This article appears in the August 2026 issue of The American Prospect magazine. If you’d like to receive our next issue in your mailbox, please subscribe here.
When we sat down to choose ten Americans who exemplify the American spirit of building a more perfect union by challenging power, our initial list came to over 100. We felt like we had to recognize some of those whose lives may not be as well known but whose accomplishments are prodigious. And we wanted to find people who knew these figures well—historians, policymakers, even friends and family members—to tell you about them. Here are another 40 Prospect Patriots. –David Dayen
Lemuel Haynes, clergyman
Born mixed-race in 1753, Haynes was released from his indenture, enlisted in the Continental Army, and in 1776 penned “Liberty Further Extended,” a critique of slaveholding in the American colonies in a time of war against British tyranny. As one war created his career, another ended it; opposition to the War of 1812 cost him his pulpit. –John Saillant, biographer
Margaret Catherine Moore Barry, scout
A Revolutionary War scout who risked her life to ride through South Carolina’s backcountry before dawn on January 16, 1781, to tell Patriot troops that the British were advancing. Armed with her intel, they won the Battle of Cowpens the next day, a victory that helped win independence. –Whitney Curry Wimbish
Mercy Otis Warren, pamphleteer
She was an outspoken poet, playwright, pamphleteer, and intellectual thinker of the American Revolution whose anti-British plays supported a break with the mother country. Her 1788 treatise under the pseudonym “A Columbian Patriot” argued against adoption of the U.S. Constitution until there was a Bill of Rights. –Nancy Rubin Stuart, historian
Herman Husband, radical
The backwoods prophet from western Pennsylvania conceived of Social Security, progressive taxation, and the abolition of slavery at a time when such things were nearly inconceivable. His inveterate resistance to government corruption and wealth concentration, culminating in the Whiskey Rebellion, represents an important radical tendency in the American revolutionary consciousness. –William Hogeland, historian
Sojourner Truth, abolitionist
Born into slavery in New York’s Hudson Valley, Sojourner Truth secured her freedom as a young woman. Deeply religious, she gained fame as a celebrated, fearless, well-traveled preacher, abolitionist, and women’s rights advocate who corresponded and met with the most distinguished leaders of her era, including Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. –Gabrielle Gurley
Wendell Phillips, abolitionist
In the 1830s, he abandoned his Boston law practice to become a full-time abolitionist, while also arguing for women’s suffrage and their right to leadership positions in the male-dominated anti-slavery movement. During Reconstruction, he argued for universal Black suffrage and ownership of prewar plantations. Unlike most antebellum abolitionists, he spent much of the postwar years championing unions and the eight-hour workday. America’s all-purpose 19th-century radical. –Harold Meyerson
William Still, conductor
Harriet Tubman is a legend and deserves her plaudits, but Still, who gave material support to Tubman, helped at least 800 slaves secure freedom, and was nicknamed the “Father of the Underground Railroad,” deserves them as well. Still provided the only first-person account of the entire network in 1872, a critical historical document. –David Dayen
Clara Barton, nurse
A self-taught Civil War nurse known as the “Angel of the Battlefield,” who tended to soldiers so close to the front lines that a bullet once pierced her sleeve. She ID’d the dead in the notorious Andersonville Prison, founded the Missing Soldiers Office and American Red Cross, and expanded who could practice medicine. –Whitney Curry Wimbish
W.E.B. Du Bois, public intellectual
The pre-eminent African American activist-intellectual of the 20th century. He tried ceaselessly to find ways to defend and advance the interests of African Americans as they faced oppression, experimenting with various shades of liberalism, socialism, Pan-Africanism, and finally, tragically, communism. No one has grappled with anti-Black racism with more verve, imagination, and eloquence. –Randall Kennedy, legal scholar
George Washington Carver, scientist
We had many scientists to choose from: Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Grace Hopper, Katherine Goble Johnson. But Carver’s accomplishments, despite being born into slavery and facing significant racial prejudice, were ahead of his time, and rooted in a desire to improve the quality of life for poor farmers of all races. –David Dayen
Sitting Bull, holy man
On the eve of America’s 100th birthday, Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and his 7th Cavalry attacked a Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho sun dance. They were swiftly annihilated in the “Greasy Grass” of the Little Bighorn River, led by the Hunkpapa Lakota holy man Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake, or “Sitting Bull.” Native nations still dance in the old ways to celebrate the victory. –Julian Brave NoiseCat, writer/activist
Maggie Lena Walker, banker
Amid Jim Crow segregation, she was the first Black woman to found and lead a bank, expanding opportunity for Black families who were excluded from the financial system. Her success demonstrated that economic justice requires not only political rights, but access to capital, ownership, and institutions that serve ordinary people. –Mehrsa Baradaran, author
Oliver H. Kelley, farmer
At a time when farmers were increasingly at the mercy of railroads, grain traders, and other monopolies, Kelley, one farmer, saw a need, stepped forward, and launched the Granger movement, giving rural Americans a collective voice and helping lay the foundation for many of the cooperative, antitrust, and democratic reforms that remain in place today. –Joe Maxwell, farmer and politician
Jane Addams, social reformer
In the face of inequality, discrimination, sweatshops, and extremes of poverty and wealth, Jane Addams forged ahead to win improvements in people’s lives and create a culture and community of caring. She co-founded Hull House, was a pioneering social worker and a leader in the women’s suffrage movement, and the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, due in part to her leadership of the movement opposing U.S. involvement in World War I. (Donald Trump would not like anything about this history-changing champion for the people!). She surely is an activist and changemaker to inspire us to build that more perfect union. –Heather Booth, organizer
Edward Filene, businessman
The Boston department store magnate helped craft the ideas and institutions of economic redistribution at the heart of New Deal liberalism. It was Filene’s great insight that in the modern economy of the 20th century, capitalists had not only to master the techniques of mass production but also pay attention to the means of mass consumption: namely, lower prices and higher wages. As he put it, “Production cannot be profitable unless it produces first of all consumers.” In his own department store, Filene pioneered the “bargain basement” in which he repeatedly lowered prices as a way to clear inventory and keep working-class customers coming. More important, though, was his support of the new industrial union movement as a way to boost wages through collective bargaining and thus increase mass purchasing power. With his support, and that of the Twentieth Century Fund, which he founded, the drafters of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 justified this key piece of New Deal legislation by explaining in its preamble that “the inequality of bargaining power” between employers and employees results in “recurrent business depressions by depressing wage rates and the purchasing power of wage earners in industry.” –Meg Jacobs, historian
Margaret Sanger, nurse
Has any medical discovery changed the world more, and in more ways, than the birth control pill? After decades of fighting for women’s reproductive and sexual freedom as founder and head of Planned Parenthood, Sanger arranged the research for contraception, found an heiress to fund it, organized its legalization and distribution, and promoted it ceaselessly. Her reputation has been clouded by her support for eugenics in the 1920s, when it was a popular progressive cause, but her role in shaping modern life is indelible: You are living in her world. –Katha Pollitt, author
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, feminist
In the world revolutionary year of 1848, this granddaughter of a Revolutionary hero was the leader in the historic Seneca Falls (New York) Women’s Rights Convention, which first brought the demand for women’s right to vote to public attention. She was also a pioneer in asserting women’s rights to sexual and reproductive independence, which she called self-sovereignty. –Ellen DuBois, historian
Eugene Debs, socialist icon
He brought workers together to stand up to the greed of the oligarchs of his time. He spent three years of his life in jail for his opposition to World War I. His humanity came out in an environment of hardened criminals, and they loved him. This was an extraordinary man. –Sen. Bernie Sanders
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, union leader
She was the USA’s original homegrown “rebel girl,” who threw down for working people for the first two-thirds of the 20th century and was a self-described “mortal enemy of capitalism.” A fiery orator who started making street speeches at age 16, she became an influential leader of the Wobblies (the Industrial Workers of the World / IWW) and traveled the nation inspiring workers to join such epochal struggles as the 1912 “Bread and Roses” Lawrence, Massachusetts, textile strike and the 1913 Paterson, New Jersey, silk strike. She spent a lifetime organizing, advocating for women’s and immigrants’ labor rights, fighting fascism and imperialism, and late in life, served more than two years in jail as a red-baited Communist. –Lane Windham, historian
Henry Demarest Lloyd, muckraker
It was a towering achievement of muckraking, taking on Standard Oil, the biggest company on the planet. But the woman whose profile you’re reading wasn’t the first. That was Lloyd in 1881 in The Atlantic, 23 years before Tarbell. Even giants stand on the shoulders of giants. –David Dayen
Harry Hopkins, New Dealer
He came from social work, not politics, and he never lost sight of who the New Deal was for. He ran programs like the WPA that put millions of unemployed Americans back to work. His work proved that when government has capacity and is held accountable, it can deliver for people. –Elizabeth Wilkins, Roosevelt Institute CEO
Francis Townsend, activist
In a 1933 letter to the Long Beach Press-Telegram, a crotchety physician wrote that every American should have old-age insurance. Before the internet, he got 20 million people to sign a petition and started thousands of Townsend clubs. When FDR signed Social Security into law in 1935, he thought it wasn’t good enough. Never underestimate crotchetiness. –David Dayen
Woody Guthrie, musician
The words of Woody Guthrie, perhaps our greatest radical writer, have become embedded in the American spirit, from “this land is your land” to “these pastures of plenty must always be free” to a leading cry of anti-ICE and anti-Trump protests in the past year: “all you fascists bound to lose.” –Greg Mitchell, filmmaker
Catherine Bauer, housing advocate
As the “Mother of Public Housing,” she saw housing not as a commodity but as a foundation for freedom, security, and family life. Her advocacy made the case that public investment is how you ensure people have the stability they need to build a life for themselves and their families. –Elizabeth Wilkins, Roosevelt Institute CEO
Mary McLeod Bethune, New Dealer
In a New Deal administration stained by its failure to braid economic empowerment with racial justice, Bethune was a relentless insider voice for Black Americans. She became the highest-ranking Black woman in the federal government, pushing Black youth into recovery programs and keeping racial inclusion on the national agenda when others preferred to ignore it. –Elizabeth Wilkins, Roosevelt Institute CEO
Leon Keyserling, economist
He deserves to be remembered for helping to craft both the Social Security Act and the National Labor Relations Act while on the staff of Sen. Robert Wagner in 1935. Keyserling subsequently served under President Harry Truman as the first chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, where he promoted government spending to achieve full employment and successfully argued for what’s still the largest percentage hike to the federal minimum wage. He was a lifelong friend of organized labor and wrote a torrent of books and pamphlets about what the government and the private economy should do to stimulate the creation of jobs and lower the unemployment rate. Keyserling closed out his career by devising the 1966 Freedom Budget for A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, and Martin Luther King—a full-employment alternative to LBJ’s good but insufficient War on Poverty. –Robert Reich, economist
Jesse Jones, public financier
Jones inventively mobilized state power to recapitalize half the nation’s banks, birth a national market for long-term mortgages through Fannie Mae, and finance the aviation and synthetic-rubber industries to power the war effort. He pointed the dynamism of private enterprise and competition toward the public good. –Chris Hughes, author, Facebook co-founder
Walter Reuther, union leader
He was a socialist, a union organizer, and a militant strike strategist in the 1930s when he helped build the United Automobile Workers. However, his greatest impact on American politics and economy came in the 1940s when Reuther, still a union vice president, sought to leverage UAW militancy on behalf of a radical, laborite Keynesianism that challenged managerial authority from the shop floor to the boardroom, thereby shifting wealth and power from capital to labor. That gambit proved but partially successful, but the effort enabled Reuther to win the presidency of the million-member UAW. More important, Reuther’s quarter-century leadership of a militant, strike-prone union—“the vanguard in America,” he called it—forced managers of America’s greatest industry, and all those who followed the patterns it set, to double the real wages of American industrial workers in little more than a generation. That was a singular accomplishment, never repeated in American history, before or since. –Nelson Lichtenstein, labor historian
H.L. Mitchell, union leader
A white sharecropper and democratic socialist, in 1934 Mitchell founded and led the biracial Southern Tenant Farmers Union. Despite violent intimidation, he not only advocated to expand New Deal agricultural programs that never reached the hundreds of thousands of sharecroppers and tenant farmers, both Black and white, but also staged actions to deter evictions, and led strikes for better contracts and campaigns to extend the franchise to Black Americans. –Harold Meyerson
Ella Baker, organizer
A civil rights activist who possessed a relentless commitment to the grassroots organizing that vanquished Jim Crow. She helped lace the South with NAACP chapters, tussled with the all-male leaders of MLK’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and promoted student power as the “Godmother of SNCC,” the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. –Gabrielle Gurley
James Baldwin, author
The pre-eminent Black novelist and essayist during the civil rights revolution of the ’50s and ’60s, Baldwin authored novels about Black and gay people at society’s margins, and penetrating essays, at once both personal and social, on America’s need for a truly egalitarian freedom. –Harold Meyerson
Fannie Lou Hamer, civil rights activist
Fannie Lou Hamer’s impact on Mississippi and our nation is the very definition of courage. She believed every American deserved the right to vote, regardless of race, ethnicity, or gender, and her courage inspired generations, including my own, to continue the fight for civil rights, equality, and our democracy. –Rep. Bennie Thompson
Fred Korematsu, civil rights hero
Fred Korematsu’s story and his Supreme Court case, Korematsu v. U.S., are more relevant now than they were in 1944. My father’s legacy is about upholding our civil liberties, the Constitution, and preserving our democracy. His legacy of speaking up for what is right continues to inspire. This is about all of us! –Dr. Karen Korematsu, daughter
Michael Harrington, democratic socialist
Michael Harrington was America’s pre-eminent democratic socialist writer, intellectual, and proselytizer from the 1960s through the 1980s, as well as DSA’s founder. Countering the postwar narrative that America had created an almost universal middle class, in 1962 he authored The Other America, documenting the widespread persistence of poverty; it inspired the War on Poverty. From the early 1970s through his death in 1989, he worked to unite progressive unions with activists from the movements that had arisen in the 1960s—feminist, environmentalist, and others—in coalitions that the rifts of the ’60s (to which, he regretted, he had contributed) had kept from forming then. A charismatic speaker, he persuaded a cadre of young people to commit their lives to democratic socialism, in a time when capitalism was still constrained by unions and by New Deal laws and regulations that were later to be shredded. His strategies (socialists should run openly in the Democratic Party and back fellow progressives, too), his analyses of the anti-democratic essences of both capitalism and communism, and his values suffuse much, though not all, of the country’s burgeoning left today. –Harold Meyerson
Tom Hayden, anti-war activist
Tom Hayden embodied the spirit of 1960s radical activism, beginning in 1962 when he co-founded Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and was principal author of its influential manifesto, The Port Huron Statement. From campus activism, he moved on to community organizing, and then to anti-war protest. At decade’s end, he was one of the “Chicago Seven,” on trial for his role in organizing demonstrations outside the 1968 Democratic convention. –Maurice Isserman, historian
Rachel Carson, environmentalist
The author of Silent Spring, which kickstarted the environmental movement. She was arguably the first person to suggest that progress—the American religion—wasn’t necessarily a one-sided bonus. And she was able to do it with extraordinary effectiveness precisely because she didn’t seem radical in any way. –Bill McKibben, climate activist
Marsha P. Johnson, gay rights icon
At Stonewall, she helped ignite a movement for LGBTQ+ liberation through courage and defiance. Like so many of our great American heroes, she was willing to put her life and freedom on the line for the justice and dignity of all people. –Mo Jenkins, Texas state director, Human Rights Campaign
Heather Booth, organizer
Drawing on her experience as an organizer for civil rights and women’s issues—including founding the Jane Collective, which provided abortions when they were still illegal—Booth built the premier training school for organizers, the Midwest Academy, in 1973. As a pragmatic radical, she has worked in Democratic presidential campaigns since the 1990s. –Robert Kuttner
Barbara Ehrenreich, modern muckraker
She made millions of American readers see the near-impossible struggle of working people. She defiantly combined the role of journalist and activist, co-chairing the Democratic Socialists of America 40 years before it broke through, and founding with me the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, which supports working-class journalists. –Alissa Quart, writer
Aaron Swartz, internet activist
Entering the inner sanctum of Silicon Valley, Aaron Swartz easily could have become a billionaire (alongside so many of his Y Combinator classmates). Instead, he developed a sharp critique of techno-utopianism and helped steward, and through his legacy helped to inspire, the anti-authoritarian and economic populist politics that have only come into prominence since his passing. –David Segal, friend and activist
This article appears in Aug 2026 issue.