LeRoi Jones

Jones is a poet, writer, political activist and teacher. He was born in 1934, in Newark, New Jersey. He graduated from Howard University in 1953, and published his first major book of poetry, Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, in 1961. He founded Totem Press in 1958, which first published works by Kerouac, Ginsberg and other lesser-known writers of the time period. Jones was also an accomplished playwright. His play Dutchman opened off-broadway and received critical acclaim. In Dutchman, an encounter between a white woman and a black intellectual exposes the suppressed anger and hostility of American blacks toward the dominant white culture. In 1965, he founded the Black Arts Repertory Theatre in Harlem, and in 1968, he founded the Black Community Development and Defense Organization, a Muslim group committed to affirming black culture and to gaining political power for blacks. In 1968, LeRoi Jones changed his name to Amiri Baraka, influenced by his Muslim beliefs.

Charles Moore

Moore had never planed to photograph the civil rights movement. In September, 1958, he was a 27-year-old photographer for the Montgomery Advertiser, a newspapaer in Alabama. When an argument broke out between Martin Luther King, Jr. and two policemen, Moore was the only photographer on the scene. He took striking pictures of Dr. King's arrest, and were distributed nationwide by the Associated Press, and one was published in Life magazine. Over the next seven years, Moore made some of the most significant pictures of the civil rights movement. As a contract photographer for Life magazine, Moore traveled the South to cover the evolving struggle. His photographs helped bring the reality of the situation to the magazine's huge audience, which at the time comprised over half the adults in the United States. According to former U.S. Senator Jacob Javits, Moore's pictures "helped to spur passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964."

Sam Cooke

Cooke was the most important soul singer in history, he also the founder of soul music, and one of the most popular and beloved performer in both the black and white communities of 20th century America. He was among the first modern black performers and composers to attend to the business side of the music business, and founded both a record label and a publishing company as an extension of his careers as a singer and composer. Yet, he still engaged in the struggle over civil rights. His own career bridged gaps between black and white audiences that few had tried to surmount. Cooke appealed to Americans of all ages and yet he never lost his credibility with his African American audience.

Cooke's lyrics were as inspiring to African Americans as they were to everyone in America. His new style of music was the new, exciting music that was needed in the time period.

History of the Civil Rights Movement

The Civil Rights Movement of the United States began as a challenge to segregation, which was the legal separation of whites and blacks. Segregation began as a method to control blacks because slavery was no longer permitted or accepted in the United States. To challenge this, civil rights activists, such as Martin Luther King Jr., Malcom X, Rosa Parks, and The Little Rock 5, used protest marches, boycotts and refusal to abide by segregation laws. The movement began with the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 and ended with the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Civil Rights Movement has also been known as the Black Freedom Movement, the Negro Revolution, and the Second Reconstruction.