The 250th birthday of the United States happened this month, and many people began to reflect on the country’s history and the stages of development that led to its current state.
There are so many people you could talk about, from figures like Red Cloud (the first Native American to win a war against the U.S.) and Mary Church Terrell (an activist, educator at Wilberforce College, and co-founder of the National Association of Coloured Women), to Dorothy Irene Height (founder of the National Council for Negro Women, and co-organizer of the March on Washington).
The list is endless, but here are five who deserve special attention:
Robert Smalls
Robert Smalls was born April 5, 1839, in Beaufort, South Carolina. At an early age, Smalls was sent to Charleston to work by Henry McKee, the man who enslaved him and his mother. While working as a waiter in a hotel, he met Hannah Jones, whom he married in 1856. Per nps.gov, during the outbreak of the Civil War, he served as an enslaved crewmember aboard the Planter, a Confederate ship operating in the Charleston Harbor. As Smalls led a group of enslaved crewmembers to escape from the port on May 12, 1862, he used espionage to take over a boat and sail them to the Union blockade, where they would turn the Planter over.
Smalls had already proven himself an incredible leader, but that was only the beginning of his journey. He joined the ranks of the Union army and was given command over the Planter. Years later, he would return to Beaufort not only a war hero, but also the owner of McKee’s mansion and land. Smalls would lobby for public education to be an important part of the state legislature, desegregate Philadelphia’s streetcar system, be elected to the state House of Representatives and the state Senate, and then become a member of U.S. Congress due to the votes of Beaufort citizens.
Kathleen Cleaver
Born Kathleen Neal on May 13, 1945, in Dallas, Texas, Cleaver spent much of her childhood abroad because her father was an ambassador for the U.S. Foreign Service. However, during her teens, the family moved back to the States, where she finished high school and attended Oberlin College and Barnard College.
Cleaver would dive headfirst into her work as an activist, deciding to leave college to work for the New York City chapter of the Student Nonviolence Coordinating Committee. 1967 would be a marquee year for her, as she would both organize a SNCC student conference at Fisk University (where she would meet her soon-to-be husband Eldridge Cleaver) and become the first woman to be on the Black Panther Party Central Committee, as well as the Communications Secretary. Cleaver played a strong role in cultivating the image of the Black Panthers, crafting political posters and handling the press while also being a main spokesperson.
One of the tallest tasks she took on was the “Free Huey” movement, where she would organize rallies, speeches, and protests all around America, pushing for the acquittal of Huey P. Newton on the charge of killing an Oakland police officer, per The New York Times. The campaign was very successful in hooking the nation in a mix of political theatrics and moral dilemma, all while continuing to bring attention to the real purpose of the Black Panthers. This further showed Cleaver’s brilliant leadership and intellect overall, but especially in the organizing space.
In the spring of 1968, Eldridge Cleaver — Kathleen’s then–husband — would be caught in a shootout where a teen Black Panther member, Bobby Hutton, would be killed, leading to him fleeing the country and Kathleen following in exile, according to NPR. They would both spend years across Cuba, France, Algeria, and other places until their eventual return to the States in the 70s, where the Black Panther Party was faced with continuous court hearings. Eventually, Cleaver took a step back from the movement as a frontline activist. She would go to Yale in the 80s and earn a J.D, after which she would continue to fight for civil rights as a lawyer.
Leonard Peltier
Born on September 12, 1944, in Grand Forks, North Dakota, Leonard Peltier had a large family, being the 11th of 13 siblings. Only four years after he was born, his parents divorced, and he and one of his sisters were sent to live with their grandparents on the Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota. At the age of 9, Peltier was taken to Wahpeton Indian School, a Native American boarding school, after his grandfather passed and his grandmother asked the Bureau of Indian Affairs for assistance.
Peltier would spend four years at the school, after a government agent threatened his grandmother with jail time if she were to interfere. Per a first-hand account by Peltier for nativenewsonline.net, his experience there was formative, opening his eyes to the fact that Native Americans had little to no rights on the very land their ancestors cultivated. The grueling abuse – both physical and mental started an inkling of activism within, leading to him and a group of older kids forming the Resisters (named after the French Resistance) as a rebellion group. Peltier went on to graduate and was sent to Flandreau Indian School in South Dakota, where he would eventually drop out in the ninth grade.
While living with his father on Turtle Mountain Reservation, Peltier’s interest in being an activist only intensified due to the U.S. government’s incessant attempts at forcing Natives to assimilate to white American culture and leave their land behind.
Later on, in the 1960s and early 70s, Peltier would join the Denver chapter of the American Indian Movement (AIM), while being a community counselor in the area. It was with AIM that he further actualized his childhood days of rebelling against the system.
According to nps.gov, in 1972, he participated in the Trail of Broken Treaties, where AIM and other protestors occupied BIA offices in Washington, D.C. A few years later, Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota became the base of interest for Peltier and AIM members, as they planned to help the local Oglala Lakota out with community outreach and security protections.
In June of 1975, FBI agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams entered the Jumping Bull Ranch with plans to arrest Jimmy Eagle (a resident of the ranch) on charges of burglary. Soon after entry, the FBI agents got into a shootout with people in a vehicle they believed belonged to Jimmy Eagle. More residents on the ranch returned fire, and eventually both agents were killed, alongside a member of AIM named Joe Stuntz.
Fleeing to Canada and then being extradited, Peltier prepared to face trial after being accused of being the one to end the lives of the two FBI agents, as reported by the Guardian.
In 1977, Leonard Peltier was convicted on two counts of first-degree murder and had to face two life sentences. Throughout his time in prison, he fought and appealed, stating his innocence. Regardless of the evidence his lawyers provided that displayed the FBI withholding favorable evidence and fabricating evidence against Peltier, he stayed in jail nearly 49 years.
Through threats on his life behind bars and years of fighting for his freedom, Peltier’s sentence was commuted by former President Joe Biden in 2025. He has used this opportunity to bring light to his story and other political prisoners. Peltier’s story is one of perseverance and relentlessness that shows exactly how the government will try to stamp out any potential threats, by any means necessary.
Yuri Kochiyama
Yuri Kochiyama was born on May 19, 1921, in San Pedro, California. From an early age, Kochiyama had experienced social injustices as a Japanese American. Post-Pearl Harbor, in the wake of internment camps springing up all across the U.S., her father, who had just finished surgery, was detained in a hospital and eventually died while in captivity.
Only a few years later, in 1943, Executive Order 9066, issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, forced Kochiyama and her family into a camp in Jerome, Arkansas, for two years. It was her time in this internment camp that forged her burning desire to fight for civil rights, and after WWII ended, she dedicated her life to it. Kochiyama moved to New York City alongside her husband, Bill Kochiyama, and they found themselves in a culturally rich area: Harlem.
As reported by the New Hampshire Center for Justice and Equality, in NYC, Kochiyama immediately got work as an activist, becoming a founding member of Asian Americans for Action (AAA). Kochiyama was big on forming unity across community lines, working with Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Harlem Freedom School, and many others.
Through her work in Harlem, she built a bond with the Black community there, which caught the attention of some important figures, including Malcolm X, whom she would meet in 1963. They became close friends and collaborated on many fronts. Kochiyama would even join Malcolm’s Organization for Afro-American Unity and extend support to many other movements like the Black Panthers.
Many people may not know, as it wasn’t shown in the film “Malcolm X” by Spike Lee, that Yuri Kochiyama was actually not only present during Malcolm’s assassination, but right by his side.
Sylvia Rivera
Sylvia Rivera was born in New York City on July 2, 1951. Growing up wasn’t easy for Rivera, as her father was absent and her mother died by suicide, leaving her to live with her grandma. Being assigned male at birth, Rivera’s exploration with prototypical women’s clothing and makeup was met with abuse at the hands of her grandma and bullying by other school children.
Rivera would run away from home at the age of 11 and go to 42nd Street, a neighborhood that served as a hub for unhoused queer youth, sex workers, drag queens, and others throughout the 1960s.
During her time there, she would engage in sex work to survive. However, the most important aspect of her journey on 42nd was the community which fostered her activism. There was a large community of drag queens and other folks a part of the LGBTQ community, who would frequent a spot called the Stonewall Inn. Sylvia was among them, and through socializing, she would meet Marsha P. Johnson, a known drag queen and gay/trans rights activist in NYC.
Marsha took on an almost motherly role to Sylvia, and together they became front-runner activists in New York’s gay liberation movements. On June 28, 1969, the police raided Stonewall Inn, as they did many other gay bars in the city; however, this time they met with resistance that they hadn’t faced before. Per loc.gov, with most of the detainees being arrested on the grounds that they were “visible law-breakers” due to them cross-dressing, outrage sparked, and a crowd of community members started surrounding the building. Sylvia, being in the crowd, threw the first (of many) bricks at police officers in the building and stood out with protestors for most of the week.
She would later work within the GLF (Gay Liberation Front) and the GAA (Gay Activists Alliance), the latter of which she had to fight for her legitimacy in, as she was a trans woman of color from a poorer part of New York City. Regardless, she would fight for trans rights and gay rights throughout the rest of her life. Starting STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries) with Marsha P. Johnson and was a part of the campaign to pass New York City’s first gay rights bill on March 20, 1986.
Due to her troubled childhood, Rivera faced substance abuse issues and at times experienced homelessness. But after returning to New York after Marsha passed, she would continue to work to provide for the LGBTQ community there, starting the Transy House in 1997 and being a proud figure of the community up until she died in 2002 at 50 years old.
