American civil rights activists

Paul Leonard Newman (January 26, 1925 – September 26, 2008) was an American actor, film director, racing driver, philanthropist, and entrepreneur. He was the recipient of numerous awards, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, three Golden Globe Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, a Silver Bear, a Cannes Film Festival Award, and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.Born in Shaker Heights, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, Newman showed an interest in theater as a child and at age 10 performed in a stage production of Saint George and the Dragon at the Cleveland Play House. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in drama and economics from Kenyon College in 1949. After touring with several summer stock companies including the Belfry Players, Newman attended the Yale School of Drama for a year before studying at the Actors Studio under Lee Strasberg. His first starring Broadway role was in William Inge's Picnic in 1953.
Newman won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in The Color of Money (1986). His other Oscar-nominated performances were in
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), The Hustler (1961), Hud (1963), Cool Hand Luke (1967), Absence of Malice (1981), The Verdict (1982), Nobody's Fool (1994), and Road to Perdition (2002). He also starred in such films as Harper (1966), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), The Sting (1973), The Towering Inferno (1974), Slap Shot (1977), and Fort Apache, The Bronx (1981). He also voiced Doc Hudson in Cars (2006).
Newman won several national championships as a driver in Sports Car Club of America road racing. He was a co-founder of Newman's Own, a food company from which he donated all post-tax profits and royalties to charity. As of 2020, these donations have totaled over US$570 million.
Newman continued to found such charitable organizations such as the SeriousFun Children's Network in 1988 and the Safe Water Network in 2006. Newman was married twice and fathered six children. He was the husband of the actress Joanne Woodward until his death.

Esther Victoria Cooper Jackson (August 21, 1917 – August 23, 2022) was an American civil rights activist, social worker, and communist activist. She worked with Shirley Graham Du Bois, W. E. B. Du Bois, Edward Strong, and Louis E. Burnham, and was one of the founding editors of the magazine Freedomways, a theoretical, political and literary journal published from 1961 to 1985. She also served as organizational and executive secretary at the Southern Negro Youth Congress.

Raúl R. Salinas (March 17, 1934 - February 13, 2008), better known by his pen name raúlrsalinas, was a Chicano pinto poet, memoirist, social activist, and prison journalist. Much of raúlrsalinas' writing was grounded in arguments for social justice and human rights. He was an early pioneer of Chicano pinto (prisoner) poetry and is notable for his use of vernacular, bilingual, and free verse aesthetics.Alongside Ricardo Sánchez, Judy Lucero, Luis Talamantez, and Jimmy Santiago Baca, raúlrsalinas sought to make prisoners' rights a more central focus of the Chicano Movement. Incarcerated for over a decade (1959–1972) for carrying a small amount of marijuana, raúlrsalinas wrote extensively while in prison, including essays, letters, prose, and journalism, the vast majority which is now held at Stanford University. raúlrsalinas' work extended beyond his prison writing, focusing also on his Xicanindio (indigenous identified Chicano) heritage and his politics as a Latino internationalist. According to Oxford University, raúlrsalinas "transformed elements of the American literary canon."

Abraham F. Arvizu, or Abe Arvizu Sr. (1928–1988), was a pioneering community activist and youth developer from Phoenix, Arizona, and is credited with being the "driving force" of the Southside Catholic Youth Center, the forerunner of the Barrio Youth Project. Barrio Youth Project and Chicanos Por La Causa organized the boycott against the Phoenix Union High School District from October 9 – November 2, 1970, which led to systematic wide changes to end the discrimination of Mexican-Americans within the local school system. Arvizu, a member of the parish council of the Historic Sacred Heart Church, advocated and voted in support of allowing young Chicano activists to use Santa Rita Hall for community engagement efforts, which led to the founding of Chicanos Por La Causa in 1969. For his efforts, Arvizu was subsequently elected to the Board of Directors of Chicanos Por La Causa, representing barrios east of Central Avenue, and many of the youth he developed went on to be political activists, elected officials, and contributing members to society.
He was married to Mariana Ochoa until his death. The couple had four children: Abraham J. Arvizu, Jr., Michael Arvizu, Cynthia "Cindi" Arvizu, and Linda Arvizu.

Raul Loya (born Raul Bejarano Loya; 30 June 1938 – 1 April 2015) was a Mexican-American workers' rights activist, known for his association with Cesar Chavez and the National Farm Workers Association.

Ernesto Galarza (August 15, 1905 – June 22, 1984) was a Mexican-American labor organizer, activist, professor, poet, writer, storyteller, and a key figure in the history of immigrant farmworker organization in California. He had a dream of giving better living conditions to working-class Latinos.

Carl Braden (June 24, 1914 – February 18, 1975) was a trade unionist, journalist, and activist who was known for his work in the civil rights movement.

Carlos Flores Truan Sr. (June 9, 1935 – April 10, 2012), was an American businessman from Corpus Christi, Texas, who served for thirty-four years as a Democrat in both houses of the Texas Legislature. He was a state representative from 1969 to 1977 and a senator from 1977 until his retirement in 2003.

Eloisa Garcia Tamez (born March 2, 1935) is an American civil rights leader, lecturer, professional nurse, professor and retired officer of the United States Army's Nursing Corps. She is a prominent opponent and litigant against the Texas-Mexico border wall. She self-identifies as being of Lipan Apache descent.

Virgilio P. Elizondo (August 28, 1935 – March 14, 2016) was a Mexican-American Catholic priest and community activist, who was also a leading scholar of liberation theology and Hispanic theology. He was widely regarded as "the father of U.S. Latino religious thought."Elizondo was the founder of the Pastoral Institute at the University of the Incarnate Word. He was also a co-founder of the Mexican-American Cultural Center, a think tank for scholars and religious leaders to develop pastoral ministry and theology from a Hispanic perspective. (It has since become the Mexican American Catholic College.) Elizondo was also well known for his book, Galilean Journey: The Mexican-American Promise, which examined the similarities between Jesus' Galilean background and the mestizo experience.