Notable Activists and Revolutionaries
This list is comprised of some of the most recognizable names from the world of activism.
| Name | Lifespan | Other Names | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spartacus | ?-71 BC |  | |
| Lady Godiva | ?-c. 1070 | | |
| William Wallace | c. 1270-1305 | | |
| Bartolomé de las Casas | 1484-1566 | | |
| Thomas Müntzer | c. 1489-1525 | | |
| Thomas Cranmer | 1489-1556 | | |
| Willem of Orange | 1533-1584 | | |
| Guy Fawkes | 1570-1606 | | |
| Paul Revere | 1734-1818 | | |
| Thomas Paine | 1737-1809 | | |
| Jean-Paul Marat | 1743-1793 | | |
| Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi | 1746-1827 | | |
| Olympe de Gouges | 1748-1793 | | |
| Honoré Gabriel Riqueti | 1749-1791 | | |
| Jacques Hébert | 1757-1794 | | |
| Maximilien Robespierre | 1758-1794 | | |
| Georges Danton | 1759-1794 | | |
| François-Noël Babeuf | 1760-1797 | | |
| Charlotte Corday | 1768-1793 | | |
| Robert Owen | 1771-1858 | | |
| Elizabeth Fry | 1780-1845 | | |
| Sojourner Truth | 1797-1883 | (Baumfree) | |
| Emilia Plater | 1806-1831 | | |
| Frederick Douglass | 1818-1895 | | |
| Susan B. Anthony | 1820-1906 | | |
| Harriet Tubman | c. 1822-1913 | | |
| Ferdinand Lassalle | 1825-1864 | | |
| Matilda Joslyn Gage | 1826-1898 | | |
| Henri Dunant | 1828-1910 | | |
| Pyotr Kropotkin | 1842-1921 | | |
| Bertha von Suttner | 1843-1914 | | |
| Marcelo H. del Pilar | 1850-1896 | | |
| José Martí | 1853-1895 | | |
| Emmeline Pankhurst | 1858-1928 | | |
| Omar al-Mukhtar | 1858-1931 | | |
| Theodor Herzl | 1860-1904 | | |
| Jane Addams | 1860-1935 | | |
| José Rizal | 1861-1896 | | |
| Ida B. Wells | 1862-1931 | (Barnett) | |
| Soh Jaipil | 1864-1951 | | |
| Sun Yat-sen | 1866-1925 | | |
| Emily Greene Balch | 1867-1961 | | |
| Emma Goldman | 1869-1940 | | |
| Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi | 1869-1948 | | |
| Vladimir Lenin | 1870-1924 | | |
| Alexander Berkman | 1870-1936 | | |
| Rosa Luxemburg | 1871-1919 | | |
| James Weldon Johnson | 1871-1938 | | |
| Adolf Brand | 1874-1945 | | |
| Zitkála-Šá | 1876-1938 | (Simmons, Bonnin) | |
| Sarojini Naidu | 1879-1949 | | |
| Emiliano Zapata | 1879-1919 | | |
| Leon Trotsky | 1879-1940 | | |
| Helen Keller | 1880-1968 | | |
| Adolph Joffe | 1883-1927 | | |
| Eleanor Roosevelt | 1884-1962 | | |
| Babilina Khositashvili | 1884-1973 | | |
| Marcus Garvey | 1887-1940 | | |
| Carl von Ossietzky | 1889-1938 | | |
| Martin Niemöller | 1892-1984 | | |
| Milena Jesenská | 1896-1944 | | |
| Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani | ?-1897 | | |
| Langston Hughes | 1901-1967 | | |
| Ève Curie | 1904-2007 | | |
| Sayyid Qutb | 1906-1966 | | |
| Simon Wiesenthal | 1908-2005 | | |
| Nicholas Winton | 1909-2015 | | |
| Irena Sendler | 1910-2008 | | |
| Bayard Rustin | 1912-1987 | | |
| Ljubo Čupić | 1913-1942 | | |
| Rosa Parks | 1913-2005 | | |
| Florynce Kennedy | 1916-2000 | | |
| Nelson Mandela | 1918-2013 | | |
| Sophie Scholl | 1921-1943 | | |
| Farley Mowat | 1921-2014 | | |
| Frantz Fanon | 1925-1961 | | |
| Malcolm X | 1925-1965 | (Little) | |
| Fidel Castro | 1926-2016 | (Ruz) | |
| Harry Belafonte | 1927-2023 | (Bellanfanti) | |
| Jack Kevorkian | 1928-2011 | | |
| Che Guevara | 1928-1967 | | |
| Martin Luther King Jr. | 1929-1968 | | |
| Sheila Kitzinger | 1929-2015 | | |
| Derek Humphry | 1930- | | |
| Desmond Tutu | 1931-2021 | | |
| Victor Jara | 1932-1973 | | |
| Vine Deloria Jr. | 1933-2005 | | |
| Audre Lorde | 1934-1992 | | |
| Gloria Steinem | 1934- | | |
| Floyd "Red Crow" Westerman | 1936-2007 | | |
| Dennis Banks | 1937-2017 | | |
| Russell Means | 1939-2012 | | |
| Buffy Sainte-Marie | 1941- | | |
| George Jackson | 1941-1971 | | |
| Betty Williams | 1943-2020 | | |
| Mairead Maguire | 1944- | (Corrigan) | |
| John Trudell | 1946-2015 | | |
| Steve Biko | 1946-1977 | | |
| Shirin Ebadi | 1947- | | |
| Philip Nitschke | 1947- | | |
| Jan Palach | 1948-1969 | | |
| Fred Hampton | 1948-1969 | | |
| Margot Kidder | 1948-2018 | | |
| Haunani-Kay Trask | 1949-2021 | | |
| Jody Williams | 1950- | | |
| Kailash Satyarthi | 1954- | | |
| Al Sharpton | 1954- | | |
| Denis Mukwege | 1955- | | |
| Liu Xiaobo | 1955-2017 | | |
| Monte Melkonian | 1957-1993 | | |
| Rigoberta Menchú | 1959- | | |
| Lawrence Lessig | 1961- | | |
| Taslima Nasrin | 1962- | | |
| Sung Jae-gi | 1967-2013 | | |
| Naomi Klein | 1970- | | |
| Calpernia Addams | 1971- | | |
| Julian Assange | 1971- | | |
| Alexei Navalny | 1976-2024 | | |
| Syarhey Tsikhanouski | 1978- | (Tikhanovsky) | |
| Eufrosina Cruz | 1979- | (Mendoza) | |
| Edward Snowden | 1983- | | |
| Chelsea Manning | 1987- | | |
| Q'orianka Kilcher | 1990- | | |
| Roman Protasevich | 1995- | (Pratasevič) | |
| Greta Thunberg | 2003- | (Ernman) | |