Resistance & repair
The archive documents harm and policy; this gallery honors people who organized, wrote, litigated, marched, and built community in the struggle against racism and for dignity. They are a small sample; additions welcome through the submission form or admin.
Anne McCarty Braden (1924–2006) was a White Southern journalist and community organizer from Louisville, Kentucky who resisted racism by helping a Black couple purchase a home in an all-White neighborhood in 1954[1]. She organized White Southerners …
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Bayard Rustin (1912–1987) was a human rights activist, strategist, and key organizer of the Civil Rights Movement who advocated for nonviolent resistance and coordinated major events like the 1963 March on Washington[1]. He resisted racism through …
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Claudette Colvin was a civil rights activist who, before Rosa Parks, refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger on March 2, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama[1][2]. She was arrested at age 15 and …
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Born in Norfolk, Virginia in 1903, Ella Baker was a quiet strategist who orchestrated some of the most impactful grassroots efforts in the Civil Rights Movement, mentoring leaders and organizing local communities.
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Hallie Quinn Brown (ca. 1850–1949) was a preeminent educator, elocutionist, writer, and activist who championed civil rights and suffrage for African Americans throughout the 19th and 20th centuries[1]. She was a principal promoter and organizer of …
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William Still (1821–1902) was a prominent businessman, abolitionist, and author who documented the experiences of enslaved people through his foundational text 'The Underground Rail Road' (1872)[1]. Born in slavery in South Carolina, he escaped to Philadelphia …
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After freeing herself from slavery, Tubman returned South repeatedly to lead roughly seventy people to freedom and later served as a Union scout and nurse during the Civil War.
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Born into slavery, Douglass became one of the most influential abolitionists of the nineteenth century through speeches, journalism, and diplomacy—including advising Lincoln.
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Wells documented lynching with data and narrative, co-founded the NAACP, and built Black institutions in Memphis and Chicago while facing mob violence and exile.
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Lewis chaired SNCC, helped lead the Selma march where he was beaten on Bloody Sunday, and served decades in Congress championing voting rights and reconciliation.
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A sharecropper who became a national voice for voting rights, Hamer survived brutal reprisals and delivered searing testimony at the 1964 Democratic convention.
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Boggs spent decades organizing around labor, Black Power, and urban renewal—later fostering youth-led urban agriculture and mutual aid in Detroit.
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After Japanese American incarceration during World War II, Kochiyama worked with Black, Puerto Rican, and Asian American liberation movements in Harlem and beyond.
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Chávez co-founded the UFW, using strikes, boycotts, and fasts to improve conditions for predominantly Latino farmworkers and expose exploitative labor systems.
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Mankiller revitalized Cherokee self-governance and rural community development—expanding housing, health care, and tribal enterprises while mentoring Native women in leadership across Indian Country.
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His book Custer Died for Your Sins helped reset U.S. conversations about treaties, tribal governments, and misrepresentation of Native people—blending law, humor, and history.
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LaDuke founded the White Earth Land Recovery Project and Honor the Earth, organizing around treaty rights, renewable energy, and opposition to pipelines that threaten treaty lands and water.
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A former U.S. representative from New Mexico, Haaland served as Secretary of the Interior—overseeing agencies that shape tribal relations, public lands, and the protection of sacred sites.
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Frank organized 'fish-ins' on the Nisqually River to assert treaty fishing rights guaranteed in treaties—facing arrest dozens of times before courts affirmed tribal salmon fisheries in the Pacific Northwest.
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