Black History Month: Celebrating Social Justice Leaders
During the second week of Black History Month, we are celebrating Black social justice leaders. These individuals have been pivotal leaders in the anti-slavery, civil rights, women’s rights, and LGBTQIA+ rights movements. Please take a few minutes to read about the seven inspiring people highlighted below and join us in honoring the contributions each has made.
Tarana Burke
Tarana Burke is the founder of the Me Too Movement, a movement that raises awareness of women who have experienced sexual violence. Burke was born and raised in the Bronx, New York where she was highly involved in her community. During her childhood, she joined an organization called 21st Century that provided her the opportunity to promote initiatives that focused on racial discrimination, housing inequality, and economic justice. As a survivor of rape and sexual violence herself, Burke’s efforts are directed toward providing victims of sexual violence the resources and support to heal from their trauma. Burke has received numerous accolades for her work, including Time Person of the Year (2017) and the Sydney Peace Prize (2019). Burke continues to spread her message through public speaking events and as the Senior Director at Girls for Gender Equity.
Laverne Cox
Laverne Cox is an actress and LGBTQIA+ activist. She was born in Mobile, AL in 1972 and studied creative writing and dance at the Alabama School of Fine Arts. While a student at Marymount Manhattan College, Cox switched from dancing to acting, and began pursuing a career in television and film. After appearing on I Want to Work for Diddy in 2008, VH1 worked with Cox to create TRANSform Me, which made Cox the first Black transgender person to produce and star in her own TV show. Cox gained international recognition for her role as Sophia Burset on Orange is the New Black. In 2014, she became the first openly transgender person to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy for this role. Sophia Burset is a trans woman in serving time in prison for stealing credit cards to pay for her transition, and the role gave Cox an opportunity to connect with the show’s audience and to speak out about trans rights. With her Time magazine cover titled The Transgender Tipping Point, Cox was able to help bring the trans rights movement to the forefront. Later in the same year, she executive-produced and narrated the documentary Laverne Cox Presents: The T Word, which won a Daytime Emmy in 2015. In addition to her trailblazing accomplishments, Cox has advocated for trans rights, focusing in particular on the intersection with race. She continues to bring attention to the violence that trans people experience, including the high homicide rate among trans women, as well as the disparity in unemployment, which is particularly devastating for trans people of color. Cox has received numerous awards for her LGBTQIA+ advocacy work, including the Claire Skiffington Vanguard Award from the Transgender Law Center and the Stephen F. Kolzak Award from GLAAD. Cox has a new podcast launching this month with Shondaland Audio and iHeartMedia called The Laverne Cox Show.
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass was one of the greatest activists, orators, and writers of all time. He was born in Talbot County, MD in 1818. For nearly 60 years, he championed civil rights through his leadership in the abolitionist movement, fighting for indigenous and immigrant rights, and advocating for voting rights for women. Douglass was born into slavery and was torn from his family at a young age, first from his mother Harriet Bailey when he was an infant, then from his grandmother Betsy Bailey at the age of six. When he was 20 years old, he escaped from slavery by traveling to Havre de Grace, MD by train and then through Delaware up to the safe house of David Ruggles in New York. Thereafter, he changed his birth name of Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey to Frederick Douglass. It was in New York that he married Anna Murray, a free Black woman he met in Baltimore, and the couple moved to New Bedford, MA and five children together. After his wife’s death in 1882, he later married a white activist, Helen Pitts, in 1884. Despite enduring a lifetime of physical violence and trauma, first as a slave and later during the abolitionist movement, Douglass was fiercely dedicated to advocating for human rights and democracy in America. He taught one of the most valuable lessons that remains especially poignant today: the pursuit of a free and just democratic nation is not easy. It is not stagnant. It is an ongoing and difficult “messy” process that requires constant vigilance and reevaluation. “Without a struggle, there can be no progress.”
John Lewis
John Robert Lewis was a civil rights activist and American politician, representing Georgia’s 5th Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives from 1987 until his death in 2020. He was born near Troy, AL in 1940. Experiencing racism and segregation as a student, he met and was inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, and Billy Graham. In 1961, Lewis was one of the 13 original Freedom Riders on interstate buses from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans. This group challenged the policies of Southern states that imposed segregated seating on buses, violating federal transportation policies. Lewis was chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In this role he engaged in the Nashville sit-in movement that led to the desegregation of lunch counters and organized bus boycotts and nonviolent protests supporting voting rights and racial equality. Lewis was one of the “Big Six” group leaders who organized the 1963 March on Washington to end legalized racial segregation in the United States, asking for President John F. Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon Johnson’s leadership on the issue. In 1965, Lewis led the first of three Selma to Montgomery marches across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, during which state troopers and police attacked Lewis and the marchers. In the incident known as “Bloody Sunday,” Lewis’s skull was fractured, leaving scars on his head. Lewis was arrested and jailed more than 40 times while nonviolently advocating for desegregation. Between 1966-1977, Lewis held various leadership roles in New York City and Atlanta, including the Voter Education Project. During his time representing Atlanta in Congress, Lewis supported other minoritized groups and opposed both the Gulf War and the US armed invasion in Haiti. John Lewis received many honorary degrees and awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in 2011.
DeRay Mckesson
DeRay Mckesson is a civil rights activist, educator, and author. He was born in Baltimore, MD in 1985, and graduated from Bowdoin College in 2003 with a degree in government and legal studies. He also holds honorary doctorates from The New School and the Maryland Institute College of Art. A leading voice in the Black Lives Matter movement and a co-founder of Campaign Zero, Mckesson has worked to provide citizens and policy makers with commonsense policies that ensure equity. He has been praised by President Obama for his work as a community organizer, and has advised officials at all levels of government, both domestically and internationally. Mckesson is the author of On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope, a memoir about his life as a Black Lives Matter organizer. He hosts the award-winning weekly podcast Pod Save The People, which creates space for conversation about issues related to justice, equity, and identity. He was named one of the World’s Greatest Leaders by Fortune Magazine in 2015 and one of the 30 Most Influential People On The Internet by Time Magazine in 2016.
Harriet Tubman
Harriet Tubman was an abolitionist who risked her life guiding slaves out of the South to freedom in the North along the “Underground Railroad.” She was born Araminta, or “Minty,” in 1822, the 5th of 9 children enslaved with their parents on a plantation in Dorchester County, MD. Like many enslaved people, she endured horrific abuse at the hands of her masters and those to whom she was leased. She barely survived a fractured skull received when she tried to protect a small boy under threat from an overseer. The injury left her with headaches and visions that she interpreted as religious guidance, and that caused others to view her as a seer. She married freedman John Tubman in 1844, but because Harriet was still enslaved, she (and any children they might have) would be owned by her abusive master Edward Brodess. When Brodess died and Harriet faced being sold away from John in the settling of the estate, she escaped to the North, thinking John would eventually follow. However, he stayed and took another wife instead. Her heartbreak became a resolve to help others reach freedom. She had learned from her father how to navigate the Chesapeake Bay waterways and where safe houses were located. She met abolitionist John Brown in Canada in 1858, and they worked together until he was executed at Harper’s Ferry. She moved to Auburn, NY, earning funds by lecturing at abolitionist and women’s suffrage meetings. She fought for the Union in South Carolina, becoming the first women ever to lead an armed raid behind enemy lines, liberating 700 enslaved people in the process. Denied pay for her services to the Union army, she struggled financially until she had aged enough to receive a pension. She died in Auburn, NY at the age of 90.
C.T. Vivian
Cordy Tindell (C.T.) Vivian was a minister, writer, and close friend and lieutenant of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement. He was born in Boonville, MO in 1924. While studying for the ministry, Vivian joined Prof. James Lawson’s class on Gandhi’s non-violence movement. Several members of the class, including Vivian and John Lewis, began organizing lunch counter sit-ins and civil rights marches in 1960s Nashville, and then became Freedom Riders registering Southern Blacks to vote. Vivian worked for the civil rights organizations SNCC and SCLC. His 1970 book Black Power and the American Myth was the first book on the movement to be written by a member of Dr. King’s staff. Vivian went on to become a major figure in Atlanta, founding the Black Action Strategies and Information Center (BASIC), and, with Anne Braden, the Center for Democratic Renewal (initially known as the National Anti-Klan Network), a multiracial organization fighting white supremacist activity. Later, he founded the C. T. Vivian Leadership Institute, Inc. In 1994, he helped establish and served on the board of Capitol City Bank and Trust Co., a Black-owned Atlanta bank. President Barack Obama awarded Vivian the National Medal of Freedom in 2013. Vivian died in 2020 on the same day as his compatriot John Lewis. He was the first Black, non-elected man to lie in state at the Georgia State Capitol.