified 31 influential activists that have had an immense impact in our communities and continue to advocate for racial equity in all spaces.

1. David Walker (1796-1830): In the 1820’s, Walker was a leader in Boston’s Black community and the growing abolitionist movement. He published An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World, a call for black unity and a fight against slavery. The Appeal brought attention to the abuses and inequities of slavery and the responsibility of individuals to act according to religious and political principles.
2. Ida B. Wells (1862-1931): Wells was an American investigative journalist, educator, and early leader in the civil rights movement. She was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Born into slavery, she dedicated her life to combating prejudice and violence, and the fight for African American equality, especially that of women. In 2020, Wells was posthumously honored with a Pulitzer Prize special citation “[f]or her outstanding and courageous reporting on the horrific and vicious violence against African Americans during the era of lynching.”
3. Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897): After escaping slavery, Jacobs wrote about her experience of abuse at the hands of her captors. “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” shed light on the sexual violence experienced by enslaved Black women.
4. Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954): A graduate of Oberlin College, Terrell used her status as a member of the upper-class Black community to promote the advancement of her people through activism and education. She co-founded the National Association of Colored Women and the NAACP.
5. Pauli Murray (1910-1985): was an author, lawyer, women’s rights activist, the first Black person to earn a Doctor of the Science of Law degree from Yale, and the first Black woman to be ordained an Episcopal priest. Murray co-founded the Congress of Racial Equality and the National Organization for Women (1966) alongside many noted feminists of the time and was appointed to President Kennedy’s Committee on Civil and Political Rights. Pauli has been described as a transgender male but was “before his/their time” aka the term trans did not exist and she was denied hormone treatment.
6. Bayard Rustin (1912-1987): Rustin is credited with organizing many mass civil rights demonstrations including 1957’s Prayer Pilgrimage to Freedom and 1963’s famous March on Washington. Rustin was openly gay, a taboo fact at the time that did not deter Martin Luther King, Jr. from valuing Rustin as an important advisor.
7. Jo Ann Robinson (1912-1992): As a professor at Alabama State College and president of Montgomery’s Women’s Political Council, Robinson made desegregating the city’s buses her priority. She was a prominent leader behind the scenes of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), largely contributing to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1956 ruling that segregated buses were unconstitutional.
8. Ella Baker (1903-1986): Baker was a field secretary and a branch director for the NAACP and co-founded an organization that raised money to fight Jim Crow laws. But her passion was the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which she founded to prioritize nonviolent protest. She also helped to organize the 1961 Freedom Rides and aided in registering Black voters.
9. Dorothy Height (1912-2010): after becoming president of the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW), Height served in the position for 40 years, making her one of the most trusted and leading voices for Black women during the civil rights movement.
10. Claudia Jones (1915-1964): A journalist in the 1960’s, Jones worked to center Black women in progressive politics. She brought attention to the unique injustices faced by Black women and brought Black women’s voices and experiences to the forefront of political conversations.
11. Whitney Young (1921-1971): beginning in 1961, Young, a World War II veteran, was the executive director of the National Urban League for 10 years, where he developed relationships with white politicians to influence public policy to benefit the Black poor and working class.
12. Julian Bond (1940-2015): while a student at Morehouse College, Bond co-founded the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee (SNCC) alongside John Lewis. Bond was a member of the Georgia General Assembly for 20 years and elected to the Georgia House of Representatives in 1965. He was also the co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center and chairman of the NAACP.
13. John Lewis (1940-2020): the man who coined the term “good trouble”—Lewis was a pillar for social justice and a staunch advocate for nonviolent civil rights demonstrations. Dubbed one of the “Big 6” of the civil rights movement (the others include Martin Luther King Jr, A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins, James Farmer and Whitney Young), Lewis was the youngest speaker and organizer of the March on Washington. He also led the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama and the crossing of Edmund Pettus Bridge which is known as “Bloody Sunday,” as state troopers brutally attacked marchers. Lewis suffered a fractured skull, and the events influenced the passing of the Voting Rights Act. In 1986, he was elected to the House of Representatives in Georgia’s 5th district, which he held until his death in 2020. The politician was also a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded to him by Barack Obama in 2011.
14. Ernestine Eckstein (1941-1992): as a Black woman and a lesbian, Eckstein was a leading supporter of both civil and LGBTQ rights in the 1960s and 70s. She worked with the NAACP and was a member of CORE, but her most influential position was as vice president of the New York chapter of Daughters of Bilitis, which was the first center solely for lesbians in NYC. Eckstein also participated in the earliest picket line protests for gay rights in the country.
15. Marsha P. Johnson (1945-1992): Marsha “Pay It No Mind” Johnson is known as a leader of the gay liberation movement. She was part of an uprising after members of the LGBTQ community were harassed at the Stonewall Inn by members of the NYPD in 1969. Johnson was a successful drag queen and used her influence to lift up others, creating the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) in 1970, an organization that worked to find housing for homeless transgender youth.
16. Phill Wilson: (1986-) after being diagnosed with HIV in 1987 and seeing his partner die of AIDS just two years later, Wilson made it his mission to spread awareness and education of the disease during a time where very little was known. Wilson founded the Black AIDS Institute in 1999 to ensure education surrounding prevention and treatment would reach communities in need through policy. In 2010, Barack Obama appointed Wilson to his President’s Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA). Wilson retired from his post as president and CEO of the Black AIDS Institute in 2018.
17. W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963): Co-founder of NAACP, Du Bois advocated for protests and challenging of the societal norms that kept Black Americans segregated from their white counterparts.
18. Claudette Colvin: (1939-): nine months before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, then 15-year-old Colvin did the same. On March 2, 1955, Colvin was taking the bus home from high school when the driver ordered her to give up her seat. She refused, saying she paid her fare, and it was her constitutional right, but was then arrested by two police officers. Colvin later became the main witness in the federal lawsuit Browder v. Gayle, which ended segregation on public transportation in Alabama.
19. A. Philip Randolph (1889-1979): Randolph created the first successful Black trade union and led them to (reluctant) acceptance into the American Federation of Labor. He vowed to President Roosevelt that he’d lead thousands in a protest in Wash., D.C. if they didn’t receive equal treatment, resulting in FDR signing an executive order that banned discrimination in defense industries and at the federal level. Randolph also founded the League for Nonviolent Civil Disobedience Against Military Segregation, which inspired President Harry Truman to sign an executive order that forbade segregation in the military. He was also a director for 1963’s March on Washington.
20. Michelle Alexander (1967-): With the publication of her 2010 bestselling book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Alexander helped to change the way race and criminal justice were discussed in America. She posited that mass incarceration and the disproportionate arrest of Black people were new, legal ways to keep segregation and inequality alive. Alexander is also a Stanford graduate, civil rights lawyer, educator, and was director of the Racial Justice Project for the ACLU of Northern California. She is currently a visiting professor at Union Theological Seminary.
21. Tarana Burke (1973-): Burke founded the #MeToo movement in 2006 to address the inequity of resources for marginalized women experiencing violence. The hashtag has shed light on the epidemic of sexual violence and created a community of survivors around the world. Tarana was also named 2017 Time Magazine’s Person of the Year.
22. Lateefah Simon (1977-): Simon earned national recognition as a civil rights advocate since becoming the youngest person ever to receive the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Award in 2003. After the tragic police killing of Oscar Grant, Simon was elected to the Bay Area Rapid Transit Board of Directors and has served as president. In this position, she influences policy through the lens of racial justice. Simon was also executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area and led San Francisco’s reentry anti-recidivism youth services division under then District Attorney, Kamala Harris.
23. James Rucker: Rucker co-founded Color of Change in 2005 alongside CNN contributor Van Jones in order to provide relief to victims of Hurricane Katrina. In the years since, Color of Change has evolved into a prominent online civil rights organization that serves as a resource for the Black community to mobilize government and corporations to fight against injustice. Rucker is also the board chair of The Leadership Conference Education Fund and serves on the board of the Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund and MoveOn.org
24. Kristen Clarke (1975-):  In 2022, President Biden nominated Clarke to be the first Black woman to lead the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. She is a former member of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., and president and executive director of the National Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Throughout her career she’s advocated for fair housing, voting rights, gender equality, and more on behalf of Black Americans.
25. Nekima Levy Armstrong (1976-): Armstrong is a civil rights attorney, former president of Minneapolis’ NAACP chapter, and founder of the Racial Justice Network, a multi-racial organization which is “committed to fighting for racial justice and building bridges across racial, social, and economic lines,” according to its website. Armstrong was one the activists instrumental in organizing the country’s first protests in George Floyd’s name following his murder by the hands of former police officer, Derek Chauvin.
26. Brittany Packnett Cunningham (1984-): As a social justice leader, educator, and organizer, Cunningham was one of the key members of the Ferguson Uprising in response to the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014. She was a part of the Ferguson Commission, President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing and is founder of social impact firm Love & Power Works.
27. The Combahee River Collective: This group of Black, feminist lesbians laid the groundwork for intersectional feminism. Their protests in the 1970’s in Boston brought attention to the otherwise ignored violence toward Black women.
28. Anita Hill (1956-): Nearly three decades before #MeToo, Hill testified before an all-white, all-male Senate Judiciary Committee about the sexual harassment she faced from then-nominee Clarence Thomas. Her brave testimony paved the way for other survivors to speak out against workplace abuse and led to new legislation protecting the rights of people who have experienced harassment.
29. Elma Lewis (1921-2004): Lewis was an arts educator and the founder of the National Center of Afro-American Artists and The Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts.  She had an extraordinary influence on art and culture in the Boston community, where she lived and taught throughout her whole life.
30. Audre Lorde (1934- 1992): Lorde was a writer, womanist, feminist, professor and civil rights activist. She was a prominent member of the women’s and LGBTQ rights movements, and gave voice to the intersectionality of oppression long before it was in the conversation.
31. Constance Baker Motley (1921- 2005): Motley was the first African-American woman federal judge and a civil rights lawyer before her appointment. At her confirmation hearing, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said that she stands on the shoulders and influence of Judge Motley.

Let us know who else we should add to our list! Contact communications [at] barcc.org with your suggestions.