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A. Philip Randolph was a prominent 20th century African-American civil rights leader and the founder of both the March on Washington Movement and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, a landmark for labor and particularly for African-American labor organizing.

Bob Dylan was born on May 24, 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota. Bob Dylan is a towering figure of late 20th century pop music, known for such songs as "All Along The Watchtower", "Like a Rolling Stone," "Tangled Up in Blue," "The Times They Are A-Changin'" and "Lay Lady Lay." Dylan has been recording and performing since 1962, mixing folk, country, blues and rock; he sometimes startles his fans but almost always pleases the critics. During the '80s he toured extensively, and in the '90s his songs found a new audience and more acclaim from the music industry. In 1991 he was given a Lifetime Achievement Grammy; his 1997 album *Time Out of Mind* won three Grammys; and in 2001 Dylan won an Oscar for "Things Have Changed," from the movie *Wonder Boys* (2000). In 2006 he released his first album in five years, *Modern Times*.

Born in Asheville, North Carolina on March 9, 1922, McKissick did his undergraduate work at Morehouse and North Caroline colleges, and later graduated form the University of North Caroline Law School. During World War II McKissick served in the European Theater as a sergeant. After the war, he began legal practice in Durham, North Caroline, where he once represented his own daughter in her successful bid to gain admission to a previously all-white public school. Despite the victory, McKissick later decided that "integration" itself only magnified the perils faced by many black children, McKissick bitterly recalled that his children had been taunted and harassed: "Patches cut out of their hair, pages torn out of books, water thrown on them in the dead of winter, ink down the front of their dresses"-a demoralizing array of constant and relentless pressures designed to crack their composure and destroy their will to learn. The adversity no doubt deepened McKissick's nascent radicalism and militant zeal. As a lawyer, McKissick's most publicized efforts involved a segregated black local in the Tobacco Workers International, an AFL-CIO member. McKissick pressed to have black workers admitted to the skilled scale without loss of their seniority rating. McKissick also successfully defended "sit-in" protestors in the South. It was at this time the rupture widened between the older, established civil rights groups, dependent for their programming on a coalition of educated blacks and affluent whites liberals, and the younger, more rancorous black militants who turned their backs on most institutional whites support. The militants argued that the civil rights groups did not appreciate the urgency of many problems affecting black urban majorities, particularly in the job area where technology often reduced people to ciphers. When Floyd McKissick replaced James Farmer as head of CORE on January 3, 1966, the organization completed a 180-degree turn that saw it change from an interracial integrationist civil rights agency pledged to uphold nonviolence into a militant and uncompromising advocate of the ideology of black power. McKissick and Roy Innis, who at that time was the head of the Harlem chapter of CORE, were close allies, and when McKissick left CORE in 1968, Innis took over. After leaving CORE, McKissick launched a plan to build a new community, Soul City, on Warren County North Carolina farmland. McKissick saw Soul City as an integrated community with sufficient industry to support a population of 55,000. For his venture, he received a $14 million bond issue guarantee from the Department of Housing and Urban Development and a loan of $500,000 form the First Pennsylvania Bank. Soul City, however, ran into difficulties and despite the best offers of McKissick, the project never developed as he had anticipated. Finally, in June 1980, the Soul City Corporation and the federal government reached an agreement that would allow the government to assume control the following January. Under the agreement, the company retained 88 acres of the project, including the site of a mobile home park and a 60,000 square foot building that had served as the project's headquarters. The Department of Housing & Urban Development paid off $10 million in loans and agreed to pay an additional $175,000 of the project's debts. In exchange, McKissick agreed to drop a lawsuit brought to block HUD from shutting down the project.

Marian Anderson (February 27, 1897 - April 8, 1993) was an American contralto and one of the most celebrated singers of the twentieth century. An African-American, Anderson became an important figure in the struggle for black artists to overcome racial prejudice in the United States during the mid twentieth century. In 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused permission for Anderson to sing to an integrated audience in Constitution Hall. Their race-driven refusal placed Anderson into the spotlight of the international community on a level usually only found by high profile celebrities and politicians. With the aid of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Anderson performed a critically acclaimed open-air concert on Easter Sunday, 1939 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. to a crowd of more than 75,000 people and a radio audience in the millions. She continued to break barriers for black artists in the United States, notably becoming the first black person, American or otherwise, to perform at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, occurring on January 7, 1955. Her performance as Ulrica in Giuseppe Verdi's Un ballo in maschera at the Met was the only time she sang an opera role on stage. Anderson later became an important symbol of grace and beauty during the civil rights movement in the 1960s, notably singing at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. She also worked for several years as a delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Committee and as a "goodwill ambassadress" for the United States Department of State.

Jacob Needleman is a professor of philosophy at San Francisco State University and the author of many books, including The Essential Marcus Aurelius, Why Can't We Be Good?, The American Soul, The Wisdom of Love, Time and the Soul, The Heart of Philosophy, Lost Christianity, and Money and the Meaning of Life. In addition to his teaching and writing, he serves as a consultant in the fields of psychology, education, medical ethics, philanthropy, and business, and has been featured on Bill Moyers's acclaimed PBS series A World of Ideas.

Walter Reuther was president of the United Automobile Workers (UAW) from 1946 until his death in 1970. Under his leadership, the UAW grew to more than 1.5 million members, becoming one of the largest unions in the United States. Reuther was widely admired as the model of a reform-minded, liberal, responsible trade unionist the leading labor intellectual of his age, a champion of industrial democracy and civil rights who used the collective bargaining process and labor's political influence to advance the cause of social justice for all Americans. Walter Reuther was born in Wheeling, W.V., on Sept. 1, 1907, the son of Valentine Reuther, a German socialist, and his wife, Anna Stocker. Reuther received an early education in socialism and union politics from his father. A visit to the prison where Socialist Party leader Eugene V. Debs was being held for his resistance to World War I made an indelible impression on the young Reuther, who became a committed Debsian socialist. Bored with his studies, Reuther dropped out of Wheeling High School at 16 and eventually became an apprentice tool-and-die maker. Fired for trying to organize a union, Reuther moved to Detroit in 1927, drawn by the Ford Motor Company's promise of high wages and a shorter workweek. He quickly established himself as one of the most skilled and respected mechanics at Ford's River Rouge plant. Working nights, Reuther earned his high school diploma at the age of 22 and took classes at Detroit City College (now Wayne State University), where he was joined by his younger brothers Victor and Roy. In 1939, Reuther became director of the UAW's General Motors department, and in 1942 he was elected the union's first vice president. During World War II, Reuther also served with the Office of Production Management, the War Manpower Commission and the War Production Board. As director of the UAW's GM division, Reuther won the respect of industry executives as well as the loyalty of the rank and file. When a wildcat strike movement swept GM's shops in 1944-1945, Reuther skillfully handled the crisis, championing the cause of the workers without running afoul of the government or the company. Then, in 1946, after the war's end, Reuther led a 116-day strike against GM, calling for a 30 percent wage increase without an increase in the retail price of cars, and he challenged GM to "open its books" to prove the demand impossible. GM refused both demands but did offer an 18 percent wage increase, which Reuther accepted. In 1968, frustrated at what he perceived to be an unwillingness or an inability to seize opportunities for action, Reuther pulled the UAW out of the AFL-CIO. He formed a short-lived Alliance for Labor Action with the Teamsters, which had been expelled from the AFL-CIO for corruption in the 1950s. Before the new group could launch any initiatives, however, Reuther; his wife, May; and two others were killed in a private plane crash. Reuther left a legacy of reform-minded unionism, civil rights activism and social justice idealism upon which the labor movement continues to draw.

Loretta Napoleoni is the best selling author of Terror Incorporated and Insurgent Iraq. She is an expert on financing of terrorism and advises several governments on counter-terrorism. She is senior partner of G Risk, a London based risk agency. As Chairman of the countering terrorism financing group for the Club de Madrid, Napoleoni brought heads of state from around the world together to create a new strategy for combating the financing of terror networks. Born and raised in Rome, in the mid 1970s Loretta Napoleoni became an active member of the feminist movement and a political activist. She was a Fulbright scholar at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington DC and a Rotary Scholar at the London School of Economics. As an economist she worked for several banks and international organizations in Europe and the US. In the early 1980s she worked at the National Bank of Hungary on the convertibility of the florin that became the blue print for the convertibility of the ruble a decade later. Ms Napoleoni is also a journalist and has worked as a foreign correspondent for several Italian financial papers. Her work appears regularly in many journals and publications, including several European newspapers. She lectures regularly on the financing of terrorism. She has written novels, guide books in Italian and translated and edited books on terrorism; her most recent novel, Dossier Baghdad, is a financial thriller set during the Gulf War. She was among the few people to interview the Red Brigades in Italy after three decades of silence. Loretta Napoleoni lives in London and Whitefish, Montana, with her husband and their children.