Prominent Civil Rights Figures
W.E.B. Du Bois was already well-known as one of the leading Black intellectuals of his time before founding the National Association Adancement Colored People(NAACP). Du Bois, the first Black American to receive a PhD from Harvard University, published many notable works about civil rights for African Americans before taking on the role of head of publicity and research for the NAACP and founding the group's official journal, The Crisis, in 1910. By 1919, the publication had amassed a following on a national scale and had a circulation of 100,000 copies per month. The magazine established itself as the most widely read and influential publication on racial and social injustice in American history.
As a civil rights attorney, Thurgood Marshall used the legal system to combat Jim Crow and end segregation in the United States. Marshall was appointed from President Lyndon B. Johnson as the first Black justice of the US Supreme Court. He is most famous for arguing in the famous 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, in which the Supreme Court deemed "separate but equal" illegal in public schools.
Dr. Martin Luther King led a nonviolent effort to gain equality for African-Americans in the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He used the strength of words and nonviolent actions of resistance, such as protests and civil disobedience, to achieve many milestones towards total equality under law for African-Americans. He continued to lead similar campaigns against global poverty and violence while staying true to his beliefs that everyone, regardless of race is equal.