The Reverend Abraham Johannes "A.J." Muste (1885–1967) (pronounced "MUSS-tee") was a Dutch-born American clergyman and political activist. Muste is best remembered for his work in the labor movement, pacifist movement, and the US civil rights movement.

A.J. Muste was born January 8, 1885 in the small port city of Zierikzee, located in the Southwestern province of Zeeland in the Netherlands. Muste's father, Martin Muste, was a coachman who drove for a family that was part of Zeeland's hereditary nobility. With his economic prospects limited in Holland, Martin Muste decided to follow four of his wife Adriana's brothers to emigration in America, making the cross-Atlantic trip as Third Class passengers in January 1891.

Muste's mother became ill aboard ship and remained hospitalized for a month at Ellis Island following the family's arrival. Upon her recovery, the family headed west for Grand Rapids, Michigan, where Adriana's four brothers worked at in a variety of small business pursuits.

The family attended services at the Grand Rapids Dutch Reformed Church, a Calvinist congregation in which religious services were conducted in the Dutch language and its very existence was testimony to the number of Dutch immigrants who made their way to the area. Dancing was prohibited by the church as a form of sinfulness, as was the singling of secular music and the viewing of performances in the dramatic theatre.

Anthony Joseph Foyt, Jr., or as he is universally known as in motorsports circles, A. J. Foyt (born January 16, 1935), is a retired American automobile racing driver. He raced in numerous genres of motorsports. His open wheel racing includes USAC Champ cars and midget cars. He raced stock cars in NASCAR and USAC. He won several major sports car racing events. He holds the all-time USAC career wins record with 159 victories, and the all-time American championship racing career wins record with 67.

He is the only driver to win the Indianapolis 500 (which he won four times), the Daytona 500, the 24 Hours of Daytona, and the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Foyt won the International Race of Champions all-star racing series in 1976 and 1977. Foyt's success has led to induction in numerous motorsports halls of fame.

Since his retirement from active racing, he has owned A. J. Foyt Enterprises, which has fielded teams in the CART, IRL, and NASCAR.

Foyt was born in Houston, Texas. He attended Pershing and Hamilton middle schools and Lamar and San Jacinto high schools, but he dropped out to become a mechanic.

James Connolly (Irish: Séamas Ó Conghaile, 5 June 1868 – 12 May 1916) was an Irish republican and socialist leader. He was born in the Cowgate area of Edinburgh, Scotland, to Irish immigrant parents and spoke with a Scottish accent throughout his life. He left school for working life at the age of 11, but became one of the leading Marxist theorists of his day. He also took a role in Scottish and American politics. He was executed by a British firing squad because of his leadership role in the Easter Rising of 1916.

Connolly was born in an Irish slum in Edinburgh in 1868. His parents had emigrated to Scotland from Monaghan and settled in the Cowgate, an Irish ghetto where thousands of Irish settled.

He was born in St Patrick's Roman Catholic parish, which was known as "Little Ireland". His father and grandfathers were labourers. He had an education up to the age of about ten in the local Catholic primary school. He then left and worked in labouring jobs. Because of the economic difficulties he was having, like his eldest brother John, he joined the British Army.

David T. Dellinger (August 22, 1915 – May 25, 2004), was an influential American radical, a pacifist and activist for nonviolent social change.

Dellinger achieved peak notoriety as one of the Chicago Seven, protesters whose disruption of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago led to charges of conspiracy and crossing state lines with the intention of inciting a riot. The ensuing court case was turned by Dellinger and his co-defendants into a nationally-publicized platform for putting the Vietnam War on trial. On February 18, 1970, they were acquitted of the conspiracy charge but five defendants (including Dellinger) were convicted of individually crossing state lines to incite a riot.

Judge Hoffman's handling of the trial, along with the FBI's bugging of the defence lawyers, resulted, with the help of the Center for Constitutional Rights, in the convictions being overturned by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals two years later, on 21 November 1972. Although the contempt citations were upheld, the appeal court refused to sentence anyone.

Avram Noam Chomsky (/ˈnoʊm ˈtʃɒmski/; born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher,cognitive scientist, historian, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor (Emeritus) in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and a major figure of analytic philosophy. His work has influenced fields such as computer science, mathematics, and psychology.

Ideologically identifying with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism, Chomsky is known for his critiques of U.S. foreign policy and contemporary capitalism, and he has been described as a prominent cultural figure. His media criticism has included Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), co-written with Edward S. Herman, an analysis articulating the propaganda model theory for examining the media.

According to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index in 1992, Chomsky was cited as a source more often than any other living scholar from 1980 to 1992, and was the eighth most cited source overall. Chomsky is the author of over 100 books. He is credited as the creator or co-creator of the Chomsky hierarchy, the universal grammar theory, and the Chomsky–Schützenberger theorem.