Mary Lucille Hamilton (October 13, 1935 – November 11, 2002) was an African-American civil rights activist whose case before the U.S. Supreme Court, Hamilton v. Alabama, decided that an African-American woman was entitled to the same courteous forms of address customarily reserved solely to whites in the Southern United States, and that calling a black person by his or her first name in a legal proceeding was "a form of racial discrimination".
Germaine Berton (7 June 1902, in Puteaux – 6 July 1942, in Paris) was a French anarchist and trade unionist. She is known for the murder of Marius Plateau, an editor for the Action Francaise journal and a leader in the royalist organisation Camelots du Roi, in January 1923. Germaine Berton was defended by Henri Torrès during her trial and surrealists have used her mugshot in a number of art pieces. Despite confessing, Berton was acquitted on 24 December 1923.
Berton stopped engaging with anarchist organizations following a subsequent arrest in 1924. In 1925, Berton married Paul Burger, a painter before leaving him in 1935 for René Coillot, a printer. She died in 1942 due to an intentional overdose.
Herta Gotthelf (6 June 1902 – 13 May 1963) was a German journalist and politician (SPD).Before 1933 she was editor in chief of the SPD women's magazine Genossin. After 1945 she worked in the Schumacher Office, set up in 1945 by Kurt Ernst Carl Schumacher to recreate the party. Within the party executive, between 1946 and 1956, she can be described as "the main voice of SPD women's policies ... as the women's officer (Frauenbeauftragte)".
Alma Vessells John (September 27, 1906 – April 8, 1986) was an American nurse, newsletter writer, radio and television personality, and civil rights activist. Born in Philadelphia in 1906, she moved to New York to take nursing classes after graduating from high school. She completed her nursing training at Harlem Hospital School of Nursing in 1929 and worked for two years as a nurse before being promoted to the director of the educational and recreational programs at Harlem Hospital. After being fired for trying to unionize nurses in 1938, she became the director of the Upper Manhattan YWCA School for Practical Nurses, the first African American to serve as director of a school of nursing in the state of New York. (Adah Belle Thoms had served as acting director of Lincoln School for Nurses between 1906 and 1923). In 1944, John became a lecturer and consultant with the National Nursing Council for War Service, serving until the war ended, and was the last director of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses from 1946 until it dissolved in 1951. Her position at both organizations was to expand nursing opportunities for black women and integrate black nurses throughout the nation into the health care system.
In 1949, John wrote a script titled Brown Women in White for production on WNBC, which led to a second career in radio and television. In 1952, she presented The Homemaker's Club on station WWRL in New York. The following year, she became the first black radio personality to be invited as a member of the New York chapter of the Association of Women in Radio and Television. She campaigned successfully for the organization meetings to be held in unsegregated facilities. In 1957, she received the McCall's Golden Mike Award for her show What's Right with Teenagers and in 1959 she became the director of women's programming at WWRL. Over her 25-year career at the radio station, she wrote and produced numerous programs giving household tips, health care advice, and providing community service information. In 1970, John began appearing on television shows at WPIX-TV. She interviewed prominent black figures on her shows Black Pride and Positively Black. John worked up to her death in 1986 and is remembered mainly for her pioneering role in radio.
Abraham "Abe" Bluestein (1909–1997) was an American anarchist who participated in the Spanish Civil War.
Rudolf (Rudi) Schwarz (3 March 1904 – 1 February 1934) was a German Communist Party activist who after 1933 became an anti-government activist. He was arrested, detained and then, a few weeks short of his thirtieth birthday, handed over to the Gestapo who shot him at the beginning of February 1934.
In the German Democratic Republic he came to wider public attention when the popular author Stephan Hermlin included his story in a 1951 book about resistance to Nazism. After this Schwarz became something of an iconic figure, featured in cinema and television productions.
James Barron Carey (August 12, 1911 – September 11, 1973) was a 20th century American labor union leader, secretary-treasurer of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO; 1938–1955), vice president of AFL–CIO (from 1955) and served as president of the United Electrical Workers (UE; 1936–1941), but broke from it because of its alleged Communist control. He was the founder and president of the rival International Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers (1950–1965). President Truman appointed Carey to the President's Committee on Civil Rights in 1946. Carey was labor representative to the United Nations Association (1965–1972). He helped influence the CIO's pullout from the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) and the formation of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) dedicated to promoting free trade and democratic unionism worldwide.
