Grace Lee Boggs was an American author, social activist, philosopher and feminist. She fought relentlessly for civil rights, feminism and labor for seven decades and was hugely influential in bringing about social change in Detroit. Boggs (born Grace Chin Lee or Yuk Ping (玉平) to use her Chinese name) was born in Providence, Rhode Island …
Nina Simone was an American singer, songwriter, pianist and civil rights activist. Simone started playing piano by ear when she was 3 years old. She played piano in her mother’s church and soon began to study classical music with an Englishwoman called Muriel Mazzanovich. She developed a love of Bach, Chopin, Brahms, Beethoven and Schubert. …
Amelia Boynton Robinson was an American activist who was a leader of the American Civil Rights Movement in Selma, Alabama and a key figure in the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches. She was also the first black woman to run for Congress in Alabama. Robinson began her interest in activism at nine years old when …
Rosa Parks was an African-American Civil Rights activist. She became the catalyst for the Civil Rights movement when she refused to move from her seat on the segregated buses in Montgomery, Alabama. Parks was brought up in a family that bore the scars of slavery, her grandparents were former slaves and advocates for racial equality. …