Abstract of "Activists Who Shaped a Century." by Humm, Andy

This article introduces a 1999 issue of the periodical, Social Policy, which focused on several social activists in the U.S. during the 20th century. Social activism has never had a more successful century, reaping radical reforms that emerged in earlier times. Rebellion against domination and subjugation has always been part of human history, but liberation from colonialism and disenfranchisement exploded in the 20th century. A Civil War may have ended slavery in the 1860s, but it was the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, led by Martin Luther King, Jr. And Malcolm X, assassinated four years before King, left an even more radical legacy of Black empowerment. Many of the leaders of the women's suffrage movement of the 19th century, such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton did not live to see the vote, but it was realized in 1920. Magnus Hirschfeld founded a gay rights movement in Germany in the late 19th century to see it destroyed by the Nazis, 30 years later. It was U.S. citizens like leftist Harry Hay who revived the movement with the Mattachine Society in the 1940s, long before the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion that sparked the modern lesbian and gay movement.