"Do they know about Martin Luther King?" Robert Kennedy asked as he stepped before the crowd.

FDR was lukewarm on Labor until Frances Perkins masterminded Social Security, minimum wage, workmen’s comp. . .  You’re welcome!

When Jim Crow whitened American newspapers, the Chicago Defender spread news about “the Race.”

From behind bars, King wrote an amazing letter with all the power of his dream.

When voting rights hinged on Selma, LBJ stunned the nation with a single phrase.

Gertrude Ederle not only swam the English Channel. She swam it faster than anyone — man or woman. (As seen in “Young Woman and the Sea.”)

Humpbacks had been singing since forever but no one heard until Roger Payne — and Judy Collins — made the world listen.

Legends of the Old West were hard, tough men. But then there was Annie Oakley.

JULY 4, 1910

When Jack Johnson fought Jim Jeffries on the Fourth, white supremacy took a stunning blow.

When the “bad break” ended his career — and soon his life — he stepped up to the plate and showed true class. (As seen in “The Pride of the Yankees.”)

GALLUP, NEW MEXICO — Face-to-face with honor and a Navajo tradition of silence.

Track and field, golf, baseball, basketball. . . Was there anything Babe Didrikson didn’t play? Yes, she said. Dolls.

In 1837, when mob violence raged, a young lawyer rose to defend the rule of law. He spoke not to his time but for all time.

When she proposed cooperation as the source of evolution, her research was called “crap.” But science soon proved Lynn Margulis’ radical theory.

During WW I, when famine loomed, Herbert Hoover masterminded a global relief effort that saved millions.

Broadway’s biggest hit celebrates the Founding Father, but without Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, there would have been no “Hamilton.”