Thurgood Marshall is best known for his achievements in the courts and for arguing the landmark 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. WHO IS THURGOOD? Thurgood Marshall was an influential figure in American history, particularly known for his significant contributions to the civil rights movement and the legal field. He was born on July 2, 1908, in Baltimore, Maryland, and passed away on January 24, 1993, in Washington, D.C. Marshall graduated from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania in 1930 and then pursued a law degree at Howard University School of Law, where he excelled academically. Throughout his education,

Looking back on history, many leaders have left an impression on millions of people. Here are 9 of those undefeated dreamers, doers, great geniuses and silent innovators, record-breakers and icons of pride and aspiration who helped change the world.  Shirley Chisholm Shirley Chisholm was a trailblazing politician who made history as the first African-American woman to serve in the U.S. Congress. Born on November 30, 1924, in Brooklyn, New York, Chisholm was the daughter of immigrant parents from Barbados. From a young age, she showed a passion for education and advocacy, and her early work with local political groups in

The Abolitionist movement in the United States was an attempt to eliminate slavery in a country that valued individual liberty and believed that “all men are created equal.” Slave owners dug in as abolitionists became louder in their demands, aggravating regional tensions that eventually led to the American Civil War. Overview The earliest leaders of the movement lasting from around 1830 to 1870, utilized methods similar to those used by British abolitionists to eradicate slavery in the 1830s. Though it began as a religiously motivated movement, abolitionism evolved into a divisive political issue that split most of the country. Supporters

Stokely Carmichael was an American civil rights activist, anti-war campaigner, and Pan-African revolutionary remembered fondly for popularizing the slogan “Black Power”. He is also known for leading the Black Panther Party and SNCC in the 1960s. He rose to fame as a participant, and subsequently as chairperson, of SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), where he collaborated with Martin Luther King Jr. and other Southern activists to organize protests. Carmichael eventually abandoned nonviolent tactics, embracing “Black Power”, affiliating him with the Black Panther Party. He renamed himself Kwame Ture and lived the majority of his later life in Guinea, where he

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was an African American civil rights activist. She was born on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. The United States Congress recognized her as “The First Lady of Civil Rights” and “The Mother of the Freedom Struggle.” On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks in Montgomery, Alabama, refused a bus driver’s order to relinquish a row of four seats in the colored section in favor of a white passenger once the white section was full. The Parks Act and the Montgomery Bus Boycott became iconic emblems of the civil rights movement.  She became an international symbol of

Racism’s existence is tied not to one’s physical features but the social interpretations of those biological variations between individuals. Since the age of colonization and slavery, racism in the US has been in many respects, been an ugly foundation of America. Legal racism has brought heavy burdens upon Native Americans, Americans in the less developed region of Europe, African Americans, and Latin Americans. European Americans were privileged by statute over time ranging from the 17th century to the 1960s in matters of schooling, taxation, civil rights, residency, possession of the property, and criminal prosecutions. However, many European ethnic groups, including

W.E.B. Du Bois led the Niagara Movement, a group of Black intellectuals who advocated for complete political, civil, and social rights for African Americans. This approach contrasted sharply with Booker T. Washington’s accommodationist perspective presented in the Atlanta Compromise of 1895. The Niagara Movement was a forerunner of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In the summer of 1905, 29 prominent African Americans, including Du Bois, gathered privately in Fort Erie, Ontario, near Niagara Falls, and drafted a manifesto demanding full individual freedoms, the end of racial prejudice and the acknowledgment of human brotherhood. Subsequent yearly

On August 21, 1831, Nathanial “Nat” Turner (1800-1831) who was an enslaved man, led his people’s rebellion. A new wave of harsh legislation was triggered, preventing enslaved people from getting an education, moving around or gathering, after Turner’s actions ended up in the death of up to 200 Black people. The revolt reinforced the region’s anti-abolitionist views, which lasted until the American Civil War (1861–65). Somewhere around 55 to 65 people were killed by the rebels, which included 51 white people. The rebellion was quickly put down on August 23 at Belmont Plantation, but Turner, on the other hand, stayed

Harriet Tubman was born on March 1822 in Araminta Rose. She was a political activist and abolitionist based in the United States. Harriet Green and Ben Rose, her parents, were enslaved. She was born into slavery as well before she escaped. She exploited an anti-slavery activist network to preserve certain houses known as the Underground Railroad. During the American Civil War, she worked as an armed scout and spy for the Union Army. In her later years, she was an activist in the women’s suffrage campaign. Tubman’s maternal grandmother came to the United States on a slave ship from Africa.