Castro, Sal (25 October 1933–15 April 2013), high school teacher and community activist, was born Salvador Castro in Los Angeles, the only child of Carmen Buruel and Salvador Castro, both Mexican immigrant workers. Because his father was undocumented he was deported in 1935 as part of a repatriation movement that blamed Mexican immigrants for taking jobs from “real Americans” during the Great Depression; Castro and his mother were spared being part of this tragic episode. The separation eventually led to his parents divorcing; his mother later remarried....
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Castro, Sal (25 October 1933–15 April 2013)
Mario T. Garcia
Article
Catto, Octavius Valentine (22 February 1839–10 October 1871), civil rights activist, educator, and athlete
Timothy J. Potero
Catto, Octavius Valentine (22 February 1839–10 October 1871), civil rights activist, educator, and athlete, was born to William T. Catto and Sarah Isabella Cain in Charleston, South Carolina. His family soon moved to Baltimore, Maryland and ultimately settled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Catto’s father, a former slave who gained his freedom early in life, became an ordained Presbyterian minister. His mother came from a mulatto family. Catto attended segregated primary classes at the Vaux Primary School and the Lombard Street School in Philadelphia and the prestigious Allentown Academy in Allentown, New Jersey. In ...
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Catto, Octavius Valentine (22 February 1839–10 October 1871)
S. Fox
In
Portrait of Octavius V. Catto, c.1871, by S. Fox
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, [LC-DIG-ppmsca-18480]
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Franklin, John Hope (2 January 1915–25 March 2009), historian, author, civil rights activist, and public intellectual
Paul Finkelman
Franklin, John Hope (2 January 1915–25 March 2009), historian, author, civil rights activist, and public intellectual, was born in the all-black town of Rentiesville, Oklahoma, the son of Mollie (Parker) Franklin, an elementary school teacher, and Buck Colbert Franklin, an attorney, local postmaster, and store owner who had attended Roger Williams College in Nashville and Atlanta Baptist College (later renamed Morehouse College). Buck Franklin’s father had been a slave owned by members of the Choctaw Nation and served in a United States Colored Troops regiment during the Civil War. When John Hope Franklin was about five years old his father moved to Tulsa, where he opened a law practice. He planned to move his family there in ...
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Meiklejohn, Alexander (1872-1964), educator and civil libertarian
Roland L. Guyotte
Meiklejohn, Alexander (03 February 1872–16 December 1964), educator and civil libertarian, was born in Rochdale, England, the son of James Meiklejohn, a Scottish textile worker, and Elizabeth France. After his family migrated to Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in 1880, Meiklejohn attended local schools and Brown University (1889–1893). He took a Ph.D. in philosophy at Cornell University (1897) and returned to his alma mater as an assistant professor that fall. He married Nannine LaVilla in 1902, and they had four children. Meiklejohn served as dean at Brown (1901–1912), concentrating on matters of student life and discipline, before being selected president of Amherst College in 1912....
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Scopes, John Thomas (1900-1970), high school science teacher
Kathleen S. Brown
Scopes, John Thomas (03 August 1900–21 October 1970), high school science teacher, was born in Paducah, Kentucky, the son of Thomas Scopes, a railroad machinist who had immigrated from England, and Mary Alva Brown. When the family moved from Paducah to Danville, Illinois, Scopes and his sisters experienced bigotry firsthand. They were ostracized as southerners who sounded different. They and two African-American students were seated separately from the rest of their class during school assemblies....
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Zinn, Howard (24 August 1922–27 January 2010), historian and activist
Alan Deutschman
Zinn, Howard (24 August 1922–27 January 2010), historian and activist, was born in New York City, the second of five sons of Jewish immigrants Eddie Zinn, who came from Austria-Hungary (in a region that later became western Ukraine), and Jenny (Rabinowitz) Zinn, who grew up in Siberia. They met while working in a garment factory. Eddie later worked as a waiter at weddings. During the Great Depression he took jobs as a window washer and pushcart peddler....
