Sojourner Truth spoke for the abolition of slavery across the United States. She was freed from slavery in 1827, and began to work for the abolitionist movement in 1843. She became the first black woman to crusade for abolition and was received by President Abraham Lincoln in the White House in 1864.

Harriet Tubman, one of the most famous leaders of the Underground Railroad, escaped slavery in Maryland in 1849 via the Underground Railroad. After traveling to Pennsylvania, she vowed to help other slaves escape. Tubman guided about 300 slaves to freedom without capture.

Ida Bell Wells-Barnett was born on July 16, 1862 in Holy Springs, Mississippi. Her parents were slaves. Later in life, she became a teacher, and refused to give up her seat for the colored section. She sued the railroad in the 1880s, wrote articles under the pen name "Iola", led a national campaign against lynching, founded the Alpha Suffrage Club of Chicago, marched in Washington, D.C. in 1913 and Chicago in 1916 in suffrage parades among many other things.

Mary Church Terrell was the daughter of the South's first African American millionaire. After graduating from Oberlin College in 1884, she began a teaching career. In 1896 she became the first president of the National Association of Colored Women and by the early 1900s was involved in efforts to improve the lot of African Americans and to combat racial discrimination. She became involved in the founding of the NAACP. In her late eighties, she led and won the struggle to desegregate Washington, D.C.'s lunch counters.

Rosa Louise Parks, born in 1913 in Alabama was a civil rights leader, active in the Montgomery Voters League and the NAACP Youth Council. In 1955, she was arrested for violating segregation laws because she refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. This resulted in a boycott of the bus system led by Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1956 segregated seating was challenged in a federal lawsuit and was ruled unconstitutional. The buses were officially desegregated in December 1956. Rosa remained active in the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). In 1987 she founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development, which offered guidance to young blacks. She also won the NAACP's Spingarn Medal in 1970 and the Martin Luther King Jr. Award in 1980, as well as an honorary degree from Shaw College. She died October 24, 2005 at the age of 92.