After earning his bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Alabama State University and becoming a baptist minister, Ralph Abernathy joined Martin Luther King Jr. in the civil rights movement. Abernathy was influential in the Montgomery bus boycott with King and Rosa Parks. In 1957, he founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with King to help organize nonviolent protests. King was appointed president and Abernathy served as secretary-treasurer until King’s assassination in 1968, when Abernathy became president. After a nine-year tenure at SCLC, Abernathy stepped down to serve as a pastor of a baptist church in Atlanta. In 1989, one year before he died, Abernathy published his autobiography “And the Walls Came Tumbling Down.” He died April 17, 1990.

James Farmer

Born: Jan. 12, 1920, Marshall, Texas

James Farmer considered himself a disciple of Gandhi and worked toward nonviolent tactics of protest. Farmer obtained degrees from both Wiley College in 1938 and Howard University in 1941. After college, he founded the Congress of Racial Equality, or CORE, which promoted nonviolence and civil equality, in 1942. CORE organized two sit-ins in 1947 that forced two Chicago restaurants to end segregated seating. After resigning from CORE in 1966, he won a Republican seat in Congress in 1968 and was appointed as assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare by President Richard Nixon in 1971. Farmer received the Congressional Medal of Freedom, the highest honor awarded to a citizen. He died July 9, 1999.

Whitney Young Jr.

Born: July 31, 1921, Lincoln Ridge, Ky.

Considered one of the most influential military figures during the civil rights movement, Whitney Young Jr. graduated from Kentucky State University and served in the U.S. Army during World War II. After the service, he changed his life goal from being a doctor to becoming a social worker. He received a master’s degree in social work in 1947 from the University of Minnesota. After joining the National Urban League in 1947, he served as industrial relations secretary until 1949 when he moved to Omaha to resume the same position there. Shortly after, he moved to Atlanta to become the dean of social work at Atlanta University. Throughout his life he was a consultant on race relations to President John F. Kennedy and President Lyndon B. Johnson, and was revered as one the most charismatic supporters of civil rights and greatly changed the state of the military during the time. He died March 11, 1971.

Roy Wilkins

Born: Aug. 30, 1901, St. Louis

Roy Wilkins received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota in 1923, and soon after joined an all-African American newspaper, the Kansas City Call. In 1931, he left the Call and became assistant-executive secretary of The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP. While working at the NAACP, he wrote countless editorials and articles for the organization. When he left the organization in 1934, he became editor of Crisis Magazine for five years. Wilkins served as an adviser to the War Department and assisted the U.S. delegation of the United Nations in a San Francisco conference in 1945. Wilkins left the magazine to come back to the NAACP, where he was then appointed as executive secretary and also acted as a chairman of the National Emergency Civil Rights Mobilization. Wilkins campaigned hard for civil rights and social justice, and is seen as one of the founding fathers of civil rights. He died Sept. 9, 1981.