Agents of Change
 Agents of Change
Medal of Excellence
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Hall of Peace and Revolution -
A Tribute to Agents of Change
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Martin Luther King, Jr.
(January 15, 1929- April 4, 1968)
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a vital figure of the modern era. His lectures and dialogues stirred the concern and sparked the conscience of a generation. The movements and marched he led brought significant changes in the fabric of American life through his courage and selfless devotion. This devotion gave direction to thirteen years of civil rights activities. His charismatic leadership inspired the citizens of this nation and around the world. |
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Malcolm X (aka El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz)
(May 19, 1925- February 21, 1965)
During his life, Malcolm X went from being a young street-wise Boston hoodlum to becoming a prominent black nationalist leaders in the United States, and when murdered, became considered by some as a martyr of Islam and champion of equality. He ultimately rose to become a world-renowned African American/ Pan Africanist and human rights activist. |
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Sojourner Truth
(1797-1883)
A former slave, Isabella Baumfree changed her name to Sojourner Truth becoming one of the most powerful abolitionist and woman suffragist in history. She worked with abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass and Olive Gilbert. Her dictated memoirs were published in 1850 as The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave. An incredible orator, she was often called upon to provide personal testimony about her experiences as a slave. In 1851, she spoke at a women’s convention in Akron, Ohio where the legendary phrase, “Ain’t I a Woman?” was created. |
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Cesar Chavez
(March 31, 1927- April 23, 1993)
Cesar Chavez was a Mexican American labor activist and founder of the United Farm Workers. During the 20th century he was a leading voice for migrant farm workers. Chavez was an organizer for the Community Services Organization (CSO), a Latino civil rights group. Chavez urged Mexican-Americans to register and vote, and he traveled throughout California and made speeches in support of workers’ rights. He co-founded the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) with Dolores Huerta focusing national attention on terrible working conditions. |
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Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales
(June 18, 1928-April 12. 2005)
Known as the “Fists of La Raza,” Gonzales was an iconic leader in the movement for justice and equality for Mexican-Americans (Chicanos) in the Southwest and is credited with raising the nation’s awareness of the plight of urban Chicanos. In the mid-1960’s he founded the Crusade for Justice which advocated Chicano nationalism. During the late 60s and the early 70s, he organized walkouts, demonstrations against police brutality and marches against the Vietnam War. Gonzales is best known for his poem “I am Joaquin/ Yo Soy Joaquin,” one of the most important literary works to emerge from the Chicano movement. |
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Rigoberta Menchu
(January 9, 1959- Present)
Rigoberta Menchu, Nobel Peace Prize winner, is an organizer abroad of resistance to oppression in Guatemala and the struggle for Indian peasant peoples’ rights. In 1983, she told her life story in a gripping human document which attracted considerable international attention called, I, Rigoberta Menchu. In 1986, Rigoberta Menchu became a member of the National Coordinating Committee of the CUC. On at least 3 occasions, Menchu has returned to Guatemala to plead the cause of the Indian peasants, but death threats have forced her to return to exile. |
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Chief Sitting Bull
(1831-1890)
Sitting Bull was the principal chief of the Dakota Sioux, who were driven from their reservation in the Black Hills by miners in 1876, and took up arms against the whites and friendly Indians, refusing to be transported to the Indian Territory. In June 1876, they defeated and massacred Gen. George A. Custer’s advance party of Gen. Alfred H. Terry’s column, which was sent against them, on Little Big Horn River. They were pursued northward by General Terry. He made his escape into British Territory and, through the mediation of Dominion officials, surrendered on a promise of pardon in 1880. Chief Sitting Bull will forever remain the icon of traditional, full blood strength and dignity. |
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Wilma Mankiller
(November 18, 1945- April 6, 2010)
Wilma Pearl Mankiller was the first female chief of the Cherokee Nation. She was elected deputy chief of the Cherokee Nation alongside Ross Swimmer, who was serving his third consecutive term as principal chief. In 1985, Chief Swimmer resigned to take the position as head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. This allowed Mankiller to become the first female principal chief. She was freely elected in 1987, and re-elected again in 1991 in a landslide victory, collecting 82 percent of the vote. Over the course of her three terms, Mankiller would make great strides to bring back that balance and reinvigorate the Cherokee Nation through community-building projects that practiced gadugi, where men and women work collectively for the common good. |
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Yuri Kochiyama
(1921-Present)
In the 1940s Yuri Kochiyama and her family were one of the many Japanese Americans to be sent to internment camps following the bombing at Pearl Harbor. Several years later she saw many similarities between how the Japanese had been treated in the camps and how many marginalized groups, especially blacks, were treated in the U.S. at the time. For more than sixty years afterwards Kochiyama has been an activist and supporter of many civil rights groups: in the 1960s she was a member of the Harlem Parents Committee organizing protests for more street lights in her neighborhood, and in 1977 she and 29 others from the Puerto Rican group the Young Lords stormed the statue of Liberty to bring attention to the issue of the issue of Puerto Rican independence. She was also a close friend and associate of Malcolm X, and was by his side at his assassination in 1965. |
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Sun Yat-sen
(November 12, 1866-March 12, 1925)
Dr. Sun Yat-sen was a Chinese revolutionary and political leader who is often referred to as the “Father of modern China.” Sun played an instrumental and leadership role in the eventual overthrow of the Qing Dynasty in 1911. He was the first provisional president when the Republic of China was founded in 1912. He later co-founded the Kuomintang (KMT) where he served as its first leader. Sun’s chief legacy resides in his political philosophy known as the Three Principals of the People: nationalism, civil liberties, and the people’s livelihood. |
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Mahatma Gandhi
(October 2, 1869-January 30, 1948)
Gandhi first employed his ideas of peaceful civil disobedience in the Indian community’s struggle for civil rights in South Africa. Upon his return to India, Gandhi organized poor farmers and laborers to protest oppressive taxation and widespread discrimination. He led a nationwide campaign for the alleviation of poverty, for the liberation of Indian women, for brotherhood amongst communities of differing religions and ethnicity, for an end to “untouchability” and caste discrimination, and for the economic self-sufficiency of the nation, but above all for the Swaraj-the independence of India from foreign domination. |
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Sarojini Naidu
(February 13, 1879-March 2, 1949)
Known as Bharatiya Kokila (The Nightingale from India), Naidu was a child prodigy, freedom fighter, and poet. Naidu was the first Indian woman to become the President of the Indian National Congress and the first woman to become the governor of a state in India. In 1905, the first volume of her collection of poems was published as The Golden Threshold. Two more volumes were published: The Bird of Time (1912) and The Broken Wing (1917). |
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Levi Coffin
(October 29, 1798-September 16, 1877)
Coffin was an American Quaker, educator, and abolitionist from in Greensboro, North Carolina. Coffin has been referred to as the “President of the Underground Railroad,” allegedly from a slave catcher who said, “There’s an underground railroad going on here, and Levi’s the president of it.” Coffin claimed to have been involved in the escaped of about 2000 slaves. Questioned about why he aided slaves, Coffin said “The Bible, in bidding us to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, said nothing about color, and I should try to follow the teachings of that good book.” Another time he simply said, “I thought it was always safe to do right.” |
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Oskar Schindler
(April 28, 1908-October 9, 1974)
Schindler was a Sudeten German industrialist credited with saving almost 1,100 Jews during the Holocaust, by having them work in his enamelware and ammunitions factories located in Poland and what is now the Czech Republic. He was the subject of the film, Schindler’s List. Once, says author Eric Silver in The Book of the Just, “Two Gestapo men came to his office and demanded that he hand over a family of five who had bought forged Polish identity papers. ‘Three hours after they walked in,’ Schindler said, ‘two drunk Gestapo men reeled out of my office without their prisoners and without the incriminating documents they had demanded’”. |
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Susan B. Anthony & Elizabeth Cady Stanton
(February 15, 1820-March 13, 1906) & (November 12, 1815-October 26, 1902)
Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were prominent and independent American civil rights leaders who played a pivotal role in the 19th century women’s rights movement to secure women’s suffrage in the United States. In 1852 they organized the first women’s state temperance society in America. Stanton remained a close friend and colleague of Anthony’s for the remainder of their lives, but Stanton longed for a broader, more radical women’s rights platform. Together, the two women traversed the United States giving speeches and attempting to persuade the government that society should treat men, women, and African Americans equally. |
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Helen Adams Keller
(June 27, 1880-June 1, 1968)
Helen Keller was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama to parents Captain Arthur H. Keller, a former officer of the Confederate Army, and Kate Adams Keller, cousin of Robert E. Lee. Not born blind and deaf, she came down with an illness, possibly scarlet fever or meningitis, at 19 months of age that left her deaf and blind. She is remembered as an advocate for people with disabilities, as well as a suffragist, a pacifist, an author, and a birth control supporter. In 1915 she founded Helen Keller International, a non-profit organization for preventing blindness. In 1920 she helped to found the ACLU. Helen Keller was also a member of the Socialist Party and actively campaigned and wrote in support of the working classes from 1909 to 1921. |
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