THROUGHOUT THE 20th century, American pioneers fought to make the United States a more humane and inclusive country. They called for women’s suffrage, laws protecting the environment and consumers, an end to lynching, the right of workers to form unions, a progressive income tax, a federal minimum wage, old-age insurance, the eight-hour workday, and government-subsidized health care and housing. When these ideas were first advanced, their pioneering advocates were considered impractical idealists, utopian dreamers, or dangerous socialists. Now we take these ideas for granted. The radical ideas of one generation have become the common sense of the next.
These accomplishments did not occur because progress is inevitable or because a set of benevolent “haves” took pity on the “have-nots” of society. “If there is no struggle there is no progress,” said Frederick Douglass, the African American abolitionist, adding, “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” The credit for these achievements goes to the activists who fought to take their ideas from the margins to the mainstream. We all stand on the shoulders of earlier generations of reformers, radicals, and idealists who challenged the status quo of the day.
The 20th century is a remarkable story of progressive accomplishments against overwhelming odds. But it is not a tale of steady progress. At best, it is a chronicle of taking two steps forward, then one step backward, then two more steps forward. The successful battles and social improvements came about in fits and starts. We tend to view history as a pendulum that swings between periods of reform (such as the Progressive Era, the Depression, and the 1960s) and periods of reaction. But activists pushed for and won reforms in every decade—indeed, every year—of the century. When pathbreaking laws are passed—such as the Nineteenth Amendment (which granted women suffrage in 1920), the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (which created the minimum wage), the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which outlawed many forms of racial discrimination), and the Clean Air Act of 1970—we often forget that those milestones took decades of work by thinkers, activists, and politicians.
Frances Fitzgerald’s 1979 book, America Revised: History Schoolbooks in the Twentieth Century, reveals the ways generations of Americans were deprived of an accurate sense of their own history. Throughout the 20th century, most Americans were taught history that downplayed conflict and dissent and celebrated instead America’s march toward progress as led by heroic political, business, and military leaders. This sanitized and inaccurate view still pervades much of what young Americans learn about our history.
As a result, most Americans know little about the fascinating activists, thinkers, and politicians and the exciting movements and struggles that are responsible for most of the best aspects of contemporary American society. That history is not taught in most high schools. It cannot be found on the major television networks or on the History Channel. Indeed, our history is under siege.
In recent years, the most flagrant misinterpreter of America’s progressive past has been Glenn Beck, the right-wing television and radio pundit who has offered his audience a wildly inaccurate history of civil rights, unions, and other progressive movements. For example, on his Fox News show on July 18, 2010, Beck claimed that the civil rights movement “has been perverted and distorted” by people claiming that Martin Luther King Jr. supported “redistribution of wealth.” In fact, King voiced such ideas during the last few years of his life. For example, during a trip to Mississippi in 1968 he called for a “radical redistribution of economic power.”
King is widely considered one of the greatest Americans of the 20th century and, indeed, since the nation’s founding. Today we view him as something of a saint. His birthday is now a national holiday. His name adorns schools and street signs. But in his day, in his own country, many people in positions of power, and not just southern racists, considered King a dangerous troublemaker. He was harassed by the FBI and vilified in the media. Despite this, he helped change America’s conscience, not only with regard to civil rights but also about economic opportunity, poverty, and peace. He pushed the country to fulfill its great promise, making it more democratic, more fair, and more humane.
What makes someone eligible to be considered one of the “greatest Americans of the 20th century”? Some of the people profiled in this book are as well-known as King. Others are far more obscure. What they share with King is a commitment to social justice and a record of accomplishment, of using their talents to help achieve important progressive change.
The great Americans expressed this commitment in three ways. Some were organizers and activists who mobilized or led grassroots movements for democracy and equality. Others were writers, musicians, artists, editors, scientists, lawyers, athletes, and intellectuals who challenged prevailing ideas and inspired Americans to believe that a better society was possible. Finally, many were politicians—presidents, members of Congress, mayors and city council members, and some who ran for office and lost. They gave voice to social justice movements in the corridors of power and translated their concerns into new laws that changed society. Quite a few of the 100 greatest Americans played more than one of these roles.
Over the years, several magazines, including Time, Life, and the Atlantic, have compiled lists of the “greatest,” “most important,” or “most influential” Americans. Not surprisingly, there is some overlap among the people included on those lists and the individuals included in this book’s Social Justice Hall of Fame. King, Eleanor Roosevelt, Albert Einstein, Jackie Robinson, Rachel Carson, and Margaret Sanger make everyone’s lists.
But the other lists also include 20th-century Americans who may have been great in their specific fields of endeavor but who did not contribute to making America a more just, equal, or democratic society. These include business leaders John Rockefeller (Standard Oil), Henry Ford (Ford Motors), Walt Disney (Walt Disney Company), Thomas Watson (IBM), Sam Walton (Walmart), Ray Kroc (McDonalds), and Bill Gates (Microsoft); inventors Thomas Edison (the light bulb), Wilbur and Orville Wright (the airplane), and Willis Carrier (the air conditioner); writers Ernest Hemingway and T. S. Eliot; banker A. P. Giannini; developer William Leavitt; evangelist Billy Graham; baseball player Babe Ruth; singer Elvis Presley; Hollywood mogul Louis B. Mayer; composer Richard Rodgers; scientist James Watson; aviator Charles Lindbergh; and politician Ronald Reagan. Some of them actively opposed movements for social justice.
The reformers and radicals profiled in this book—from Eugene Debs, Jane Addams, and W. E. B. Du Bois in the early years of the century to John Lewis, Gloria Steinem, and Michael Moore at its end—exercised influence not only because of the huge number of people they mobilized but also because of the moral force of their ideas. They influenced Americans’ attitudes about right and wrong, the treatment of different groups, and the role of government in society.
All activists, across the political spectrum, believe that what they are doing expresses their loyalty to the nation’s core values. Some just call this “fairness.” Others call it “patriotism.” Indeed, the ways we Americans express our patriotism are as diverse and contentious as our nation. To some people, patriotism means “my country—right or wrong.” To others, it means loyalty to a set of political and philosophical principles and thus requires dissent and criticism when those in power violate those standards. As King said in a speech during the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, “The great glory of American democracy is the right to protest for right.”
The 100 greatest Americans of the 20th century—listed chronologically by birth—were therefore all patriots as well as dissenters. To them, America stood for basic democratic values—economic and social equality, mass participation in politics, free speech and civil liberties, first-class citizenship for women and racial minorities, and a welcome mat for the world’s oppressed people. They did not agree on everything. But those included in the Social Justice Hall of Fame often joined forces when it came to battles over specific issues, such as granting women the vote, ending lynching, giving workers the right to unionize, enacting Social Security and a minimum wage, expanding health care, adopting progressive taxes, and pushing business to act more responsibly.
But the 20th century was more than a series of battles over specific issues. It was also an ongoing struggle over values and ideas. Throughout the century, Americans debated big, visionary questions. What kind of society do we want? How much inequality and poverty is justifiable in a wealthy nation? What is the proper balance between individual liberty and social justice? What is the appropriate role of government in protecting workers, consumers, and the environment, particularly from abuse by corporations? How do we address the demands for equality and fair treatment of workers, women, African Americans, immigrants, homosexuals, and others?
Each of these 100 profiles can be read separately, but it will be quickly apparent that every individual was part of a mosaic of movements for social justice. These Americans linked their careers, talents, and achievements to collective efforts to make America a more democratic and equitable society. They spent most of their lives as activists for change. So it should not be surprising that many of these 100 individuals knew each other, were members of many of the same organizations, and participated in many of the same events.
These 100 people helped move America forward by organizing movements, pushing for radical reforms, popularizing progressive ideas, and spurring others to action. Some of them are identified with a particular issue—for example, women’s rights or the environment—but most of them were involved in broad crusades for economic and social justice, revealing the many connections between different movements across generations.
Anthropologist Margaret Mead once said, “Never underestimate the power of a small group of people to change the world. In fact, it is the only way it ever has.” Mead was both right and wrong. A small group of people can get things started. But significant progressive change—the battle for more democracy—only happens when large numbers of people get involved from the bottom up. Some limit their involvement to voting for candidates who voice their hopes and commit to fighting for laws that embody new rights. Others attend meetings, write letters to newspapers, sign petitions, donate money, and lobby their elected officials. Others join rallies and demonstrations, boycott, go on strike, and participate in sit-ins and other forms of civil disobedience. Movements succeed because thousands, and sometimes millions, of people bring their diverse talents and commitments to bear on what may seem like intractable moral problems.
Consider Rosa Parks. She is often portrayed as an exhausted middle-aged seamstress from Montgomery who, wanting to rest her tired feet after a hard day at work, simply violated the city’s segregation law by refusing to move to the back of the bus. She is therefore revered as a selfless individual who, with one spontaneous act of courage, triggered the Montgomery bus boycott and became, as she is often called, the “mother of the civil rights movement.” Often overlooked in this story is a much larger history: before Parks’s stand, several other women had refused to give up their seats on buses, but those incidents triggered no larger protest. Because of her reputation as a veteran activist and her web of friendships, word of Parks’s arrest spread quickly. E. D. Nixon, a leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and a union organizer, posted Parks’s bond and asked for permission to use her case to challenge the city’s bus segregation laws in court and in the streets. Jo Ann Robinson, an African American professor at the all-black Alabama State College and a leader of Montgomery’s Women’s Political Council (WPC), mimeographed thousands of leaflets urging Montgomery’s blacks to stay off the city buses on Monday, when Parks would appear in court. Nixon, Robinson, and others circulated the leaflets among the city’s segregated school system, churches, civic groups, and workplaces. Black teachers, for example, encouraged students in the city’s segregated schools to take the leaflets home to parents. Robinson and Nixon asked black ministers to use their Sunday sermons to spread the word. The one-day boycott proved enormously effective. As King would later recall, “A miracle had taken place. The once dormant and quiescent Negro community was now fully awake.” Within a few days, the boycott leaders had formed a new group, the Montgomery Improvement Association, and elected a reluctant Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as president.
On December 5, 1955, the first day of the boycott, thousands of Montgomery’s black citizens crowded into Holt Street Baptist Church for the Montgomery Improvement Association’s first mass meeting. Inspired by King’s words—“There comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression”—they voted unanimously to continue the boycott. The boycott lasted for 381 days. Although many African Americans walked to and from work during the boycott, the Montgomery Improvement Association also organized an elaborate private taxi plan with more than 200 cars as a parallel transportation system, an enormous undertaking. Drivers (including a handful of sympathetic whites) picked up and dropped off blacks who needed rides at designated points. Black community activists organized fund-raisers to raise money for gas and car repairs to keep the carpool system going. About 17,000 African Americans—almost all of the city’s black bus riders—participated in the boycott, despite threats from employers and others that doing so could cost them their jobs. Throughout the year, boycott leaders successfully used church meetings, sermons, rallies, and songs to help maintain not just the black community’s spirits but also its commitment to nonviolent tactics and its resolve against the opposition of the city’s white business and political leaders. The boycott worked. The desegregation of Montgomery’s buses inspired others across the South, catalyzing a new wave of civil rights activism.
As this example suggests, all movements need leaders as well as rank-and-file activists. There are many types of leaders in social movements—some leaders organize, others inspire by speaking, writing, singing, or producing art, others explain and educate, others raise money and keep the movement’s organizations running.
One of the remarkable aspects of the lives of these 100 greatest Americans was their success in building organizations. No struggles for justice succeed without organization. We generally associate grassroots movements with relatively well-known mass-membership groups—like the National Woman Suffrage Association, the NAACP, the United Auto Workers (UAW), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Service Employees International Union, Planned Parenthood, and the Sierra Club—that can mobilize large numbers of people.
Another feature of the progressive movement is the small political parties—such as the Socialist Party, the Communist Party, the Women’s Party, the American Labor Party, and the Green Party—that compete for votes in elections. The leaders and candidates of these parties rarely expect to win public office. They use political campaigns to raise issues, attract new followers, and push the mainstream parties to adopt some part of their platforms (which mainstream parties may do, but typically without acknowledging that they borrowed the ideas).
Often overlooked in the examination of progressive movements are the relatively small institutions that play a big role as catalysts. As you read the profiles, you will learn about Hull House, the National Consumers League, the Women’s Trade Union League, the Highlander Folk School, Brookwood Labor College, the American Friends Service Committee, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the War Resisters League, the Industrial Areas Foundation, the Catholic Worker, the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, the Midwest Academy—organizations that recruited, trained, and educated thousands of the key activists of the 20th century. And you will encounter publications like the Appeal to Reason, the Call, The Nation, and the Progressive, among others, which incubated and disseminated ideas. These small groups and publications kept the flame of social justice alive through difficult times, when conditions were bleak. They brought new activists into the progressive movement and fostered a sense of hope and possibility.
The leaders, organizations, and movements that made America a more just society all had to learn how to balance the tension between outsiders and insiders.
Progressive insiders—typically elected officials, their advisers, and lobbyists—see their job as pushing through legislation that can alter living conditions, incomes, and access to opportunity. Lawmaking involves the art of compromise, which requires individuals adept at brokering deals, negotiating, and forging consensus.
Progressive outsiders—activists, protesters, reformers, and radicals—need different skills. They often view compromise as “selling out” by politicians tied to corporate and elite interests. Activists often believe that the influence of campaign contributions and the trade-offs required by legislative give-and-take make most elected officials undependable allies.
American history reveals that progressive change comes about when both insider and outsider strategies are at work. To gain any significant reforms, insiders and outsiders need each other. Boycotts, strikes, civil disobedience, and mass marches—outsider strategies—help put new issues on the agenda, dramatize long-ignored grievances, and generate media attention. This type of agitation gets people thinking about things they had not considered before and can change public opinion. Savvy liberal and progressive elected officials understand that they need “radical” protestors to change the political climate and make reform possible. When “disruption” is taking place in the streets, policymakers can appear statesmanlike and moderate in forging compromises to win legislative victories. For example, Abraham Lincoln was initially reluctant to divide the nation over the issue of slavery, but he eventually gave voice to the rising tide of abolitionism, a movement that had started decades earlier and was gaining momentum but could not succeed without an ally in the White House.
None of the people in the Social Justice Hall of Fame was (or is) a saint. They all had vision, courage, persistence, and talent, but they also made mistakes. Some had troubled personal lives. Some expressed views that many progressives considered objectionable.
Margaret Sanger endorsed eugenics. Theodore Roosevelt’s “big stick” imperialism outraged many progressives, as did Earl Warren’s support for rounding up Japanese Americans and putting them in internment camps during World War II. Theodor Geisel’s racist depictions of Japanese Americans in his editorial cartoons (under his pen name Dr. Seuss) for the radical newspaper PM contradicted his lifelong support for tolerance. Jackie Robinson’s attack on Paul Robeson reflected Cold War tensions; Robinson later said he regretted his remarks. Many progressives admire Lyndon Johnson’s commitment to civil rights and to fighting poverty but cannot forgive his expansion of the war in Vietnam. Senator Paul Wellstone voted in favor of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which outlawed federal recognition of same-sex marriage, although he later said he regretted his stance on the issue.
Some of these views may be understandable in their historical context. It is important to recognize that although these 100 individuals were pioneers in most aspects of their thinking, they could not entirely transcend the political realities and social prejudices of their times.
The list does not include people who lived into the twentieth century but whose major achievements occurred in the previous century. This group includes labor organizer Mary Harris “Mother” Jones (1837–1930), environmentalist John Muir (1838–1914), journalist Jacob Riis (1849–1914), Knights of Labor leader Terence Powderly (1849–1924), agrarian Populist leader Mary Lease (1850–1933), economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929), and African American journalist, feminist, and antilynching crusader Ida B. Wells (1862–1931).
The 20th century was filled with many courageous, heroic, and visionary thinkers and doers who breathed life into key movements for progressive change. No single list of 100 people can come close to capturing all the figures who deserve a place in the century’s Social Justice Hall of Fame. Because they were part of collective crusades, they shared responsibilities—and achievements—with other leaders who played important roles in these movements. Readers who want to learn more about these efforts might want to explore the lives of one or more of the following fifty people (listed by date of birth) who deserve to be included on an expanded Social Justice Hall of Fame roster.
1.Julia Lathrop, social worker and social reformer (1858–1932)
2.Mary White Ovington, journalist and NAACP founder (1865–1951)
3.Lillian Wald, social worker and social reformer (1867–1940)
4.Stephen S.Wise, rabbi and social reformer (1874–1949)
5.Charles Beard, historian (1874–1948)
6.Mary McLeod Bethune, educator (1875–1955)
7.William English Walling, civil rights activist and NAACP founder (1877–1936)
8.Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, labor activist (1890–1964)
9.David Dubinsky, labor leader and president of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union (1892–1982)
10.Paul Douglas, economist and U.S.senator (1892–1976)
11.Lewis Mumford, social critic (1895–1990)
12.Aaron Copland, composer (1900–1990)
13.Linus Pauling, scientist and peace activist (1901–1994)
14.Margaret Mead, anthropologist (1901–1978)
15.John Steinbeck, novelist (1902–1968)
16.Benjamin Spock, pediatrician and antiwar activist (1903–1998)
17.H.L.Mitchell, Southern Tenant Farmers Union organizer (1906–1989)
18.Edward R.Murrow, journalist (1908–1965)
19.Fred Ross Sr., community organizer (1910–1992)
20.Joseph Rauh, labor lawyer (1911–1992)
21.Paul Goodman, social critic (1911–1972)
22.Jonas Salk, scientist (1914–1995)
23.Daniel Berrigan, Catholic priest and antiwar activist (1921–)
24.William Appleman Williams, historian (1921–1990)
25.Harold Washington, congressman and mayor of Chicago (1922–1987)
26.Grace Paley, writer (1922–2007)
27.Anne Braden, civil rights activist (1924–2006)
28.James Baldwin, writer (1924–1987)
29.Robert Kennedy, U.S.senator and presidential candidate (1925–1968)
30.Phillip Burton, U.S.congressman (1926–1983)
31.Allen Ginsberg, poet (1926–1997)
32.Tony Mazzocchi, labor activist (1926–2002)
33.Harry Belafonte, performer (1927–)
34.Adrienne Rich, writer (1929–2012)
35.Dolores Huerta, United Farm Workers organizer (1930–)
36.Frances Fox Piven, political science and sociology professor (1932–)
37.Jonathan Kozol, social critic and education reformer (1936–)
38.Julian Bond, civil rights activist (1940–)
39.Phil Ochs, folksinger (1940–1976)
40.Bernice Johnson Reagon, singer and musicologist (1942–)
41.Ernesto Cortés, community organizer (1943–)
42.Randall Forsberg, antiwar activist (1943–2007)
43.Arthur Ashe, athlete (1943–1993)
44.Wade Rathke, community organizer (1948–)
45.Holly Near, singer and feminist (1949–)
46.John Sayles, filmmaker (1950–)
47.Andy Stern, union organizer and president of Service Employees International Union (1950–)
48.Miguel Contreras, union organizer and leader of Los Angeles County Federation of Labor (1952–2005)
49.Cornel West, philosopher and activist (1953–)
50.Barbara Kingsolver, writer (1955–)
Each generation of Americans faces a different set of economic, political, and social conditions.There are no easy formulas for challenging injustice and promoting democracy.Many historians—most prominently Howard Zinn in A People’s History of the United States and Eric Foner in The Story of American Freedom—have chronicled the story of America’s utopians, radicals, and reformers, reminding us of their successes and failures.Every generation needs to retell this story, reinterpret it, and use it to help shape the present and future.Unless we know this history, we will have little understanding of how far we have come, how we got here, and how progress was made by the moral convictions and courage of the greatest Americans.