Seven Changemakers You Should Know

For generations, African Americans worked collectively to survive and thrive amid historical and ongoing oppression.  

Our museum uplifts changemakers who have made tremendous contributions toward equity and freedom. However, their stories are often overlooked. 

Until now.

Hallie Quinn Brown (1849-1949) helped organize the Colored Women’s League in Washington, D.C., one of the organizations that merged in 1896 to become the National Association of Colored Women (NACW). She served as president of the NACW, from 1920 to 1924 acted as its honorary president until her death in 1949. As president, she pursued preserving Fredrick Douglass’ home in Washington, D.C., and establishing a scholarship in her name for female students. 

Brown is among many other notable founders of the NACW, to include abolitionist Harriet Tubman (1820-1913), educator and speaker Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954) and journalist Ida B. Wells (1862-1931). “Lifting as we climb,” the slogan of NACW, became a well-known motto for Black women’s activism in the late nineteenth century. 

In 1900, the African Methodist Episcopal Church elected her as their Secretary of Education, making her the first woman to serve as a “daughter of the church.”  Brown also served as president of the Ohio State Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs between 1905 and 1912.

In 1900, the African Methodist Episcopal Church elected her as their Secretary of Education, making her the first woman to serve as a “daughter of the church.” Brown also served as president of the Ohio State Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs between 1905 and 1912.  

During her last year as president of the NACW, she spoke at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Brown had a reputation as a powerful orator. In 1899, while serving as a U.S. representative, she spoke before the International Congress of Women meeting in London on women’s suffrage and civil rights.  

She advocated for equality for African Americans and women from the late 1880s until her death in 1949. 

Charlene Carruthers is a filmmaker, writer, organizer and author of “Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements. She has over 15 years of experience in racial justice, feminist and youth leadership development movement work. She is a 2020 Marguerite Casey Presidential Freedom Scholar and Mellon Interdisciplinary Cluster Fellow in Gender and Sexuality Studies.  

As the founding national director of BYP100 (Black Youth Project 100), Carruthers has worked with young Black activists to create justice and freedom for all Black people. The Chicago-based group for activists and organizers ages 18-35 formed in 2013. It trains youth to be leaders, to empower a younger generation of black activists. 

In July 2013, Carruthers with 100 other Black activist leaders from across the U.S. were assembled by the Black Youth Project in Chicago for a meeting. The meeting convened with the goal of building networks of organization for Black youth activism across the country.

However, it was the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, that inspired Carruthers and the other activists to form BYP100.  

Angela Davis (b. 1944) is a political activist, professor and author who was an active member in the Communist Party and the Black Panther Party. 

She is known for her involvement with the Soledad brothers, who were accused of killing a prison guard. During George Jackson’s trial in August 1970, an escape attempt was made at gunpoint and several people were killed. 

Davis was accused of taking part in the event and was charged with murder. Evidence showed that the guns were registered to her, and rumors said she was in love with Jackson, which later proved untrue.  

Davis went into hiding and was placed on the FBI’s most wanted list. She spent 18 months in jail, which led to the “Free Angela Davis” campaign and the Angela Davis Legal Defense Committee. In response, John Lennon and Yoko Ono wrote “Angela” and the Rolling Stones wrote “Sweet Black Angel.” 

She served as a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she taught courses on the history of consciousness. Her interests in prisoner rights led her to found Critical Resistance, an organization working to abolish the prison-industrial complex. Davis is the author of several books including “Women, Race, and Class,” which was published in 1983 and “Are Prisons Obsolete?” 20 years later. 

Pauli Murray (1910-1985), an activist, pioneering lawyer, author and priest, inspired a generation of lawyers, including the late associate Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.   

She was first in her class at Howard University Law school and the only woman. She is the first African American to earn a J.S.D. from Yale Law School and a co-founder of the National Organization for Women with Betty Friedman and other activists. As the only female student at Howard University Law School, Pauli Murray developed the term Jane Crow, the “twin evil of Jim Crow,” to describe the sexism Black women faced. 

Murray’s 776-page book, "States’ Laws on Race and Color," was regarded as the “bible” of civil rights work. It served as a foundation for the arguments posed in the landmark Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education. 

Ginsburg called Murray her legal hero and lauded her for the “willingness to speak out when society was not prepared to listen. [Murray] was the one who sparked the idea that the Fourteenth Amendment should protect the right of men and women . . . to follow their talent as far as it could take them.” 

Murray’s 1956 book, “Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family,” showcases the racial and social dynamics between the union of a free Back family from the North and a mixed-race family of the South. It was an early work in African American genealogy. 

In 1977, Murray became the first African American woman to be ordained as an Episcopal priest and served in that capacity until her death in 1985. She was later canonized as a saint as an affirmation of her advocacy and her contributions to the church.

Bayard Rustin (1912–1987) was a human rights activist known for his work during the Civil Rights Movement.  

A key organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Rustin was one of Martin Luther King Jr.’s closest advisors — especially on techniques of nonviolent resistance. Rustin was extremely active in the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and helped to create the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). 

Early in his career, he was arrested for “moral cause” which led to his outing to the public. However, once outed, Rustin was completely open about his sexuality and was never ashamed. Criticism and discrimination over his sexuality led Rustin to have a more background role in the Civil Rights Movement. 

He never wanted his sexuality to have a negative effect on the Movement, which is often the reason that Rustin’s efforts are not widely known. 

From 1965–1979, Rustin served as the head of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, the AFL-CIO's African American constituency group. Serving alongside A. Philip Randolph until his passing in 1979, Rustin worked to integrate unions and promote unions among African Americans.  

Rustin served on several humanitarian missions to Vietnam, Cambodia, and Haiti during the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1980s, he became a part of the LGBTQ+ movement and an advocate for AIDS education. In a 1986 testimony on behalf of New York State's Gay Rights Bill, Rustin stated that “gay people are the new barometer for social change.” He felt that injustice everywhere should not be tolerated and must be protested. 

Rustin died Aug. 26, 1987, because of a perforated appendix.

In 1973, author and lesbian feminist Barbara Smith (b. 1946), with other delegates, attended the first regional meeting of the National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO) in 1973 in New York City.  


This meeting resulted in the founding of the Combahee River Collective. The collective’s name was suggested by Smith, who owned the book, “Harriet Tubman, Conductor on the Underground Railroad” by Earl Conrad.  

The name commemorated an action at the Combahee River planned and led by Harriet Tubman on June 2, 1863, in the Port Royal region of South Carolina. The action freed more than 750 slaves and is the only military campaign in American history planned and led by a woman. The Combahee River Collective emphasized the intersections of race, gender, sexuality and class oppression in the lives of African American women and other non-white women. 

The academic, activist and author also established the “Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press” in 1980, an activist feminist press that published several pamphlets and books. Many of these works became widely influential and adopted into many courses of study. 

Smith continued her work as a community organizer, when she was elected to the Albany, New York Common Council in 2005. She was an advocate for violence prevention and equity in educational opportunities. 

She continues to be an activist for economic, racial and social inequality. 

William Still (1801-1902) was a businessman, historian, writer and civil rights activist.    

He was an active agent on the Underground Railroad, helping formerly enslaved Blacks who came to Philadelphia. He served as a clerk for the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery and lead its Vigilance Committee. He was part of Philadelphia’s free Black community.  

The Underground Railroad refers to the self-emancipation of enslaved African Americans along secret routes during the early to mid-19th century. They sought refuge in safe houses or other places and received assistance from diverse groups of people including enslaved and free African Americans. 

The abolitionist was known as the Father of the Underground Railroad, assisting hundreds to escape to freedom. He helped finance several of Harriet Tubman’s trips to the South. 

Between 1850 and 1860, Tubman made over a dozen journeys across the Mason-Dixon line, guiding family and friends from slavery to freedom. Tubman, often referred to as “the Moses of her people,” was a former slave who fled to freedom in 1849. Tubman worked for years to bring enslaved women, men, and children from the South to the North through the Underground Railroad.  

Objects related to Harriet’s life — such as the shawl gifted to her by Queen Victoria — highlight her impact on her contemporaries and acknowledge her international impact.

In 1867, he published “A Brief Narrative of the Struggle for the Rights of Colored People of Philadelphia in the City Railway Cars.” In his 1872 book, “The Underground Railroad Records,” Still chronicled first-person accounts of activities within the network, drawing from the records he collected through the years.

Still helped established Philadelphia’s first Black YMCA and an orphanage. He also served as a trustee for Storer College in Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, which operated from 1867 to 1955.

Make your voice heard this Black History Month with our museum. 
Join us in sharing key stories of Black resistance throughout February organized around five weekly focus areas that demonstrate how African Americans have practiced resistance from arriving in the Americas to today.