Courageous MEn And Women
rosa parks (1913-2005)
Rosa Parks was born on February 14, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. She attend high school but dropped out when she was sixteen to care for her dying grandmother and chronically ill mother. In 1955, when she was forty-two, she was on her way home on a bus when she was later told to give up her seat for a white man, since all of the other seats were taken. She refused to leave her seat and was arrested and fined $10 plus $4 in court fees. On the day of her trial, the leaders of the local black community organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The boycott, lead by Martin Luther King Jr., lasted 381 days and ended when the U. S. Supreme Court declared bus segregation unconstitutional.
Stokely Carmichael (1941-1988)
Stokely Carichael was born on June 29, 1941 in Port of Spain, Trinidad, and became a U.S. civil-rights activist who commenced the famous black nationalism rallying slogan, "black power." When he was just nineteen years old, he participated in the 1961 freedom ride, a bus full of black United States activists traveling through the southern states to challenge segregation. He was later imprisoned for trying to conform an "all white" cafeteria in Jackson, Mississippi. Unfortunately, Carmichael was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1985 and died in 1988.
fannie lou hamer (1917-1977)
Stokely Carichael was born on June 29, 1941 in Port of Spain, Trinidad, and became a U.S. civil-rights activist who commenced the famous black nationalism rallying slogan, "black power." When he was just nineteen years old, he participated in the 1961 freedom ride, a bus full of black United States activists traveling through the southern states to challenge segregation. He was later imprisoned for trying to conform an "all white" cafeteria in Jackson, Mississippi. Unfortunately, Carmichael was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1985 and died in 1988.
Angela Davis (1944- present)
Angela Davis was born on January 26, 1944, in Birmingham, Alabama, and was an activist, educator and writer. When Angela was a teenager, she organized interracial study groups and joined several communist groups such as the Black Panthers, but spent most of her time with Che-Lumumba Club, an all-black brand of the communist party, when she attended the University of California in San Diego. Later she was hired to teach at the University of California in Los Angeles, but she was alter fired due to her involvement with communism. In court, she fought them and got her job back, but she still left after her contract expired in 1970. During the same year she supported three prisoners, John W. Cluchette, Fleeta Drumgo, and George Lester Jackson, that were accused of killing a prison guard. During the trial, some of the prisoners tried to escape, and many people in the courtroom were killed, including Jackson. Angela was charged for murder, spent 18 months in prison, and was acquitted in 1972. Today, Angela Davis is professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she teaches classes on the history of consciousness, and has also written many books, including Women, Race, and Are Prisoners Obsolete?