Search

“Mary Robinson, lawyer, human rights activist and feminist, redefined the scope of two important positions. Robinson was elected the first woman president of Ireland in 1990, serving until 1997. She took up the post of United Nations High Commissioner of Human Rights from 1997 to 2002.”

Bayard Rustin was an African American leader who worked for the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) in the 1940s and 1950s for equal rights for all Americans using nonviolence. In this story, he writes about the struggle for an African American man to order a simple hamburger at a restaurant in the Midwest.

“In Kenya, a modern ‘Johnny Appleseed’ has initiated a successful program to counteract the alarming destruction of Africa’s forests.”

Graça Machel dedicated her life to fighting for the rights of children—especially those who have fallen victim to war—all over the world.

School athletics in Nebraska is radically altered after a mother’s court fight for equal treatment for high school female athletes.

“The desert-dwelling Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians were uprooted from their ancestral lands. For decades, they were cheated of the property rights deeded to them by the U.S. government, and then subject to restrictive deed provisions. Not until the 1980s were they able to develop their own land in Palm Springs, and only recently have they begun to restore the springs revered by their ancestors. Tribal council member Anthony J. Andreas III battles the severe mental health problems that afflict the traumatized tribe by reviving ancestral practices. Traditional Bird Songs and pottery help today’s youth draw strength from the tribe’s sources of spiritual resilience.”