Civil Rights

Disability Rights Activist

b. May 19, 1987
d. May 19, 2020

“I would want people with disabilities 20 years from now to not think that they’re broken.”

Stacey Park Milbern was a civil rights advocate best known for her role in establishing the disability justice movement. She proudly identified as a queer, crip (slang for disabled person) woman of color.

The child of a white U.S. army serviceman and a Korean mother, Milbern was born with muscular dystrophy — a serious, progressive, degenerative disease. Though she began life in Seoul, South Korea, she spent most of her childhood in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

Milbern was in grade school the first time she realized she had “a totally different reality.” She could walk on her own, but she was unsteady on her feet. When she fell in the school restroom, the other little girls just continued to chat, oblivious to her predicament.

As she matured, Milbern had trouble establishing independence as a physically impaired person confined to a wheelchair. “The world literally isn’t made to house us, it feels sometimes,” she said. By the age of 16, she had become a full-fledged disability activist. She secured a role as the community outreach director of the National Youth Leadership Network and later founded the North Carolina Leadership Forum and Disabled Young People’s Collective.

In 2004 the governor of North Carolina appointed Milbern to the Statewide Independent Living Council, where she served for six years with a two-year overlap on the North Carolina Commission for the Blind. Thanks largely to her diligence, North Carolina mandated disability awareness instruction in its public schools. In 2005 Milbern established the disability justice movement as an “intersectional approach to achieving access” for people of color, the LGBTQ community and other traditionally excluded groups.

Milbern graduated from Methodist University in 2009. She moved from her parents’ home to San Francisco at age 24, because of the city’s reputation for disability access. She earned her MBA from Mills College in Oakland, California, in 2015 and took a leadership position at the Center for Independent Living in Berkeley.

A gifted writer and blogger, Milbern rebuked the mainstream disability movement for marginalizing LGBTQ people and racial minorities and criticized telethons for their pity ploys. She faulted doctors for recommending unnecessary surgeries in pursuit of a “good body” versus a good quality of life.

Despite her declining health, in 2019 Milbern organized the distribution of generators to people on ventilators during the California wildfire power shutoffs. Just months before she died in 2020, she mobilized a group to help protect homeless people from the novel coronavirus.

Milbern died on her 33rd birthday from surgical complications. The New York Times published her obituary.

Author & Activist

b. July 19, 1875
d. September 18, 1935

“Unwittingly, you’ve made me dream
Of violets, and my soul’s forgotten gleam”

Alice Dunbar-Nelson was a racially-mixed bisexual poet and author whose career spanned multiple literary genres and culminated during the Harlem Renaissance. She was also a lifelong educator and activist who fought for women’s suffrage and equality for Black Americans.

Dunbar-Nelson (née Alice Ruth Moore) was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, 10 years after her enslaved mother gained freedom. Her father, who was rumored to have been a white merchant, left when she was young.

An exceptional student, Dunbar-Nelson graduated from high school at age 14. She attended Straight College (now Dillard University) and received her teaching certificate in 1892. She later attended Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania.

Initially, Dunbar-Nelson taught in the Louisiana public school system and worked on her writing. In 1895 she published her first book, a collection of stories and poems titled “Violets and Other Tales.” Soon after, she moved to Boston to pursue a literary career. Her work for the Boston Monthly Review captured the heart of a fellow writer, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and they began a two-year correspondence.

During this period, Dunbar-Nelson relocated to Harlem where she cofounded and taught at the White Rose Mission, a “home for Black girls and women.” In 1898 she married Paul Dunbar in New York, and they settled in Washington, D.C.

In 1899 her second book, “The Goodness of St. Rocque and Others,” about Creole life, launched Dunbar-Nelson’s career-long exploration and critique of American culture and racial oppression. She wrote novels, stories, essays, poems, and reviews and kept a diary.

Dunbar-Nelson’s husband physically and emotional abused her. She divorced him in 1902 and moved to Wilmington, Delaware, where she taught at various high schools and colleges. She created the Wilmington Advocate, a newspaper promoting racial uplift. She quietly married and divorced a second time and explored relationships with women, including Edwina Kruse, a high school principal, and Fay Jackson Robinson, a journalist and activist.

In 1916 Dunbar-Nelson married the journalist Robert J. Nelson. His activism further ignited her own. Among other pursuits, she served on the Delaware Republican Committee and championed civil rights and women’s suffrage.

During the Harlem Renaissance — the golden age of African-American art and expression in 1920s and ’30s — Dunbar-Nelson lectured and wrote prolifically. Her work inspired influential writers of the era.

Dunbar-Nelson died from a heart condition. Fifty years later, W.W. Norton & Co. published her journal, “Give Us Each Day.” It is one of only two African-American women’s journals published in the 20th century.

Political Activist

b. August 16, 1946

“Issues come and go; values and principles never come and go. They are the core of your essence and who you are.”

David Mixner is a human rights activist, a political operative and a best-selling author. Newsweek once named him the most powerful gay man in America.

Mixner was born in New Jersey to a family of moderate means. His father worked on a corporate farm. His mother was a bookkeeper. In high school, Mixner supported Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and demonstrated for civil rights.

In 1964 Mixner enrolled at Arizona State University, where, in addition to civil rights, he engaged in antiwar activism. He entered his first same-sex relationship with a man he refers to as “Kit.” When Kit died in an automobile accident, the heartbroken Mixner could only attend the funeral as a friend, fearing Kit’s parents would learn their son was gay.

After Kit’s death, Mixner transferred to the University of Maryland to be closer to the political action in Washington. His activism soon took precedence, and he dropped out of college. He became a grassroots organizer for the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, which coordinated the 1967 March on the Pentagon, a defining moment in the antiwar movement.

During the height of the AIDS epidemic, Mixner became an organizer and a fundraiser, lobbying for the government to proactively address the crisis. He lost hundreds of friends to the virus, including the love of his life, Peter Scott. He worked on AIDS prevention and treatment projects in the U.S. and abroad, including in Russia and Africa.

Mixner has raised tens of millions for charitable causes and political candidates. He worked on more than 75 elections as a campaign manager, fundraiser or strategist. He was instrumental in Bill Clinton’s 1992 election and served as President Clinton’s unofficial advisor on LGBT issues.

Mixner helped found the Municipal Elections Committee of Los Angeles (MECLA), a group of donor-class LGBT individuals who became involved in local politics. He served as the national co-chair of the Victory Fund, whose mission is to elect LGBT politicians and allies. He is a former member of the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Party Delegate Selection Committee.

Mixner is the author of three best sellers, including his critically acclaimed memoir, “Stranger Among Friends” (1997). In 2014 he premiered in “Oh, Hell No!,” the first of his three autobiographical one-man shows known as the “Mixner trilogy.”

In 2005 Yale University Library established the David Benjamin Mixner collection, which houses his personal books, papers, photos and other media. In 2019 he announced his retirement after 60 years of activism.

Community Nursing Founder

b. March 10, 1867
d. September 1, 1940

“Nursing is love in action ...”

Lillian Wald was a social reformer and the founder of the American community nursing movement. Her visionary leadership in public health; women and children’s welfare; and labor, immigrants’ and civil rights led to the formation of countless institutions worldwide.

Wald was born to a German Jewish middle-class family in Cincinnati, Ohio. After graduating in 1891 from the nursing program at the New York Hospital Training School, she took a job at the New York Juvenile Asylum, an orphanage, where she quickly grew disillusioned with institutional methods of child care. As her biographer and friend, R. L. Duffus, commented, “She had too much individuality to be willing to lose herself as a cog in an established institution. Instinctively, she wanted to change things—to do better.”

Wald attended medical school briefly. During this time, she witnessed firsthand the poverty and hardship endured by immigrants on New York’s Lower East Side. She resolved to bring affordable health care to those in need.

In 1893 Wald quit medical school and organized the Henry Street Settlement, otherwise known as the Visiting Nurse Society (VNS) of New York. The VNS operated on a sliding fee scale to provide all city residents with an opportunity to access medical care. Wald pioneered, and coined the term, “public health nursing” with the belief that the nurse’s “organic relationship with the neighborhood should constitute the starting point for a universal service to the region.” By 1913, through her tireless efforts, the VNS grew from 10 to 92 nurses, making 200,000 visits annually. It became a model for similar entities across the nation and around the globe.

Wald became a highly influential advocate at the city, state and national levels. She persuaded the New York Board of Education to initiate the first American public school nursing program in Manhattan. She successfully lobbied President Theodore Roosevelt to create a Federal Children’s Bureau to protect children from abusive child labor, and she helped form the Women’s Trade Union to protect women working in sweatshops. She campaigned for women’s suffrage and supported racial integration, helping to found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Upon her recommendation, The New York Commission on Immigration was formed to investigate the living and working conditions of immigrants.

Wald did not marry and maintained her closest relationships with women. Although she did not self-identify as a lesbian, her letters reveal the intimate affection she felt for at least two of her companions, Mabel Hyde Kittredge and Helen Arthur.

Wald died of a stroke at the age of 73.

Pioneering Ballet Dancer

b. March 27, 1934
d. September 19, 2018

“The myth was that because you were black that you could not do classical dance. I proved that to be wrong.”

Arthur Mitchell was the first African-American to become a principal dancer with a major ballet company, opening the door to classical dance for people of all races. After achieving international stardom, he founded the Dance Theater of Harlem, the first black classical ballet company in the United States.
 
Mitchell was born in Harlem, New York. After his father’s incarceration, he became the primary provider for his family at age 12. When Mitchell was in junior high, a guidance counselor spotted him dancing the jitterbug and encouraged him to audition for the High School of Performing Arts. The school accepted Mitchell on a full scholarship. There, he explored modern dance and choreography and first encountered the racism inherent in the dance world. Though he was often passed over for projects in favor of less qualified white students, his exceptional talent and determination prevailed.

At 18, Mitchell was offered a scholarship from the preeminent School of American Ballet in New York. Despite the prevalent racism in classical dance and the urgings of his instructors to pursue other genres, Mitchell accepted.

He was determined “to do in dance what Jackie Robinson did in baseball.” He would later describe himself as a “political activist through dance.”

In 1955 Mitchell became the first African-American permanent dancer for the renowned New York City Ballet (NYCB). One year later, he rose to the top-ranked position of principal dancer. His career-defining roles included the lead in “Agon” and Puck in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Both were choreographed specifically for him by George Balanchine, the NYCB’s celebrated director. In “Agon,” the pairing of Mitchell with Diana Adams—a white Southern ballerina—was considered scandalous, but Balanchine persisted. Mitchell performed the role with white female partners worldwide.

The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. marked a turning point in Mitchell’s career. Determined to provide his community with the same opportunities he had received, Mitchell and Karel Shook—Mitchell’s famous former ballet teacher—founded the Dance Theatre of Harlem in 1969. It became the first permanent black ballet company in America. Today, it is a multicultural dance institution with more than 300 students.
 
Mitchell received the Kennedy Center Honor in 1993 and the MacArthur Fellowship in 1994. In 1995 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the School of American Ballet and the National Medal of Arts from President Clinton.

Social Activist

b. October 20, 1873
d. January 4, 1952

“No effective program can be made until we set our own house in order.”

Frances Alice Kellor was an American social reformer dedicated to women’s rights and immigration issues. She spent her life advocating for workers and the naturalization of immigrants. 

Kellor served as both secretary and treasurer of the New York State Immigration Commission and chief investigator for the state Bureau of Industries and Immigration. She also served as managing director of the North American Civic League for Immigrants and oversaw the American Association of Foreign Language Newspapers. Kellor cofounded the National Urban League. 

Kellor grew up in Michigan, raised by a single mother. She earned money hunting with a slingshot and a rifle. After lack of money forced her to drop out of high school, she worked at a local newspaper. A few years later, two wealthy sisters invited Kellor to live with them and paid for her education. 

In 1897, 23 years before women won the right to vote, Kellor became one of the first women to graduate from Cornell Law School. She later studied at the University of Chicago and the New York School of Philanthropy. For a time she lived at Hull House, the famous settlement house in Chicago, where she became interested in many of the issues that shaped her lifetime of advocacy. 

A lifelong progressive and proponent of education, Kellor believed social change could be accomplished if more women and immigrants had the same opportunities as American-born white men.  She studied the cause and effect of imprisonment rates of poor black women in the South and the economic conditions that led to crime. She founded the National League for the Protection of Colored Women, and she worked to eradicate poverty, to end prostitution and to provide education in urban areas. She went undercover to expose poor management decisions that endangered workers’ rights and safety. 

During World War I, Kellor directed the National Americanization Committee (NAC), a group advocating English language education for immigrants. She believed that better communication skills would help them avoid workplace accidents and grow professionally. She also worked to get suffrage into the national party platforms. 

Kellor never married. She enjoyed a long relationship with Mary Dreier, a fellow progressive in New York City. Together they created the Inter-Municipal Committee on Household Research, a group dedicated to protecting domestic laborers, and the Bureau of Industries and Immigration, which served as an arbiter between employers and workers throughout the country. The women shared a home in New York for 47 years, until Kellor’s death in 1952. 

Singer and Actor

b. June 3, 1906
d. April 12, 1975

“People … can learn to live together in peace if they are not brought up in prejudice.”

Josephine Baker was an American-born entertainer who found fame as a dancer, singer and actress in Paris. Sometimes called the “Jazz Cleopatra,” Baker was born Freda Josephine McDonald in a poor neighborhood in St. Louis, Missouri. After facing abuse and racial discrimination in America, she moved to France in the 1920s where she became a celebrated performer and the first black woman to star in a major motion picture. Her exotic beauty inspired Ernest Hemingway to describe her as “the most sensational woman anyone ever saw.” 

Baker’s landmark cabaret show, “La Revue Nègre,” became the toast of Paris thanks to her on-stage antics. She exuded sexuality, wearing next to nothing and performing tribal-inspired dances with comic touches and cultural commentary. 

When she returned to the United States as a major star a decade later, the reception was quite different. American audiences rejected her, and The New York Times called her a “negro wench.” She went back to Europe brokenhearted.

During World War II, Baker earned recognition performing for troops and smuggling secret messages on music sheets for the French Resistance. She also served as a sub-lieutenant in the Women’s Auxiliary Army. She was honored with the Croix de Guerre and named Chevalier of the Legion of Honor by the French government. 

In the 1950s and ’60s, Baker again faced racial discrimination in America, where the most popular clubs prohibited her from performing. She publicly criticized the Jim Crow laws that enforced segregation and refused to perform in segregated clubs. In 1951 Baker was honored for her activism by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which declared May 20th Josephine Baker Day. 

Baker talked publicly about racial equality in France and segregation at home. She spoke at the March on Washington in 1963 alongside Dr. Martin Luther King. 

Baker married and divorced four times and adopted 12 children of varying ethnic backgrounds, which she called “The Rainbow Tribe.” One son later described his mother as a bisexual, noting a relationship she had with the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. 

Baker also has been linked romantically to the novelist Colette, fellow expatriate performer Bricktop and other women.  

Baker became a citizen of France, where she remains an icon. In 1991 HBO released “The Josephine Baker Story,” which earned five Emmys and a Golden Globe. 

First “Out” Elected Official

b. ca 1954, date unconfirmed

“It is clear that they [Ann Arbor City Council members] don’t ever plan to enforce complaints under sexual preference.”

Kathy Kozachenko was the first openly gay person to be elected to a public office in the United States. In 1974 she was elected as a Human Rights Party candidate to the City Council of Ann Arbor, Michigan.

In the early 1970s only 10 cities in the United States had laws specific to homosexual rights. Most of these pertained either to housing or public employment. Ann Arbor was an exception. The city had enacted a human rights ordinance that protected homosexuals in both housing and employment. Kozachenko ran on a platform that the law had not been enforced. When the city refused to prosecute a restaurant manager who had allegedly separated two women who were dancing together, homosexuals in the town rallied. Said Kozachenko, “It is clear that they [City Council members] don’t ever plan to enforce complaints under sexual preference.”  

Kozachenko won against a Democratic contender by 43 votes. She was the first to prove that an openly gay person could run for and be elected to public office. Kozachenko helped pave the way for Harvey Milk, who was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977.

Poet

b. July 9, 1936, Harlem, New York

d. June 14, 2002, Berkeley, California

“To tell the truth is to become beautiful, to begin to love yourself, value yourself. And that’s political, in its most profound way.”

June Jordan was an activist, journalist, essayist, educator and celebrated African-American poet. Her commitment to fighting oppression, particularly of women and blacks, was the defining element of her work.

Jordan discovered her calling as a poet at an early age. Her father loved literature and maintained irrationally high expectations of Jordan. He required his young daughter to memorize poetry from the time she could read. Although these compulsory assignments strained Jordan’s relationship with her father, they also ignited her passion for language. Speaking of this fraught parental relationship, she said, “My father was very intense, passionate and over-the-top. He was my hero and my tyrant.”

Jordan attended Barnard College in New York, but left without graduating because of her opposition to the white patriarchal curriculum. In 1969 she published her first book of poetry, “Who Look at Me.” Jordan composed this work in black English vernacular, which she believed was an essential characteristic of her culture.

Throughout her prolific career, Jordan’s work ranged from poems to political essays to children’s literature. Though it spanned numerous genres, her work was consistent in engaging social issues and speaking out against oppression.

Jordan received many awards including a lifetime achievement award from the National Black Writers’ Conference. She was well respected and taught at prominent universities including Yale and University of California, Berkeley.

After battling breast cancer, Jordan died at age 65. Toni Morrison described Jordan’s legacy best: “forty years of tireless activism coupled with and fueled by flawless art.”

Journalist

b. March 6, 1967, New York, New York

“Gay issues are about the same fundamental issues as other civil liberties questions—the rights of the individual.”

Glenn Greenwald was born in New York and raised in Lauderdale Lakes, Florida, where his grandfather was a city councilman. Greenwald’s youthful ambition was politics. He became the first teenager on the county parks and recreation board.

Greenwald studied law at New York University. His debate skills helped secure him a job at a prominent law firm that represented rich and powerful clients. Dissatisfied with the work, he came out as a gay man and began his own law firm. Greenwald believed that as social outcasts, gay people tend to be more willing to challenge authority.

In 2005 Greenwald launched a blog, Unclaimed Territory. He focused on unbridled government surveillance versus first-amendment rights. In 2006 he published “How Would a Patriot Act? Defending American Values from a President Run Amok,” which became a New York Times best seller. Greenwald gained notoriety for providing the international media with classified National Security Agency (NSA) documents illegally obtained by Edward Snowden. The disclosure exposed controversial U.S. government surveillance activities.

When the United States soldier formerly known as Bradley Manning (now Chelsea Manning) was arrested for stealing secret government documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and disseminating them to WikiLeaks, Greenwald came to Manning’s defense. Greenwald characterized Manning’s intentions as “politically insightful, astute and thoughtful.”

Greenwald published an article praising President Obama for his support of same-sex marriage. For Greenwald the matter was personal. In 2005 he left the United States to pursue a relationship with a Brazilian man, David Miranda. Of Obama’s endorsement Greenwald stated, “It is a powerful message to gay youth that their sexual orientation is neither a flaw nor an abnormality.”