Martin Luther King, Jr.

One of the most visible advocates of nonviolence and direct action as methods of social change, Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in Atlanta on 15 January 1929. 

King was elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association in 1955 after Rosa Parks refused to comply with Montgomery’s segregation policy on buses. In December 1956 the United States Supreme Court declared Alabama's segregation laws unconstitutional and Montgomery buses were desegregated. Seeking to build upon the success in Montgomery, King and other southern black ministers founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957.

In the spring of 1963, King and SCLC lead mass demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama, where local white police officials were known for their violent opposition to integration. President Kennedy responded to the Birmingham protests by submitting broad civil rights legislation to Congress, which led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Subsequent mass demonstrations culminated in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on 28 August 1963, in which more than 250,000 protesters gathered in Washington, D. C. It was on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. The following year, while supporting striking sanitation workers in Memphis, he delivered his final address "I've Been to the Mountaintop." The next day, 4 April 1968, King was assassinated.

To this day, King remains a controversial symbol of the African American civil rights struggle, revered by many for his martyrdom on behalf of nonviolence and condemned by others for his militancy and insurgent views.

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Malcolm X

Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska.  In 1946 Malcolm was sentenced to 10 years in prison for burglary.  He used this time to further his education especially the teachings of Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad.

By the time he was paroled in 1952, Malcolm was a devoted follower with the new surname "X."  Intelligent and articulate, Malcolm was appointed as a minister and national spokesman for the Nation of Islam. Elijah Muhammad also charged him with establishing new mosques in cities such as Detroit, Michigan and Harlem, New York. 

After a falling out with the Nation of Islam, Malcolm founded his own religious organization, the Muslim Mosque, Inc. Malcolm X was assassinated during a speaking engagement the Manhattan's Audubon Ballroom on February 21, 1965

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Nelson Rockefeller

Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller (July 8, 1908 – January 26, 1979) was the forty-first Vice President of the United States, governor of New York State, philanthropist, and businessman.

A leader of the liberal wing of the Republican Party, he was Governor of New York from 1959 to 1973, where he launched many construction and modernization projects. A descendant of one of the world's richest and best known families, he failed repeatedly in his attempts to become president, but he was appointed Vice President of the United States of America in 1974. He served from 1974 to 1977, and did not join the 1976 GOP national ticket with President Gerald Ford. He retired from politics when his term as Vice President was over.

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Jacob Javits

Jacob Koppel "Jack" Javits (May 18, 1904 – March 7, 1986) was a liberal Republican New York politician. He was initially elected to New York's 21st congressional district (since redistricted) in the United States House of Representatives during the heavily Republican year of 1946. He was a member of the freshman class along with John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Richard M. Nixon of California. He served from 1947 to 1954, then resigned his seat after his election as the New York Attorney General.

In 1956, he defeated Mayor of New York City Robert F. Wagner, Jr., in a U.S. Senate race to succeed the retiring incumbent Democratic Senator Herbert Lehman. Like Lehman, Javits was for a time the only Jew in the U.S. Senate.

Senator Javits sponsored the first African-American Senate page in 1965 and the first female page in 1971. His background, coupled with his liberal stands, enabled him to win the votes of many historically Democratic voters.

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John F. Kennedy

John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917–November 22, 1963), was the thirty-fifth President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963.

After Kennedy's leadership as commander of the USS PT-109 during World War II in the South Pacific, his aspirations turned political. Kennedy represented the state of Massachusetts in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1947 to 1953 as a Democrat, and in the U.S. Senate from 1953 until 1961. Kennedy defeated former Vice President and Republican candidate Richard Nixon in the 1960 U.S. presidential election, one of the closest in American history. He is, to date, the only practicing Roman Catholic to be elected President. His administration witnessed the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the building of the Berlin Wall, the Space Race, the American Civil Rights Movement and early events of the Vietnam War.

Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas. The event proved to be a poignant moment in U.S. history due to its impact on the nation and the ensuing political fallout. Many regard President Kennedy as an icon of American hopes and aspirations; he continues to rank highly in public opinion ratings of former U.S. presidents.

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Thurgood Marshall

Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an American jurist and the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States. Prior to becoming a judge, he was a lawyer who was best remembered for his high success rate in arguing before the Supreme Court and for the victory in Brown v. Board of Education.

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Dwight Eisenhower

Dwight David Eisenhower (October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969), nicknamed "Ike", was a five-star General in the United States Army and U.S. politician, who served as the thirty-fourth President of the United States (1953–1961). During the Second World War, he served as Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe, with responsibility for planning and supervising the successful invasion of France and Germany in 1944-45. In 1951, he became the first supreme commander of NATO. As a Republican, he was elected the 34th U.S. President, serving for two terms. As president, he oversaw the cease-fire of the Korean War, kept up the pressure on the Soviet Union during the Cold War, made nuclear weapons a higher defense priority, launched the Space Race, enlarged the Social Security program, and began the Interstate Highway System.

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Richard Nixon

Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913 – April 22, 1994) was the thirty-seventh President of the United States, and was the only U.S. President to resign the office. Elected twice to the presidency, he served from 1969 to 1974. He was also the thirty-sixth Vice President of the United States, serving in the administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953–1961). During the Second World War, he served as a Navy lieutenant commander in the Pacific, before being elected to the Congress, and later serving as Vice President. After an unsuccessful presidential run in 1960, Nixon was elected in 1968.

Under President Nixon, the United States followed a foreign policy marked by détente with the Soviet Union and by the opening of diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China. His centrist domestic policies combined conservative rhetoric and liberal action in civil rights, environmental and economic initiatives. As a result of the Watergate scandal, Nixon resigned the presidency in the face of likely impeachment by the United States House of Representatives. His successor, Gerald Ford, issued a controversial pardon for any federal crimes Nixon may have committed.

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Branch Rickey

Branch Rickey (December 20, 1881 – December 9, 1965) was an innovative Major League Baseball executive best known for two things: breaking baseball's color barrier by signing the African-American player Jackie Robinson, and later drafting the first Hispanic superstar, Roberto Clemente; and creating the framework to the modern minor league farm system. His many achievements, and somewhat theatrical religiosity, earned him the nickname "The Mahatma".

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Lyndon Johnson

Lyndon Baines Johnson (August 27, 1908 – January 22, 1973), often referred to as LBJ, was the thirty-sixth President of the United States (1963–1969). Johnson served a long career in the U.S. Congress, and in 1960 was selected by then-Presidential candidate John F. Kennedy to be his running-mate. Johnson became the thirty-seventh Vice President, and in 1963, he succeeded to the presidency following Kennedy's assassination. He was a major leader of the Democratic Party and as President was responsible for designing his Great Society, comprising liberal legislation including civil rights laws, Medicare (health care for the elderly), Medicaid (health care for the poor), aid to education, and a "War on Poverty". Simultaneously, he escalated the American involvement in the Vietnam War, from 16,000 American soldiers in 1963 to 550,000 in early 1968.

He was elected President in his own right in a landslide victory in 1964, but his popularity steadily declined after 1966 and his reelection bid in 1968 collapsed as a result of turmoil in his party. He withdrew from the race to concentrate on peacemaking. Johnson was renowned for his domineering personality and arm-twisting of powerful politicians, known for getting in their faces and giving them the "Johnson treatment."

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Barry Goldwater

Barry Morris Goldwater (January 2, 1909 – May 29, 1998) was a five-term United States Senator from Arizona (1953–1965, 1969–87) and the Republican Party's nominee for President in the 1964 election. He was also a Major General in the U.S. Air Force Reserves.

Goldwater is the politician most often credited for sparking the resurgence of the American conservative political movement in the 1960s.

Goldwater rejected the legacy of the New Deal and fought inside the Conservative coalition to defeat the New Deal coalition. He lost the 1964 presidential election in a landslide to incumbent Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson. The Johnson campaign and other critics painted him as a reactionary, while supporters praised his crusades against the federal government, labor unions, and the welfare state. His defeat allowed American liberals to pass their Great Society programs, but the defeat of so many older Republicans in 1964 also cleared the way for a younger generation of American conservatives to mobilize. Goldwater was much less active as a national leader of conservatives after 1964; his followers mostly rallied behind Ronald Reagan, who became Governor of California in 1966 and President of the United States in 1981.

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Hubert Humphrey

Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Jr. (May 27, 1911 – January 13, 1978) was the thirty-eighth Vice President of the United States, serving under President Lyndon Johnson. Humphrey twice served as a United States Senator from Minnesota, and served as Democratic Majority Whip. He was a founder of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and Americans for Democratic Action. He also served as mayor of Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1945–1949. In 1968, Humphrey was the nominee of the Democratic Party in the United States presidential election but narrowly lost to the Republican nominee, Richard M. Nixon.

In a renowned speech, Humphrey told the 1948 Democratic National Convention, "The time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadows of states' rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights," winning support for a pro-civil-rights plank in the Party's platform.

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