10 Unsung Historical Figures That Changed Black History
A quick history lesson on those the media failed to cover.
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Robert Smalls - Former slave who became a captain at sea and politicianChange: He successfully helped convince President Abraham Lincoln to accept Blacks in the Union army.(Photo: Fotosearch/Getty Images)
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Diane Nash - Strategist of the student wing of the civil rights movementChange: She started the Selma Voting Rights Committee campaign, which helped African-Americans in the South vote. (Photo: Leigh Vogel/Getty Images)
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Fannie Lou Hamer - Civil rights activist who fought for voting rightsChange: She was a quintessential leader in organizing the Mississippi Freedom Summer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). She later became the vice chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. She worked side by side with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to bring change in voting rights. (Photo: Afro American Newspapers/Gado/Getty Images)
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Claudette Colvin - Sparked change in segregation lawsChange: On March 2, 1955, a full nine months before Rosa Parks’s arrest, Claudette Colvin was dragged by police officers and taken to jail for refusing to follow segregation rules on a bus. She ultimately helped inspire the bus strikes and was an inspiration to Rosa Parks. (Photo: Dudley M. Brooks/The Washington Post/Getty Images)
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Martin Delany - African-American abolitionist and physicianChange: He was one of the first African-Americans accepted into Harvard Medical School. When the cholera epidemic hit Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, between the years of 1833 and 1854, many doctors fled. Martin Delany was one of the few that stayed to treat patients. (Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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