ROLE MODELS

It is very important that we become aware that we are powerfully influenced by the role models we encounter in our lives. Since they have such influence, obviously we would be well served by selecting solid role models. How does one determine what is a "solid" role model? Although you can define this in many ways, I would argue that the finest role models all have certain things in common---they are involved in reaching out to others, in caring about the less fortunate, in following the Golden Rule of treating others as you would like to be treated, in heeding the wisdom of the Sermon on the Mount and other great spiritual admonitions as to how to live life. If you believe in making this a better world and act accordingly, then you are, by definition, a change agent.

Few, if any, role models are perfect. As humans, role models make mistakes just like we all do. When you review the following list of role models, keep in mind that you should not be interested in becoming "just like them" but rather you should strive to incorporate some of the best of what they were like into your personality and character.

If you have names you feel should be added to this list, please send them along to me. Don't just send the name; let me know why you feel they make a great role model.

Alphabetical list of role models from throughout the world:

Females:

Please note that women, throughout the world, throughout history, and in all fields of endeavor, have taken leadership roles and as change agents have dramatically influenced society.

Jane Addams: winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, founder of Hull House and the American settlement house movement, author of 20 Years at Hull House, considered by many to be one of the earliest developers of the social work profession.

Delmira Agustini: Uruguayan poet (1886-1914), one of the first women to write boldly about themes of sensuality and passion, Delmira documented in her poetry the struggle of a woman artist to develop an individual voice in the oppressive world of Latin patriarchy.

Hannah Arendt: political theorist, born in Germany (1906-1975), her seminal work is Origins of Totalitarianism. After fleeing Nazi Germany she spent most of her life teaching and writing in the United States.

Jane Austen: (1775-1817) English novelist, one of the Western world's great novelists, born the seventh of eight children to a country pastor, as a moral writer she was concerned with proper conduct and judgment in relationships. Her works include Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Emma.

Joan Baez: American folk singer who was considered a major force in the 1960s during a time of great change and who is still active musically and politically.

Josephine Baker: African-American singer and dancer (1906-1975), born into poverty, she left home at the age of 13 to break into show business. After some success in the U.S., she moved to Paris and became famous. During WWII she was a member of the French Resistance. After the war she adopted a dozen children from throughout the world.

Simone de Beauvoir: French feminist, philosopher, and writer (1908-1986). Her work includes: The Second Sex, A Very Easy Death, & The Coming of Age.

Gwendolyn Brooks: (1917- ) American poet who began writing poetry at the age of seven. Her often stark poetry is an exploration of urban black experience. She became the first black poet to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1950. Dark-skinned and poor, she learned in elementary school about the class and color snobbery that existed even among her black classmates. She would fictionalize these childhood experiences in her novel Maud Martha.

Kate Chopin: (1851-1904) American novelist, Chopin, during her lifetime, was attacked for her feminist concerns and skeptical attitude toward many societal conventions. Her greatest work is The Awakening.

CiXi: (1835-1908) Dowager Empress of China. She started out as a low-ranking consort of Emperor Xian Feng but rose to become the de facto ruler of China for many years and the most powerful woman in China's history.

Cleopatra: (69-30 B.C.) Queen of Egypt from the age of 17, highly skilled at manipulating others (usually great Roman generals such as Caesar and Marc Anthony) to the benefit of her country.

Colette: (1873-1954) One of France's most popular authors, the semi-autobiographical nature of her writing often led her to write frank and questioning accounts of sexuality and issues of sexual orientation. At her death she was granted a secular state funeral.

Marie Sklodowska Curie: (1867-1934) Polish-born French physicist famous for her work on radioactivity and twice awarded the Nobel Prize. She died of leukemia, caused by her work with radioactivity.

Sor Juana Cruz: (1651-1695) Mexican poet, playwright, and essayist, Sor Juana is best known for her impassioned defense of women's rights, especially the right of women to develop their minds through education.

Emily Dickinson: (1830-1886) American poet. During her lifetime she avoided publishing her poems and the only ones published were without her permission. After her death, her sister discovered her poems and had them published. Today she is considered one of the foremost poets of the American literary tradition.

Marguerite D'Youville: Canadian. Founder of the first order of nuns in the new world (The Grey Nuns).

George Eliot: (1819-1880) English novelist, George Eliot was the pen name of Mary Ann Evans, a Victorian pioneer of modern English literature who revolutionized English writing with her use of psychological analysis.

Buchi Emecheta: (1944- ) Nigerian writer who was a social worker before becoming a writer. Orphaned as a small child and placed in a foster home, married at age 16 and moved to London with her husband and by the age of 22 had borne five children and then separated and went on to become a college graduate and writer. Among her other works is her autobiography, Head Above Water.

Forugh Farrokhzad:(1935-1967) Iranian poet, who, despite social restraint and taboo, dared to express her innermost feelings about love, sex, society, and self with a frank openness unprecedented in the history of Persian literature.

Rosario Ferre: (1941- ) Puerto Rican writer, her literary work has concentrated on the exploration of the condition of women and on the critique of the bourgeois Puerto Rican family. Her protagonists tend to be women unleashed, setting violently out against the daily abuses of a hypocritical, bourgeois, and sexist world.

Ella Fitzgerald: (1918-1996) African-American jazz singer, considered to be the "First Lady of Jazz" and tremendously creative---able to rival jazz instrumentalists in harmonic and melodic improvisation.

Charlotte Gilman: (1860-1935) American writer and feminist theorist. In The Yellow Wallpaper she draws upon her own experiences and portrays a woman bullied by her doctor and husband, and creates a chilling depiction of mental illness and its treatment.

Emma Goldman: (1869-1940) American anarchist and feminist who was arrested and jailed and imprisoned a number of times for her beliefs. She contended that women's freedom was only possible if women could choose their own destiny.

Martha Graham: (1894-1991) American choreographer, teacher, and dancer, one of the founders of modern dance.

Fannie Lou Hamer: (1917-1977) American civil rights activist and politician, born to a family of poor sharecroppers, she began picking cotton at the age of six with her parents and nineteen older brothers and sisters.

Bessie Emory Head: (1947-1986) South African author and teacher, she is particularly concerned with describing the institutionalization of evil. The daughter of a white woman and a black man, she was born in the mental institution in which her mother had been placed. She was adopted by a white Afrikaner family when she was very young; however, when her black features revealed themselves, she was sent to live with a black family, where she remained until moving into an orphanage at the age of thirteen. The largely autobiographical A Question of Power describes her struggles.

Lillian Hellman: (1905-1984) American playwright, her work is marked by denunciation of social injustice and her play The Children's Hour shows the devastating effects of a child's lies about a lesbian relationship between two boarding-school teachers.

Zora Neale Hurston: (1903-1960) American novelist and folklorist, she was born in the black-run, black-populated town of Eatonville, Georgia, which gave her a passion for African-American culture. Hurston always claimed she did not "belong to that sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a low-down dirty deal." This insistence on affirmation rather than protest gave her fiction a wholly different orientation from the realist writing of other African-American authors.

Ito Noe: (1895-1923) Japanese feminist, anarchist, and writer. After rebelling against a forced marriage, she ran away from he home, married and divorced a second husband, then moved in with anarchist Osugi Sakae and gave birth to seven children while writing more than 80 articles and several autobiographical novels, and translating major works by European anarchists Emma Goldman and Peter Kropotkin before being killed by the government for her political activities---a rather full life for someone who died in her 20s!

Harriet Jacobs: (1813-1897) American writer best known for her Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself.

Khadija: Muhammad's wife and mother of his four daughters, she encouraged her husband to preach after his revelation from God. Muhammad was orphaned as a child and grew up to become an employee of Khadija, an older wealthy woman whom he married.

Ronyoung Kim: (1926-1987) Korean-American artist and author, born Gloria Hahn, as a second-generation immigrant she devoted her one novel, Clay Walls, to the hardships of growing up in America while remaining inextricably linked to a Korean heritage. The book raises issues of identity, racism, and oppression.

Maxine Hong Kingston: (1940- ) Chinese-American writer. Her books deal with powerlessness and empowerment in legend and history. The Woman Warrior deals with female powerlessness and China Men deals with the masculine side of the Chinese-American experience.

Frances Moore Lappe: American author and activist, her works include Diet for a Small Planet and Rediscovering America's Values.

Edwina Leon: African-American social work professor who continued to be a change agent in impoverished communities even after retirement.

Rosa Luxemburg: (1871-1919) Polish-born political philosopher, revolutionary, and socialist agitator. While imprisoned in Warsaw for her activities, she wrote The Mass Strike in which she advocated the mass strike as the most powerful weapon in the proletariat's arsenal. In contrast to authoritarian leaders like Lenin, she firmly believed that a properly trained and radicalized working class could spontaneously create its own revolution.

La Malinche: (1505-1529) Aztec who was sold into slavery by her father when he remarried after her mother died. She was awarded to Cortes as a gift upon his arrival in Mexico on March 12, 1519. When Cortes realized that she was multilingual, he used her as his interpreter and teacher of the customs of various indigenous peoples. In 1522 she gave birth to Cortes' son. She was so influential that the Indians called Cortes "Senor Malinche" or Malinche's man.

Rigdserta Menchu: (1959- ) Guatemalan Indian rights activist, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992. Her mother, father, and brother all were murdered by the Guatemalan government. Her book I, Rigoberta Menchu is widely translanted.

Gabriela Mistral: (1889-1957) Chilean poet of Basque and Indian ancestry, she became the first Spanish-American writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1945.

Toni Morrison: (1931- ) African-American writer, her first book, The Bluest Eye, chronicled the experiences of a young black girl driven insane with self-hatred caused by her inability to live up to the standards of beauty projected by the white dominant culture. Her book Beloved, examines the horrors of American Slavery and won the Pulitzer Prize. She received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993.

Murasaki Shikibu: (980-1015) Japanese novelist and poet who is regarded as one of the greatest writers in the history of Japanese literature.

Nefertiti:

Georgia O'Keefe: One of America's greatest artists, her paintings are exquisite.

Eva Peron: (1919-1952) Argentine political and social leader, born an illegitimate child, she became a radio and motion-picture actress and then mistress and ultimately wife of Juan Peron, she was revered by the lower economic classes. Through her Eva Peron Foundation she established thousands of schools, hospitals, orphanages, homes for the aged, and similar charitable institutions and created the Peronista Feminist Party.

Denise Roche: Grey Nun and President of D'Youville College.

Eleanor Roosevelt: (1884-1962) U.S. First Lady (wife of FDR our only four term President) and diplomat. She helped place women in important federal government jobs and held press conferences exclusively for women. Championing the causes of minorities, women, and the poor, in 1939 she publicly resigned from the Daughters of the American Revolution when they refused to let black singer Marian Anderson perform in Constitution Hall.

Nawal al-Sadawi: (1932- ) Egyptian writer, physician, and feminist who calls for radical reform and attacks the systematic deformation of women's lives. She was the director of health education when she published Women and Sex which led to her being fired.

Sappho: Lyric poet of Greek antiquity (lived around 600 B.C.), she is one of the earliest known female poetic voices.

Sata Ineko: (1904- ) Japanese novelist and critic, she grew up in abject poverty and worked in knitting mills as a child. She at times was a member of the Japanese Communist party and her political beliefs resulted in a great deal of personal suffering.

Maggie Schultz: Social work educator and feminist who elected to adopt two children rather than endlessly wait for the "right" man to come along.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton: (1815-1902) American women's right leader, she organized the ground-breaking Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. Her concerns about women and family are outlined in her autobiography, Eighty Years and More.

Gertrude Stein: (1874-1946) American writer, she was a leading innovator in modernist writing and her salon in Paris was the center of the artistic movement known as Cubism and a gathering place for Picasso, Braque, Matisse, and Cezanne among others.

Tamar: (1165-1213) Georgian queen, who ruled from 1184 until her death and is considered to be the greatest of Georgian rulers.

Amy Tan: (1952- ) Chinese-American novelist, who in her book The Joy Luck Club writes of the alienation and cultural estrangement of the immigrant experience. The book was made into an excellent film by the same title.

Harriet Taylor (wife of John Stuart Mill, British philosopher and economist): Mill discussed all of his work with her and because of her influence developed his influential and, at that time (1860s), radical theories on female suffrage. Mill acknowledge that some of his work was a joint production with his wife.

Sojourner Truth: (1797-1883) Abolitionist, religious leader, and women's rights activist, born a slave and sold several times. Her autobiography is The Narrative of Sojourner Truth.

Harriet Tubman: (1820-1913) Underground railroad conductor, nurse, and Union spy, born a slave, from the age of five she was hired out by her masters to clean houses.

Umm Kulthum: (1910-1975) Egyptian singer, considered to be the most famous singer of the Arab world. Through personal dedication, and more than a touch of stubborn perseverance, she helped create a social niche for female singers and was instrumental in defining a new social role for music in general.

Alice Walker: (1944- ) American novelist and poet, her work is primarily concerned with the interpersonal relations of black women in a racist and sexist society with her most famous novel being The Color Purple.

Ida B. Wells: (1862-1931) African-American civil rights activist, lecturer, and journalist, born a slave, orphaned at the age of fourteen when five members of her family died of yellow fever. She moved to Memphis and became a teacher and the editor and part owner of a black newspaper. She was fired from her teaching position due to her articles urging the equal distribution of resources for black students. Her editorials against lynching brought threats to her life and the destruction of the building housing her paper. She moved north and helped establish the NAACP.

Wu Zetian: (623-704) At fourteen she became a concubine to the Emperor and eventually became the ruler of China.

Males:

Salvador Allende: (1908-1973) Politician and physician, Allende became the first democratically elected Marxist head of state when he became President of Chile in 1970. He began restructuring society and sent representatives to study the Mondragon system in Spain, however, in 1973 he was killed in a coup engineered with the support of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta: Basque priest who was the guiding spirit behind the creation of the Mondragon system of worker-owned enterprises in the Basque region of Spain.

Ashoka: Indian emperor who died in 232 B.C., he maintained a general policy of respect toward all religions, a belief in non-violence, honesty, and benevolence and encouraged people to live up to their own ideals without being adversely critical of others. The memory of his personal standards of benevolence survives to this day.

Miguel Angel Asturias: (1899-1974) Guatemalan novelist and diplomat, the first Latin American writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, he attacked both corrupt politicians and corporations in his books. The Cyclone, The Green Pope, & Eyes of the Interred document the exploitation of the Guatemalan fruit industry by American firms.

Nnamdi Azikiwe: (1904-1996) writer, journalist, educator, & first President of Nigeria when it became a republic in 1963. He left Nigeria as a stowaway and came to the U.S. where he studied and supported himself as a coal miner, casual laborer, dishwasher, and boxer before returning to Africa. Among his books is Nascent Africa.

Neville Thomas Bonner (1922- ) The first Aboriginal Australian to be elected to the country's parliament, he is an active spokesman for Aboriginal rights and social welfare and reform. Several excellent movies on Australia's Aborigines have been made including The Wave.

Jorge Luis Borges: (1899-1986) Argentinean writer who has influenced many of the other great South American writers. Borges suffered a severe head wound and blood poisoning, an injury that nearly killed him, in 1938. The experience unleashed his deepest creative imagination. Later in life he was blind but continued to write by dictating his work. His works include The Aleph and Other Stories, Dreamtigers, The Book of Imaginary Beings, Dr. Brodie's Report, & The Book of Sand.

Deadwood Dick: (1854-1921) African-American cowboy, born Nat Love, a slave in Davidson County, Tennessee, he went West in 1869 and became a cowboy. In competition with the best cowboys in the West he won various contests and his admiring fans gave him the name of Deadwood Dick. With the passing of the great era of the cowboy he became a Pullman porter and wrote his autobiography entitled: The Life and Adventures of Nat Love: Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick."

Eugene V. Debs: (1874-1926) American political leader. When he ran for President he advocated abolition of child labor, equal pay for equal work for women, and pensions for both men and women. He did so decades before these issues were addressed by other politicians. See his biography written by Ray Ginger entitled The Bending Cross.

Morris Dees: Civil rights attorney.

Ron Dellums: Social Worker and, until 1998 when he retired, a U.S. Representative for 26 years. As an African-American and a social worker Dellums was deeply committed to social change and building a just society and play a key role in bringing an end to Apartheid in South Africa.

Burton Hoffman Fern: Pediatrician who was paralyzed by polio and went on to write a nationally syndicated medical advise column for the newspapers.

Charles Lee Frost: Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee in 1892, cowboy, mule skinner, soldier, labor leader and construction foreman for the telephone company.

Mohandas Gandhi: (1869-1948) Fought for Indian civil rights in South Africa and then returned to India and became the guiding force behind India's successful efforts to win their independence from Great Britian. Known for his policy of non-violent protest or civil disobedience.

Harry Glantz: New York City minimalist. Harry lived in the YMCA where he was the swimming pool attendant. Each morning he would get up, slip into his one bathing suit, and step into the elevator outside his door and drop off his one suit at the Y's cleaners on his way down to the lower level pool and retrieve it at the end of the day---all he needed was one set of clothes. All of this was years before Schumacher wrote Small is Beautiful.

J. Krishnamurti: Spiritual philosopher. His writings include Think on These Things, The Impossible Question, and You Are the World. Considered by many to be the greatest spiritual philosopher of the 20th century.

Malcolm X: (1925-1965) African-American political and religious leader. His father was the Reverend Little, a Baptist minister and organizer for African-American leader Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association. The family moved to Michigan to escape harassment but his father's house in Michigan was burned by the Ku Klux Klan, his father murdered, and his mother placed in a mental institution. Malcolm was kept in a series of detention homes and he dropped out of school after the eighth grade and got involved in running numbers, selling and using drugs and organizing a burglary ring. Caught and imprisoned, he converted to the Nation of Islam, known popularly as the Black Muslims, and changed his name to Malcolm X, a Nation of Islam custom signifying that he rejected his former name as a vestige of slavery. Read The Autobiography of Malcolm X for more on this major leader.

Nelson Mandela: (1918- ) South Africa's first black president. Regularly arrested for his political activities, he was ultimately imprisoned for 28 years and released in 1990 and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 and became president in 1994.

Jose Marti: (1853-1895) Cuban journalist and poet, founder of the Cuban Revolutionary Party, he died while commanding rebel troops in the Cuban revolt of 1895.

Karl Marx: (1818-1883) German social and economic theorist. Despite chronic poverty, illness, and the death of three children, Marx worked for years in the British Museum researching and writing his monumental analysis of capitalism, Das Kapital.

With Engels he also wrote the Communist Manifesto. In his work he effectively argues that economic conditions determine all else and that modes of production affect every facet of human life.

St. Maurice: Christian martyr and saint who died around the year 287, he was the first African who became a Saint. Maurice was a high ranking officer in the Roman army and the 6,000 men in the legion he commanded were all Christians and refused to participate in a sacrifice to the Roman gods to ensure their success in battle as it would betray their Christian convictions. They were all massacred as a result of their convictions. His saint's day is September 22.

Mencius: (371-289 B.C.) Chinese Confucian philosopher. Relatively uninfluential during his own lifetime, his ideas became a central figure in the history of Confucianism. According to Mencius, a truly moral leader would spontaneously receive the loyalty of the people and a mandate from heaven. When he loses this virtue, he also loses the support of heaven, and his subjects consequently have the right to revolt.

Milarepa: (1040-1123) Tibetan poet and mystic. When he was seven, his father died, leaving the family in the care of an uncle. The greedy uncle seized their property and put them to work. He spent six years meditating in solitude in a cave and spent the rest of his life pursuing liberation through hardship.

Mo Zi: (470-391 B.C.) Ancient Chinese philosopher, he advocated the practice of self-sacrifice and universal love. His teachings come close to the basic ideas of Christianity. He emphasized that there is something immortal after death.

Mongkut: (1804-1868) Ruler of Thailand when it was known as Siam. Before becoming ruler he spent 27 years as a Buddhist monk. His character, albeit highly romanticized, can be seen in the movie The King and I.

Ralph Nader: American activist dedicated to improving society and ensuring that its products are safe for the consumer.

Pablo Neruda: (1904-1973) Chilean poet, diplomat, and politician. His poetry and his political commitment have made him the poet with perhaps the greatest influence in contemporary Latin America. He won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature.

George Orwell: (1903-1950) English novelist. His first book, Down and Out in London and Paris, described his life living in the slums. His other works include: The Road to Wigan Pier, Animal Farm, and 1984.

Robert Owen: (1771-1858) British socialist and reformer. In 1799 he and several partners purchased the mills at New Lanark, Scotland and used the mill as a model on which to base his theories of social reform. His Autobiography is considered one of the great documents of the early socialist movement.

Octavio Paz: (1914-1998) Mexican poet, critic, and playwright. He gave up the study of law to found a progressive school for laborers. In 1990 Paz won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Diego Rivera: (1886-1957) Mexican painter and muralist. He believed that art should be accessible and therefore on the walls of public buildings. His art often deals with issues of oppression and liberation.

Jose Rizal: (1861-1896) Philippine physician, novelist, poet, and patriot, considered to be a founder of Philippine nationalism, he was executed by firing squad.

Auguste Rodin: (1840-1917) French sculptor. As a youth, Rodin was rejected three times by the prestigious Ecole des Beaux-Arts and worked for several eyars as an ornamental mason.

Augusto Sandino: (1895-1934) Nicaraguan political leader. He was ardently opposed to U.S. intervention in Latin America and waged a guerilla war in the mountains of Nicaragua against the U.S. Marines.

Shaka: (1787-1828) Zulu King, hailed as the greatest of African military leaders. As a child he and his mother were treated with hostility, scorn, and treated as outcasts.

George Bernard Shaw: (1856-1950) Irish playwright and critic. At school he was at the bottom of his class and was considered wild, indulging in idleness when the subjects being taught did not interest him. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925.

David Alfaro Siqueiros: (1896-1974) Mexican painter, muralist, and political activist, he entered the revolutionary army at the age of fifteen. He was jailed several times for his political activities and also served in the republican army during the Spanish Civil War.

Wole Soyinka: (1934- ) Nigerian playwright, poet, and novelist. His work, A Dance of Forests, warns Africans against glorifying the past by showing how even the most highly revered ancestors were as petty and spiteful as any living people. In 1986 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Baruch Spinoza: (1632-1677) Dutch philosopher. He was an unlikely philosopher: by trade he was a lens grinder and lived a modest life. Still, he became a leading figure of the 17th century schools of both Rationalism and Pantheism, which denied any separation between humans, God, and nature.

August Strindberg: (1849-1912) Swedish dramatist, novelist, and short-story writer, his childhood was one of unhappiness and poverty. After becoming a playwright, he was persecuted for his work and this led to a period in which he bordered on madness. The dream-like, surreal dramas written during his recovery phase are often considered to be his most brilliant.

Jonathan Swift: (1667-1745) English author and satirist. His first work as an author was rejected by his contemporaries so he then switch to satire and wrote Gulliver's Travels dealing with moral corruption in his own society and it was an immediate success.

Rabindranath Tagore: (1861-1941) Indian poet and philosopher. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. His work includes 15 books of philosophy, 100 books of verse, over 50 plays (acting in many of them), 40 works of fiction, and produced several ballets.

Tatanka Iyotake (aka Tattanka Yotanka or Sitting Bull): (1831-1890) Chief of the Hunkpapa Sioux who united the numerous Sioux tribes in their struggle to maintain their land. Best known for his victory over Custer at the Little Big Horn.

Camilo Torres: (1929-1966) Colombian priest and revolutionary. A highly successful chaplain and lecturereat the University he believed that the only way to secure Catholic social justice would be to alter radically the existing power structures. Because of his beliefs he was forced to give up the priesthood. He was killed while fighting with the guerillas.

Henry David Thoreau: (1817-1862) American writer, his thoughts on nonconformity, humanity's relation to nature, and civil disobedience have exerted enormous influence in both America and abroad, more so in the twentieth century than in his own time.

Francois Toussaint (L'Ouverture): (1744-1803) Haitian revolutionary, he liberated the slaves of the French colony of Saint Domingue (now Haiti) and established the first black-led government in the Western Hemisphere.

Francois Truffaut: (1932-1984) French film director and critic, he had a childhood similar to that of the main character in his first major film, The 400 Blows.

Antonio Vieira: (1608-1697) Portuguese missionary, in Brazil he worked with the Amerindians and African slaves and spoke out in defense of the former Jews of Portugal who had been converted to Christianity by force. He was driven out of Brazil by the colonists who resented his intervention on behalf of the Amerindians. The movie The Mission gives you glimpse of what it was like to be a missionary trying to do God's work in the jungles of South America.

Booker T. Washington: (1856-1915) African-American educator and founder of Tuskegee Institute, at the age of nine, he began working in a salt furnace and at ten in a coal mine. He encouraged blacks to accept segregation as a fact of life and to work for economic equality before social equality. The most famous black leader of his time, he angered radical black intellectuals like W.E.B. Du Bois who decried Washington's approach as ineffectual at a time when racial discrimination was being systematically legalized.

Walt Whitman: (1819-1892) American poet and essayist, who sings of the beauty of ALL humans, of all the world's wonders, and urges us to be wild, free, forceful, alive involved, caring, quiet, observant, and one with all humanity---recognizing that "any thing is but a part."

Elie Wiesel: (1928- ) Romanian-Jewish writer, survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, he wrote about his horrendous experiences in Night and received the Nobel Peace Prize for his lifelong efforts to eradicate violence, hatred, and oppression in 1986.

Emiliano Zapata: (1879-1919) Mexican revolutionary who was committed to social justice for the Indian. Today he is still eulogized and rebel movements throughout the Americas know of him and one group in the Chiapas province of Mexico call upon his name calling themselves Zapatistas. The excellent movie Viva Zapata provides a glimpse into his life.

Emile Zola: (1840-1902) French novelist and critic, he gained worldwide attention in 1989 when he published a letter entitled "I Accuse" in which he supported French captain Alfred Dreyfus who had been falsely arrested and tried for treason.  In the letter, Zola accused the government of being anti-Semitic and covering up the truth in the case and after the letter came out he was forced to flee the country.  His novels include Germinal.