The Alabama Chapter of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) was one of the most influential political bodies organizing poor African-Americans in the South during and after the Great Depression, it played a vital role in organizing African-Americans during a period where many activists would later become leaders of the emerging Civil Rights Movement, including which activist in the Civil Rights Movement, whom the United States Congress called "the first lady of civil rights", and would later commit an act of civil disobedience launching the Montgomery Bus Boycott?
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Alabama Chapter of the Communist Party USA The Alabama Chapter of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) was one of the most influential political bodies organizing poor African-Americans in the South during and after the Great Depression. Started with just two members, the Alabama chapter CPUSA was established in Birmingham Alabama in 1928, and remained active until it was forced underground by Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and police repression, and was disbanded when it was outlawed in 1951. During the height of Jim Crow and the Great Depression, the Alabama CPUSA organized some of the poorest African-American communities in the country, and was successful in leading organization drives in multiple industries including the Sharecroppers' Union, mine, mill, and industrial workers, as well as leading numerous campaigns to organize unemployed workers. The Alabama CPUSA also played a vital role in organizing African-Americans during a period where many activists would later become leaders of the emerging Civil Rights Movement. Ashbury Howard, who later was a significant leader in Alabama during the Civil Rights Movement, and Rosa Parks, who would later commit an act of civil disobedience launching the Montgomery Bus Boycott, were both trained and active with the Alabama CPUSA.
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Rosa Parks Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an activist in the Civil Rights Movement, whom the United States Congress called "the first lady of civil rights" and "the mother of the freedom movement".
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Southern Christian Leadership Conference The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is an African-American civil rights organization. SCLC, which is closely associated with its first president, Martin Luther King Jr, had a large role in the American Civil Rights Movement.
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E. D. Nixon Edgar Daniel Nixon (July 12, 1899 – February 25, 1987), known as E. D. Nixon, was an African-American civil rights leader and union organizer in Alabama who played a crucial role in organizing the landmark Montgomery Bus Boycott there in 1955. The boycott highlighted the issues of segregation in the South, was upheld for more than a year by black residents, and nearly brought the city-owned bus system to bankruptcy. It ended in December 1956, after the United States Supreme Court ruled in the related case, "Browder v. Gayle" (1956), that the local and state laws were unconstitutional, and ordered the state to end bus segregation.
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Lena Morrow Lewis Martha Lena Morrow Lewis (1868-1950), commonly known by her middle name Lena, was an American orator, political organizer, journalist, and newspaper editor. An activist in the prohibition, women's suffrage, and socialist movements, Lewis is best remembered as a top female leader of the Socialist Party of America during that organization's heyday in the first two decades of the 20th Century and as the first woman to serve on that organization's governing National Executive Committee.
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Dorothy Rogers Tilly Dorothy Rogers Tilly (June 30, 1883 - March 16, 1970) was an American activist from the progressive era until her death. She was a noted activist in the Women's Missionary Society (WMS), Commission on Interracial Cooperation (CIC), Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching, Southern Regional Council, Fulton-DeKalb Commission on Interracial Cooperation, and Fellowship of the Concerned (FOC). She was also appointed to the President's Committee on Civil Rights in 1946 by Harry S. Truman.
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Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights The Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) was a civil rights organization in Birmingham, Alabama, United States, which coordinated boycotts and sponsored federal lawsuits aimed at dismantling segregation in Birmingham and Alabama during the Civil Rights Movement. Fred Shuttlesworth, pastor of Bethel Baptist Church, served as president of the group from its founding in 1956 until 1969. The ACMHR's crowning moment came during the pivotal Birmingham Campaign which it coordinated along with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference during the Spring of 1963.
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Albion W. Tourgée Albion Winegar Tourgée (May 2, 1838 – May 21, 1905) was an American soldier, Radical Republican, lawyer, writer, politician, and diplomat. A pioneer civil rights activist, he founded the National Citizens' Rights Association, established the historically black women's college Bennett College, and litigated for the plaintiff Homer Plessy in the famous segregation case "Plessy v. Ferguson" (1896). Historian Mark Elliott credits Tourgée with introducing the metaphor of "color-blind justice" into legal discourse.
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Black Power and the American Myth Black Power and the American Myth is a 1970 book by Reverend C. T. Vivian that analyzes the Civil Rights Movement. Before writing "Black Power and the American Myth", Vivian had been an activist, a member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and a member of its Executive Staff along with Martin Luther King, Jr., Andrew Young, James Bevel and others. Besides King, Vivian was the first member of SCLC's staff to write a book about the Civil Rights Movement, and his access gave readers a first-hand account of the thoughts and motivations of the movement's leaders.
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National Negro Committee The National Negro Committee (formed: New York City, May 31 and June 1, 1909 - ceased: New York City, May 12, 1910) was created in response to the Springfield race riot of 1908 against the black community in Springfield, Illinois. Prominent black activists and white progressives called for a national conference to discuss African-American civil rights. They met to address the social, economic, and political rights of African Americans. This gathering served as the predecessor to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which was formally named during the second meeting in May 1910.
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Ralph Abernathy Ralph David Abernathy Sr. (March 11, 1926 – April 17, 1990) was a leader of the Civil Rights Movement, a minister, and a close friend of Martin Luther King Jr.. In 1955, he collaborated with King to create the Montgomery Improvement Association, which led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. In 1957, Abernathy co-founded, and was an executive board member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Following the assassination of King, Abernathy became president of the SCLC. As president of the SCLC, he led the Poor People's Campaign in Washington, D.C. during 1968. Abernathy also served as an advisory committee member of the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE). He later returned to the ministry, and in 1989 — the year before his death — Abernathy wrote, "And the Walls Came Tumbling Down: An Autobiography", a controversial autobiography about his and King's involvement in the Civil Rights Movement.
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George Raymond Jr. George Raymond, Jr. (January 1, 1943 – March 8, 1973) was an African-American civil rights activist, a member of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, a Freedom Rider, and head of the Congress of Racial Equality in Mississippi in the 1960s. Raymond influenced many of Mississippi's most known activists, such as Anne Moody, C. O. Chinn, and Annie Devine to join the movement and was influential in many of Mississippi's most notable Civil Rights activities such as a Woolworth's lunchcounter sit-in and protests in Jackson, Mississippi, Meredith Mississippi March, and Freedom Summer.
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Inez Baskin Inez J. Baskin (June 18, 1916 – June 28, 2007) was an American journalist and civil rights supporter who covered the Civil Rights Movement and the Montgomery Bus Boycott for African American readers and publications.
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Wednesdays in Mississippi Wednesdays in Mississippi was an activist group during the Civil Rights Movement in the United States during the 1960s. Northern women of different races and faiths traveled to Mississippi to develop relationships with their southern peers and to create bridges of understanding across regional, racial, and class lines. By opening communications across societal boundaries, Wednesday’s Women sought to end violence and to cushion the transition towards racial integration.
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Vanzetta Penn McPherson Vanzetta Penn McPherson (1947) is an African American woman who served as United States magistrate judge in Montgomery, Alabama. She earned her J.D. from Columbia University in 1947. After completing her degree, she open a law practice back in her home town of Montgomery. As a lawyer and a judge, she was noted for her defense of the rights of women and African Americans. McPherson has received awards for her public service and leadership from several organization, including the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Women of Distinction, South Central Alabama Girl Scout Council, and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
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Mary McLeod Bethune Mary Jane McLeod Bethune (born Mary Jane McLeod; July 10, 1875 – May 18, 1955) was an American educator, stateswoman, philanthropist, humanitarian and civil rights activist best known for starting a private school for African-American students in Daytona Beach, Florida. She attracted donations of time and money, and developed the academic school as a college. It later continued to develop as Bethune-Cookman University. She also was appointed as a national adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt as part of what was known as his Black Cabinet. She was known as "The First Lady of The Struggle" because of her commitment to gain better lives for African Americans.
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Civil Rights Memorial The Civil Rights Memorial is a memorial in Montgomery, Alabama, to 41 people who died in the struggle for the equal and integrated treatment of all people, regardless of race, during the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. The memorial is sponsored by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
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Fredrick McGhee Fredrick L. McGhee (October 28, 1861 – September 9, 1912), a black civil rights activist and one of America’s first African American lawyers. McGhee, born as a slave but who later was able to achieve a substantial career as an attorney and become one of the civil rights pioneers, was a contemporary of Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois.
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Maggie L. Walker Maggie Lena Walker (July 15, 1864 – December 15, 1934) was an African-American teacher and businesswoman. Walker was the first female bank president of any race to charter a bank in the United States. As a leader, she achieved successes with the vision to make tangible improvements in the way of life for African Americans and women. Disabled by paralysis and limited to a wheelchair later in life, Walker also became an example for people with disabilities.
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Flossie Bailey Katherine "Flossie" Bailey (1895–February 6, 1952) was a civil rights and anti-lynching activist from Indiana. She established a local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Marion, Indiana, in 1918 and became especially active fighting for justice and equality following the double lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in 1930. As president of the Indiana NAACP, Bailey was pivotal in lobbying for passage of a statewide anti-lynching law in Indiana in 1931 and advocated for a similar bill at the national level. She was also a recipient of the national NAACP's Madam C. J. Walker Medal.
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Montgomery bus boycott The Montgomery bus boycott, a seminal event in the Civil Rights Movement, was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. The campaign lasted from December 5, 1955—the Monday after Rosa Parks, an African American woman, was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat to a white person—to December 20, 1956, when a federal ruling, "Browder v. Gayle", took effect, and led to a United States Supreme Court decision that declared the Alabama and Montgomery laws requiring segregated buses to be unconstitutional. Many important figures in the Civil Rights Movement took part in the boycott, including Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy.
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Hattie Hooker Wilkins Hattie Wilkins (née Hooker) (July 28, 1875 – 1949) was an American progressive era suffragist and women's rights activist who is best known for being the first woman elected to a seat in the Alabama Legislature. She was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 1997.