Peace & Justice Activists Posters “He...-Ho...-”
with curriculum enrichment resources for social studies classrooms, teachers, home schoolers, offices.

Dorothy Height
Josiah Henson
Edward Hicks

Julia “Butterfly” Hill
Thomas Hodgkin
bell hooks

Dorothy Irene Height
b. 3-24-1912; Richmond, VA
d. 4-20-2010; Washington, DC

Social activist Dorothy Height, a 2004 recipient of the Congressional Gold Medal, initiated food, child care, housing, and career educational programs. In 1986 she began the Black Family Reunion Celebration to emphasize the positive aspects of the African-American family.

Dorothy Height quotes ~
• “We've got to work to save our children and do it with full respect for the fact that if we do not, no one else is going to do it.”
• “No one will do for you what you need to do for yourself. We cannot afford to be separate. . . . We have to see that all of us are in the same boat.”
• “Without community service, we would not have a strong quality of life. It's important to the person who serves as well as the recipient. It's the way in which we ourselves grow and develop.”

Josiah Henson
b. 6-15-1789; Charles Co., MD
d. 5-5-1883; Dresden, Ontario, Canada

Josiah Henson, born into slavery, became an author and minister after he escaped to Canada in 1830. He founded “Dawn Settlement” near Dresden, Ontario, that offered former slaves escaped from the U.S. the chance to start a new life.

Josiah Henson is considered the model for Harriet Beecher Stowe's character Uncle Tom.

FYI- Josiah was the uncle of polar explorer Matthew Henson.

Edward Hicks
b. 4-4-1780; Bucks Co., PA
d. 8-23-1849

Quaker minister Edward Hicks, was not well known as an artist in his lifetime - he made his living farming and painting coaches and signs.

He painted nearly seventy versions of the Peaceable Kingdom based on the Bible verses Isaiah 11:6-8. They provide an excellent example of working through his struggle with being in trouble as a young man and his desire to abide by Quaker teaching.

Julia “Butterfly” Hill
b. 2-18-1974; Mount Vernon, Missouri

Activist and environmentalist Julia “Butterfly” Hill came to the attention of the public when she lived in a 180-foot tall, 1500+/- year-old California Redwood tree for 738 days between December 10, 1997 and December 18, 1999. The tree became known as Luna.

Hill took “Butterfly” as her nickname when she was ten - a butterfly lit on her finger while she was taking a walk with her family and stayed there during the hike. (Guess I should be called Hummingbird on my Shoulder, very cool ...)

Thomas Hodgkin
b. 8-17-1798; Pentonville, St. James Parish, Middlesex, England
d. 3-5-1866; Jaffa, Palestine (dysentery)

Thomas Hodgkin, a pioneer in preventive medicine, was a Quaker dedicated to the betterment of those around him by actively participating in the abolition of slavery and American Indians rights. He is also the remembered for the first account of Hodgkin's disease, a form of lymphoma and blood disease.

Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, bell hooks (no commecially available poster)

bell hooks
née Gloria Jean Watkins
b. 9-25-1952; Hopkinsville, KY

bell hooks, the pen name of Gloria Jan Watkins, is a feminist and social activist whose writng focuses on the interconnectivity of race, class and gender. She is a professor of English and has published numerous books of poetry and nonfiction.

Lena Horne
b. 6-30-1917; Brooklyn
d. 5-9-2010; NYC

Lena Horne, a singer and actress, has recorded and performed alone and with notables such as Duke Ellington. Horne's career spanned from 1933 as a member of the Cotton Club chorus line, through film, TV, nightclubs, concerts and recording to 2000. Lena Horne was also a civil rights activist working with Eleanor Roosevelt and Medgar Evers.

The Myles Horton Reader: Education for Social Change (no commecially available poster)

Myles Horton
b. 7-2-1905; Savannah, Tennessee
d. 1-19-1990

Called the “Father of the Civil Rights Movement”, educator and socialist Myles Horton was the cofounder, with Don West and James A. Dombrowski, of the Highlander Folk School. Among his students were Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks.

The school was created in 1932 “to provide an educational center in the South for the training of rural and industrial leaders, and for the conservation and enrichment of the indigenous cultural values of the mountains.”

The school was based on the non-academic folk high schools of Denmark for adult education on the belief that schools should educate for life, commonly called lifelong learning.

Myles Horton quotes ~
• “If people have a position on something and you try to argue them into changing it, you're going to strengthen that position. If you want to change people's ideas, you shouldn't try to convince them intellectually. What you need to do is get them into a situation where they'll have to act on ideas, not argue about them.”
• “The only accurate charge I ever had made against me was the time I got arrested [at a mine strike] in 1934. They said I was ‘getting information and going back and teaching it.’ That's exactly what I was doing.”
• “Only people with hope will struggle. The people who are hopeless are grist for the fascist mill. Because they have no hope, they have nothing to build on. If people are in trouble, if people are suffering and exploited and want to get out from under the heel of oppression, if they have hope that it can be done, if they can see a path that leads to a solution, a path that makes sense to them and is consistent with their beliefs and their experience, then they'll move. But it must be a path that they've started clearing. They've got to know the direction in which they are going and have a general idea of the kind of society they'd like to have. If they don't have hope, they don't even look for a path. They look for somebody else to do it for them.”

Julia Ward Howe
b. 5-27-1819; NYC, NY
d. 10-17-1910; Portsmouth, RI

Julia Ward Howe, an abolitionist, political and social activist, poet, playwright, and philosopher, is most famous for her poem set to music as the “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”, the words and melody closely identified with the Civil War.

One of the phrases in the Battle Hymn “grapes of wrath” was used by John Steinbeck as the title for his 1939 novel.

Julia Ward Howe quotes ~
• “Disarm, disarm. The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.”
• “I am confirmed in my division of human energies. Ambitious people climb, but faithful people build.”

• Julia Ward Howe 1819-1910 - Volume I by Laura Howe Richards
• Diva Julia: The Public Romance And Private Agony of Julia Ward Howe