Civil Rights

🇺🇸Barack Obama

Politics

b. 1961

"When it comes to our foreign policy, you seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s, just like the social policies of the 1950s and the economic policies of the 1920s."

🇺🇸Eldridge Cleaver

Politics

1935–1998

"Americans think of themselves collectively as a huge rescue squad on twenty-four-hour call to any spot on the globe where dispute and conflict may erupt."

🇺🇸James Forman

Social Activism

1928–2005

"Black people in this country must understand that we are the vanguard force. We shall liberate all the people in the United States, and we will be instrumental in the liberation of colored people the world around."

🇺🇸Thurgood Marshall

Law

1908–1993

"here's no difference between a white snake and a black snake. They'll both bite."

🇺🇸Rosa Parks

Social Activism

1913–2005

"From my upbringing and the Bible I learned people should stand up for rights just as the children of Israel stood up to the Pharaoh."

🇺🇸Coretta Scott King

Social Activism

1927–2006

"Coretta Scott King – slideshow by LIFE magazine"

🇺🇸Dick Gregory

Entertainment

1932–2017

"I never learned hate at home, or shame. I had to go to school for that."

🇺🇸Mary Church Terrell

Social Activism

1863–1954

"I arose and said, As a colored woman, I hope this association will include in the resolution the injustices of various kinds of which colored people are the victims."  p. 143"

🇺🇸Faith Ringgold

Art

feminist art

1930–2024

"…Quilting was a method of artistic expression that could also be used to cover people, to keep them warm, but which also put designs together to make them beautiful…"

🇺🇸John Lewis

Social Activism

1940–2020

"I have been in some kind of fight – for freedom, equality, basic human rights – for nearly my entire life. I have never faced a fight quite like the one I have now."

🇺🇸Pauli Murray

Social Activism

1910–1985

"This society is not hospitable to persons of color, women or left-handed people."

🇺🇸Jesse Jackson

Politics

civil rights movement

1941–2026

"When we divide, we cannot win. We must find common ground as the basis for survival and development and change, and growth."