In 1903, he traveled to Kingston, Jamaica, and soon became involved in union activities. In 1907, he took part in an unsuccessful printer's strike and the experience kindled in him a passion for political activism. Three years later, he traveled throughout Central America working as an newspaper editor and writing about the exploitation of migrant workers in the plantations. He later traveled to London where he attended Birkbeck College (University of London) and worked for the African Times and Orient Review,
It was these moral which then forced Darrow to quit corporate law and help the people, he began practicing labor law and in 1894 Darrow represented Eugene V. Debs, the leader of the American Railway Union, who was prosecuted by the federal government for leading the Pullman Strike of 1894. Darrow severed his ties with the railroad to represent Debs, making a financial sacrifice. He saved Debs in one trial but could not keep the union leader from being jailed in another. Ammirus Darrow was a very important influence on his son Clarence. Ammirus was an iconoclast who publicly expressed atheistic views and abolitionist beliefs which deeply influenced and had a lasting impact on the young Clarence Darrow.
When the East St. Louis Riots broke out, Marcus responded to the riots by giving a speech where he said that the riots were an outrage. The UNIA split into two factions and Marcus enlisted to be its leader. Marcus started developing a program to improve the conditions of people with African decent under the UNIA. Marcus worked as an editor for the Negro World without pay until 1920, but used the paper to help grow the UNIA. By 1919, the UNIA
While his father Oludotun Rasome Kuti was a protestant minister and a school principal. His father was also the first president of the Nigerian Union of teachers. Whiles both of brothers are well known doctors in Nigeria. His cousin Lareate Wole Soyinka, whom was also Nigearian, was the first African to win a Noble Prize for Literature. While growing up Kuti states that an article that both his parents were taught and strict and would beat him, but he also states that he knew they did those things to get him ready for what life would be like.
King attended a segregated public school in Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of fifteen and received his B. A. degree in 1948 from Morehouse College; a distinguished Negro institution of Atlanta from which both his father and grandfather had graduated. In June 1953 Martin married Coretta Scott and had four kids. In 1954 King became the pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. During this time Rosa Parks was arrested for failure to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery city bus.
King’s first leadership role in the civil rights movement was as an executive in the National Association for the Advancement of colored people where he lead and organized the year long Montgomery Bus Boycott. Later the Boycott would lead to the U.S Supreme Court to rule that segregated buses were unconstitutional. He also became President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The group was different because they only used nonviolent strategies to get their point across and expose the evils of oppression. Martin Luther King spoke over 2,500 times and led marches and nonviolent demonstrations for black people to vote, desegregation, labor and other basic civil rights for all.
He and his wife agreed to raise a black youth as one of their own. He also participated in the Underground Railroad and helped to establish an organization that worked to protect escaped slaves from slave catchers (League of Gileadites). In 1847 John met Frederick Douglass for the first time in Springfield, Massachusetts. After the meeting, Douglass stated that, “Though a white gentleman, (Brown) is in sympathy a black man, and as deeply interested in our cause, as though his own soul had been pierced with the iron of slavery.” John Brown outlined his plan to Douglass to lead a war to free slaves. In 1849, John and his family moved to the black community of
The suffragette movement gained strength in America after black men got the vote (though most southern black men were effectively disenfranchised by literacy laws, the poll tax, threats and intimidation etc). Just as, in the UK, the movement grew when working class men got the vote. In both countries there was great resentment amongst upper class women that men of inferior social status could vote, when they couldn't. It spurred them on to greater efforts. The abolition movement was the movement to abolish slavery.
Lee 1 Black Boy, an autobiography of Richard Wright, contains twenty chapters with two parts, was divided by him arriving in Chicago, described his miserable childhood and life in Memphis from chapter 1 to chapter 14, recording his early adulthood in Chicago from chapter 15 to chapter 20. He composed his own life experiences in this book in chronological order, starting the story with the fire he set accidentally when he was merely four then ended with him being a communist writer getting kicked out of the Communist Party though he was not defeated and still remained strong will. The author used many foreshadowing techniques in this novel, and gave the readers further explanations of consequences of his major early life events. An example was his
Bayard Rustin, an openly gay black man, helped introduce Gandhian nonviolence to the African-American civil rights movement. His pacifism landed him in jail for refusing to participate in World War II. While in jail, he organized protests against the segregated seating in the dining halls (Spartacus). He was part of the first Freedom Rides in 1947, helped to found the Congress for Racial Equality, and was National Field Secretary for the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Following his release from prison, Rustin began to travel widely, giving speeches on discrimination and other issues.