Notable Peace & Justice Activists Posters “X...-Y...-Z...-”
with curriculum enrichment resources for social studies classrooms, teachers, home schoolers, offices.

Malcolm X
b. 5-19-1925; Omaha, NE
d. 2-21-1965; NYC

Malcolm X was a Muslim minister, public speaker and civil rights activist.

“We declare our right on the earth ... to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of human being in this society on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY.”

Liu Xiaobo
b. 12-28-1955; China

Liu Ziaobo was awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize “for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China”.

John Howard Yoder
b. 12-29-1927; Smithville, OH
d. 12-30-1997

Theologian, ethicist, and Biblical scholar and professor John Howard Yoder is best known for his radical Christian pacifism. He rejected the proposition that human history is driven by coercive power, arguing that it was God — working in, with, and through the nonviolent, non-resistant community of disciples of Jesus — who has been the ultimate force in human affairs. The Christian church alliances with political rulers reflected the lost confidence in this truth.

His magnum opus, The Politics of Jesus, was published in 1972.

John Howard Yoder quotes ~
• “Nonviolent action on behalf of justice is no automatic forumla with promise of success: but neither is war. After all, at least half of the people who go to war for some cause deemed worthy of it are defeated.” When War Is Unjust: Being Honest in Just-War Thinking
• “If the tradition which claims that war may be justified does not also admit that it could be unjustified, the affirmation is not morally serious. A Christian who prepares the case for a justified war without being equally prepared for hte negative case has not soberly weighted the prima facie presumption that any violence is wrong until the case for an exception has been made.” When War Is Unjust: Being Honest in Just-War Thinking

Neil Young
b. 11-12-1945; Toronto

Singer-songwriter Neil Young is an advocate for the environement and education.

Neil Young quotes ~
• “I'm not into organized religion. I'm into believing in a higher source of creation, realizing we're all just part of nature. ”
• “The rockets and the satellites, spaceships that we're creating now, we're pollinating the universe.”

Whitney Young
b. 7-31-1921; Lincoln Ridge, KY
d. 3-11-1971, Nigeria

“The truth is that there is nothing noble in being superior to somebody else. The only real nobility is in being superior to your former self.”

Whitney Young was a civil rights leader during the 1960s. Born in 1921, he spent much of his life teaching and working in the field of social work. In 1961, he became the executive director of the National Urban League. It was in this position that he pushed hard for a “domestic Marshall Plan” aimed at solving the nation's urban problems. He died in 1971.

• Whitney Young at Amazon.com

Muhammad Yunus
b. 6-28-1940; Chittagong, East Bengal, now Bangladesh)

Muhammad Yunus is an conomist, professor, and founder of the Grameen Bank, an institution that provides microcredit (small loans to poor people possessing no collateral) to help its clients establish creditworthiness and financial self-sufficiency. Yunus and Grameen received the 2006 Nobel Prize for Peace.

Ludwig L. Zamenhof
b. 12-15-1859; Russian Empire (now Poland)
d. 4-14-1917; Warsaw

Linguist L. L. Zamenhof was the inventor of Esperanto, a language constructed to function as a universal second language that would foster peace and understanding.

“I am profoundly convinced that every nationalism offers humanity only the greatest unhappiness... It is true that the nationalism of oppressed peoples -- as a natural self-defensive reaction -- is much more excusable than the nationalism of peoples who oppress; but, if the nationalism of the strong is ignoble, the nationalism of the weak is imprudent; both give birth to and support each other...”

Howard Zinn
b. 8-24-1922; Brooklyn, NY
d. 1-27-2010; California

Professor Howard Zinn taught political science at Boston University from 1964 to 1988. Among his more than 20 books was the influential “A People's History of the United States”.

Howard Zinn quotes ~
• “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.”
• “If those in charge of our society - politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television - can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.”
• “I'm worried that students will take their obedient place in society and look to become successful cogs in the wheel - let the wheel spin them around as it wants without taking a look at what they're doing. I'm concerned that students not become passive acceptors of the official doctrine that's handed down to them from the White House, the media, textbooks, teachers and preachers.”
• “(Nationalism is) a set of beliefs taught to each generation in which the Motherland or the Fatherland is an object of veneration and becomes a burning cause for which one becomes willing to kill the children of other Motherlands or Fatherlands.”

Dreams and Thunder: Stories, Poems, and The Sun Dance Opera

Zitkala-Sa, pen name of Gertrude Simmons Bonnin
b. 2-22-1876; Yankton Indian Reservation, SD
d. 1-26-1938; Washington, DC

Writer, editor, musician, teacher and political activist Gertrude Simmons Bonnin is best know by her pen name Zitkala-Sa (Red Bird).

Emile Zola
b. 4-2-1840; France
d. 9-29-1902

Emile Zola, 19th Century French novelist in the literary school of naturalism, wrote an open letter accusing the French government of anti-semitism in the wrongful imprisonment of Alfred Dreyfus.

Emile Zola quotes ~
• “I am here to live out loud.”
• “The fate of animals is of greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous; it is indissolubly connected with the fate of men.”
• “Tis better to plumb the depths of unity than forever scratch the surface of variety.”
• “If you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will blow up everything in its way.”

• more Emile Zola posters
• more Writers Who Changed the World posters