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

Malcolm X
b. 5-19-1925; Omaha, NE
d. 2-21-1965; NYC

Malcolm X was a Muslim minister, public speaker and civil rights activist.

“We declare our right on the earth ... to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of human being in this society on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY.”

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Liu Xiaobo
b. 12-28-1955; China

Liu Ziaobo was awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize “for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China”.

John Howard Yoder
b. 12-29-1927; Smithville, OH
d. 12-30-1997

Theologian, ethicist, and Biblical scholar and professor John Howard Yoder is best known for his radical Christian pacifism. He rejected the proposition that human history is driven by coercive power, arguing that it was God — working in, with, and through the nonviolent, non-resistant community of disciples of Jesus — who has been the ultimate force in human affairs. The Christian church alliances with political rulers reflected the lost confidence in this truth.

His magnum opus, The Politics of Jesus, was published in 1972.

John Howard Yoder quotes ~
• “Nonviolent action on behalf of justice is no automatic forumla with promise of success: but neither is war. After all, at least half of the people who go to war for some cause deemed worthy of it are defeated.” When War Is Unjust: Being Honest in Just-War Thinking
• “If the tradition which claims that war may be justified does not also admit that it could be unjustified, the affirmation is not morally serious. A Christian who prepares the case for a justified war without being equally prepared for hte negative case has not soberly weighted the prima facie presumption that any violence is wrong until the case for an exception has been made.” When War Is Unjust: Being Honest in Just-War Thinking

Neil Young
b. 11-12-1945; Toronto

Singer-songwriter Neil Young is an advocate for the environment and education.

Neil Young quotes ~
• “I'm not into organized religion. I'm into believing in a higher source of creation, realizing we're all just part of nature. ”
• “The rockets and the satellites, spaceships that we're creating now, we're pollinating the universe.”

Whitney Young
b. 7-31-1921; Lincoln Ridge, KY
d. 3-11-1971; Nigeria

“The truth is that there is nothing noble in being superior to somebody else. The only real nobility is in being superior to your former self.”

Whitney Young was a civil rights leader during the 1960s. Born in 1921, he spent much of his life teaching and working in the field of social work. In 1961, he became the executive director of the National Urban League. It was in this position that he pushed hard for a “domestic Marshall Plan” aimed at solving the nation's urban problems. He died in 1971.

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Muhammad Yunus
b. 6-28-1940; Chittagong, East Bengal, now Bangladesh)

Muhammad Yunus is an conomist, professor, and founder of the Grameen Bank, an institution that provides microcredit (small loans to poor people possessing no collateral) to help its clients establish creditworthiness and financial self-sufficiency. Yunus and Grameen received the 2006 Nobel Prize for Peace.

Ludwig L. Zamenhof
b. 12-15-1859; Russian Empire (now Poland)
d. 4-14-1917; Warsaw

Linguist L. L. Zamenhof was the inventor of Esperanto, a language constructed to function as a universal second language that would foster peace and understanding.

“I am profoundly convinced that every nationalism offers humanity only the greatest unhappiness... It is true that the nationalism of oppressed peoples -- as a natural self-defensive reaction -- is much more excusable than the nationalism of peoples who oppress; but, if the nationalism of the strong is ignoble, the nationalism of the weak is imprudent; both give birth to and support each other...”

Howard Zinn
b. 8-24-1922; Brooklyn, NY
d. 1-27-2010; California

Professor Howard Zinn taught political science at Boston University from 1964 to 1988. Among his more than 20 books was the influential “A People's History of the United States”.

Howard Zinn quotes ~
• “History is instructive. And what it suggests to people is that even if they do little things, if they walk on the picket line, if they join a vigil, if they write a letter to their local newspaper. Anything they do, however small, becomes part of a much, much larger sort of flow of energy. And when enough people do enough things, however small they are, then change takes place.”
• “We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.”
• “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.”
• “Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens.”
• “If those in charge of our society - politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television - can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.”
• “I'm worried that students will take their obedient place in society and look to become successful cogs in the wheel - let the wheel spin them around as it wants without taking a look at what they're doing. I'm concerned that students not become passive acceptors of the official doctrine that's handed down to them from the White House, the media, textbooks, teachers and preachers.”
• “(Nationalism is) a set of beliefs taught to each generation in which the Motherland or the Fatherland is an object of veneration and becomes a burning cause for which one becomes willing to kill the children of other Motherlands or Fatherlands.”
• “I am not an absolute pacifist, because I can't rule out the possibility that under some, carefully defined circumstances, some degree of violence may be justified, if it is focused directly at a great evil. Slave revolts are justified, and if John Brown had really succeeded in arousing such revolts throughout the South, it would have been much preferable to losing 600,000 lives in the Civil War, where the makers of the war — unlike slave rebels — would not have as their first priority the plight of the black slaves, as shown by the betrayal of black interests after the war. Again, the Zapatista uprising seems justified to me, but some armed struggles that start for a good cause get out of hand and the ensuing violence becomes indiscriminate. Each situation has to be evaluated separately, for all are different. In general, I believe in non-violent direct action, which involve organizing large numbers of people, whereas too often violent uprisings are the product of a small group. If enough people are organized, violence can be minimized in bringing about social change.”
• “We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children.”
• “One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression. Patriotism becomes the order of the day, and those who question the war are seen as traitors, to be silenced and imprisoned. ”
• “What most of us must be involved in – whether we teach or write, make films, write films, direct films, play music, act, whatever we do – has to not only make people feel good and inspired and at one with other people around them, but also has to educate a new generation to do this very modest thing: change the world.”
• “The term “just war” contains an internal contradiction. War is inherently unjust, and the great challenge of our time is how to deal with evil, tyranny, and oppression without killing huge numbers of people.”
• “Why should we accept that the “talent” of someone who writes jingles for an advertising agency advertising dog food and gets $100,000 a year is superior to the talent of an auto mechanic who makes $40,000 a year? Who is to say that Bill Gates works harder than the dishwasher in the restaurant he frequents, or that the CEO of a hospital who makes $400,000 a year works harder than the nurse or the orderly in that hospital who makes $30,000 a year? The president of Boston University makes $300,000 a year. Does he work harder than the man who cleans the offices of the university? Talent and hard work are qualitative factors which cannot be measured quantitatively.”
• “While some multimillionaires started in poverty, most did not. A study of the origins of 303 textile, railroad and steel executives of the 1870s showed that 90 percent came from middle- or upper-class families. The Horatio Alger stories of “rags to riches” were true for a few men, but mostly a myth, and a useful myth for control.”
• “Whenever I become discouraged (which is on alternate Tuesdays, between three and four) I lift my spirits by remembering: The artists are on our side! I mean those poets and painters, singers and musicians, novelists and playwrights who speak to the world in a way that is impervious to assault because they wage the battle for justice in a sphere which is unreachable by the dullness of ordinary political discourse.”

Dreams and Thunder: Stories, Poems, and The Sun Dance Opera

Zitkala-Sa, pen name of Gertrude Simmons Bonnin
b. 2-22-1876; Yankton Indian Reservation, SD
d. 1-26-1938; Washington, DC

Writer, editor, musician, teacher and political activist Gertrude Simmons Bonnin is best know by her pen name Zitkala-Sa (Red Bird).

Emile Zola
b. 4-2-1840; France
d. 9-29-1902

Emile Zola, 19th Century French novelist in the literary school of naturalism, wrote an open letter accusing the French government of anti-semitism in the wrongful imprisonment of Alfred Dreyfus.

Emile Zola quotes ~
• “I am here to live out loud.”
• “The fate of animals is of greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous; it is indissolubly connected with the fate of men.”
• “Tis better to plumb the depths of unity than forever scratch the surface of variety.”
• “If you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will blow up everything in its way.”

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