The Civil Rights Movement is one of the most important periods in American history and has created a massively positive impact in the world. During the movement’s span of time, there have been many activists that made many generational contributions and accomplishments.
A few civil rights activists like Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, and Malcolm X are widely recognized and appreciated for their contributions to the movement, but there are many significant activists that aren’t given the credit they deserve.
Dorothy Height is famously known as the godmother of the civil rights movement. Throughout Dorothy’s life, she developed education and training programs at Columbia University and from 1947 to 1956 for African American women. She became the president of their sorority during that timespan.
Height was an advocate for helping African American women fight against unemployment and inequality, and later became the president of the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years. After her career during the civil rights movement, Dorothy has won multiple awards including the Presidential Citizens Medal, two Congressional Black Caucus awards, and has been inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1993.
Julian Bond was a politician and civil rights activist who was also a former member of Congress. In his early life, he was a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia and established the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. He became one of eleven African Americans that served four terms in Georgia as the House of Representative leader and he later served a six year term in the Georgia State Senate.
While in Congress, he played a part in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In the process, he gave the constitutional right for American Americans to vote. After being in Congress, he was the chairman of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for twelve years from 1998 to 2010.
Ida B. Wells was an investigative journalist and one of the earliest leaders of the civil rights movement. She is widely regarded as one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and actively fought for equality for African Americans and women’s rights.
In her early life, she was born into slavery and later became a teacher in Memphis, Tennessee where she would write for the Free Speech and Headlight newspaper. It catapulted her investigative journalism career by publicly speaking about her beliefs during the civil rights movement and she became of the most courageous and powerful speakers during that time period.
Nearly 90 years after her death in 1931, she posthumously won a Pulitzer Prize special citation for her contributions to speaking out against violence and prejudice during the movement.
James Meredith was a United States Air Force veteran who became a writer and activist during the civil rights movement. He is most famously known for becoming the first African American that attended the University of Mississippi. He fought against the riots at the University of Mississippi in 1962 and in June of 1966, Meredith was shot and wounded by a white salesman during a march while encouraging African Americans to vote.
After the injury, he followed his degree in political science and became a politician and domestic adviser and influenced more than 4,000 African Americans to vote. His legacy during the civil rights movement lives on as he fought for equal educational opportunities.
Pauli Murray was a civil rights activist who was famous for fighting against gender, racial, and sex discrimination during the civil rights movement. She attended Howard University Law school and was the only African American woman and became the first African American to earn a J.S.D.
After she was denied at Harvard, she advocated for civil and women’s rights and later became the co-founder of the National Organization for Women. She also became the first African American woman to become an episcopal priest. Many years later, the historical site called the Pauli Murray Center was built and located in Durham, North Carolina.
