Author's note -- Introduction: The spirit of justice -- The colonial era (1492-1765). Anthony, Isabella, and William ; John Punch ; Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa -- The Revolutionary era (1765-1783). Mum Bett/Elizabeth Freeman ; Phillis Wheatley ; Prince Hall ; Jean Baptiste Point du Sable ; Benjamin Banneker -- The abolitionist movement (1780-1870). Pierre Toussaint Louverture ; David Walker ; Anna Murray Douglass ; Paul Cuffe -- The Civil War and Reconstruction (1861-1877). Robert Smalls ; The Emancipation Proclamation and Juneteenth ; Harriet Tubman ; Elizabeth Keckley -- The Jim Crow era (1877 to late 1960s). Elias Camp Morris ; William J. Seymour ; Anna Julia Cooper ; Charles Hamilton Houston -- The civil rights era (late 1940s-late 1960s). Ella Baker ; Fannie Lou Hamer ; Martin Luther King Jr. ; Coretta Scott King ; Anna Arnold Hedgeman ; Prathia Hall ; Unita Blackwell ; Dorothy Height -- The late twentieth century (early 1970s-1999). James Cone ; Shirley Chisholm ; Myrlie Evers-Williams ; Sister Thea Bowman ; Toni Morrison -- The early twenty-first century (2000-today). The creatives ; The activists ; The ministers -- Conclusion.