#ClarenceBJones, 93, was honored for his activism during the Civil Rights Movement. He’s a lawyer who provided legal counsel to Martin Luther King Jr. & helped write the opening paragraphs of the “I Have a Dream” speech that King delivered at the Lincoln Memorial at the 1963 March on Washington.
Medgar Wiley Evers received posthumous recognition for his civil rights leadership & work fighting segregation in Mississippi in the 1960s as the NAACP’s first field officer in the state. He was 37 when he was fatally shot in the driveway of his home in June 1963.
Michelle Yeoh made history last year by becoming the first Asian woman to win an Academy Award for best actress for her performance in “ Everything, Everywhere All at Once.”
Jim Thorpe, who died in 1953, was the first Native American to win an Olympic gold medal for the United States.
Judy Shepard co-founded the Matthew Shepard Foundation, named after her son, a gay 21-year-old University of Wyoming student who died in 1998 after he was beaten & tied to a fence.
Katie Ledecky, the most decorated female swimmer in history.
Teresa Romero, president of the United Farm Workers and the first Hispanic woman to lead a national union in the U.S. The union has endorsed Biden’s reelection bid and backed him in 2020.
Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit Catholic priest who founded & runs Homeboy Industries, a gang-intervention & rehabilitation program.
Phil Donahue, a journalist & former daytime TV talk-show host. (This is an odd one)
Fmr New York mayor & philanthropist Michael Bloomberg,
Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C.,
Elizabeth Dole, a fmr Senator, transportation secretary & labor secretary & president of the American Red Cross. She currently leads a foundation supporting military caregivers.
Fmr Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., who died in 2013,
Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic congresswoman from California, the first & only woman ever elected to the speaker’s post, putting her second in the line of succession to the presidency.
Unreal. For those of you who insist there are “moderates” in the Republican Fascist Party, and I’ve never agreed with that, looks like more and more are now supporting #GymJordan for #Speaker. Via Angry Staffer:
Jim Jordan is pretty much worst-case scenario, so naturally that’s who the GOP is coalescing around 1/…