Wilma Glodean Rudolph...American Athlete,Author,Activist,Humanitarian,Olympic Champion

Long before becoming the world's fastest female, Wilma Rudolph 1940-1994 beat her greatest odds by learning to walk on her own. As a child, Rudolph (the 17th of 21 children) was afflicted with polio, scarlet fever and double pneumonia and grew up wearing a brace on her right leg. To her doctor's shock, she removed the brace and walked unassisted at age nine. By 13 she was outracing neighborhood kids. By 16 she had qualified for the 1956 Olympics (she won bronze in the 4x100-meter relay). In Rome four years later she became a beloved figure when she won the 100 and 200 meters and in the 4x100. She never shied from a cause. She participated in sit-ins at whites-only restaurants, ran a community center and established the Wilma Rudolph Foundation, which sends schools tutors and books about American heroes, a category that surely includes Rudolph.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/siforwomen/top_100/8/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilma_Rudolph

Naomi Wolf...Author,Social Critic,and Political Activist

Naomi Wolf raises awareness of the pervasive inequities that exist in society and politics. She encourages people to take charge of their lives, voice their concerns and enact change.

Wolf was born on November 12, 1962,in San Francisco, to a Jewish family. Her mother is Deborah Goleman, an anthropologist and the author of The Lesbian Community. Her father is the Romanian-born gothic horror scholar Leonard Wolf. She attended Lowell High School and debated in regional speech tournaments as a member of the Lowell Forensic Society. Wolf then attended Yale University where in 1984,she received her Bachelor of Arts in English literature. From 1985 to 1987,she was a Rhodes Scholar at New College, Oxford.

Wolf’s landmark international bestseller, The Beauty Myth, challenged the cosmetics industry and the marketing of unrealistic standards of beauty, launching a new wave of feminism in the early 1990s. The New York Times called it one of the most important books of the 20th century. In her long-anticipated book, Vagina: A New Biography, she asks, “could a profound connection between a woman’s brain and her experience of her vagina affect her greater sense of creativity—even her consciousness?” She argues that this connection is not only real—and long-overlooked—but that it is fundamental to a woman’s sense of self.

Wolf’s New York Times bestseller, The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, is an impassioned call to return to the aspirations and beliefs of the Founders’ ideals of liberty. The New York Times called the documentary version “pointedly inflammatory.” Her latest book, Give Me Liberty: A Handbook For American Revolutionaries, includes effective tools for citizens to promote civic engagement and create sustainable democracy.

Her international journalism includes the investigative report “Guantánamo Bay: The Inside Story” for The Times of London, and as a columnist for Project Syndicate her articles have been published in India, Philippines, Egypt, and Lebanon. She’s a frequent blogger on The Huffington Post and writes cultural commentary for The Guardian, The Washington Post, and Harper’s Bazaar. Her TV appearances include Larry King Live, Meet the Press, The Joyce Behar Show, and The Colbert Report.

Wolf was a consultant to Al Gore during his presidential campaign on women’s issues and social policy. She is co-founder of The Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership, an organization that teaches leadership to young women, and The American Freedom Campaign, a grass roots democracy movement in the United States whose mission is the defense of the Constitution and the rule of law.

http://naomiwolf.org/biography/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Wolf

http://www.superscholar.org/features/20-most-influential-women-intellectuals/

Rev. Dr. Herbert Daughtry...Pastor,Actor,Educator,Community Leader,Author,Activist

The Rev. Dr. Herbert Daughtry hails from a family that has produced five generations of Black church leaders.  Currently National Presiding Minister of The House of the Lord Churches, he has previously served as Chairman of the National Black United Front as well as Founder and President of the African People's Christian Organization.  More than 50 years of involvement in church and community service has earned him the title, "The People's Pastor."

Rev. Daughtry's long career of activism began with the civil rights struggles in the 1950s working with Brooklyn CORE and Operation Breadbasket, and continued in the fight for community control of schools in the late 1960s. He subsequently helped to found several organizations, including Black Leadership 

Commission on AIDS, Alonzo Daughtry Memorial Family Life Services, which serves the community through innovative programming such as Families of Victims Against Violence, and Alonzo Daughtry Memorial Day Care Center, which provides early childhood education under the motto, "Nurturing and Educating the Leaders of Tomorrow."  He currently serves as Chair of National Religious Leaders of African Ancestry Concerned about Darfur.

Reverend Daughtry has previously served as Chair of the New York Citywide African-American Clergy Council, African American Clergy and Elected Officials, and the Association of Brooklyn Clergy for Community Development, which built and renovated more than 500 units of housing for low- and middle-income families in Brooklyn. 

His commitment to global human rights and self-determination has led Rev. Daughtry to travel and lecture extensively around the world, and he has participated in dozens of international conferences and conventions, including speaking at United Nations subcommittee meetings regarding South African apartheid, Cuba, the Middle East, and the state of U.S. civil rights.

Currently, Reverend Daughtry is one of a handful of community leaders working with Forest City Ratner Companies to build Atlantic Yards, a $5 billion complex that includes a 19,000 seat arena to house the New York Nets.  Daughtry was instrumental in the creation of the landmark Atlantic Yards Community Benefits Agreement that ensures delivery of a wide variety of services to the Brooklyn community, including a state-of-the-art health facility, an intergenerational center, and a community foundation as well as housing opportunities for low- and middle-income New Yorkers, construction jobs for minorities and women, and thousands of other employment opportunities.

Ordained to the Ministry in 1958, Reverend Daughtry was installed as the third National Presiding Minister of The House of the Lord Churches in October 1959.  His father, Alonzo, had served as the Church's founder and first Presiding Minister.  Daughtry has pastored the Brooklyn congregation since 1958.  In 2010, he established a Jersey City branch of the Church, and he also serves as pastor there.

In the field of religion, he has served in various capacities with the World Council of Churches; has studied and done research at the Theological Ecumenical Institute in Bossey, Switzerland; and has been the preacher in residence at the Interdenominational Theological Seminary in Atlanta, Georgia. Rev. Daughtry has also lectured at Harvard University School of Divinity and at both Union and New York Theological Seminaries in New York City. Additionally, he was one of the principal lecturers at the 150th anniversary of the Virginia Theological Seminary and his lecture, “A Theology of Black Liberation: the Who, What and How,” was published in the school’s journal.

Rev. Daughtry is a prolific author. His book, No Monopoly on Suffering: Blacks and Jews in Crown Heights and Elsewhere, published by Africa World Press in 1997 with a foreword by Dr. Cornel West, gives a chronology of the building of a movement in Brooklyn which can serve as a guide for the empowerment of any people. His other books include My Beloved Community, published by Africa World Press, Effectual Prayer and Dear 2pac: Letters to a Son, published by Seaburn Press. Other publications to his credit include “Jesus Christ: African in Origin, Revolutionary and Redeeming in Action,” “South African Reader,” “Seize the Future,” “From Magnificence to Wretchedness: The Sad Saga of Black Humanity,” “Inside the Storm: A Report on the Uprising in Crown Heights,” and another work on Tupac Shakur – who joined his congregation at the early age of 11 – entitled, “A Seed Planted in Stone: The Life and Times of Tupac Shakur.” 

The pastor appeared in Spike Lee’s Mo’ Better Blues as the minister who married Bleak Gilliam (Denzel Washington) and Indigo Downes (Joie Lee).

Reverend Daughtry is married to Reverend Dr. Karen Smith Daughtry.  They have four adult children:  Leah, Sharon, Dawnique, and Herbert, Jr; and three grandsons, Lorenzo, Herbert III, and Myles.

http://holc.bluestatedigital.com/pages/presiding-minister

http://www.holnj.org/nationalpresider.html

Rev. Rodney M.Hunter…Pastor,Community Leader and Activist

This is Pastor Rodney M Hunter(from Newport News,VA) of Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church in Richmond,VA who received a leadership and activism award from the Progressive Democrats of America on May 15, 2011. He has served as chairperson of the Juvenile Court Volunteers Program, and member of the Board of The Society of Saint Andrew Gleaning Network, and the Home Reparation Project. Rev. Hunter works with outreach ministries involving parenting and families and has traveled overseas on peace missions. He also hosts the "House of Love radio broadcast on WFTH 1590 AM on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

http://www.zoominfo.com/p/Rodney-Hunter/1424861607

http://www.examiner.com/article/progressive-democrats-salute-richmond-activists

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=0FDbk2Q_aZA

Dr. Julianne Malveaux…President Emertia of Bennett College,Economist,Activist,Civic Leader and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Member

Julianne Malveaux was born September 22, 1953, in San Francisco, California. Dr. Julianne Malveaux is President Emertia of Bennett College for Women. She is an economist, author of Wall Street, Main Street, and the Side Street: A Mad Economist Takes a Stroll (1999) and Surviving & Thriving 365 Facts in Black Economic History (2010) as well as commentator who’s popular writings has appeared in USA Today, Black Issues in Higher Education, Ms.Magazine, Essence Magazine, the Progressive and many more.

Well-known for appearances on national network programs, including CNN, BET, PBS, NBC, ABC, Fox News, MSNBC, CNBC, C-SPAN and others; Malveaux is booked to offer commentary on subjects ranging from economics to women's rights and public policy. She has also hosted television and radio programs.

A committed activist and civic leader, Dr. Malveaux has held positions in women’s, civil rights, and policy organizations. Currently she serves on the boards of the Economic Policy Institute, The Recreation Wish List Committee of Washington, DC, and the Liberian Education Trust. Malveaux is also President of PUSH Excel, the educational branch of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition.

She has also lectured at more than 500 colleges/universities corporate events. For the last 5 years Dr. Malveaux has focused and centered her efforts on public speaking appearances and her work as a broadcast and print journalist, and author.

http://www.juliannemalveaux.com/#!about/c1yaw

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julianne_Malveaux

W.E.B. Du Bois was a black civil rights activist, leader, Pan-Africanist, sociologist, educator, historian, writer, editor, poet, and scholar

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born on February 23, 1868 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts,in The United States. Du Bois grew up in a relatively tolerant and integrated community. After graduating from Harvard, where he was the first African American to earn a doctorate, he became a professor of history, sociology and economics at Atlanta University. Du Bois was one of the co-founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.

Du Bois rose to national prominence as the leader of the Niagra Movement, a group of African-American activists who wanted equal rights for blacks. Du Bois and his supporters opposed the Atlanta Compromise, an agreement crafted by Booker T. Washington which provided that Southern blacks would work and submit to white political rule, while Southern whites guaranteed that blacks would receive basic educational and economic opportunities. Instead, Du Bois insisted on full civil rights and increased political representation, which he believed would be brought about by the African-American intellectual elite. He referred to this group as the talented tenth and believed that African Americans needed the chances for advanced education to develop its leadership.

Racism was the main target of Du Bois's polemics, and he strongly protested against lynching, Jim Crow laws, and discrimination in education and employment. His cause included people of color everywhere, particularly Africans and Asians in their struggles against colonialism and imperialism. He was a proponent of Pan-Africanism and helped organize several Pan-African Congresses to free African colonies from European powers. Du Bois made several trips to Europe, Africa and Asia. After World War I, he surveyed the experiences of American black soldiers in France and documented widespread bigotry in the United States military.

Du Bois was a prolific author. His collection of essays, The Souls of Black Folk, was a seminal work in African American literature;and his 1935 magnum opus Black Reconstruction in America challenged the prevailing orthodoxy that blacks were responsible for the failures of the Reconstruction era. He wrote the first scientific treatise in the field of sociology; and he published three autobiographies, each of which contains insightful essays on sociology, politics and history. In his role as editor of the NAACP's journal The Crisis, he published many influential pieces. Du Bois believed that capitalism was a primary cause of racism, and he was generally sympathetic to socialist causes throughout his life. He was an ardent peace activist and advocated nuclear disarmament. The United States' Civil Rights Act, embodying many of the reforms for which Du Bois had campaigned his entire life, was enacted a year after his death. He became a naturalized citizen of Ghana in 1963 at the age of 95 August 27 1963, where he passed away in the city of Accra.

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/10710.W_E_B_Du_Bois?bf=500&from_search=true

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._E._B._Du_Bois

James Baldwin...Essayist, Playwright,Civil Rights Activist,Novelist and American Icon

Born on August 2, 1924, in Harlem,New York and raised by his mother and Pentecostal minister stepfather and briefly serving as youth minister himself, James Baldwin published the 1953 novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, going on to garner acclaim for his insights on race, spirituality,sexuality and humanity. Other novels included Giovanni's Room, Another Country and Just Above My Head as well as essay works like Notes of a Native Son and The Fire Next Time. Having lived in France, he died on December 1, 1987 in Saint-Paul de Vence

http://www.egs.edu/library/james-baldwin/biography/

http://www.biography.com/people/james-baldwin-9196635

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/10683.Best_of_James_Baldwin#38461

Dr Frances Cress Welsing...Psychiatrist,Author,Activist,Speaker,Elder...She Shall Not Be Moved

This is Dr. Frances Cress Welsing.born March 18, 1935 in Chicago. She is noted for writing The Isis Papers; The Keys to the Colors (1991), and the ”Cress Theory of Color Confrontation”(1989), which explores white supremacy.  She is is an African American psychiatrist practicing in Washington, D.C. and speaks at various venues about topics such as tv shows like Scandal and movies like Twelve Years A Slave as well as politics and President Barack Obama

http://blackhistoryfactorfiction.com/biography/
http://mymajicdc.com/3310084/she-shall-not-be-moved-and-you-can-help/