John Elliott Churchville is a civil rights activist and black nationalist who founded Philadelphia’s Freedom Library Community Project, which would become the Freedom Library Day School. Born in Philadelphia in 1941, Churchville attended Simon Gratz High School, and, on graduation, began studying music education at … Read MoreJohn Churchville (1941- )
Maxwell Curtis Stanford, Jr., known since 1970 as Muhammad Ahmad, is a civil rights activist and was a founder of the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), a black power organization active during the 1960s. Born on July 31, 1941 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he graduated from West … Read MoreMaxwell Curtis Stanford Jr. (a.k.a. Muhammad Ahmad) (1941- )
The Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) was an umbrella organization that united several groups involved in the civil rights campaign in Mississippi between 1963 and 1965. Serving as the organization behind the civil rights movement, COFO was involved in voter registration and public accommodations desegregation … Read MoreCouncil of Federated Organizations (1962-1965)
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was created on January 10-11, 1957, when sixty black ministers and civil rights leaders met in Atlanta, Georgia in an effort to replicate the successful strategy and tactics of the recently concluded Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott. Rev. Martin Luther … Read MoreSouthern Christian Leadership Conference (1957- )
Zenzile Miriam Makeba, world renowned South African singer, was born in Johannesburg on March 4, 1932. She studied music for eight years at the Kilmerton Training Institute in Pretoria, South Africa and toured with amateur groups before beginning her professional career in 1954 with the … Read MoreMiriam Makeba (1932-2008)
Charles Sherrod was a key civil rights leader in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) whose leadership led to the Albany Movement in southwest Georgia. Born in extreme poverty to his fourteen-year old mother in 1937 in Surry, Virginia, he worked to help support six … Read MoreCharles Sherrod (1937 – 2022)
Ruby Doris Smith Robinson, born in Atlanta, Georgia on April 25, 1942, was a civil rights leader. Robinson, the second oldest of seven children born to Alice and John T. Smith, was raised in Atlanta’s black middleclass neighborhood of Summerhill. She graduated from Price High … Read MoreRuby Doris Smith Robinson (1942-1967)
The Orangeburg Massacre took place in Orangeburg, South Carolina at South Carolina State University on February 8, 1968. This horrific incident ended with three young men killed, Samuel Hammond, Henry Smith, and Delano Middleton, and twenty-seven other students wounded. It was the worst example of … Read MoreOrangeburg Massacre (1968)
Marion Barry Jr., a civil rights activist and later three term mayor of Washington, D.C., was born on March 6, 1936, in Itta Bena, Mississippi. His parents, Marion Barry and Mattie Barry, were sharecroppers; the family lived in relative poverty. When Marion was eight years … Read MoreMarion Barry, Jr. (1936-2014)
Horace Julian Bond was a scholar, poet, former legislator, and activist in the American Civil Rights Movement. Julian Bond, as he came to be known, was born on January 14, 1940, in Nashville, Tennessee to Julia Washington Bond and Horace Mann Bond, an educator who … Read MoreJulian Bond (1940-2015)
