Roy Wilkins was a prominent civil rights activist who held leadership positions within the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People from 1931 until 1977. In 1941, he helped coordinate staff and financial support from the NAACP for…

Jeanette Rankin was the first woman member of Congress. Rankin served two nonconsecutive terms in 1916 and again in 1940, giving her the unique ability to vote against US entry into war for both World War I and World War II. Rankin continued her…

Rustin was a crucial force driving civil rights activism, especially in organizing protests on the National Mall. The first March on Washington movement emerged in 1941 when African American activists, including Rustin, successfully pressured…

From 1961 to 1971, Whitney Young was the Executive Director of the National Urban League (NUL), a civil rights organization which emphasizes economic parity and self-reliance. In March 1963, A. Philip Randolph asked Young and the NUL to participate…

In May 1932, Walter W. Waters, a World War I veteran, led a group of his fellow veterans to Washington, DC, to demand immediate payment of bonuses which were not due to be paid to the soldiers until 1945. This group was dubbed the Bonus Expeditionary…

Hillel Kook was a Jewish activist and member of the Revisionist Zionist movement who was also known by the alias Peter Bergson. He lived in the United States during World War II and led the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe. In…

In 1932, MacArthur was the Chief of Staff of the Army when a group of veterans called the Bonus Army converged on Washington to demand payment of bonuses by Congress. On July 28 the protesters clashed violently with police, resulting in the death of…

President James Garfield was shot twice in the back by an assassin, Charles Guiteau, only five months after taking the oath of office. The attack took place at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station on Sixth Street. Garfield survived the attack…

African American contralto Marian Anderson sang on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939. A peaceful crowd of seventy-five thousand people stretched from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument to attend the free…

Civil rights leader and labor organizer A. Philip Randolph built coalitions of African Americans who pressured presidents, Congress, and local governments to end racial discrimination. In 1941, he organized a proposed march on Washington by African…