Names to Know

Ella Baker 

Born in Norfolk, Virginia, on 13 December 1903, Baker was raised on the same land her grandparents had worked as slaves. Baker’s childhood was marked early on by the activist spirit of her mother, a member of the local missionary association, who called on women to act as agents of social change in their communities. After graduating from Shaw University in 1927, Baker moved to New York, where she served as national director of the Young Negroes Cooperative League. In 1938, Baker joined the staff of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as an assistant field secretary and later as director of branches. Unable to redirect the organization's focus toward grassroots organizing, Baker resigned from her position in 1946. She joined the NAACP again in 1952 as president of the New York City branch. In 1956, Baker, along with Stanley Levison and Bayard Rustin, co-founded In Friendship to provide aid to local movements in the South. Learn more!

Cesar Chavez

A true American hero, Cesar was a civil rights, Latino, farm worker, and labor leader; a religious and spiritual figure; a community servant and social entrepreneur; a crusader for nonviolent social change; and an environmentalist and consumer advocate. A second-generation American, Cesar was born on March 31, 1927, near his family's farm in Yuma, Arizona. At age 10, his family became migrant farm workers after losing their farm in the Great Depression. Throughout his youth and into his adulthood, Cesar migrated across the southwest laboring in the fields and vineyards, where he was exposed to the hardships and injustices of farm worker life. Learn more! 

14th Dalali Lama

His Holiness the XIVth Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, is the spiritual and temporal leader of the Tibetan people. He was born in a small village called Takster in northeastern Tibet. Born to a peasant family, His Holiness was recognized at the age of two, in accordance with Tibetan tradition, as the reincarnation of his predecessor the 13th Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lamas are the manifestations of the Bodhisattva of Compassion, who chose to reincarnate to serve the people. Dalai Lama means Ocean of Wisdom. Tibetans normally refer to His Holiness as Yeshin Norbu, the Wish-fulfilling Gem, or simply, Kundun, meaning The Presence. Learn more!

Mahatma Gandhi

Gandhi was born 2 October 1869, in Porbandar, in the western part of India, to Karamchand Gandhi, chief minister of Porbandar, and his wife Putlibai, a devout Hindu. At the age of 18, Gandhi began training as a lawyer in England. After completing his barrister’s degree he returned to India in 1891, but was unable to find well-paid work. In 1893, he accepted a one-year contract to do legal work for an Indian firm in South Africa, but remained for 21 years. It was in South Africa that Gandhi was first exposed to official racial prejudice, and where he developed his philosophy of nonviolent direct action by organizing the Indian community there to oppose race-based laws and socioeconomic repression. Learn more!

Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan 

A devout practitioner of nonviolence and social reform, Khan worked to spread his ideals in the region. Eluding at least two assassination attempts and surviving three decades in prison, he remained committed to nonviolence to the day he died in 1988 at the age of ninety-eight. "For today's children and the world, my thoughts are that only if they accept nonviolence can they escape destruction, with all this talk of the atom bomb, and live a life of peace," Khan told an interviewer in 1985. "If this doesn't happen, then the world will be in ruins." Learn more!

Nelson Mandela 

Rolihlahla Mandela was born in Mvezo, a village near Mthatha in the Transkei, on July 18, 1918, to Nonqaphi Nosekeni and Henry Mgadla Mandela. His father was the principal councillor to the Acting Paramount Chief of the Thembu. Rolihlahla literally means “pulling the branch of a tree”. After his father’s death in 1927, the young Rolihlahla became the ward of Jongintaba Dalindyebo, the Paramount Chief, to be groomed to assume high office. Hearing the elder’s stories of his ancestor’s valor during the wars of resistance, he dreamed also of making his own contribution to the freedom struggle of his people. Learn more! 

Bayard Rustin

Bayard Rustin was a close advisor to Martin Luther King, Jr. and one of the most influential and effective organizers of the civil rights movement. Affectionately referred to as "Mr. March" by A. Philip Randolph, Rustin organized and led a number of protests in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, including the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Learn more! 

Aung San Suu Kyi 

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is one of the world's most renown freedom fighters and advocates of nonviolence, having served as the figurehead for Burma's struggle for democracy since 1988. Born on June 19th, 1945 to Burma's independence hero, Aung San, Aung San Suu Kyi was educated in Burma, India, and the United Kingdom. Her father was assassinated when she was only two years old. Burma has been ruled by a military regime since 1962. Learn more!

Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau was born on July 12, 1817, in Concord, Massachusetts. He was the son of John and Cynthia Thoreau, and the third of four children. Out of his two sisters and a brother, Helen was the oldest sister, John Thoreau Jr. was Henry's older brother and Sophia was the younger sister. The house they were born in belonged to his maternal grandmother and is located on the outskirts of Concord on Virginia Road. Learn more!

Ken Saro Wiwa 

Ken Saro-Wiwa (d. 1995), a well known Nigerian author and television producer, was president of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP), an organization set up to defend the environmental and human rights of the Ogoni people who live in the Niger Delta. Learn more!