Bayard Rustin was an American political activist, a prominent leader in social movements for civil rights, socialism, nonviolence, and gay rights. Rustin was the principal organizer of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963.
Medgar Wiley Evers was an American civil rights activist and soldier who was the NAACP's first field secretary in Mississippi. Evers, a United States Army veteran who served in World War II, was engaged in efforts to overturn racial segregation at the University of Mississippi, end the segregation of public facilities, and expand opportunities for African Americans, including the enforcement of voting rights when he was assassinated by Byron De La Beckwith.
The Deacons for Defense and Justice was an armed African-American self-defense group founded in November 1964, during the civil rights era in the United States, in the mill town of Jonesboro, Louisiana. On February 21, 1965—the day of Malcolm X's assassination—the first affiliated chapter was founded in Bogalusa, Louisiana, followed by a total of 20 other chapters in this state, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Alabama. It was intended to protect civil rights activists and their families, threatened both by white vigilantes and discriminatory treatment by police under Jim Crow laws. The Bogalusa chapter gained national attention during the summer of 1965 in its violent struggles with the Ku Klux Klan.
The American Legion, commonly known as the Legion, is an organization of U.S. war veterans headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana. It comprises state, U.S. territory, and overseas departments, in turn made up of local posts. It was established in March 1919 in Paris, France, by officers and men of the American Expeditionary Forces (A.E.F.). It was subsequently chartered by the 66th U.S. Congress on September 16, 1919.
Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) is a liberal American political organization advocating progressive policies. ADA views itself as supporting social and economic justice through lobbying, grassroots organizing, research, and supporting progressive candidates.
The National Urban League (NUL), formerly known as the National League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes, is a nonpartisan historic civil rights organization based in New York City that advocates on behalf of economic and social justice for African Americans and against racial discrimination in the United States. It is the oldest and largest community-based organization of its kind in the nation. Its current president is Marc Morial.
The Communist Party USA, officially the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), is a communist party in the United States which was established in 1919 after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Russian Revolution.
The Citizens' Councils were an associated network of white supremacist, segregationist organizations in the United States, concentrated in the South and created as part of a white backlash against the US Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling. The first was formed on July 11, 1954. The name was changed to the Citizens' Councils of America in 1956. With about 60,000 members across the Southern United States, the groups were founded primarily to oppose racial integration of public schools: the logical conclusion of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling.
The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) is a progressive public interest association of lawyers, law students, paralegals, jailhouse lawyers, law collective members, and other activist legal workers, in the United States. The group was founded in 1937 as an alternative to the American Bar Association (ABA) in protest of that organization's then exclusionary membership practices and conservative political orientation. They were the first predominantly white US bar association to allow the admission of minorities to their ranks. The group sought to bring more lawyers closer to the labor movement and progressive political activities, to support and encourage lawyers otherwise "isolated and discouraged," and to help create a "united front" against Fascism.
The civil rights movement (1896–1954) was a long, primarily nonviolent action to bring full civil rights and equality under the law to all Americans. The era has had a lasting impact on American society – in its tactics, the increased social and legal acceptance of civil rights, and in its exposure of the prevalence and cost of racism.
Gilbert Gude was an American politician who served as the U.S. representative for Maryland's 8th congressional district from 1967 to 1977. He was a member of the Republican Party.
American Veterans (AMVETS) is a non-partisan, volunteer-led organization formed by World War II veterans of the United States military. It advocates for its members as well as for causes that its members deem helpful to the nation at large. The group holds a Federal charter under Title 36 of the United States Code. It is a 501(c)19 organization.
Iota Phi Theta Fraternity, Inc. (ΙΦΘ) is a historically African American fraternity. It was founded on September 19, 1963, at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland, and is the fifth largest Black Greek Lettered Fraternity. Members of the close-knit afrocentric fraternity proudly embrace the organization’s youth, uniqueness, individualism and modern idealism. As a contemporary organization, many members have had the great honor of meeting, fellowshipping with, and/or engaging in personal or virtual discussions with one or more of their founders. Today there are over 301 undergraduate and alumni chapters, as well as colonies located in 40 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, The Bahamas, Colombia, South Korea, and Japan.
Myrlie Louise Evers-Williams is an American civil rights activist and journalist who worked for over three decades to seek justice for the 1963 murder of her husband Medgar Evers, another civil rights activist. She also served as chairwoman of the NAACP, and published several books on topics related to civil rights and her husband's legacy. On January 21, 2013, she delivered the invocation at the second inauguration of Barack Obama.
The American Legion Auxiliary (ALA) is a separate entity from the American Legion that shares the same values. It is composed of spouses, mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, granddaughters, grandsons, and brothers, & sisters of American war veterans. Founded in 1919, the ALA is dedicated to serving veterans, military, and their families.
Sigma Pi Phi (ΣΠΦ), also known as The Boulé,is an African American professional fraternity. Founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1904, it is the oldest fraternity for African Americans. The fraternity does not have collegiate chapters and is designed for professionals in mid-career or older. Sigma Pi Phi has over 5,000 members and 139 chapters throughout the United States, the United Kingdom, The Bahamas, Colombia and Brazil.
Frank Smith, Jr., is a civil rights activist and politician in Washington, D.C.
The March on Washington Movement (MOWM), 1941–1946, organized by activists A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin was a tool designed to pressure the U.S. government into providing fair working opportunities for African Americans and desegregating the armed forces by threat of mass marches on Washington, D.C. during World War II. When President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 in 1941, prohibiting discrimination in the defense industry under contract to federal agencies, Randolph and collaborators called off the initial march.
The Tougaloo Nine were a group of African-American students at Tougaloo College, who participated in civil disobedience by staging sit-ins of segregated public institutions in Mississippi in 1961.
June Adele Willenz was an American military veterans advocate, Executive Director of the American Veterans Committee (AVC), and author of Women Veterans: America's Forgotten Heroines. Willenz also initiated the effort to build the Women in Military Service for America Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. She was inducted into the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame in 2011.
