(1792-1868) Pennsylvania Congressman who led the Radical Republicans during and after the Civil War, hosting an Underground Railroad stop in Lancaster, then advocating reparations and full citizenship for African Americans including suffrage

(1793-1880) Quaker abolitionist from Philadelphia who wrote and spoke publicly against slavery and the Fugitive Slave Act, hosted escaping slaves in her home, physically protected activists from mobs, and argued for Black voting rights after the Civil War—while simultaneously leading the movement for women’s rights

(1800-1879) South Carolina-born daughters of a slave-owning judge who moved to Philadelphia and became nationally known speakers and writers against slavery

(1800-1859) Tanner who created Underground Railroad stops in two states, fought the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act, fought slavers in the Kansas territory, liberated 11 slaves from Ohio and shuttled them to Canada, and attempted a revolution in Southern states beginning with a raid in Virginia

(1802-1880) Successful Wayland-area author published the first anti-slavery work by a white woman, losing much of her audience; she housed refugees from the Fugitive Slave Act; wrote the preface to Harriet Jacobs’ 'Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl'; and promoted women’s rights, Native American rights, and religious freedom

(1803-1890) Connecticut teacher who accepted African Americans to her private boarding school, then created school just for girls of color, facing active resistance

(1805-1865) Wife of New York politician who opened her home to fugitives from enslavement and sold her property to Harriet Tubman

(1805-1879) Newburyport printer who published anti-slavery newspaper to promote immediate emancipation and founded the American Anti-Slavery Society

(1806-1885) Boston abolitionist who organized fundraising events (Boston Anti-Slavery Bazaar), sales (the gift book 'The Liberty Bell'), and campaigns (the book 'How Can I Help to Abolish Slavery?') to support anti-slavery efforts

(1809-1867) Medford businessman who funded anti-slavery homesteaders in Kansas, founded an Underground Railroad station, supplied weapons to John Brown, recruited Black soldiers to the Union Army, and co-founded the Freedman’s Bureau

(1810-1860) Watertown/West Roxbury preacher who led opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act, smuggled fugitives in his home, and expressed the idea behind “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice”

(1811-1874) Massachusetts senator who became the public face of radical abolition and reconstruction, demanding full equality for Blacks and dismantling slave-holder power; was severely beaten on the Senate floor by a South Carolina Congressman

(1811-1884) Son of Boston’s first mayor who deployed his oratorical gifts to the anti-slavery movement alongside Garrison, and helped create the Massachusetts Indian Commission in support of Indigenous land rights

(1813-1846) New England pastor who broke with Garrison to form a more actively political anti-slavery party, setting up one of the first Underground Railroad lines, and personally freeing 400 people (many enslaved by Southern members of Congress); he died in prison and is buried in Mt. Auburn Cemetery

(1815-1864) Abolitionist who founded a school for Black children in Washington, DC, when slavery was still legal, facing mob violence

(1825-1901) Philadelphia health care volunteer who co-founded first school for newly freed slaves, in South Carolina

(1816-1901) Kentucky minister who founded co-ed, interracial college; sold his land to buy freedom for his childhood caregiver; and taught Black Union soldiers in camp

(1877-1936) Scion of a Kentucky slave-owning family whose investigative report of a violent white uprising in Illinois included a call to mobilize in defense of Black Americans

(1865-1951) Brooklyn Unitarian who, inspired by Walling’s article, convened civil rights leaders to co-found the National Association of the Advancement of Colored People, which she supported for 37 years

(1880-1968) South Carolina federal judge whose 1950s civil rights rulings included opening white primaries to Black voters and creating precedents for legal desegregation

(1903-1999) Housewife and political activist from Birmingham, Alabama, who fought against the poll tax and southern white male domination

(1904-1988) Massachusetts-born chaplain who partnered with Martin Luther King during the Civil Rights Movement in Chicago, moving with his family to the Black part of the city and supporting integration and fair housing efforts

(1911-2013) Sacramento fruit inspector who kept Japanese neighbors’ farms operating while their owners were interned in camps during WWII

(1913-1993) Pacifist from a wealthy New York family who worked with CORE on hundreds of integration actions from the 1940s-60s, including the first cohort of Freedom Riders and the march to Selma

(1924-2006) Journalist/community organizer from Louisville, Kentucky who bought a home for a Black family (which was bombed), was Blacklisted for Communist sedition, and organized social justice groups and courses

(1925-1965) Detroit NAACP activist who marched and supported the organizers from Selma to Montgomery, before being shot by Ku Klux Klan members while driving other volunteers to the airport

(1927-1965) Philadelphia Unitarian minister who moved his family to the Black part of the city to be the YMCA youth director, then to Roxbury to work on housing desegregation, then to Selma to join the voting rights marches where he was beaten to death by white supremacists

(1931-) A Selma minister who worked with activists to integrate his white church; published an article defending interracial marriage, for which he was physically assaulted; organized in support of migrant workers in Oklahoma; and founded a white antiracist spiritual community in Chicago

(1939-1965) Cambridge seminarian who went on leave to serve with the Civil Rights Movement in Selma until, during a protest, he stepped in front of teenager Ruby Sales and was murdered by a militiaman

(1939-) Alabama student who became SNCC’s first white field secretary, training protestors for sit-ins and building support among rural white southerners, despite being frequently beaten

(1941-) Participated in the sit-ins and Freedom Rides as a college student, spending two months in jail in Alabama, and retiring after teaching ESL for 40 years to start a foundation to educate youth about the Civil Rights Movement

(1933-) Iowa schoolteacher whose classroom activity using eye color to role-play discrimination is considered the inspiration for the field of diversity training

(1937-) New Orleans attorney who purchased a plantation and converted it into the country’s first and only slavery history museum (so far), The Whitney Plantation

(1949-) North Carolina lesbian organizer who fought the far-right in the 1980s and wrote the landmark book 'Memoir of a Race Traitor'