
A. Philip Randolph
(1889–1979), union head and civil rights leader.A socialist, Asa Philip Randolph saw economic empowerment as the key to African-American advancement, a philosophy he espoused in his Messenger ...

Aaron Henry
(b. 2 July 1922; d. 19 May 1997),civil rights activist and politician. Born in Dublin, Mississippi, to sharecroppers who encouraged him to get an education, Aaron Henry joined the ...

Activism
In the literature of American women writers can be discussed on many levels. A literary text can accomplish the work of raising political consciousness and inspiring political action, thereby having ...

affirmative action
Any form of positive discrimination taken to assist or promote members of disadvantaged groups, e.g. under Affirmative Action (Equal Employment Opportunity for Women) Act 1986 (Cth). See ...

Alabama
Alabama became a new immigrant destination at the end of the twentieth century. Latino immigrants and migrants, primarily from Mexico and Central America, have brought dramatic demographic, economic, ...

Albany Movement
The Albany Movement began in Georgia in the fall of 1961 and ended in the summer of 1962. It was considered one of the first mass movements in the twentieth-century ...

Alice Walker
(1944– )Black US novelist and poet whose writing explores racial and sexual politics as they affect African-American women.Born into a family of sharecroppers in Eatonton, Georgia, Alice Walker ...

American Bar Association
The American Bar Association (ABA) was founded in 1878 in Saratoga Springs, New York, as a voluntary, national organization of the legal profession. Its initial membership totaled 289 lawyers, and ...

An American Dilemma
(1944).Gunnar Myrdal's An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy ranks among the most important studies of American race relations. The “American Negro Problem,” Myrdal argued, lay ...

American Friends Service Committee
Relief organization seeking to implement the Quaker peace testimony.Many American Quaker Yearly Meetings joined in 1917 to create the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) as a place for ...

American Indian Movement
(AIM)A militant organization emerging from the growth of a pan-American Indian identity in 1968 to advance American Indian cultural, legal, and property claims. Some of its members occupied Alcatraz ...

Americans for Democratic Action
(ADA) was founded in January 1947 by the liberal leadership of a World War II–era interventionist group, the Union for Democratic Action.The ADA's creation marked the culmination of a ...

Andrea Dworkin
(1945–2005),American feminist writer, critical commentator, and political activist, born in Camden, New Jersey, educated at Bennington College. Active in women's campaigns throughout the USA, Dworkin ...

Anticommunism and Civil Rights
Anticommunism was frequently deployed to discredit the aims, objectives, and methods of the civil rights movement. Opponents of civil rights claimed that movement members and organizations had ...

Atlanta
The state capital of Georgia, which during the Civil War was a Confederate stronghold. Its loss in 1864 to the Union forces under Sherman after a long siege was a turning point in the Civil War.

Audre Lorde
(1934–92), poet.Born in New York City of West Indian parents, Lorde was educated at the National University of Mexico, Hunter College, and Columbia University. The main themes of her ...

baptists
A person who practises baptism; The Baptist is the epithet of St John of Chancery.A Baptist is a member of a Protestant Christian denomination advocating baptism only of adult believers by total ...

Barbara Deming
Barbara Deming (1918–1939) was an American writer, film analyst, and nonviolent activist whose acute insights into human psychology underpin her philosophy of nonviolent political action. She was at ...

Bayard Rustin
(b. 17 March 1912; d. 24 August 1987),civil rights organizer. Born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, to Florence Rustin and Archie Hopkins, Bayard Taylor Rustin was one of the most ...

Beauty Culture
Black is beautiful! This familiar cry of the Black Power movement was revolutionary in its celebration of the culture, style, politics, and physical attributes of peoples of African descent. Symbols ...