By Harry Kretchmer July 2020
- Civil rights leader John Lewis is survived by a generation of changemakers, ready to take up the baton.
- Twenty-one are listed here, representing intersections of civil rights causes including policing, LGBTQ rights and social media.
“You are a light. You are the light. Never let anyone – any person or any force – dampen, dim or diminish your light.”
So said John Lewis, the American civil-rights giant and United States congressman who has died, aged 80.
He was the last surviving speaker from the historic 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
20. Lateefah Simon, structural inequalities
From an early age, Lateefah Simon has campaigned for poor and marginalized people.
She won a MacArthur Fellowship in 2003 for her work helping teenagers and young women living in poverty. As the president of the Akonadi Foundation, she is one of the leading voices calling for attention to be paid to ‘structural racism’ – the way in which services like education and health often discriminate due to their design.
