John Lewis was an influential SNCC leader and is recognized by most as one of the important leaders of the Civil Rights Movement as a whole. He was born on February 21, 1940, in Troy Alabama. His family were sharecroppers. (more)

Julian Bond was born in January 1940, in Nashville, Tennessee. His father, Dr. Horace Mann Bond was a dedicated educator. Among other accomplishments, Dr. Bond was the first black president of Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, the oldest black private college in the U. S. (more)

Fannie Lou Hamer, who was "sick and tired of being sick and tired," was born October 6, 1917, in Montgomery County, Mississippi. She was the granddaughter of slaves. Her family were sharecroppers--a position not that different from slavery. Hamer had 19 brothers and sisters. (more)

Bob Moses was born in 1935 in Harlem. He had two brothers and his family was poor. Because Moses had strong academic skills he was able to attend a competitive private high school. He then attended Hamilton College and went on to earn a master's degree in philosophy from Harvard. (more)

Ella Baker was born on December 13, 1903, in Norfolk, Virginia. Baker developed a sense for social justice early in her life. As a girl growing up in North Carolina, Baker listened to her grandmother tell stories about slave revolts. As a slave, her grandmother had been whipped for refusing to marry a man chosen for her by the slave owner. (more)

Stokeley Carmichael was born on November 15, 1941, in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad. At age seven, he moved to New York City with his parents and four sisters. He attended the prestigious Bronx High School of Science where he excelled academically. After high school, Carmichael studied philosophy at Howard University. (more)