The new civil rights leaders: Emerging voices in the 21st century

Erika Andiola

Immigration activist

Age: 27

Mesa, Ariz.

Andiola, co-director of the DRM Action Coalition, is one of Arizona’s most prominent immigration reform activists. In 2012, when Andiola appeared on the cover of Time magazine with 35 other immigrants living in the U.S. without authorization, she told the magazine, “I know one day I will run for office in the state of Arizona.”

In 2013, Andiola, a graduate of Arizona State University, helped foment a social media campaign that successfully pressured officials not to deport her mother and brother. In 2014, she appeared in a viral video in which she confronts Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) over federal immigration policy at an Iowa fundraiser — as potential presidential hopeful Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) awkwardly slips away.

“After the country helped stop my mother’s deportation, I came to realize that our community and the American people have the power, not politicians inside the beltway,” Andiola wrote for the Huffington Post in 2013.

Kimberly Bryant

Founder, Black Girls Code

Age: 47

San Francisco

Appalled by the dismal number of minorities represented in the tech industry, Bryant wanted to present new opportunities for young African American girls. And with that came inspiration to launch the San Francisco-based nonprofit Black Girls Code. Her organization provides pre-teens the opportunity to learn computer programming skills and develop a grasp of basic technology. The group offers summer programs nationwide where young girls can attend workshops and hear from experts in the field.

Bryant was honored by the White House in 2013 with the Champions of Change Tech Inclusion award for her efforts to expand technology.

"I hope to provide young and pre-teen girls of color opportunities to learn in-demand skills in technology and computer programming at a time when they are naturally thinking about what they want to be when they grow up,” Bryant says on the group’s website.

Susan Burton

Founder, A New Way of Life

Age: 62

Los Angeles

Burton became addicted to alcohol and crack cocaine after her 5-year-old son, Marque, was hit by a car and killed in 1982. She served time in prison, and after being in and out of the justice system for more than a decade, Burton turned her life around. She became founder of A New Way of Life, which aims to help women in South Los Angeles after their release from prison. Among the project’s goals is reducing recidivism rates.

In 2010, she received a Citizen Activist Award from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

“I served six terms — 19 months, two years, three years,” she told the Times. “It’s not rocket science that I was a woman who needed help, which was never given to me through the courts.”

Patrisse Cullors

Co-founder of #BlackLivesMatter

Age: 31

Los Angeles

A self-described “freedom fighter” and “wife of Harriet Tubman,” Cullors founded the group Dignity and Power Now in 2012 to battle for law enforcement reform in Los Angeles County. Cullors came up with the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag after George Zimmerman was found not guilty in 2013 of criminal charges for fatally shooting Trayvon Martin. The #BlackLivesMatter social media campaign she helped foster caught on in Ferguson, Mo., after the death of Michael Brown in 2014 at the hands of a police officer.

“This post-racial Obama era has sort of bamboozled a lot of us into thinking that we’ve come much further than we actually have,” Cullors told California Sunday recently, explaining the significance of the #BlackLivesMatter message. “Obviously we haven’t had enough both talk and practice around what it means to save black lives, because we keep dying. We need to stop being fearful of talking about ourselves.”

Fania Davis

Founder, Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth

Age: 67

Oakland

The 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., stoked a lifetime of activism for Davis. Two of her close friends were killed in what became one of the most horrific events of the civil rights movement. Davis, the sister of political activist Angela Davis, who had close ties to the Black Panther Party, is the founder of Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth. She’s used the organization as a platform to work with Oakland public schools to reduce suspensions for minority students and the city’s juvenile justice system to form new diversion programs.

“All over the U.S., we are witnessing the dawn of a truth and reconciliation movement,” she wrote in a recent piece for the Guardian newspaper. “At this stage, there’s no centralized national truth and reconciliation body of the sort we saw in South Africa after the fall of apartheid. Instead, these expressions emanate from local, community-based and grass-roots groups that are self-organizing rather than following the directives of a high-level governmental entity.”

Wazi Maret Davis

Co-founder, Black Brunch

Age: 23

Oakland

While the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter has gained attention worldwide, the lesser-known hashtag #BlackBrunch is also gaining traction, thanks to Davis.

The Oakland resident helped launch the tactic, where activists file into weekend brunch spots in gentrified neighborhoods to inform patrons about violence that African Americans have endured at the hands of police. Davis said she was inspired to act after grand juries in Ferguson, Mo., and New York failed to indict white police officers who killed unarmed black men. She wanted to create something similar to the lunch counter sit-ins in the South during the civil rights movement. In recent months, #BlackBrunch has occurred in cities from Oakland to New York.

“I sent out a text telling people to come to my house if they wanted to do something by us, for us,” she said in a recent Times article about how #BlackBrunch came about. “We started brainstorming about what a movement led by young black people could look like.”

Antonio French

St. Louis alderman

Age: 37

St. Louis

It was French's social media posts — updated at a frenetic pace — that allowed the country early on to look directly inside the protests in Ferguson, Mo., where tear gas and rubber bullets threatened to become routine. And it was French's frank words that gave Ferguson's black community its voice in the days after the shooting of Michael Brown.

In the months since the Aug. 9 shooting, some in the St. Louis area believe he will one day run for mayor. Along with organizing events for demonstrators, he has established the nonprofit #HealSTL, which looks to help businesses in the community rebuild.

“I've just been right here, just helping my people. This is personal to me. This is my home,” he said in a recent Times profile. “I like to think I was doing solid things for this region, for this community, before the world started watching us.”

Chad Griffin

President, Human Rights Campaign

Age: 41

Washington, D.C.

Griffin, head of one of the nation’s most prominent LGBT advocacy groups, was sitting in the U.S. Supreme Court when it ruled against part of the Defense of Marriage Act and California’s same-sex marriage ban in 2013 — a tremendous victory for same-sex couples seeking the same rights as straight couples. It was a victory for Griffin too, a onetime Los Angeles political consultant who had brought the then-risky lawsuit against California’s ban. After Griffin emerged from the Supreme Court building, he promised supporters, “Within five years, we will bring marriage equality to all 50 states.”

Same-sex couples may not have to wait that long. Federal judges across the country have repeatedly ruled against states’ same-sex marriage bans — thanks in part to advocates like Griffin, who waged social and legal campaigns to win new supporters and concessions from opponents.

“Our opponents are losing in federal court, at the ballot box, in the state court, in the court of public opinion,” Griffin said in 2013. “The vast majority of this country is now supportive of marriage equality. Being on the wrong side of history as it relates to this issue has become an increasingly isolated place to be.”

Ashley Jackson

Director, Human Rights Campaign Alabama

Age: 31

Montgomery, Ala.

A native of the Deep South, Jackson played an influential role in helping to overturn Alabama’s ban on same-sex marriage. As the state director of the Human Rights Campaign, she’s collaborated with officials from across the state in a fight for equal rights. A federal judge ruled against Alabama’s ban on same-sex marriage. The state Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Roy Moore, has since ordered probate judges not to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

“There's something deeply ironic about a judge seeking the right to ignore another judge's ruling while crying ‘judicial activism,’” she said in a statement after Moore called for the state’s ban to remain in place, despite the federal ruling. “The federal Constitution guarantees the equal protection of the law for all Americans, and, sooner rather than later, that equality must come to Alabama's families too.”

Bamby Salcedo

Founder and president, the Trans-Latin@ Coalition

Age: 45

Los Angeles

As gay and lesbian Americans have won growing acceptance in American life, transgender people face high rates of suicide, unemployment, poverty and harassment. Bamby Salcedo, who survived a harrowing youth in Mexico and the U.S., is founder and president of the Trans-Latin@ Coalition, which advocates for greater rights and visibility for transgender Latina immigrants. She was also featured in the 2013 documentary “TransVisible: Bamby Salcedo’s Story.”

“We’re living in an era of ‘separate but equal,’” Salcedo said in 2014 at the National Conference on LGBT Equality, where she accepted the Susan J. Hyde Award for Longevity in the Movement. “Many of you may think the trans community is advancing, but the truth is that we are just being complacent. There are statistics that prove our experience is one of unemployment ... incarceration, HIV, homelessness, drug abuse, you name it.”

Ciara Taylor

Political director, Dream Defenders

Age: 25

Miami

As a student at Florida A&M University, Taylor found an interest in politics and volunteered on campaigns, including Barack Obama’s White House run in 2008. But the Trayvon Martin case jolted Taylor into activism. She is now political director of Dream Defenders, a Florida-based group that launched in the wake of Martin’s death. In her role, Taylor develops legislative initiatives for the group and helps register minority voters.

Two years ago she was among dozens of Dream Defenders to stage a sit-in at the Florida Capitol to protest the state’s “stand your ground” law.

“I have had it going through the normal routes because it doesn’t work,” Taylor told the New York Times at the time of the sit-ins. “People tell us that certain things aren’t possible, but they are coming through every day. We are proving them wrong every minute.”

Opal Tometi

Director, Black Alliance for Just Immigration

Age: 30

Brooklyn, N.Y.

A first-generation Nigerian American, Tometi has been active in immigrant rights for much of the last decade. As director of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, she became a vocal opponent of Arizona’s controversial SB-1070. At the time, she said the law was meant to “destroy communities.” Since the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, Tometi co-founded Black Lives Matter which calls for policing reforms.

“This is a challenging moment, but we must maintain the integrity of our message and moral movement,” she wrote in a December Huffington Post piece. “We still have the moral high ground, and we cannot allow for it to be undermined.”