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

Yitzhak Rabin
Pandita Ramabai

Marie Louise de la Ramée
A. Philip Randolph

Yitzhak Rabin
b. 3-1-1922; Jerusalem, British Mandate of Palestine
d. 11-4-1995; Tel Aviv

Politician and general Yitzhak Rabin was the fifth Prime Minister of Israel, serving two terms in office, 1974–1977 and 1992 until his assassination in 1995.

In 1994, Rabin was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize together with Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat.

Rabin was assassinated by right-wing Israeli radical opposed to Rabin's signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords - the first direct, face-to-face agreement between the government of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). It was intended to be the one framework for future negotiations and relations between the Israeli government and Palestinians.

Panita Ramabai Dongre Medhavi
b. 4-23-1858; Maharashtra, India
d. 4-5-1922

Pandita Ramabai, renowned for her learning in an age when most Indian women did not even learn to read, was a Indian Christian social reformer and activist. In 1889 she founded the Mukti (Hindi: liberatation) Mission as a refuge for young widows; today the mission is still active providing education, vocational training, housing, and medical services for the needy.

Pandita Ramabai quote ~
• “I realized after reading the fourth chapter of St. John's Gospel, that Christ was truly the Divine Saviour he claimed to be, and no one but He could transform and uplift the downtrodden women of India. … Thus my heart was drawn to the religion of Christ.”

• Pandita Ramabai's America: Conditions of Life in the United States

Marie Louise de la Ramée
née Maria Louise Ramé
b. 1-7-1839; Bury St. Edmunds, England
d. 1-25-1908; Viareggio, Italy

Marie Louise de la Ramée used the pen name “Ouida” for her more than 40 novels, children's books, short stories and essays. She is considered an animal rights activist, owning as many as 30 dogs at one time. Also author Jack London said her book Signa was an inspiration to him.

Marie Louise de la Ramée quotes ~
• “Petty laws breed great crimes.”
• “To vice, innocence must always seem only a superior kind of chicanery.”
• “Take hope from the heart of man, and you make him a beast of prey.”
• “It is hard work to be good when you are very little and very hungry, and have many sticks to beat you, and no mother's lips to kiss you.”

• A Dog of Flanders

A. Philip Randolph, Civil Rights and Labor Activist
b. 4-15-1899; Crescent City, Florida
d. 5-16-1979; NYC

The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
When African American posrters working for the staunchly anti-union Pullman Company decided to organize in the 1920s, they turned to Harlem labor activist Asa Philip Randolph, who had established his reputation as an eloquent sopbox orator and cofounder of The Messenger, the “only radical Negro magazine in America.” Officially launched in August, 1925, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, led by Randolph, battled Pullman's union-busting tactics for twelve years, winning the respect of the hitherto all-white affiliates of the American Federation of Labor. In 1937, Randolph finally obtained a contract from Pullman for better wages and working conditions, the first agreement ever negotiated between a major corporation and an all-black union. Randolph went on to successfully campaign against racial discrimination in the armed forces and defense industries and to organize the famous 1963 March on Washington. He is now regarded as the greatest black labor leader in American history and an influential figure in the civil rights movement.
“Freedom is never given; it is won.” - Keynote speech, Second National Negro Congress, 1936

• more A. Philip Randolph posters

Jeannette Pickering Rankin
b. 6-11-1880; Missoula, MT
d. 5-18-1973; Carmel, CA

Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to the US Congress, (1916 House of Representative as a Republican from Montana), voted against declaring WWI. Rankin then voted for the draft, sold Liberty Bonds and introduced legislation to provide state and federal funds for health clinics, midwife education, and visiting nurse programs in an effort to reduce the nation's infant mortality. She was the only woman to vote for the 19th Amendment.

After failing to gain nomination for the 1918 Montana nomination for the Senate she worked as a Washington lobbyist until she was again elected to Congress in 1940. Rankin voted against declaring war against Japan, and simply declared her presence in the vote to declare war against Germany and Italy in the WWII conflict.

Rankin was a supporter of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. and at age eighty-seven she led five thousand women in a peace march on Washington to protest the Vietnam War.

Jeannette Rankin quotes ~
• “As a woman I can't go to war, and I refuse to send anyone else.”
• “You can no more win a war that you can win an earthquake.”
• “What one decides to do in crisis depends on one's philosophy of life, and that philosophy cannot be changed by an incident. If one hasn't any philosophy in crises, others make the decision.”

• Jeannette Rankin: First Lady of Congress