In the 1950s, Harlem mother Mae Mallory fought a school system that she saw as ‘just as Jim Crow’ as the one she had attended in the South. Introduction Whether it’s black-and-white photos of Arkansas’ Little Rock Nine or Norman Rockwell’s famous painting of New Orleans schoolgirl Ruby Bridges, images of school desegregation often make[…]
The civil rights that various groups have fought for within the United States. Introduction What is the difference between a civil right and a human right? Simply put, human rights are rights one acquires by being alive. Civil rights are rights that one obtains by being a legal member of a certain political state. There[…]
In the South, electoral politics remained a parade of electoral fraud, voter intimidation, and race-baiting. Just as reformers advocated for business regulations, anti-trust laws, environmental protections, women’s rights, and urban health campaigns, so too did many push for racial legislation in the American South. America’s tragic racial history was not erased by the Progressive Era.[…]
Jim Crow states passed statutes severely regulating social interactions between the races. Jim Crow was the name of the racial caste system which operated primarily, but not exclusively in southern and border states, between 1877 and the mid-1960s. Jim Crow was more than a series of rigid anti-black laws. It was a way of life.[…]
They ultimately achieved significant concessions for fair employment practices for African Americans in San Francisco. By Ammar Alqatari The Ad-Hoc Committee to End Discrimination played an instrumental role in the organization of the San Francisco civil rights movement during 1963-64. The group, formed mostly by young members of the Du Bois Clubs, organized and lead[…]
Women suffragists picketing in front of the White house. The first picket line – College day in the picket line line, 1917 / Wikimedia Commons Washington suffragists supported the national crusade until the 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. By Dr. Mildred Andrews / 02.26.2004 Social Historian Introduction ashington women won[…]
Public Domain Kochiyama was one of the most prominent Asian American activists of the 20th century. By Dr. Diane C. Fujino Chair of the Department of Asian American Studies University of California, Santa Barbara Introduction Prominent Japanese American human rights activist in Harlem (1960s-1999) and Oakland (1999-present). Yuri Kochiyama (1921–2014 ) worked with Malcolm X[…]
Lunch Counter Sit-in, Greensboro, North Carolina, 1960 / Library of Congress, Public Domain On February 1, 1960, a new tactic was added to the peaceful activists’ strategy – the sit-in. Edited by Matthew A. McIntosh / 10.18.2018 Public Historian Brewminate Editor-in-Chief By 1960, the Civil Rights Movement had gained strong momentum. The nonviolent measures employed[…]
In the American South, local television news coverage had immediate and significant effects on knowledge and perception in civil rights movement. By Dr. William G. Thomas III / 11.03.2004 John and Catherine Angle Professor in the Humanities University of Nebraska-Lincoln Overview It is often suggested that national television news coverage of the civil rights movement[…]
Emmeline Pankhurst addressing a crowd in Trafalgar Square in 1908 / Public Domain History is messy. And so are politics. By Dr. John Buescher Historian Introduction History is messy. And so are politics. A good historian resists the urge to reduce the many causes or meanings of an event to a single one. One of[…]
A 1950s photograph of Emmett Till and his mother Mamie Till Mobley, during a visit to Jackson, Miss. AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis Most Mississippi civil rights history leads back to the widespread outrage over the Till case in the summer of 1955. By Dr. Davis W. Houck / 07.13.2018 Professor of Communications Florida State University The U.S.[…]
By Dr. Katherine Mellon Charron Associate Professor of History North Carolina State University Introduction Segregation contradicts what most students have learned about American freedom and democracy. Textbooks locate segregation’s origins in Southern disenfranchisement laws of the 1890s and highlight the Supreme Court’s 1896 “separate but equal” ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson. The majority of African Americans still lived[…]
March on Washington, August 28, 1963 / United States Information Agency via Wikimedia Commons By Dr. Jenice L. View Associate Professor, Transformative Teaching George Mason University The modern Civil Rights Movement is often marked as beginning with the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision banning school segregation or the day in 1955 when Rosa Parks refused[…]
Martin Luther King Jr.‘s dream – which alternated between shattered and hopeful – can be traced back to Hughes’ poetry. AP Photo In order to avoid being labeled a communist sympathizer, King needed to publicly distance himself from the controversial poet. Privately, King found ways to channel Hughes’ prose. By Dr. Jason Miller / 03.30.2018 Professor[…]
Linda Brown Smith, right, and her two children in their Topeka, KS home 1974. AP While Linda Brown is being celebrated for her role in the historic Brown v. Board of Education case that desegregated US schools, a researcher says the story behind the case is more complex. By Dr. Charise Cheney / 03.30.2018 Associate Professor[…]
Daguerreotype of John Brown, by John Bowles, c.1856 / Boston Athenaeum via Wikimedia Commons By Dr. Christopher H. Hamner Professor of History George Mason University Brown and the Raid John Brown was active in the abolition movement for decades before the Civil War, and had earned a notorious reputation for his antislavery activities in Kansas during[…]
By Dr. Kurt Von Daacke Professor of History and Assistant Dean University of Virginia Between June 19 and August 6, 1822, the Charleston, SC, Court of Magistrates and Freeholders interrogated, tortured, and tried in closed sessions over 100 African Americans as co-conspirators in a planned slave rebellion. Almost all were slaves. The court sent 35[…]
Edited by Matthew A. McIntosh / 02.25.2018 Historian Brewminate Editor-in-Chief 1 – Civil Liberties and the Bill of Rights 1.1 – The Bill of Rights 1.1.1 – Overview The Bill of Rights of the United States of American: The United States Bill of Rights, which are the first 10 amendments to the US Constitution, and[…]
The 8th Quinquennial Council Meeting of the ICW in Vienna / Public Domain By Dr. Leila J. Rupp / 06.16.2011 Professor of Feminist Studies University of California Santa Barbara Introduction This article traces the formation of a first wave of transnational organizing among women from the late 19th century through the Second World War. The[…]
This group portrait monument to the pioneers of the woman suffrage movement, which won women the right to vote in 1920, was sculpted from an 8-ton block of marble in Carrara, Italy.The monument features portrait busts of three movement leaders: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Lucretia Mott. / Architect of the Capitol By[…]
“There needs to be a new conversation about racism, in specific, and the system of white male privilege, in general. While economic equality should be one aspect of this conversation, it should also include race, gender, and class.” (Photo: U.S. Embassy New Delhi/flickr/cc) “It’s painful to acknowledge that most of what Dr. King complained about in[…]
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. , chats with African-Americans during a door-to-door campaign in 1964. AP Photo/JAB By Dr. Paul Harvey / 01.11.2018 Professor of American History University of Colorado After this last tumultuous year of political rancor and racial animus, many people could well be asking what can sustain them over the next coming days: How do they[…]
Zoot suit wearing pachucos detained by the police, ca. 1942 This June marks the 74th anniversary of the Zoot Suit Riots, a series of week-long race riots that swept Los Angeles in the summer of 1943. The spirit lives on today. By Angela Fichter / 06.09.2017 Dressed in a white shirt and pegtop trousers, the[…]
“By even considering this discriminatory order he has broken his promise to be a president for all Americans,” says Human Rights Campaign. (Photo: @HRC) ‘Nothing could be more un-American’ than order protecting those with a religious objection to same-sex marriage, transgender people, and reproductive rights. By Deirdre Fulton / 05.03.2017 Rights groups protested outside the[…]
Photograph of Emerson in later life / Wikimedia Commons By Dr. Phyllis Cole and Dr. Wesley T. Mott / 09.15.2015 Cole: Professor of English, Women’s Studies and American Studies / Penn State Brandywine Mott: Professor of English / Worcester Polytechnic Institute A Legacy of Revolt, 1803-1821 By Dr. Phyllis Cole I find myself often[…]
Martin Luther King Jr. statue. Jonathan Ernst/Reuters By Dr. Timothy Joseph / 02.01.2016 Associate Professor of Classics College of the Holy Cross In “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” the soaring and chilling speech he delivered the day before his assassination, Martin Luther King Jr. ponders the thought of life in other places and times. Among[…]
By David L. Hudson, Jr. / 11.16.2016 You better not curse within hearing distance of a church or school in South Carolina. That’s because the state has a law that specifically bans such profanity. Krystal Johnson challenged the constitutionality of the law after she was arrested for breaking it. Johnson had called the police to[…]
Activists picketing at a demonstration for housing equality while uniformed American Nazi Party members counter-protest in the background with signs displaying anti-integration slogans and racist epithets, Los Angeles, 1963, Charles Brittin. The Getty Research Institute, 2015.M.11. © J. Paul Getty Trust The photographs of Charles Brittin reveal the struggle for civil rights in Los Angeles[…]
The feds say they can secretly read all your email. / Shutterstock By Dr. Clark D. Cunningham / 09.21.2016 W. Lee Burge Chair in Law and Ethics Director, National Center for Teaching Ethics & Professionalism Georgia State University Fear of hackers reading private emails in cloud-based systems like Microsoft Outlook, Gmail or Yahoo has recently[…]
By Ashley Farmer / 06.03.2016 On October 2, 1962 journalists at the Chicago Defender interviewed Mae Mallory, a prisoner at the Cuyahoga County Jail in Cleveland, Ohio. Throughout their discussion, Mallory offered her thoughts on the current state of the black liberation movement. She proclaimed that she was “just an insignificant black woman who believes[…]