Those We Lost — September 25

Honoring those we lost on September 25 — remembered for what they gave, and for what they left behind.

Herbert Lee

Born in 1912 — died September 25, 1961

Farmer and voting rights martyr.

A father of nine and founding member of his county NAACP, Lee drove SNCC organizer Bob Moses through Amite County, Mississippi, to register Black voters — and was shot dead in daylight by a state legislator who was cleared the same day. His name belongs beside the movement’s most famous martyrs.

Bessie Delany

Full name: Annie Elizabeth Delany

Born September 3, 1891 — died September 25, 1995

Pioneering dentist and centenarian author.

The second Black woman licensed to practice dentistry in New York, Delany treated Harlem for decades, then became a bestselling author at 101 with Having Our Say, written with her sister Sadie. She died at 104, having outlived Jim Crow and told the tale.

Wangari Maathai

Full name: Wangari Muta Maathai

Born April 1, 1940 — died September 25, 2011

Environmentalist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Maathai’s Green Belt Movement planted tens of millions of trees across Kenya while training women in self-determination, and in 2004 she became the first African woman awarded the Nobel Peace Prize — proof that environmental justice and human freedom grow from the same soil.

Assata Shakur

Birth name: JoAnne Deborah Byron

Born July 16, 1947 — died September 25, 2025

Black Panther, Black Liberation Army member, and exile.

Convicted in a 1973 New Jersey shootout in a trial she and supporters called unjust, Shakur escaped prison in 1979 and received asylum in Cuba, where she lived more than four decades on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list while movements chanted her words: "It is our duty to fight for our freedom." Godmother of Tupac and author of a widely taught memoir, she died in Havana as one of the most contested figures in Black political history — mourned by many, condemned by others, ignored by no one.