What is "big six"

n. (context ecology English) The six elements most used by life; carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur.

Big Six or Big 6 may refer to:

The Big Six refer to the chairmen, presidents, and leaders of six prominent civil rights organizations active during the height of the Civil Rights Movement who were instrumental in the organization of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963.

They are:

• Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968): the chairman of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was a Baptist minister, activist, and the most famous leader of the Civil Rights Movement. King won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and he posthumously won the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977, nine years after his assassination in 1968. For his promotion of nonviolence and racial equality, King is considered a peacemaker and martyr by many people around the world. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in the United States was established in his honor, and a memorial to him stands on the nation's National Mall.
• James Farmer (January 12, 1920 – July 9, 1999): In 1942 Farmer founded the Congress of Racial Equality or CORE, a pacifist organization dedicated to achieving racial harmony and equality through nonviolence, and stayed active in the Civil Rights Movement through the 1950s and 1960s. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998, shortly before his death in 1999.
• John Lewis (born February 21, 1940): Became a leader in the Civil Rights Movement as president of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and as a participant with other civil rights leaders such as Diane Nash, James Bevel, and Bernard Lafayette in the Nashville Student Movement (1959–62). John Lewis was one of the original 13 Freedom Riders. Lewis represented SNCC with a speech at the August 28, 1963 March on Washington. Lewis has represented the 5th District of Georgia in the United States House of Representatives since 1987, a district which includes almost all of Atlanta.
• A. Philip Randolph (April 15, 1889 – May 16, 1979) was a socialist in the labor movement and the Civil Rights Movement. In 1925, Randolph organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. This was the first serious effort to form a labor union for the employees of the Pullman Company, which was a major employer of African Americans.
• Roy Wilkins (August 30, 1901 – September 8, 1981) was a prominent civil rights activist in the United States from the 1930s to the 1970s. In 1955, Wilkins was named executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He had an excellent reputation as an articulate spokesperson for the Civil Rights Movement. He participated in the March on Washington (1963), the Selma to Montgomery marches (1965), and the March Against Fear (1966).
• Whitney Young (July 31, 1921 – March 11, 1971) spent most of his career working to end employment discrimination in the South and turning the National Urban League from a relatively passive civil rights organization into one that aggressively fought for justice.

In James Farmer's autobiography, Lay Bare the Heart, he identified the term "Big Six" as having originated with the founding of the Council for United Civil Rights Leadership. Farmer did not include A. Philip Randolph in his listing of the "Big Six", instead listing Dorothy Height, president of the National Council of Negro Women as the sixth member of the group. Farmer also noted that the press often referred to the group as the "Big Four", excluding Height and John Lewis. Farmer attributed their omission to sexism and age bias, respectively.

Black nationalist and human rights activist Malcolm X, who may have coined the term "The Big Six", said: "...the Negro civil rights leaders have now been permanently named the Big Six (because of their participation in the Big Fix?)".

Patrick Henry Bass, journalist and historian of the March on Washington, described the rise of these leaders to celebrity: "Increasingly, these six powerful men lived in two worlds: the political and the personal, one white, in which they were still strangers but becoming increasingly familiar with its insider/outsider rules; the other, black, where they were treated as extended members of the family."

The Big Six law firms, was a term informally used in Australia to refer to the commercial law firms which, collectively, were the largest firms operating in Australia in terms of revenue and lawyers employed, and perceived to be the most prestigious before four merged or formed association relationships with firms from other countries, primarily the United Kingdom, in 2012.

Before 2012, the following firms were generally seen as composing the Big Six (listed alphabetically):

• Allens Arthur Robinson (now Allens, which operates in association with Linklaters LLP)
• Blake Dawson (now part of Ashurst LLP)
• Clayton Utz
• Freehills (now part of Herbert Smith Freehills)
• Mallesons Stephen Jaques (now part of King & Wood Mallesons)
• Minter Ellison

In 2012, three of these firms merged with overseas firms, and one other began operating in association with an overseas firm. As a consequence, it has proposed that the "Big Six" as a term is no longer applicable to the Australian legal profession, displaced by the concept of 'global elite' law firms or 'international business law firms'.

The Big Six in men's international ice hockey are the six national teams that have been dominant in competitive play throughout the history of international hockey and especially since the 1950s. The group is composed of the North American countries of Canada and the United States, and four European countries: Czech Republic, Finland, Russia and Sweden. Before the end of the Cold War, the Soviet Union/ CIS and Czechoslovakia held the places of Russia and the Czech Republic. The four European members are sometimes referred to as the "European Big Four" or "Big Four", especially to distinguish them from the North American teams.

Out of the 204 IIHF World Championships medals awarded, only twenty have been won by teams outside the Big Six and only five of those have been won since 1953 (four by Slovakia, one by Switzerland). Of the 69 Olympic ice hockey medals awarded, only 6 have not been won by a Big Six team.