Summary

American Social Leaders and Activists features more than 250 A-to-Z entries on important American activists and social leaders from colonial times to the present. Profiles cover men and women who have been at the forefront of social reform and, to a lesser extent, those who have directed reactionary movements. Included are figures who were prominent abolitionists, socialists, communists, temperance crusaders, suffragists, peace advocates, civil rights workers, labor organizers, and antiwar protesters.

Keeping in mind that many social leaders and activists represent groups with social, economic, and political agendas, those included in this volume made their most memorable contributions to American society from positions outside of goverment and political office. The impact these leaders made in the lives of Americans spread far beyond the work and support of their colleagues and direct supporters and into the mainstream national consciousness. In some cases, their prominence in the United States made them internationally known. Wide in scope of time, activity, gender, and ethnicity, American Social Leaders and Activists provides valuable insight into the lives of many of those who have profoundly affected American lives.

Profiles include:

• Grace Abbot: social worker, child labor reformer
• Henry Barnard: education reformer
• Clara Barton: health reformer, founder of the Red Cross
• Stokely Carmichael: Black Power leader
• David Duke: white supremacist
• John Echohawk: Indian rights leader
• Ernesto Galarza, Jr.: farm labor organizer, Mexican rights activist
• Abbie Hoffman: antiwar and counterculture leader
• Emma Goldman: anarchist, women’s rights activist
• Helen Keller: socialist
• Larry Kramer: AIDS activist
• Ricardo Flores Magón: anarchist
• Ralph Nader: consumer rights and environmental activist
• Upton Sinclair: socialist.

Specifications

Black-and-white photographs. Index. Subject index. Bibliography. Cross-references. Further reading lists.

About the Author(s)

Neil Hamilton holds a Ph.D. in American history from the University of Tennessee and M.A. in history and a B.A. in history from the University of Miami. He is currently a professor of history at Spring Hill College in Mobile Alabama. He also serves as adjunct professor of American history at University of South Alabama. He has been professor of American history at Brevard Community College and adjunct professor at Florida Institute of Technology. He is a member of the Author’s Guild and the Organization of American Historians. Hamilton is the author of ABC-Clio’s The 1960s Counterculture in America: An Encyclopedia, Militias in America: A Reference Handbook, Founders of Modern Nations: A Biographical Dictionary, and American Business Leaders (which is both a CD-Rom and book) and coauthor of Gale’s Atlas of the Baby Boom Generation. For Facts On File, Hamilton has written Presidents: A Biographical Dictionary. He lives in Fairhope, Alabama.