Heroes

Listed below are the names of the heroes featured in the Transcendients: Heroes at Borders exhibition. Click on their names to learn more about each hero.

Kim Abeles

Artist and professor

Manal J. Aboeleta

Public health advocate

The Accomplices—Mike Sonksen, Peter Woods, Chiwan Choi

Independent Publishing Collective

Bernice Akamine

Artist, community activist, and ancestral historian

Susan B. Anthony

Social reformer and women’s rights activist, especially regarding suffrage and the passing of the 19th Amendment

Betto Arcos

Broadcast journalist

Jacob Bender

Executive Director, Council on American-Islamic Relations (Philadelphia Chapter)

Lauren Bon

Artist and philanthropist

Father Greg Boyle

Jesuit priest and founder, Homeboy Industries

Jeff Chang

Author, journalist, and hip-hop historian

Cesar Chavez

Civil rights leader, Latino and farm labor activist, community organizer, champion of nonviolent social change, and cultural icon

Nalleli Cobo

Co-founder, South L.A. Youth Leadership Coalition

Leonard Cohen

Canadian singer/songwriter, poet, artist, and novelist whose work explored subjects from depression to sexuality, loss, religion, politics, death, and pacifism

Robbie Conal

Painter and prominent street artist

Patrisse Cullors

Co-founder, Black Lives Matter Global Network; founder/chair, Dignity and Power Now and Reform L.A. Jails

Kamau Daáood

Poet, musician, curator, and educator

Zackary Drucker

Multimedia artist and television producer

East Los Streetscapers

Muralists and public art makers

Rudy Espinoza

Executive Director, Inclusive Action for the City

Ron Finley

Artist, Gangsta Gardener, and community leader

Rabbi Susan Goldberg

Congregational leader, Nefesh (Los Angeles)

Gilda Haas

Co-founder, Strategic Actions for a Just Economy

Lisa Harper

Author; founder and president, Freedom Road

Aziza Hasan

Executive Director, NewGround: A Muslim-Jewish Partnership for Change

Lena Horne

Iconic singer, dancer, actress, and noted civil rights and anti-segregation activist who self-funded integrated USO tours and worked with Eleanor Roosevelt on anti-lynching laws

Satsuki Ina

Writer, filmmaker, and therapist

Helen Keller

Author and activist for women’s suffrage, labor rights, social justice, and peace; the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree

traci kato-kiriyama

Performer and principal writer of PULLproject Ensemble and Director/co-founder of Tuesday Night Project

Daniel Dae Kim

Actor, director, and producer

Martin Luther King Jr.

Nobel Peace Prize winning Baptist minister and visionary civil rights, social justice, voting rights and anti-war activist; proponent of nonviolence and civil disobedience

David Kipen

Literary critic and founder, Libros Schmibros Bookstore and Lending Library

Evan Kleiman

Radio host, restaurateur, chef, author

Yuri Kochiyama

Civil rights and peace activist, colleague of Malcolm X, advocate for marginalized and underservrd communities, political prisoners, nuclear disarmament, and reparations for incarcerated Japanese Americans

Fred Korematsu

Activist known for the landmark Japanese American civil rights lawsuit that bears his name, challenging in the Supreme Court the Executive Order that allowed for mass incarceration

Hirokazu Kosaka

Buddhist priest and master artist

DJ Kurs

Artistic Director, Deaf West Theatre

Queen Lili‘uokalani

First queen and last sovereign monarch of the Kingdom of Hawai‘i before 1893 overthrow, who spent her life petitioning to have the islands’ sovereignty restored

Andy Lipkis

Founder, TreePeople

Adonia E. Lugo, Ph.D.

Co-founder, People for Mobility Justice

Lewis MacAdams

Poet, journalist, and co-founder, Friends of the Los Angeles River (FoLAR)

John Malpede

Performance artist and founder, Los Angeles Poverty Development

Robert Mapplethorpe

Photographer best known for his intimate portraits, still lifes, and controversial sex-forward self-portraits, whose images of New York City gay culture fueled a national debate on arts funding

Ima Matul

Survivor Coordinator, Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking

Russell Means

Actor, author, performer, and activist who led the American Indian Movement (AIM) and has attracted national and international media and government attention to the struggles of indigenous peoples around the world

Harvey Milk

American politician who was the first openly gay elected official in California, and indeed the United States, later assassinated

Dale Minami

Attorney and senior counsel at Minami Tamaki

Nobuko Miyamoto

Performing artist and founder, Great Leap

Rick Nahmias

Writer, photographer, and founder, Food Forward

Viet Thanh Nguyen

Pulitzer Prize–winning writer

Ara Oshagan

Artist, author, curator, and community activist

Maya Paley

Co-founder, Change the Talk (National Council of Jewish Women)

Rosa Parks

Civil rights activist who sparked the Montgomery bus boycott, later honored by Congress as “the First Lady of civil rights” and “the mother of the freedom movement” in America

Jonathan Ryan

Executive Director, Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES)

Angelica Salas

Executive Director, Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA)

Hadi Salehi

Photographer and humanitarian

Rev. Alexia Salvatierra

Faith-based immigration advocacy

Nandita Sharma

Professor of Racism, Migration, and Transnationalism in the Department of Sociology at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa

Johng Ho Song

Executive Director, Koreatown Youth and Community Center

George Takei

Actor, author, and activist

Nainoa Thompson

Native Hawaiian navigator and President, Polynesian Voyaging Society

Haunani Trask

Artist and social activist, Hawaiian Studies

Lula & Erwin Washington

Co-founders, Lula Washington Contemporary Dance Foundation

Bill Watanabe

Founding Executive Director, Little Tokyo Service Center

Lisa Watson

CEO, Downtown Women’s Center

Carol Wells

Founder and Director, Center for the Study of Political Graphics

Kristi Yamaguchi

Olympic gold medalist, author, and literacy activist