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The Unknown Rebel
On June 5, 1989 in Beijing, China, an anonymous man stood in front of a line of army tanks on their way to suppress a populist uprising in Tiananmen Square. At once no one and everyone, the Unknown Rebel has come to symbolize the power of individuals in the face of tyranny. |
Inez Milholland (1886 - 1916)
Was a suffragist, labor lawyer, World War I correspondent, and public speaker who greatly influenced the women's movement in America. She was involved in the National American Woman Suffrage Association, which later branched into the grassroots radical National Woman's Party. She became a leader and a popular speaker on the campaign circuit of the NWP, working closely with Alice Paul and Lucy Burns. |
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Aretha Franklin (b. 1942)
An American singer, songwriter and pianist. She is known to the music world as "The Queen of Soul," but is also adept at jazz, rock, blues, pop, gospel, and even opera. She is widely acclaimed for her passionate, soulful vocal style, which is aided by a massive and powerful vocal range. Franklin is the second most honored female singer in Grammy history after Alison Krauss. Franklin has had a total of eighteen #1 R&B singles - a record unsurpassed by any other female recording act - and a total of seventeen top ten singles on the Billboard Hot 100. |
Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini (1902 – 1989)
He was a senior Shi`i Muslim cleric, Islamic philosopher and the political leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution which saw the overthrow of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran. Following the revolution, Khomeini became the country's Supreme Leader—the paramount political figure of the new Islamic Republic until his death. He was named Time's Man of the Year in 1979 and also one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people of the 20th century. |
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Emmeline Pankhurst (1858 - 1928)
She was one of the founders of the British suffrage movement. She founded the Women's Franchise League in 1889. Followed by Women's Social and Political Union, that began in 1905 and was most famous for its militancy. When WWII broke, she led in the decision to stop the suffrage movement, so that the country could focus on winning the war. She then shifted her focus to women taking over men’s jobs so that there were more men to go fight in the war. |
Harvey Milk (1930 - 1978)
He was the first openly gay politician to be elected into office. He was the city supervisor of San Francisco, CA and a gay rights activist. Milk also played a key role in defeating Proposition 6, which would have allowed openly gay and lesbian teachers to be fired based on their sexuality. He was assassinated by Dan White, an anti-gay conservative, who was sentenced to only five years with parole, leading to White Night Riots in San Francisco. |
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Jack "Jackie" Roosevelt Robinson (1919-1972)
In 1947 he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers after playing baseball professionally in the Negro Leagues. He was the first African-American professional baseball player in the league since 1889. By joining the team he broke the color barrier challenging racial segregation in the U.S. |
David Ben-Gurion (1886-1973)
He became the first Prime Minister of Israel in May 1948, and played a major role in establishing Israel as a state. He held this position until 1963. Ben-Gurion went on to form the National List Party after his former party, Rafi, merged with the Alignment Party, which won four seats in the 1969 elections. He retired from politics in 1970. |
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John Maynard Keynes
His radical idea that governments should spend money they don't have may have saved capitalism. Keynes' largest influence came from a convoluted, badly organized and in places nearly incomprehensible tome published in 1936, during the depths of the Great Depression. It was called "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money." Keynes' basic idea was simple. In order to keep people fully employed, governments have to run deficits when the economy is slowing. |
Lech Walesa
Poland's brash union organizer stood up to the Kremlin and dealt the Eastern bloc a fatal blow. He shaped the 20th century as the leader of the Solidarity movement that led the Poles out of communism. Poland was the icebreaker for the rest of Central Europe in the "velvet revolutions" of 1989. Walesa's contribution to the end of communism in Europe, and hence the end of the cold war, stands beside those of his fellow Pole, Pope John Paul II, and the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983. |
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Margaret Sanger
Her crusade to legalize birth control spurred the movement for women's liberation. While working as a practical nurse and midwife in the poorest neighborhoods of New York City in the years before World War I, she saw women deprived of their health, sexuality and ability to care for children already born. Contraceptive information was so suppressed by clergy-influenced, physician-accepted laws that it was a criminal offense to send it through the mail. In a series of articles called "What Every Girl Should Know," Sanger put information and power into the hands of women. |
Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948)
Also known as Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi was a Indian nationalist leader, who established his country's freedom from British rule through a nonviolent revolution. Gandhi was also a leader of the movement in India dedicated to eradicating the unjust social and economic aspects of the caste system. He was assassinated in January of 1948. |
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Pope John Paul II (1920-2005)
He reigned as the 264th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church. He was the first non-Italian pope in 450 years and was born in Poland. In his early reign he opposed communism, and he is often credited as one of the forces which contributed to its collapse in Central and Eastern Europe. Later, he was noted for speaking against war, fascism, communism, dictatorship, materialism, abortion, contraception, relativism, and unrestrained capitalism. |
Nelson Mandela (b. 1918)
He was a South African activist who was imprisoned for 27 years for his work in the antiapartheid movement. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 for his work to end apartheid in South Africa. In 1994, Mandela became the first black president of South Africa (1994-1999).
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Bill Gates (b. 1955)
He cofounded Microsoft in 1975 with high school friend Paul Allen. He is an American business executive, who serves as chairman of Microsoft Corporation, the leading computer software company in the United States. The company's success made Gates one of the most influential figures in the computer industry and, eventually, one of the richest people in the world. In the late 1990's Gates became more involved in philanthropy. With his wife he established the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is one of the largest foundations in the world. He now works full time with his foundation.
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Joan Baez and Bob Dylan
They were among the best-known of the folksingers to come to prominence in the 1960s.
Baez, who was active in the peace movement and in civil rights, is best known for her 1970s hits "Diamonds & Rust" and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down". She has performed publicly for nearly 50 years, released over 30 albums and recorded songs in at least eight languages.
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, author, musician, poet, and, of late, disc jockey who has been a major figure in popular music for five decades. Much of Dylan's most celebrated work dates from the 1960s, when he became an informal chronicler and a reluctant figurehead of American unrest. A number of his songs, such as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'", became anthems of the anti-war and civil rights movements.
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Mother Teresa of Calcutta (1910-1997)
She was a Roman Catholic nun, who founded the Missionaries of Charity. The charity opened orphanages, hospitals for lepers and other homes first in India then in many countries. She worked and lived among the poor she served. She received the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of her humanitarian work, "bringing help to suffering humanity".
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James Joyce
His novel Ulysses baffled readers and challenged aspiring writers; it also revolutionized 20th century fiction. He began Ulysses in 1914; portions of it in progress appeared in the Egoist in England and the Little Review in the U.S., until the Post Office, on grounds of alleged obscenity, confiscated three issues containing Joyce's excerpts and fined the editors $100. The censorship flap only heightened curiosity about Joyce's forthcoming book. Even before Ulysses was published, critics were comparing Joyce's breakthroughs to those of Einstein and Freud. Ulysses became a source book for 20th century literature. It expanded the domain of permissible subjects in fiction.
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Rosa Parks
Her simple act of protest ignited a revolution. On December 1, 1955, Parks, a seamstress on her way home from work, dared to sit in the "whites-only" section of a Montgomery, AL city bus. Her defiance marked the death knell for segregation in the American South and set off the Civil Rights Movement.
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Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Scientist, professor, intellect, Albert Einstein's idea reverberated across disciplines and throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. The impact of his theories, The General Theory of Relativity, the Special Theory of Relativity, just to name a few, was felt not just in his field of physics, but also in the cultural fabric of their time.
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Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)
Martin Luther King Jr. led the struggle for racial equality that ended segregation in America. A minister, activist, and orator, King's belief in civil disobedience defined the Civil Rights Movement. Although an assassin's bullet cut short a dynamic life, his work and words altered, and continue to alter, modern America.
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Rosie the Riveter
A cultural icon, a symbol of gender equality, Rosie the Riveter represented the millions of American women who entered the workforce during the Second World War. With her flexed arm and rolled-up sleeves, she embodies the strength women found in financial and cultural freedom.
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W.E.B. DuBois (1868 – 1963)
W.E.B. DuBois was an early civil rights leader, activist, writer, sociologist, and scholar. He was the first African-American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard University and in 1909 he helped to found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
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Rachel Carson (1907 – 1964)
An American marine biologist and nature writer whose writings are often credited with launching the global environmental movement. Her Silent Spring (1962), brought environmental concerns to an unprecedented portion of the American public. It spurred a reversal in national pesticide policy—leading to a nationwide ban on DDT and other pesticides—and the grassroots environmental movement it inspired led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. Carson was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
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Malcolm X (1925-1965)
Black activist whose ideas about racial problems in the United States had an important influence on the black nationalist and the black separatist movements of the 1950s and 1960s. Late in his life, Malcolm X was also known by the religious name El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. After moderating his views on black separatism, he was assassinated. |
Alice Paul (1885 – 1977)
An American suffragist leader who in January 1917, as part of the National Woman's Party staged the first political protest ever to picket the White House. The picketers, known as "Silent Sentinels," held banners demanding the right to vote. This was an example of a non-violent civil disobedience campaign.She led a successful campaign for women's suffrage that resulted in the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920.
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Ernesto "Che" Guevara (1928 - 1967)
He helped Fidel Castro to over throw Dictator Fulgencio Batista, as part of the Rebel Army during the Cuban Revolution. Over the years he held many positions within the new Cuban government. He also wrote books and articles surrounding theories and practices of guerrilla warfare including, but not limited to, The Motorcycle Diaries, Guerrilla Warfare, Che Guevara: Radical Writings on Guerrilla Warfare.
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Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862 - 1931)
She was an American civil rights activist and women's rights advocate for the suffrage movement born out of slavery. Wells refused to give up her seat to a white man on a train 71 years before the similar, but famous, Rosa Parks' bus incident. In 1889 she became the co-owner of Free Speech, an anti-segregation newspaper based out of Memphis, TN. She was also a co-founder of the NAACP and a major leader in the American anti-lynching campaign.
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Karl Marx
The philosopher, social scientist, historian and revolutionary is without a doubt the most influential socialist thinker to emerge in the 19th century. Although he was largely ignored by scholars in his own lifetime, his social, economic and political ideas gained rapid acceptance in the socialist movement after his death in 1883. Until quite recently almost half the population of the world lived under regimes that claim to be Marxist.
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Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
Spanish painter who lived most of his life in France. He is widely acknowledged to be the most important artist of the 20th century. No other painter before his had a mass audience in their lifetime. A long-lived and highly prolific artist, he experimented with a wide range of styles and themes throughout his career. Among Picasso’s many contributions to the history of art, his most important include pioneering the modern art movement called cubism, inventing collage as an artistic technique, and developing assemblage (constructions of various materials) in sculpture.
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