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“They had to deal with my history, didn’t they,” Spike Moss said as people approached him with thanks and congratulations. Photo by Azhae’la Hanson, North News

When we talk about civil rights leaders, we often think of distant figures from history books. But some of the most important freedom fighters are still here, still organizing, still demanding justice in our own community. Spike Moss is one of them.

Moss stood with fellow civil rights leader Mahmoud El-Kati, left, after the unveiling. Photo by Azhae’la Hanson, North News 

In 1966, after a Black girl was beaten by police with batons, north Minneapolis erupted in its first rebellion. Out of that pain came The Way Opportunities Unlimited, one of the first community centers built by and for the Black community in Minneapolis. Moss became its youngest director, creating space where young people could gather, organize, and be free. He spent decades fighting to desegregate Metro Transit, the fire department, and the police force at a time when those institutions refused to hire Black workers. Moss describes himself not as an activist but as a freedom fighter. The distinction matters. Freedom, justice, equality in that order. When Attorney General Keith Ellison announced the Derek Chauvin verdict in 2021, he said his mind was on Spike Moss, the first person who ever taught him “that you can organize, work and actually fight for justice and actually win some accountability.”

Last year, Plymouth Avenue between Newton and Lyndale was renamed Spike Moss Way, making him the first living man to have a street named after him in Minneapolis. The location is significant. It’s where The Way once stood before the Fourth Precinct Police Station was built in its place. The irony is not lost on anyone, especially Moss.

Across Minneapolis right now, the economic impact of aggressive immigration enforcement is being felt in every neighborhood. Families are facing impossible choices between paying bills and buying food. Workers are staying home rather than risk going out, losing income they desperately need. Small businesses that anchor our communities are seeing their customer base shrink. The financial strain is real and it’s urgent.

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Yet in the face of this hardship, we’re witnessing the power of community in action. People are organizing to support each other in ways that would make the leaders we’ve honored this month proud. Our Rapid Response Fund exists to meet this moment, providing emergency assistance with food, housing costs, and utilities to families who need help right now. Every dollar goes directly to keeping our neighbors stable during this difficult time.

Moss’s decades of work offer a blueprint for this moment. Local organizing matters. Building community institutions matters. Standing up for each other matters, even when it’s uncomfortable, even when the challenges feel overwhelming.

Your donation to the Rapid Response Fund puts that principle into action. It ensures that a family can afford groceries this week. It means a parent doesn’t have to choose between rent and utilities. It means our neighbors know they’re not alone.

Throughout this month, we’ve shared stories of leaders who acted despite fear. Thurgood Marshall used the law as a weapon for justice. Angela Davis transformed imprisonment into a lifelong fight for freedom. John Lewis put his body on the line for what was right. Martin Luther King Jr. showed us that love can dismantle oppression. Stokely Carmichael taught us that true liberation means building our own power. And Spike Moss reminds us that the work continues right here, in our own city, every single day.

These leaders didn’t wait for permission to fight for what was right. They didn’t let fear stop them. They built movements, supported each other, and refused to accept injustice as inevitable. The work they started is not finished. It lives in every person who chooses courage over comfort, solidarity over silence, action over despair.

Stand with your community. Act despite fear. Build the world we deserve.

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Kwame Ture, formerly Stokely Carmichael, speaks at a press conference in Mississippi in 1966. Source: Wikimedia Commons

History celebrates those who fight for freedom, but rarely acknowledges those who dare to define what freedom should look like on their own terms. Stokely Carmichael was one of those visionaries who refused to accept anyone else’s definition of liberation.

At 19, Carmichael was the youngest Freedom Rider in 1961, spending 53 days in Mississippi’s notorious Parchman Penitentiary. He became a grassroots organizer in the Mississippi Delta and Alabama’s Black Belt, where he helped create the Lowndes County Freedom Organization in one of the poorest and most violently racist counties in the nation, eventually becoming the SNCC chairman in 1966. There, he popularized the phrase “Black Power” during the Meredith March Against Fear in Mississippi and, in doing so, electrified a generation that was tired of waiting for dignity. Black Power meant self-determination, political and economic control, and the right to define one’s own liberation. It meant building institutions that served Black communities rather than begging for integration into systems built on their exclusion.

His vision extended beyond American borders. After leaving SNCC, he became honorary prime minister of the Black Panther Party before moving to Guinea and changing his name to Kwame Ture in honor of pan-African leaders Kwame Nkrumah and Sékou Touré. He spent the rest of his life working for global Black liberation through the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party, connecting struggles across continents.

The financial toll of recent immigration enforcement is hitting Minneapolis families hard. Parents are missing paychecks because they’re afraid to leave home. Rent is going unpaid. Grocery budgets are stretched beyond breaking. Local businesses are struggling as customers stay away. The economic ripple effects touch everyone in our community.

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This is exactly when we must show up for each other. Throughout our neighborhoods, people are stepping forward to help however they can. At Pillsbury United Communities, we created the Rapid Response Fund to turn that solidarity into concrete support. The fund provides immediate relief for families facing eviction, hunger, or utility shutoffs. It’s our way of ensuring that economic hardship doesn’t have to mean falling through the cracks.

Carmichael’s message resonates now more than ever. True support means building power and creating systems of care that serve our communities’ real needs. It means taking collective action to ensure no one is left behind.

Your donation to the Rapid Response Fund builds that power. It ensures that a family can keep the lights on this month. It means a parent can feed their children. It means our neighbors have the resources they need to weather this storm together.

Stokely Carmichael showed us that freedom is something you build, not something you beg for. We honor his legacy by continuing that work with the same determination and vision.

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The civil rights leaders we honor this month understood that courage takes many forms. For Martin Luther King Jr., courage meant choosing love over hate, nonviolence over retaliation, and organizing over despair even when the threats against him were constant and real.

Portrait of Martin Luther King Jr., 1964. Source: Wikimedia Commons

When Rosa Parks was arrested on December 1, 1955, Montgomery’s Black community launched a bus boycott that would last 381 days. King, a 26-year-old minister who had been in Montgomery barely a year, was elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association to lead the campaign. His safety was threatened, yet he continued to lead the boycott until the Supreme Court ruled that segregation on public buses was unconstitutional.

King synthesized Christian love with Gandhian nonviolence into a powerful doctrine of civil resistance that demanded protesters love their oppressors even while dismantling oppression. This wasn’t passive acceptance. It was strategic, disciplined, and profoundly demanding work that required people to face violence without responding in kind.

King’s commitment to nonviolence never wavered, even as others in the movement grew impatient with its pace. He wrote that darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that, and hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that. He believed that violent revolution was impractical in a multiracial society and that nonviolence offered the only path to lasting transformation.

Right now, families across Minneapolis are facing real financial hardship. The ongoing impacts of aggressive immigration enforcement have created economic strain that ripples through entire communities. Parents are missing work out of fear. Small businesses are losing customers. Families are struggling to afford groceries, rent, and basic necessities. The stress is palpable, and the need is urgent.

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But our communities have risen to meet this moment. At Pillsbury United Communities, we’ve seen neighbors checking on neighbors, volunteers stepping up, and people giving what they can to support each other. Our Rapid Response Fund was created to provide immediate assistance to families facing these hardships, offering emergency food support, help with rent and utilities, and direct aid to those who need it most.

King’s legacy teaches us that love means more than sentiment. It means action. It means building networks of support that sustain each other through difficulty. It means refusing to let economic hardship break the bonds of community.

Your donation to the Rapid Response Fund puts love into action. It ensures that a family can put food on the table this week. It means a parent doesn’t have to choose between paying rent and buying groceries. It means our neighbors know they’re not alone.

King showed us that love can be a force powerful enough to transform a nation. We honor his legacy by continuing that work with the same courage and conviction he demonstrated every day of his life.

Give to the Rapid Response Fund Today