Before You Read From Resistance to Civil Government
While Malcolm X, Rosa Parks and of course Martin Luther King Jr. are all well-known leaders in America's ceremonious rights movement, the accomplishments of that era were the piece of work of more than just a few individuals. Thousands marched, organized, educated and more to build a amend society, and as a result, some leaders vicious by the wayside of many of today'southward history books. These are just some of the amazing civil rights leaders y'all may have never learned almost.
Claudette Colvin
Although Rosa Parks may be famous for refusing to give up her seat for a white man, Claudette Colvin stood her ground nine months earlier — and at the historic period of 15 rather than 42. She and iii of her friends were sitting in a row when a white woman boarded the bus, and the driver demanded that all four of them move. Iii did. Claudette didn't.
She explained that it was her constitutional right to sit there. "Information technology felt," Colvin later explained, "every bit though Harriet Tubman's easily were pushing me downward on i shoulder and Sojourner Truth's easily were pushing me downward on the other shoulder."
Colvin's books were knocked from her hands, and she was manhandled off the omnibus and later placed in jail before beingness bailed out by her parents. The National Clan for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) considered promoting her as a key figure in the fight against segregation, just it ultimately chose not to because she was a teenager. She also soon became pregnant, which organizers feared would distract from the broader struggle.
All the same, along with Aurelia S. Browder, Susie McDonald and Mary Louise Smith, Colvin became one of 4 plaintiffs in the case of Browder vs. Gayle, which saw Montgomery, Alabama's bus policies thrown out as unconstitutional. Colvin moved to New York City ii years afterwards and became a nurse's aide.
While Martin Luther King Jr. was the face of the ceremonious rights rallies of the '60s, Bayard Rustin was the homo behind the scenes who organized them. Raised by his teenage female parent and Quaker grandparents, he was drawn to the Immature Communists League while attending New York's City College during the 1930 because of their support for racial equality. However, he left when the Communist Party shifted abroad from civil rights work after 1941. He then joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), co-founded the Congress of Racial Equality (Core) and became an active campaigner for civil rights.
Rustin'southward accomplishments are nearly as well numerous to list. He participated in CORE'south Journey of Reconciliation, the predecessor to the afterwards Freedom Rides that ended bussing segregation, and concluded up on a chain gang as a event. He used that experience to publish several paper manufactures that led to the reform of such gangs. In 1948, he went to India to see Mahatma Gandhi'southward nonviolent practices in action, and he after traveled to West Africa to piece of work with different colonial independence movements. He became a close advisor to Martin Luther King and played an instrumental role in everything from 1963's March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom to helping to typhoon King's Memoir, Step Toward Freedom.
Rustin became a target of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI early because of his communist ties, and his 1953 confidence on charges of homosexual activeness caused tension even with other civil rights leaders. Nonetheless, Rustin continued his work, and in the 1980s, he finally opened up about his sexuality. He played a key role in getting the NAACP to take action against the AIDS crisis. He died in 1987.
Shirley Chisholm
Born to immigrant parents from British Guiana and Barbados, Shirley Chisholm graduated from Brooklyn College in 1946. She was an education consultant for New York Urban center's daycare organization and was active in the NAACP before representing Brooklyn in the New York'south state legislature from 1964 to 1968. She and then accomplished success on the national stage by winning ballot to the House of Representatives, where she remained until 1981. She was an agog opponent of the Vietnam State of war and a supporter of abortion rights and the Equal Rights Amendment.
Chisholm was also both the first Black person and first adult female to run for the nomination of a major political party in the United States. Though she only received 152 delegate votes at the 1972 Democratic National Convention, her run nevertheless foreshadowed even greater political accomplishments for women and people of color in the years and decades to come up.
Benjamin Mays
Martin Luther King Jr. in one case described Benjamin Mays as his "spiritual mentor." Born in 1894 Hezekiah and Louvenia Carter, who were former slaves, Mays grew upward to get a doctorate from the University of Chicago and was ordained every bit a Baptist minister. He later became president of Morehouse College.
While at Morehouse, Mays delivered weekly addresses at the college'due south chapel, and it was these speeches that first drew a young Martin Luther Rex Jr. to him. King began meeting with Mays to discuss theology and world affairs later on the weekly addresses, and Mays began to accept Dominicus dinners with the Rex family unit.
Mays went on to be one of King's well-nigh prominent supporters. When mass arrests led King'due south male parent to ask him to step downward as a leader in the Montgomery bus boycott, Mays vocally supported King'due south decision non to practice and then. He gave the benediction at the March on Washington for Jobs and Liberty in 1963. Even after King's assassination, Mays continued to fight for civil rights and became the first Black president of the Atlanta Board of Instruction.
Nannie Helen Burroughs
Like Mays, Nannie Helen Burroughs' parents had experienced the horrors of slavery firsthand. After her father died, she and her female parent moved to Washington D.C. Burroughs performed well in school, merely despite her success, she was unable to find a task equally a public school instructor. Equally a result, she decided to plant her own schoolhouse for Black American women without the means to pay for an education.
Some civil rights leaders of the time, such as Booker T. Washington, doubted Burroughs' power to raise money for the school. Because of donations from local black women and their families, however, Burroughs was nevertheless successful, and the National Trade and Professional person School for Women and Girls (NTPSG) in 1909 with the motto, "We specialize in the wholly impossible." At historic period 26, Burroughs was the first president.
The NTPSG was unusual in that it combined a classical education along with vocational skills meant to help blackness women find jobs in mod society. Blackness history was also a required course, a largely unprecedented move for the time. While the original schoolhouse but consisted of a small-scale farmhouse, in 1928, it grew to include a larger building with 12 classrooms and boosted facilities. Burroughs died in 1961, but her efforts to provide education and opportunity regardless of race or gender paved the way for further efforts to secure ceremonious rights.
Source: https://www.reference.com/history/influential-civil-rights-leaders-fba3aa8663d7f466?utm_content=params%3Ao%3D740005%26ad%3DdirN%26qo%3DserpIndex
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