Today, we're recognizing Rev. Leon H. Sullivan!

Famed civil rights leader Leon H. Sullivan was born in Charleston on October 16, 1922. He was raised in a small house in a dirt alley in one of Charleston's poorest sections. At the age of twelve, he tried to purchase a (cont.)

Coca-Cola in a drugstore on Capitol Street. The proprietor refused to sell him the drink, saying, "Stand on your feet, boy. You can't sit here." This incident inspired Sullivan's lifetime pursuit of fighting racial prejudice. Sullivan took his first active role in the (cont.)

civil rights movement by helping to organize a march on Washington, D.C. in the early 1940s. He also began organizing a boycott in Philadelphia. Sullivan believed jobs were key to improving Black lives and asked that the city's largest companies begin interviewing young (cont.)

Black people. When most didn't, Sullivan organized a boycott of various businesses which produced thousands of jobs for Black Philadelphians in a period of four years. Sullivan's work was recognized nationally and he was asked by Dr. Martin Luther King to (cont.)

organize boycotts in Atlanta in the early 1960s. Sullivan also worked to end the system of apartheid in South Africa in the 1970s. (end.)