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

Lech Walesa
Alice Walker
Alfred Russel Wallace

Raoul Wallenberg
Barbara Ward
Josiah Wedgewood

Lech Walesa
b. 9-29-1943; Popowo, Poland

Lech Walesa, who worked as an electrician in the Lenin Shipyards of Gdansk, was awarded Nobel Peace Prize, 1983

“Each of us individually does not count much. But together we are the strength of the millions who constitute Solidarity.”

• Heroes of the 20th Century Posters
• Images of Labor posters

Alice Walker
b. 2-9-1944; Georgia

The Color Purple is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by African-American author and poet Alice Walker. Walker, the daughter of sharecroppers, is also a civil rights and peace activist.

The Color Purple was challenged, but retained, in a California school district due to controversial ideas about race, religion, and sexuality.

Alice Walker quotes ~
• “Anybody can observe the Sabbath, but making it holy surely takes the rest of the week.”
• “Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise.”
• “Helped are those who create anything at all, for they shall relive the thrill of their own conception and realize a partnership in the creation of the Universe that keeps them responsible and cheerful.”
• “In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they're still beautiful.”
• “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.”

Alfred Russel Wallace
b. 1-8-1823; Wales
d. 11-7-1913; England

Biologist Alfred Russel Wallace, who explored and did extensive field work in the Amazon and Malay Archipelago, is best remembered for proposing a natural selection evolutionary theory before Darwin. Wallace's ideas include biogeography, the study of where organisms live and their population size, and why a certain organism is or is not found in a certain geographical area.

Wallace was one of the first to raise concerns over the environmental impact of human activity and was critical of the social and economic systems of 19th century England.

Raoul Wallenberg
b. 8-4-1912; Lidingö Municipality, Sweden
d. 7-17-1947?; Soviet Union?

Humanitarian and diplomat Raoul Wallenberg worked in Budapest, Hungary, during World War II to rescue Jews from the Holocaust. He was detained by the Soviets after they entered Budapest in 1945; the circumstances of his death have long been in question.

Barbara Ward
b. 5-23-1914; Heworth, Yorkshire, England
d. 5-31-1981

Barbara Ward was one of the world's most outstanding writers and speakers on environment and development issues. She was a pioneer of the international movement which led from resource scarcity and protecting the environment to climate change and planetary survival. She coauthored Only One Earth with Rene Dubos.

Josiah Wedgewood
b. 7-12-1730; Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England
d. 1-3-1795

Josiah Wedgewood's name is associated with the company he founded and the industrialization of the manufacture of pottery. Not as well known today is his support of abolition.

One of his creations was a cameo titled “Am I Not A Man And A Brother?” depicting the seal for the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. He had the medallion widely distributed, and it became the most famous image of a black person in all of 18th-century art.

FYI - Josiah Wedgewood was also the grandfather of Charles Darwin.

Ida Bell Wells-Barnett
b. 7-16-1862; Holly Springs, MS
d. 3-25-1931; Chicago

Ida Wells-Barnett, active in the women's rights and the women's suffrage movement, is best remembered today for her journalistic campaign against racial lynching. Threats against her life and the destruction of her Memphis, TN newspaper office only produced stronger and louder editorials and investigative journalism on the subject.

FYI - Ida Wells was arrested for refusing to give up her train seat to a white man 71 years before Rosa Parks.

Ida B. Wells quotes ~
• “I will not begin at this late day by doing what my soul abhors; sugaring men, weak deceitful creatures, with flattery to retain them as escorts or to gratify a revenge.”

• more Black History posters

Rebecca West
née Cicely Isabel Fairfield
b. 12-21-1892; London, England
d. 3-15-1983; London, England

Author, journalist, literary critic, travel writer, and committed feminist Rebecca West was one of the foremost public intellectuals of the twentieth century. West had a ten year affair with H. G. Wells.

• Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia; Rebecca West

Rebecca West quotes ~
• “There is a point, and it is reached more easily than is supposed, where interference with freedom of the arts and literature becomes an attack on the life of society.”
• “If it be ungentlemanly to kiss and tell, it is still further from gentlemanliness to pray and tell.”

John Greenleaf Whittier
b. 12-17-1807; near Haverhill, MA
d. 9-7-1892; Hampton Falls, New Hampshire

Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier was an abolitionist and humanitarian who aspired for a political career at one time. Whittier is considered one of the ‘Fireside Poets’ (Bryant, Holmes, Longfellow, Lowell); among his best known works are the ballad Barbara Frietchie, and the poems The Barefoot Boy and Snow Bound.

Many public schools have been named for Whittier as well as the city of Whittier, CA and Whittier College.

John Greenleaf Whittier quotes ~
• “I'll lift you and you lift me, and we'll both ascend together.”
• “Give fools their gold, and knaves their power; let fortune's bubbles rise and fall; who sows a field, or trains a flower, or plants a tree, is more than all.”
• “For all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these, ‘It might have been’.”
• “As a small businessperson, you have no greater leverage than the truth.”

• The Poetry of John Greenleaf Whittier: A Readers' Edition