Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass born February 1818 February 20, 1895 was an

African-American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and
statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a
national leader of the abolitionist movement from Massachusetts and
New York, gaining note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery
writings. He stood as a living counter-example to slaveholders'
arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as
independent American citizens . Even many Northerners at the time
found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been a slave.
Douglass wrote several autobiographies. He described his experiences
as a slave in his 1845 autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick
Douglass, an American Slave, which became a bestseller.

Ella Baker

While were constantly reminded of the civil rights

leaders who worked in front, those who were behind
the scenes often go unrecognized. Ella Baker is one
of those people. An active civil rights leader in the
1930s, Ms. Baker fought for civil rights for five
decades, working alongside W.E.B Dubois, Thurgood
Marshall, and Martin Luther King, Jr. She even
mentored well-known civil rights activist, Rosa Parks.

Daisy Bates

Daisy Bates was an American civil rights activist,

publisher and writer who played a leading role in
the Little Rock integration crisis in 1957. Before
that, Bates and her husband started their own
newspaper in 1941 called the Arkansas State
Press. The paper became a voice for civil rights
even before the nationally recognized movement.

Anna Arnold Hedgemen

A civil rights leader, politician, and writer, Anna

Arnold was also the first African-American student at
Hamline University, a Methodist college in
Minnesota. After college she became a teacher.
During her tenure as a teacher, Anna witnessed
segregation and decided to fight for its end. After
holding a position as assistant dean of women at
Howard University in 1946, Anna later moved to New
York and became the first African-American woman
to hold a mayoral cabinet position in the history of
the state.

Diane Dash

A leader and strategist of the student wing of the Civil

Rights Movement, Diane Nash was a member of the
infamous Freedom Riders. She also helped found the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the
Selma Voting Rights Committee campaign, which helped
blacks in the South get to vote and have political power.
Raised in Chicago, Nash initially wanted to become a nun
as a result of her Catholic upbringing. Also known for her
beauty, she would later become runner-up for Miss Illinois.
But Nashs path changed direction when she attended Fisk
University after transferring from Howard University.