Seven historic Philly civil-rights activists who demand your solidarity today

Let’s briefly meet a few of them—particularly those whose legacies have been neglected today. And then, let’s expand our notion of solidarity. Solidarity can stretch through time. If you feel defeated by an unelected billionaire’s assault on our government, alongside the massively unpopular Christian Nationalist tide of Project 2025 (which Trump embraced as soon as he took office after disavowing it on the campaign), ask yourself whether these activists would have despaired, covered their ears, and gone home.

Because every time you contact Congress, protest, donate, get informed, volunteer, boycott, speak up for the truth, or organize for justice in your community, it is as if civil-rights activists of the past are still alive. You are acting in solidarity with them, continuing their vital work. (Look at their faces below, and then read on to meet them.)

Benjamin Lay, born in Essex, England in 1682, worked as a shepherd, glovemaker, and sailor before he and his wife Sarah Smith settled in Philadelphia in the 1730s. He was a Quaker and spent decades disrupting Meetings with his fervent abolitionist values. He staged brilliant moments of guerilla theater in protest of slavery, for which he was repeatedly disowned and denounced by his fellow Quakers, often facing extra derision because of his appearance as a Little Person. He wrote an anti-slavery treatise which he knew the Quaker Board of Overseers wouldn’t publish, but his friend Benjamin Franklin did. After Sarah’s death, he continued his protest by moving into a cave in Abington, where he refused to exploit the labor of people or animals: he grew his own fruits and vegetables, refused to eat meat, made his own clothes, tended his beehives, and enjoyed his home library (the cave was apparently quite spacious). Near the end of his 77 years, he saw the same Meetings who had expelled him start to oppose slavery themselves. You can read more about him in The Fearless Benjamin Lay: The Quaker Dwarf Who Became the First Revolutionary Abolitionist.

Act in solidarity with Benjamin Lay.

Judy Heumann was born in Philadelphia in 1947 to German Jewish parents who escaped to the US before the Holocaust. She grew up in Brooklyn and fought for years to attend school and then become a teacher, despite the school board’s claim that her wheelchair was a fire hazard. She was a leader of the 1977 504 Sit-In in San Francisco, which at 26 days is the longest sit-in on record in a US federal building (the Black Panthers stood in solidarity with the disabled activists, providing them with food). The sit-in forced the US government to begin defining and enforcing a law that prevented any facility with federal funding from discriminating against disabled people or denying them services, and it led directly to the Americans with Disabilities Act. Heumann’s autobiography, Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist, offers a thrilling front-row seat to the 504 protest and the rest of her historic activism, and the Netflix documentary Crip Camp is an excellent, deeply personal portrait of this movement.

Act in solidarity with Judy Heumann.

William Still was born in New Jersey in 1821. His formerly enslaved father had purchased his own freedom and his mother escaped with two of her four children. He moved to Philadelphia in 1844 and worked as a clerk and janitor for the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery. Meanwhile, he became a major figure of the Underground Railroad, organizing direct aid networks, fundraising, and keeping a written record of the people he helped (a highly risky practice after the Fugitive Slave Act) so that they could later find their relatives (he himself was reunited in adulthood with a long-lost brother). He was a successful entrepreneur, lifelong civil-rights advocate, and the author of the 1872 book The Underground Railroad, an unparalleled historical record to this day (you can read it here for free via the Library of Congress). Read more about him in Vigilance: The Life of William Still, Father of the Underground Railroad.

Act in solidarity with William Still.

Kiyoshi Kuromiya was born in 1943 in a Wyoming internment camp (his parents were Japanese Americans born in California). He came out at a young age and spent decades as a civil rights and anti-war activist, meeting MLK at the March on Washington and becoming close with his family. As a protestor, he suffered near-fatal beatings and arrest. He fought for people with HIV before learning that he himself was HIV positive. He was a founding member of Gay Liberation Front/Philadelphia and participated in direct action though ACT UP Philadelphia, and he was an openly gay delegate to the 1969 Black Panther Convention which endorsed gay liberation (held at Temple University). He founded the Philly-based Critical Path Project, which included a website, newsletter, free Internet access, and a 24-hour phone hotline for people living with HIV and AIDS who needed access to the latest science and treatment info. You can support a campaign for a feature-length documentary on Kuromiya’s life.

Act in solidarity with Kiyoshi Kuromiya.

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was born in 1825 in Baltimore, MD to free Black parents and orphaned at age 3. Her aunt and uncle took her in, and she must have been inspired at a young age by her uncle William Watkins, an abolitionist organizer and educator. She loved books and writing and wrote her own first volume of poetry at 21, and went on to become a teacher, trailblazing author, and international abolitionist speaker. In her 20s, she moved in for a time with her uncle’s friends William and Letitia George Still in Philadelphia, where she wrote poetry for antislavery newspapers. She fought throughout her life for voting rights, temperance, education, and equal opportunities, and died in Philly in 1911. You can buy her complete works here.

Act in solidarity with Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.

North Philly native Gloria Casarez became Philly’s first director of LGBT Affairs (appointed by Mayor Nutter in 2008). She worked from the inside City Hall to bring the country’s most powerful LGBTQ protections to Philly, led the Gay and Lesbian Latino AIDS Initiative (GALAEI), started the city’s first mobile HIV testing centers, fought against violence targeting trans people, and became recognized across the country for her advocacy. She died of cancer in 2014, at just 42. (A mural dedicated to her was painted over in 2020.)

Act in solidarity with Gloria Casarez.

Octavius V. Catto, born in South Carolina in 1839, moved to Philadelphia with his family as a child, after his father, a Presbyterian minister, was freed. Catto graduated from The Institute for Colored Youth on Lombard Street and began his distinguished teaching career there. He was a brilliant man: a scholar, political organizer, speaker, and voting-rights activist who protested to desegregate Philadelphia trolleys decades before Rosa Parks was born. He was a world-class baseball player, organized a historic baseball league, and was a veteran of the Pennsylvania National Guard who recruited Black troops to fight for the Union during the Civil War. He married Caroline LeCount, a Philly justice icon in her own right. He was assassinated near his own home on South Street on Election Day 1871, after spending the day rallying his fellow Black men, who had recently gained voting rights, to the polls. He was 32 years old. He received a lavish public funeral with full military honors, and his death was a landmark moment for Philly politics, but his killer (though well-known to history) was never charged. You can visit Catto’s monument on the southwest side of City Hall, and learn more about him in the book Tasting Freedom: Octavius Catto and the Battle for Equality in Civil War America.

Act in solidarity with Octavius V. Catto.

Learn, share, and act

These are brief snapshots of a handful of activists. Make it a project to learn more about them. Learning and sharing what you have learned is a meaningful action.

Catto himself said “we shall never rest at ease, but will agitate and work, by our means and our influence, in court and out of court,” to fight for justice. Do you think he meant this only during his own lifetime?

Do not lose heart in this horrible American moment. Many of these activists faced much worse than the likes of Trump and Elon Musk. They wrote, spoke, fought, petitioned, protested, and bled for justice. Don’t just remember them. Find your own ways to act with them. Our democracy depends on it.

Feel free to share about your favorite Philly activists in the comments or on social media. There are so many more than we can represent here. And if this article inspires you, remember that BSR needs our readers’ support.