Advocacy & Social Organizations

The reform groups, civic machines, and movements-turned-institutions that pressed for — and sometimes against — change in American life.

Tammany Hall

The New York political machine that ran on patronage and graft, 1789–1960s

The ACLU

The organization that made the Bill of Rights its client, founded 1920

The American Red Cross

Clara Barton's humanitarian corps for war and disaster, founded 1881

The Anti-Saloon League

The single-issue lobby that drove America into Prohibition, 1893

The Black Panther Party

The armed revolutionary movement for Black liberation, 1966–1982

The Ku Klux Klan

The white-supremacist terror movement that rose, fell, and rose again

The NAACP

The civil rights organization that fought segregation in the courts, founded 1909

The National Organization for Women

The group that drove the fight for women's equality, founded 1966

The Sierra Club

John Muir's wilderness guardians and the birth of the conservation lobby, 1892

The Sons of Liberty

The secret agitators who lit the fuse of the American Revolution, 1765

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference

Martin Luther King's engine of the nonviolent civil rights movement, 1957

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

The young radicals who put their bodies on the line for civil rights, 1960