Character ideas! You do not have to choose from this list, but it would be great if we had some of these lesser-known people!  A lean into RIGHTS (human, environmental, labor, women's, civil, etc.) would be fun this year,  but this is optional.

Clara Lemlich (Ukrainian immigrant, leader of shirtwaist workers protest in NYC, early 1900s)

Antoinette Brown Blackwell (scientist, suffragist, minister, refuted Darwin's theory that women were inferior, latter 1800s)

Mileva Maric (physicist, mathematician, was she the genious behind Albert Einstein's theories? early 1900s)

Sir David Attenborough (naturalist, animal rights and earth activist, 100 years old this year!)

Bessie Coleman (first African/Native American female pilot, early 1900s)

Woody Guthrie (Oklahoma-born migrant whose Dust Bowl Ballads gave voice to economic injustices, 1930s)

Julia Butterfly Hill (American environmental activist who lived in a 200-foot-tall, 1,000-year-old California redwood tree for 738 days, 1990s--yes, she is still alive)

Aldo Leopold (American writer, philosopher, naturalist, scientist, ecologist, forester, professor, conservationist, and environmentalist, early 1900s)

Nancy Wake (WW2 spy)

Matilda Joslyn Gage  (activist, suffragist, abolitionist, 1800s--for whom the "Matilda Effect" is named)

Joan Trumpauer (American civil rights activist, Freedom Rider who was arrested in Jackson, MS, 1960s--still alive)

Sitting Bull (unifying leader of the Lakota Sioux who resisted U.S. encroachment on Native lands)

John Muir  (Scottish immigrant, "Father of the National Parks," 1800s)

Sophie Scholl  (anti-Nazi political activist, active in the White Rose non-violent resistance, 1940s) 

Dorothea Lange (photographer who brought attention to the destitiution of the "Okie" refugees during the Dust Bowl)

Chuck Yeager ( American decorated WWII fighter ace famous as the first person to break the sound barrier)

Jean Pierre Moulin (French civil servant and French Resistance leader, WW2)

Francis Perkins  (American workers-rights advocate, United States secretary of labor from 1933 to 1945, First Female Cabinet Member)

Mabel Little (survivor of the Tulsa Race Massacre, entrepreneur, activist, 1920s)

Hugh Hammond Bennett (first head of the Soil Erosion Service, Soil Conservation Act of 1935)

Impactful American History events that would be nice to bring forward:

Tulsa Race Massacre

Woman's Suffrage

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

The role of Native American code talkers in World War I and World War II

Tuskegee Airmen in World War II

The Sultana Explosion, deadliest maritime disaster in United States history, 1865

Brown vs. Board of Education and the Little Rock Nine, 1957

The Harlem Renaissance and the Great Migration

The Children's Blizzard, severe winter storm that struck the U.S. Great Plains on January 12, 1888

The March of the Mill Children, protest organized by labor activist "Mother" Jones to spotlight the exploitation of young workers in American textile mills, 1903

The Ludlow Massacre, a brutal attack by the Colorado National Guard on a tent colony of striking coal miners and their families on April 20, 1914

Trail of Tears

Chicago Teamsters' Strike, garment cutters protesting Montgomery Ward & Company, 1905 

The Molly Maguires, a group of mostly Irish miners, strike and plan attacks against the operators, 1874

Lattimer Massacre, striking coal miners killed by police, 1897

“Roosevelt’s Tree Army" Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933-1942

The Dust Bowl, 1930s