This activist was a founding member of the NAACP and one of the foremost Black intellectuals of his era. He published many influential works describing the plight of Black Americans and encouraged Black people to embrace their African heritage even as they worked and lived in the United States.

Strict local and state laws that detailed when, where and how formerly enslaved people could work, and for how much compensation. They appeared throughout the South as a legal way to put Black citizens into indentured servitude, to take voting rights away, to control where they lived and how they traveled and to seize children for labor purposes.

Most prolific civil rights activist of our time.

Most prolific civil rights activist of our time.

Most prolific civil rights activist of our time.

Not only did this activist become the nation's first Black Supreme Court Justice, but he was also one of America's foremost attorneys, serving as chief of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. He led the legal fight against segregation, arguing the historic 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education.

Established by Congress in 1865, its task was to help the Southern Blacks and Whites make the transition from a society based on Slavery to one that allows freedom. Responsibilities included introducing a system of free labor, overseeing some 3,000 schools for freedpersons, settling disputes and enforcing contracts between the usually white landowners and their black labor force, and securing justice for blacks in state courts.

Most prolific civil rights activist of our time.

Most prolific civil rights activist of our time.

Most prolific civil rights activist of our time.

As school teachers in Florida, this husband and wife fought tirelessly for equal rights for Black Floridians by investigating lynchings, challenging barriers to voter registration, and advocating for equal pay for Black teachers in public schools despite segregation. Their fight would end in 1951 when they were killed in their home by KKK members. At the time of their deaths, Florida had the highest number of Black voters - a result of their efforts.

This movement was formed by critics of Booker T. Washington who resented his more conciliatory approach whites and discriminatory policies. W.E.B. Du Bois was a central figure in the movement.

Most prolific civil rights activist of our time.

Most prolific civil rights activist of our time.

Most prolific civil rights activist of our time.

This leader has been engaged in the fight for equal rights for more than three decades. As a civil rights lawyer, she has worked in the U.S. Department of Education, for a federal judge, and throughout New York state and city government. Simmons now runs the Center for Law and Social Justice at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, which provides legal services to people facing voter suppression and discrimination.

Most prolific civil rights activist of our time.

A book by this civil rights attorney entitled "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness," argues that the racial oppression of the 20th century had been replaced by a new system of racial oppression – prisons, filled disproportionately with black men. The book has become a must-read for civil rights activists, according to a foreword of the book by Harvard University Public Philosophy Professor Dr. Cornel West.