Sources and inspirations.

United States, 1961

The Freedom Riders

On May 4, 1961, thirteen Black and white people left Washington by bus to challenge segregation. Despite a bus set on fire in Alabama, some 436 people took up the cause, and segregation in bus terminals was banned that fall.

“We can't let them stop us with violence.”Diane Nash, 1961

Durham, North Carolina, 1971

C. P. Ellis and Ann Atwater

In 1971, in Durham, a Ku Klux Klan leader and a Black activist co-chaired meetings on school desegregation. By listening to each other, he came to tear up his Klan card. They remained friends to the end.

“If schools are going to be better by me tearing up this card, I shall do so.”C. P. Ellis, 1971

Boston and Richmond, 1864

Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler

In 1864, she became the first African American woman to earn a medical degree in the United States. After the Civil War, she cared for people newly freed from slavery in Richmond.

Montgomery, Alabama, 1955

Rosa Parks

On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, she refused to give up her seat on a bus. Her arrest sparked a 381-day boycott that led to the end of segregation on the city's buses.

“The only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”Rosa Parks, autobiography, 1992

New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, 1946

Viola Desmond

On November 8, 1946, in New Glasgow, she refused to leave the whites-only section of a movie theatre. Pardoned in 2010, she has appeared on the $10 bill since 2018.

“We must learn from our history so that we don't repeat it.”Wanda Robson, her sister, 2010

New York, today

Christopher Emdin

A professor at Columbia's Teachers College, he advocates a “reality pedagogy”: starting from students' own culture. With the rapper GZA, he had New York students write raps about science.

“These kids are geniuses waiting to be discovered.”Christopher Emdin, 2013

South Africa, 1963

Jordan Kush Ngubane

A Zulu journalist and editor of Inkundla ya Bantu, then South Africa's only newspaper wholly owned by Africans, Jordan Kush Ngubane co-signed the 1944 ANC Youth League manifesto. In 1963, in An African Explains Apartheid, he described ubuntu as a "philosophy of life": one of the very first written explanations.

Zimbabwe, 1980

Stanlake and Tommie Marie Samkange

A Zimbabwean historian and novelist, Stanlake Samkange wrote Hunhuism or Ubuntuism (1980) with Tommie Marie Samkange, the first book devoted entirely to ubuntu. Published in the year of Zimbabwe's independence, it proposed ubuntu, hunhu in Shona, as a political philosophy for the new country.

Kenya, 1969

John S. Mbiti

A Kenyan theologian, philosopher and Anglican priest, John S. Mbiti published African Religions and Philosophy in 1969, long a reference worldwide. It contains the phrase that sums up the African view of the person: "I am, because we are; and since we are, therefore I am."

South Africa, 1999

Mogobe B. Ramose

A South African philosopher who long taught at the University of South Africa (UNISA), Mogobe B. Ramose published African Philosophy Through Ubuntu in 1999. He shows that ubuntu is not a slogan but a way of understanding human beings as always in relationship and in motion.

South Africa, 2001

Augustine Shutte

A philosopher at the University of Cape Town, Augustine Shutte devoted much of his work to ubuntu. In Ubuntu: An Ethic for a New South Africa (2001), he made it a shared ethic for post-apartheid South African society, across everyone's origins.

Nigeria, 1984

Ifeanyi Menkiti

An Igbo-born philosopher and poet who taught at Wellesley College in the United States, Ifeanyi Menkiti published a now-classic essay on person and community in 1984. For him, we are not born fully "persons": we become persons gradually, within a community. A thought kindred to ubuntu.

Ghana, 1997

Kwame Gyekye

A philosopher at the University of Ghana and a specialist in Akan thought, Kwame Gyekye argued in Tradition and Modernity (1997) for a "moderate communitarianism": community matters, but it must also protect each person's dignity and rights. A kindred thought from West Africa.

Tanzania, 1967

Julius Nyerere

A schoolteacher who became Tanzania's first president, Julius Nyerere, known as Mwalimu, "the teacher," put forward ujamaa, "extended family" in Swahili. The Arusha Declaration (1967) made it a social project built on mutual aid. His collective villages had failures, but he forged a strong national unity.

Zambia, 1964

Kenneth Kaunda

The first president of independent Zambia (1964-1991), Kenneth Kaunda championed a "Zambian humanism" that put the person at the centre of political life. His one-party rule also showed its limits. Defeated in the 1991 election, he left power peacefully and later campaigned against HIV/AIDS.

South Africa, 1984

Desmond Tutu

Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, Desmond Tutu received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his nonviolent struggle against apartheid. He went on to chair the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. More than anyone, he made ubuntu known to the world, notably in No Future Without Forgiveness (1999).

South Africa, 2019

Mungi Ngomane

Desmond Tutu's granddaughter, Mungi Ngomane published Everyday Ubuntu in 2019, with a foreword by her grandfather. She offers simple lessons for living ubuntu every day, such as seeing yourself in others or looking for the best in everyone.

South Africa, 1994

Nelson Mandela

A lawyer and ANC activist, Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison. Released in 1990, he negotiated the end of apartheid and in 1994 became South Africa's first democratically elected president. He chose reconciliation over revenge and shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize with Frederik de Klerk.

South Africa, 1995

Yvonne Mokgoro

One of the first justices of South Africa's Constitutional Court, where she served from 1994 to 2009, Yvonne Mokgoro left her mark on S v Makwanyane (1995), which abolished the death penalty. She explained that ubuntu expresses human dignity and mutual respect, at the heart of the new Constitution.

South Africa, 1995

Pius Langa

A former factory worker who became a human rights lawyer, Pius Langa sat on the Constitutional Court from 1994 and later served as Chief Justice (2005-2009). In Makwanyane, he described ubuntu as a culture that values community and the interdependence of its members.

South Africa, 1960

Albert Luthuli

A teacher and Zulu chief, Albert Luthuli led the ANC from 1952. He championed strictly nonviolent resistance to apartheid despite arrests and banning orders. In 1960, he became the first African to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

South Africa, 1977

Steve Biko

A medical student, Steve Biko founded the Black Consciousness movement, urging Black South Africans to free themselves first from the sense of inferiority imposed by apartheid. Arrested in 1977, he died of injuries sustained in detention, at 30. His writings are collected in I Write What I Like.

Liberia, 2003

Leymah Gbowee

A social worker, Leymah Gbowee brought together Christian and Muslim women in 2003 who demonstrated every day, dressed in white, to demand peace. Their movement pushed the warring parties to sign an agreement that ended the civil war. She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011.

Rwanda, 1994

Captain Mbaye Diagne

A Senegalese officer with the UN mission in Rwanda, Captain Mbaye Diagne saved hundreds of people during the 1994 genocide, unarmed, talking his way through roadblocks. He was killed in May 1994. Since 2014, a UN medal for exceptional courage has borne his name.

Rwanda, 1994

Zura Karuhimbi

A healer nearly 70 years old at the time of the genocide, Zura Karuhimbi hid more than a hundred people in her small house. She made the killers believe the place was haunted by spirits and that they would be cursed if they touched anyone. In 2006, she received the Campaign Against Genocide Medal.

United States, 1963

Martin Luther King Jr.

A Baptist minister, Martin Luther King Jr. led the civil rights movement through nonviolence, from the Montgomery bus boycott (1955-1956) to the March on Washington (1963). In a Birmingham jail, he wrote that we are caught in "an inescapable network of mutuality." Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, he was assassinated in 1968.

United States, 1964

Fannie Lou Hamer

A Mississippi sharecropper, Fannie Lou Hamer lost her job in 1962 for trying to register to vote. Beaten in jail in 1963, she kept going. In 1964, she co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and told the whole country about the violence faced by those who wanted to vote.

United States, 1960

Ella Baker

An organizer for more than fifty years, Ella Baker worked for the NAACP and then for Martin Luther King's organization. In 1960, she helped students found SNCC, encouraging them to stay independent. Her conviction: a strong movement rests on ordinary people learning to lead together.

United States, 1965

John Lewis

The son of Alabama sharecroppers, John Lewis was one of the 1961 Freedom Riders. On March 7, 1965, in Selma, he was badly beaten by police on the Edmund Pettus Bridge during a march for voting rights. Elected to Congress in 1986, he served until his death in 2020.

United States, 1960

Ruby Bridges

On November 14, 1960, at age six, Ruby Bridges walked into William Frantz Elementary in New Orleans, until then whites-only, escorted by federal marshals. Facing insults, she spent the year almost alone in class with her teacher, Barbara Henry. Today she speaks to young people about tolerance.

United States, 1849

Harriet Tubman

Born enslaved in Maryland, Harriet Tubman escaped in 1849. She returned about a dozen times to guide some 70 people to freedom on the Underground Railroad, several of them as far as St. Catharines, Canada. During the Civil War, she helped free more than 700 people in the Combahee River raid.

United States, 1989

Bryan Stevenson

A lawyer, Bryan Stevenson founded the Equal Justice Initiative in Alabama in 1989 to defend people on death row and the wrongly imprisoned. His team has won the reversal of many convictions. In Just Mercy (2014), he reminds us that each of us is more than the worst thing we've ever done.

Ontario, 1853

Mary Ann Shadd

Born free in Delaware, Mary Ann Shadd moved to Canada West after the US Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. In 1853, she founded The Provincial Freeman, becoming the first Black woman to publish a newspaper in North America. In it, she urged Black Americans to come and settle freely in Canada.

Ontario, 1841

Josiah Henson

Enslaved in Maryland and Kentucky, Josiah Henson escaped to Upper Canada with his family in 1830. He then helped found the Dawn settlement near Dresden, with a school for refugees. His life story is said to have inspired the title character of Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Nova Scotia, 1946

Carrie Best

In 1946, Carrie Best founded The Clarion in New Glasgow, one of the first newspapers of Nova Scotia's Black community. She championed Viola Desmond, thrown out of a movie theatre that same year, and denounced segregation. She later hosted a radio show and received the Order of Canada.

Ontario, 1951

Kay Livingstone

A radio host and activist, Kay Livingstone co-founded the Canadian Negro Women's Association in Toronto in 1951. In 1973, she organized the first national conference of Black women, which gave rise to the Congress of Black Women of Canada. She is credited with coining the term "visible minority."

Ontario, 1978

Stanley G. Grizzle

A sleeping car porter with Canadian Pacific, Stanley Grizzle joined the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, a union that fought racial discrimination at work. He also campaigned for anti-discrimination laws in Ontario. In 1978, he became Canada's first Black citizenship judge.

Ontario, 1962

Daniel G. Hill

A US-born sociologist, Daniel G. Hill settled in Toronto in 1950. In 1962, he became the first director of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, and later its chair. A historian of the Black community, he co-founded the Ontario Black History Society and wrote The Freedom-Seekers (1981).

British Columbia, 1972

Rosemary Brown

Born in Jamaica, Rosemary Brown came to Canada to study at McGill University. In 1972, she became the first Black woman elected to a Canadian legislature, in British Columbia. In 1975, she was the first woman to run for the leadership of a federal party, the NDP.

Ontario, 1968

Lincoln Alexander

The son of Caribbean immigrants and a Royal Canadian Air Force veteran, Lincoln Alexander became the first Black member of the House of Commons in 1968. Minister of Labour in 1979, he later served as Lieutenant Governor of Ontario (1985-1991), making education and anti-racism his priorities.

Ontario, 1995

Jean Augustine

Born in Grenada, Jean Augustine was a teacher and then a school principal in Toronto. Elected in 1993, she became the first Black woman to sit in the House of Commons. In 1995, her motion led to the official recognition of February as Black History Month in Canada.

Montreal, 1983

Fo Niemi

Fo Niemi co-founded the Center for Research-Action on Race Relations (CRARR) in Montreal in 1983. Since then, the organization has supported victims of discrimination before courts and human rights commissions, and pushed Quebec institutions to change their practices.

Manitoba, 2015

Murray Sinclair

Manitoba's first Indigenous judge, the Anishinaabe Murray Sinclair (Mizanay Gheezhik) chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada on residential schools from 2009 to 2015. Its final report set out 94 Calls to Action. He later served in the Senate. He died in 2024.

Canada, 2016

Cindy Blackstock

A Gitxsan social worker, Cindy Blackstock leads the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society. In 2007, with the Assembly of First Nations, she filed a complaint against Ottawa over the underfunding of children's services. In 2016, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruled in their favour.

Manitoba, 1990

Elijah Harper

An Oji-Cree member of the Manitoba legislature, Elijah Harper, holding an eagle feather, refused in June 1990 the consent needed to pass the Meech Lake Accord in time, an accord negotiated without Indigenous peoples. His "no" sank the accord and became a symbol of Indigenous self-affirmation.

Ontario, 2008

Shannen Koostachin

A Cree student from Attawapiskat, Shannen Koostachin never had a real school: her community's school had been closed because of contamination. At 13, she took her cause all the way to Ottawa. She died in 2010, at 15, in a car accident; the long-awaited school opened in 2014.

Ontario, 2019

Autumn Peltier

From Wiikwemkoong First Nation, Autumn Peltier has defended water since childhood. At 12, in 2016, she confronted the prime minister about drinking water in First Nations. She went on to address the United Nations and in 2019 became Chief Water Commissioner of the Anishinabek Nation.

Quebec, 2016

Michèle Audette

An Innu activist, Michèle Audette led Quebec Native Women and then the Native Women's Association of Canada. From 2016 to 2019, she was a commissioner of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. She was appointed to the Senate in 2021.

Quebec, 2009

Joséphine Bacon

Born in Pessamit, Joséphine Bacon is a poet, translator and keeper of the Innu language. Her collections, written in Innu-aimun and French, such as Bâtons à message (2009), carry the voice of the land and of the elders. She is a member of the Order of Canada.

Quebec, 1967

Alanis Obomsawin

An Abenaki from Odanak, Alanis Obomsawin has made documentaries at the National Film Board since 1967. With more than 50 films, including Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (1993), she gives First Nations a voice to tell their own stories and struggles.

Onondaga Nation

Oren Lyons

A Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan of the Onondaga Nation, Oren Lyons has for decades carried the voice of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, all the way to the United Nations. There he recalls the Seven Generations principle: every decision must consider those who will come after us.

Kenya, 1977

Wangari Maathai

The first woman in East Africa to earn a doctorate, Wangari Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977. Thousands of women planted tens of millions of trees, for the land and for their own independence. In 2004, she became the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

DR Congo, 1999

Denis Mukwege

A gynaecologist, Denis Mukwege founded Panzi Hospital in Bukavu in 1999. There he has treated tens of thousands of women who survived sexual violence used as a weapon of war, and supports them psychologically, legally and economically. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018.

Haiti and Rwanda, 1987

Paul Farmer

A physician and anthropologist, Paul Farmer co-founded Partners In Health in 1987, first in Haiti, then in Rwanda and beyond. He rejected the idea that the poorest should settle for second-rate care. He died in 2022 in Rwanda, where he had helped found the University of Global Health Equity.

Poland, 1942

Irena Sendler

A social worker in Warsaw, Irena Sendler was part of the Żegota resistance network. With her colleagues, she smuggled some 2,500 Jewish children out of the ghetto and recorded their real names so they might one day find their families. Yad Vashem honoured her as Righteous Among the Nations in 1965.