Bhimrao Ambedkar was born in India in the late 19th century to a family from the “Untouchable” caste—the bottommost rung of the Indian caste system. In spite of the circumstances of his birth, Ambedkar achieved academic success and, in 1913, traveled to the United States to study economics at Columbia University. Ambedkar soon began working alongside civil rights activists like W.E.B. DuBois, finding many commonalities between the struggle of his people and the struggles of Black Americans. As the “patron saint of the low-born” and the “father” of the anti-caste movement in India, Ambedkar advocated for the Untouchables to become known as the Dalits—a word for “broken people” who’d been unfairly excluded from society for millennia. Ambedkar dedicated his life to raising awareness about caste systems around the world, as well as to dismantling them.