Defender
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Bedford-Stuyvesant
In 1964, with the cooperation of fellow senator Jacob Javits and Mayor John Lindsay, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy set into motion the Special Impact Program, an amendment to the Economic Opportunity Act of the same year. A study of the problems facing Bedford-Stuyvesant, the city’s largest non-white community, was launched in 1967, and RFK subsequently…
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Dr. Rami Nashashibi
Rami Nashashibi was born in Amman, Jordan, lived in Spain, Saudi Arabia, and Italy during his teenage years, and moved to Chicago at age 19. There he earned a B.A. from DePaul University in 1995 and a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago in 2010. Nashashibi is a MacArthur Fellow and the founder…
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Betty Williams
Betty Williams didn’t start off as an activist. She was a Protestant office receptionist from West Belfast. In 1976, she witnessed a horrific tragedy in which three innocent children were killed by the swerving car of an Irish Republican Army gunman. The shock motivated her to launch an appeal against the meaningless use of violence…
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Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo
A Roman Catholic bishop, Belo played a vital and ongoing role in bringing peace to his country, the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, during the Indonesian occupation that stretched from 1975 to 1999. He was born in 1948 in Wailakama, a small, rural village in East Timor, where he grew up in a farming family and…
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Dalai Lama
The 14th Dalai Lama was born in 1935 in a small village in Tibet, and at the age of 2, he was recognized as the reincarnation of the previous dalai lama. It is believed that dalai lamas are manifestations of the bodhisattva of compassion and the patron saints of Tibet—beings who have vowed to be…
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Ruby Bridges
Ruby Bridges was born on September 8, 1954, in Tylertown, Mississippi, the oldest of farmers Lucille and Abon Bridges’ five children. When she was 2 years old, her family moved to New Orleans in search of a better life. Perhaps it is no coincidence that 1954 also marked Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S.…
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Andrea James
Attorney Andrea James has been engaged with criminal justice issues since her days as a youth worker. She is the founder and executive director of Families for Justice as Healing—a criminal justice reform organization that advocates for community wellness alternatives to incarceration, with a focus on women. She is a 2015 Soros Justice Fellow and…
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Andrea Jenkins
Born in 1961, Andrea Jenkins was raised on Chicago’s West Side by a single mother from a working-class community. Her father battled addiction and was incarcerated through much of her childhood, but her mother was loving and emphasized the importance of a good education. Jenkins discovered literature and poetry at a young age, along with…
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Gavin Grimm
Gavin Grimm grew up in Gloucester, Virginia. He came out as transgender in 2014 during his sophomore year at Gloucester High School. With his principal’s permission, he used the boys’ restrooms at school for several months without any problems, before a handful of parents went to the school board to complain. A public meeting was…
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Laverne Cox
Laverne Cox was born in 1972 in Mobile, Alabama, and she and her identical twin brother were raised by a single mother and grandmother. At age 11, Cox attempted suicide—she was developing feelings for her male classmates and being bullied for not acting “the way someone assigned male at birth was supposed to act.” Cox…
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Jacob Tobia
Jacob Tobia (they/them) was born in 1991 and raised by a Methodist family in Raleigh, North Carolina. In high school, Tobia was president of the Gay-Straight Alliance and participated in student government. They applied and were accepted to Harvard but chose to attend Duke University, where they graduated summa cum laude with a degree in…
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Schuyler Bailar
Schuyler Bailar was born in New York City in 1996 and raised in McLean, Virginia. He was solo swimming before his first birthday and competing in the Junior Olympics by age 10. Five years later, he ranked as one of the top 15-year-old breaststroke swimmers in the United States. In 2012, Bailar broke his back…
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