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James Farmer was a leader in the fight to desegregate public transportation in the I 960s, Born in Texas in 1920. Farmer was an outstanding student and received degrees from Wiley College and Howard University Along with several Christian pacifists, he founded the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) in 1942, with the purpose of directing challenges to American racism by using Gandhi’s tactics of nonviolence. In 1947 Farmer participated in CORE’s Chicago restaurant sit-ins, which helped end restaurant discrimination against blacks. An articulate and charismatic man, Farmer became the national director of CORE in 1961, organizing Freedom Rides in the Deep South, He was appointed Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare by President Nixon. After leaving that position in 1971, Farmer worked at the Council on Minority Planning and Strategy, an African American think-tank. Farmer was awarded the Congressional Medal for Freedom in 1998 and died of complications from severe diabetes in July of 1999.

Yolande Cornelia Giovanni, Jr.. was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. Called Nikki from an early age, she is considered a leader in the black poetry movement. After graduating from Fisk University with a history degree, Giovanni went on to attend the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work and the Columbia University School of Fine Arts. Believing that change is necessary for growth, Nikki’s poetry is renowned for its urgent call for black people to embrace their own identity and to fully understand white-controlled culture. Her poetry collection, Black Feeling, Black Talk, Black ]udgment, captures the militant attitude of the civil rights and black arts movements of that time. Her work has been honored with an NAACP Image Award as well as the Langston Hughes Medal for Outstanding Poetry Giovanni prides herself on being "a Black American, a daughter, a mother, and a professor of English."

Born in St. Louis in 1940, Henry Hampton suffered polio as a child. After earning his BA from Washington University in St. Louis. Hampton became a renowned movie producer. His television documentary Eyes on the Prize set the standard for documenting conflicting accounts of an historical period—in this case, the civil rights movement. The first episode in Eyes on the Prize featured original footage of the Emmett Till story a disturbing event that brought greater attention to racism and lynching in the South, Hampton’s other films include The Great Depression and America’s War on Poverty, both of which received critical acclaim, He also founded and ran Blackside Productions, which was the largest African American-owned documentary film production company becoming a fertile training ground for young black filmmakers.

Due to his parents’ divorce, young james Langston Hughes was raised by his grandmother. He was born in 1902 in Missouri and moved to Illinois at age thirteen to live with his mother and her husband. There he began writing poetry. He spent a year in Mexico visiting his father and a year at Columbia University. Hughes later finished his degree at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. In 1924 Hughes moved to Washington, D.C. He published his first book of poems, The Weary Blues, in 1926. His first novel, Nor Without Laughter, published in 1930, won the Harmon Gold Medal for Literature. Known for his insightful and colorful portrayals of black life in America in the 1 920s through I 960s, Hughes wrote novels, short stories and plays in addition to his poetry Unlike other writers of his time, Hughes refused to differentiate between his personal experience and the communal experience of black America. He wanted to tell stories of his people in ways that reflected their actual culture—including the suffering. the love of music and laughter, and the rich language, Hughes died of complications of prostate cancer in 1967, after which his home in Harlem was given landmark status.

The youngest man elected to be President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was also the youngest to die in office. Born in Massachusetts in 1917. Kennedy graduated from Harvard in 1940 and entered the Navy where he was a WWII hero during an attack on his PT boat. After the war, he became a Democratic congressman near Boston, and in 1953 Kennedy advanced to the Senate. In 1955, while recovering from a back injury, Kennedy wrote Profiles in Courage, which won the Pulitzer Prize in history Seventy million Americans watched the Great Debates between Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960. Kennedy won the presidential race by a narrow margin. In his inaugural address Kennedy famously stated, "Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country." In response to urgent demands from many groups, Kennedy made moves to support the cause of civil rights during the early 60s. In November of 1963, after hardly 1,000 days in office, John F. Kennedy was killed by an assassin’s bullet while riding in a motorcade in Texas.

Born in Atlanta in 1929, Martin Luther King attended segregated schools in Georgia, graduating high school at age fifteen. His grandfather began the family’s long tenure as pastors at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. After earning his BA from Morehouse College in 1948, King spent three years studying at the Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania. At Crozer King won a fellowship and enrolled in graduate studies at Boston University where he met and married Coretta Scott and graduated in 1955. Always a strong worker for civil rights, in 1955 King accepted leadership of the first black nonviolent demonstration in the U.S.—a bus boycott lasting 382 days. King faced jail, bombing, and abuse as a leader of the boycott, but emerged as an irreplaceable leader in the movement. In 1957 King was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide leadership for the burgeoning civil rights movement. King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail was a manifesto of the black revolution, and over 250,000 people heard his "I Have a Dream" speech during the march for civil rights in Washington, D.C. At age 35 King became the youngest man to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, turning over the $50,000 in prize money to further civil rights work. In April of 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated while standing on a hotel balcony in Memphis.

With her father in the Air Force, Angela Medearis and her family moved often during her childhood. She is the author of over 80 award-winning children’s books, including, Seven Spools of Thread, Picking Peas for a Penny, and Daisy and the Doll. In addition, Medearis’ works include several books about African American arts and Texas history. She also founded a nonprofit organization called Book Boosters, Inc., which develops tutoring programs for elementary children needing a “boost” in their self-esteem and help with reading. In addition to her published novels, Medearis has also written four cookbooks and developed educational videos and television programs for children.

Raymond Patterson was an African American poet, writer, and professor from Harlem, New York. Patterson received his BA from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and his Masters degree in English from New York University He has since become a prolific poet, whose work is highly anthologized. He is the author of 26 Ways of Looking at a Black Man and Other Poems as well as Elemental Blues, a book-length poem on the life of the enslaved African poet Phyllis Wheatley. His work often explored the roles of African Americans in the arts and society With his wife, Patterson created Black Poets Reading, a nonprofit speakers’ bureau. In 1968 he joined the faculty of New York City College, where he founded the Langston Hughes Festival, which he directed from 1973 to 1993. Patterson died in 2001 at the age of 71.

Born Theodore Roosevelt Augustus Major Poston, Ted Poston grew up working on his father’s small newspaper in Hopkinsville, Kentucky After college he decided to make journalism his career. He went to New York City, where he landed a job as city hall reporter for the New York Post. Later, Poston won many journalistic awards for his work covering race relations and the civil rights movement. He also published about twenty short stories, including "The Revolt of the Evil Fairies," one of many stories based on his life at Booker T. Washington Colored Grammar School in Hopkinsville.

Poet, publisher, and founder of the Broadside Press, Dudley Randall was born in Washington, D.C., in 1914. His family moved to Detroit shortly thereafter. His first published poem appeared in the Detroit Free Press when he was just thirteen years old. Randall worked at a post office while earning degrees in English and library science. For the next five years Randall was a librarian at Morgan State and Lincoln Universities, after which he returned to Detroit to a position at the Wayne County Federated Library System. In 1969 he became the librarian and poet in residence at the University of Detroit until his retirement in 1974. Randall’s well-known poem Ballad of Birmingham was written in response to the 1963 church bombing where four young black girls were killed. This became the first project of Randall’s Broadside Press, which printed this poem to protect its rights. The first collection of poetry printed by Broadside was Poem Counterpoem, in which ten poems were thematically matched on facing pages. Broadside Press was instrumental in establishing the reputations of many African American poets and writers,