Individual | Inducted 2024
W. Robert Schultz III is campaign organizer for the Active Transportation Alliance, whose mission is to advocate for walking, bicycling, and public transit to create healthy, sustainable, and equitable communities. He has been a leader in various activist efforts in Illinois, ranging from marriage equality to the successful campaign to repeal the death penalty.
Born in Tallahassee, Florida, Schultz holds a B.S. in political science from Alma College in Alma, Michigan, and received a law degree from one of the country’s historically black law schools, North Carolina Central University. He moved to Chicago in 1990 to continue the human rights advocacy he had started in Michigan, Minnesota, and North Carolina. He championed human rights and connected the LBGT community to broader issues while being engaged in concerns such as racial justice, immigrant rights, disability rights, criminal justice, human services, and transportation. He was a leader in the People of Color campaign for equity funding practices by AIDS funders, and for five years he led the community advisory board that provided input to the design and operations of the Ruth M. Rothstein CORE Center for the treatment of HIV.
Schultz was a founding editor of BLACKlines magazine and contributed to other Windy City Media publications including En La Vida over the course of a decade. Schultz, a percussionist, joined with four other LGBT musicians to start the Lakeside Pride Music Organization in 1997. He was in the Lakeside Pride drumline for 22 consecutive years until the COVID-19 pandemic intruded. He also marched with the first LBGT contingents in the Bud Billiken Parade, the Mexican Independence Parade, the Disability Pride Parade, and the African Liberation Day Parade.
His other affiliations and past employers include Access Living of Metropolitan Chicago, Amnesty International USA, the Chicago chapter of the National Lawyers’ Guild, Northside Action for Justice, the Illinois Institute for Public Health, and the Illinois Assistive Technology Project. Schultz also served on the Chicago Black Lesbians and Gays steering committee for a decade, and has served on Howard Brown Health’s board of directors since 2014.