Activism > Civil Rights Archives

Rose Matsui Ochi

While serving as a Reginald Heber Smith Fellow for the Western Center on Law and Poverty she won the landmark educational law reform case, Serrano v. Priest, serving as the co-counsel of record.

Lena Olive Smith

Lena Olive Smith was a prominent civil rights lawyer and activist during the 1920s and 1930s.

Ethel Ray Nance was an African American activist and writer. During the 1920s, she broke various racial and gender barriers in Minnesota, participated in the Harlem Renaissance movement, worked as a secretary for the National Urban League, and contributed to Opportunity magazine.

Irene Gomez-Bethke

Irene Gomez-Bethke, a daughter of Mexican parents who immigrated to Minnesota, played a leadership role in bending the arc of history toward social justice, serving as Minnesota Commissioner of Human Rights, guiding boards and commissions as a volunteer, and co-founding both Centro Cultural Chicano and Instituto de Arte y Cultura.

Nellie Stone Johnson

Nellie Stone Johnson was an African American union and civil rights leader whose career spanned the class-conscious politics of the 1930s and the liberal reforms of the Minnesota DFL Party.

Tsuyako “Sox” Kitashima

San Francisco Bay Area-based Nisei redress activist who has been called the heart and soul of San Francisco National Coalition for Redress/Reparations

Marvel Cooke

Marvel Cooke was a pioneering journalist and political activist who spent her groundbreaking career in a world where she was often the only female African American.

Hilda Simms

Civil rights activist Hilda Simms became a national celebrity for her leading role in the first all-Black performance of the Broadway show Anna Lucasta. Frustrated by her struggling career and the lack of roles for Black actors, Simms worked as the creative director for the New York State Human Rights Commission to address racial discrimination in the entertainment industry.

Fannie Barrier Williams

Civil rights activist who helped found the National League of Colored Women in 1893

Franziska Boas

Pioneering dancer, percussionist, teacher, ethnologist, and therapist