This list contains the names of notable African American civil rights activists and thinkers who pushed for emancipation, equality, and racial justice during the 19th century. Although not often highlighted in American history, before

Rosa Parks Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an American civil rights activist. She is best known for her refusal to move from her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus, in defiance of Jim Crow laws, which sparke ...

changed America when she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery, Alabama city bus in December 1955, 19th-century African-American civil rights activists worked strenuously from the 1850s until the 1880s for the cause of equal treatment.

Activists

Harriet Tubman Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Ross, – March 10, 1913) was an American abolitionist and social activist. After escaping slavery, Tubman made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 enslaved people, including her family and friends, us ...

Philip Alexander Bell Philip Alexander Bell (1808–1889) was an American newspaper editor and abolitionist. Born in New York City to an African American family, he was educated at the African Free School and became politically active at the 1832 Colored Conventi ...

* Katherine "Kate" Brown *

Charlotte L. Brown Charlotte L. Brown (1839–?) was an American educator and Civil and political rights, civil rights activist who was one of the first to legally challenge racial segregation in the United States when she filed a successful lawsuit against a stree ...

Norris Wright Cuney Norris Wright Cuney (May 12, 1846March 3, 1898) was an American politician, businessman, union leader, and advocate for the rights of African-Americans in Texas. Following the American Civil War, he became active in Galveston politics, serving ...

* Robert Fox *

Nellie Griswold Francis Nellie F. Griswold Francis (November 7, 1874 – December 13, 1969) was an African-American suffragist, civic leader, and civil rights activist. Francis founded and led the Everywoman Suffrage Club, an African-American suffragist group that help ...

* Elizabeth "Lizzie" Jennings * Sallie Robinson *

Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, February 14, 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. He was the most impor ...

Sojourner Truth Sojourner Truth (; born Isabella Bomefree; November 26, 1883) was an American Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist and activist for African-American civil rights, women's rights, and Temperance movement, alcohol temperance. Truth was ...

Booker T. Washington Booker Taliaferro Washington (April 5, 1856November 14, 1915) was an American educator, author, and orator. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the primary leader in the African-American community and of the contemporary Black elite#United S ...

Ida B. Wells Ida Bell Wells-Barnett (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931) was an American investigative journalist, sociologist, educator, and early leader in the civil rights movement. She was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advance ...

Florence Kelley Florence Molthrop Kelley (September 12, 1859 – February 17, 1932) was an American social and political reformer who coined the term wage abolitionism. Her work against sweatshops and for the minimum wage, eight-hour workdays, and children's ...

W. E. B. Du Bois William Edward Burghardt Du Bois ( ; February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) was an American sociologist, socialist, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in a relativel ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:19th-century African-American civil rights activists * * African-American civil rights activists Lists of activists