Fierce Legion of Friends: A History of Human Rights Campaigns and Campaigners

This is a history of human rights campaigns in the United States and elsewhere, starting with the Quakers and other 18th-century campaigners against slavery and covering the rise of the labor movement, lynchings, genocide, Sacco and Vanzetti, the Scottsboro “Boys,” the Rosenbergs, and the history of Amnesty International.  It is both informative and inspirational.

Linda Rabben is a human rights advocate and a visiting professor of social anthropology at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. She is the author of Brazil's Indians and the Onslaught of Civilization and coeditor Rome Has Spoken: A Guide to Forgotten Papal Statements and How they Have Changed through the Centuries.