Human rights defenders

Human rights defenders are important for the abolition of human right violation. Without defenders, we have no one to tell the world what most of us really think. They sacrifice and put themselves in danger to make sure everyone is well. Human rights defenders are heroes and people who really deserve everything. The following list highlights the best-known defenders of all time.

Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King Jr. was an American minister and activist who became the most visible spokesman and leader in the American civil rights movement from 1955 until his death in 1968. Martin protected civil rights through nonviolent ways, inspired by Mahatma Gandhi. He was the son of the early civil rights activist and minister Martin Luther King Sr.

King led marches for blacks' right to vote, desegregation, labor rights, and other basic civil rights. King led the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott and later became the first president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). As president of the SCLC, he led the unsuccessful Albany Movement in Albany, Georgia, and helped organize some of the nonviolent 1963 protests in Birmingham, Alabama. King helped organize the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech.

Martin Luther King’s dream of an equal world changed many lives all over the world. He managed to change the way people looked at African-Americans in general and reduced the amount of racism in the world tremendously.

On October 14, 1964, King won the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolent resistance.

Right he primarily fought for: 1

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (or better known as Mahatma Gandhi) was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist, and political ethicist who used nonviolent resistance to lead the successful campaign for India's independence from British rule. He also managed to inspire other countries to make similar movements for independence and civil rights.

He was born and raised in a Hindu family, where he was learned about law at the Inner Temple. After two years in India, where he was unable to start a successful law practice, he moved to South Africa in 1893 to try his luck there. He lived in South Africa for 21 years and it was here that Gandhi raised a family and first used nonviolent resistance in a campaign for civil rights. In 1915, aged 45, returned he to India. He convinced organizing peasants, farmers, and urban laborers to protest against land-tax and discrimination. In 1921 became Gandhi the leader of the Indian National Congress where he hosted campaigns for easing poverty, expanding women's rights, building religious and ethnic amity, ending untouchability, and above all for achieving self-rule.

To challenge the British salt tax Ghandi walked 400 km in 1930. It was called the salt march and was intended to make the British quit India.

His non-violent resistance helped end the British rule in India and has influenced modern movements and protest across the globe today. You can overall say that Gandhi managed to help India reach independence through non-violent methods.

Right he primarily fought for: 3

Rosa Parks

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was an African American activist in the civil rights movement best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott. The United States Congress has honored her as "the first lady of civil rights" and "the mother of the freedom movement".

On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks refused to leave the colored section in favor of a white passenger who could not sit in the white section because it was full. Parks was not the first person to resist bus segregation, but she was a good candidate.

In December 1943 became Parks active in the civil rights movement. Rosa Parks invigorated the struggle for racial equality when she refused to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama. She had a big influence for the way people looked at women and is a role model for many people. After her time the ideal of how girls should be treated subsequently changed.

Rights she primarily fought for: 1

Alicia Garza

Alicia Garza is an American civil rights activist and writer known for the international Black Lives Matter movement. She has organized rights for domestic workers, ending police brutality, anti-racism, and violence against transgender and gender non-conforming people of color.

Garza was born by a single mother in Oakland, California, on January 4, 1981. She spend her first four years in San Rafael, where she was living with her African-American mother and her mother's twin brother. After that, she lived with her mother and her Jewish stepfather, where she grew up as Alicia Schwartz in a mixed-raced and mixed-religion family. The family lived first in San Rafael and then Tiburon, where they ran a business, with the help of her brother Joey. When she was 12 years old, engaged Alicia in activism, promoting school sex education about birth control. Afterward, she continued her activism by working at the student health center and joining the student association. In her final year at college, she helped to organize the first Women of Color Conference where she afterward graduated in 2002 with a degree in anthropology and sociology.

With Opal Tometi and Patrisse Cullors, Garza founded the Black Lives Matter hashtag. Garza came up with the idea after the death Trayvon Martin. She posted on Facebook: "I continue to be surprised at how little Black lives matter... Our lives matter." Cullors shared this with the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter.

This movement made big changes for the racist community in the world. She helped to create a better global perspective on what is really going on in the world.

Rights she primarily fought for: 1