NOVEMBER 2017 BIRTHDAYS

Please join us in celebrating the birthdays of these notable figures and applaud them for their work in Social Justice.

​*** The Museum of Social Justice would like to hear from you! If there is a notable figure who should be recognized in our Monthly Birthday posts, please feel free to email [email protected].***

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Elizabeth Stanton (November 12, 1815 – October 26, 1902)

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a social activist, women’s rights activist, and abolitionist. She was a leading figure in the women’s rights movement.  In 1848, Stanton wrote the Declaration of Sentiments, which was created to help secure equal rights for women. Other social issues she challenged included: women’s parental and custody rights, property rights, divorce, birth control, and supported the temperance movement. Stanton also authored and co-authored History of Woman Suffrage and the Woman’s Bible.

Shirley Graham Du Bois (November 11, 1897 – March 27, 1977)

Shirley Graham Du Bois was an American Award-winning author, playwright, composer, and African American activist. She was married to W.E.B. Du Bois, an American sociologist, historian, and civil rights activist. Du Bois was known for writing the first race opera in 1932, Tom Tom: An Epic of Music and the Negro, which expressed the Africans’ journey to the North American colonies through dance and music. The premier attracted 10,000 people and the second performance attracted 15,000 people. Du Bois won the Messner and the Anisfield-Wolf prizes for her work.

Bryan Stevenson (November 14, 1959)

Bryan A Stevenson is an American lawyer, clinical professor at New York University School of Law, and a social justice activist who founded the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI). The EJI is a non-profit organization based in Montgomery, Alabama that provides legal representation to prisoners who may have been wrongly convicted of crimes or denied a fair trial.  Stevenson has gained acclamation for his work in challenging the bias against the poor and minorities. He has secured relief for dozens of condemned prisoners and developed community based reform litigation to aid in improving the administration of criminal justice. Stevenson has been a recipient of awards such as, Olof Palme Prize, Gruber Justice Prize, and Andrew Carnegie Medical for Excellence in fiction and Nonfiction.