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https://www.loc.gov/resource/mesn.111/?sp=8&st=image&r=-0.066,0.462,1.338,1.113,0

I read a few pages of the North Carolina excerpt. It's impressive to see firsthand writing, knowing that knowledge was illegal for black people. I'm glad that their stories are still being shared despite an attempt for oppression.

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Image 8 of Federal Writers’ Project: Slave Narrative Project, Vol. 11, North Carolina, Part 1, Adams-Hunter

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Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.

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The Rosa Parks Papers reveal her as more than a single historic moment. They show her as a daughter, wife, sister, and lifelong activist whose influence stretched far beyond the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Seeing her personal letters and decades of civil rights work highlights the persistence and quiet strength behind her public courage. The transcriptions make her legacy accessible to everyone, reminding us that ordinary people’s choices can create extraordinary change.

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The papers of Rosa Parks (1913-2005) span the years 1866-2006, with the bulk of the material dating from 1955 to 2000. The collection, which contains approximately 7,500 items in the Manuscript Division, as well as 2,500 photographs in the Prints and Photographs Division, documents many aspects of Parks's private life and public activism on behalf of civil rights for African Americans. The collection is a gift made to the Library in 2016 through the generosity of the Howard G. Buffett Foundation. The Library received the materials in late 2014, formally opened them to researchers in the Library's reading rooms in February 2015, and now has digitized them for optimal access by the public.

Family papers include correspondence with her husband Raymond A. Parks; her mother, Leona Edwards McCauley; and her brother, Sylvester McCauley. Correspondence with her husband and mother contains the largest number of letters written by Parks in the collection. Letters by Sylvester McCauley largely concern his efforts to convince his sister to move to Detroit. Events surrounding Parks's arrest in 1955 for disorderly conduct after she refused to give her seat to a white passenger, as well as the subsequent Montgomery Bus Boycott, are described in many of her writings, notes, and correspondence from 1955 to 1956. Other subjects covered in the collection include Parks's work in Congressman John Conyers's Detroit office; her participation in major civil rights events such as the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom in 1957, March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, Mississippi Freedom Project in 1964, and the Poor People's Campaign in 1968; and Parks's Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal along with material concerning other honors received by Parks.

The collection also documents Parks's affiliation with organizations and institutions including the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development, an organization she founded with Elaine Eason Steele to promote youth development and civil rights education; Hampton Institute, Highlander Folk School, Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; Southern Christian Leadership Conference; and Saint Matthew African Methodist Episcopal Church, Detroit, Michigan.

The vast majority of items in the Parks Collection have been digitized in their entirety and may be viewed in this online collection. Other material is available to researchers through the Manuscript and Prints and Photographs reading rooms. A small percentage (approximately 6 percent) of the manuscript items, consisting largely of newspapers, magazines, and other publications still under copyright along with some materials for which rights clearance is still pending, may be viewed onsite only at this time. Among the visual materials, all items were digitized except the children's greeting cards for which a representative sample is included in this online collection.

Description of Series

The manuscript collection is arranged in eleven series:

Includes correspondence, certificates, notes, financial records, employment records, insurance documents, medical records, photographs, news clippings, and other material pertaining to the family of Rosa Parks. Letters to and from Parks arranged alphabetically by name of immediate family member. Papers of Parks's husband, mother, brother, and father arranged alphabetically by name of family member and alphabetically thereunder by topic or type of material. Letters from extended family grouped together in a chronological arrangement.

Includes letters Parks received from prominent individuals; a chronological file of largely incoming correspondence from friends, acquaintances, organizations, event planners, and the general public; greeting cards; and the letters and drawings of children. Arranged alphabetically and chronologically.

Includes correspondence, memoranda, invitations, notes, writings, interview transcripts, programs, flyers, name tags, newsletters, lists, certificates, song sheets, petitions, photographs, and other material pertaining to Parks's affiliation with organizations and institutions, her participation in major civil rights events, and various efforts to honor her. Arranged alphabetically by name of organization, institution, or event, by topic, or by type of material.

Contains book galleys, drafts of writings, notes, notebooks, interviews, prayers, spiritual reflections, and statements by Parks. Arranged alphabetically by type of material.

Includes programs, flyers, tickets, and other printed matter pertaining to Parks's speaking engagements, the honors she received, and the events she attended. Arranged in two parts: events featuring or honoring Parks and a general file of events that she most likely attended even though her name does not appear in programs. Each part is arranged chronologically within.

Resolutions and Other Honors, 1967-2006

Contains resolutions, tributes, certificates, honorary degrees, and poetry honoring Parks. Arranged alphabetically in categories and within each category by name of organization, institution, person, or state. These materials are included as part of the oversize series in this online edition.

Includes financial, employment, insurance, estate, and medical records, appointment calendars, address books, biographical material, membership and business cards, telephone messages, a recipe, a questionnaire, and other material documenting Parks's daily life and material circumstances. Arranged alphabetically by type of material or topic.

Contains magazines, newspapers, pamphlets, brochures, commemorative stamps, calendars, and various printed ephemera either pertaining to or collected by Parks. Arranged alphabetically by type of material or topic. Partially digitized.

Books owned by Parks. Some of the books are inscribed with the names of family. Others contain inscriptions to Parks by the author or the person giving her the book. Arranged alphabetically by name of author or title. Partially digitized.

The Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Arranged alphabetically by name of medal.

Oversize material consisting of resolutions, tributes, certificates, honorary degrees, correspondence, writings, political ephemera, labor and campaign buttons, a calendar, a family Bible, and newspapers. Arranged and described according to series, containers, and folders from which the items were removed. Partially digitized.

NOTE: Also available with this online collection are the Visual Materials from the Rosa Parks Papers.

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About this Collection | Rosa Parks Papers | Digital Collections | Library of Congress

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The papers of Rosa Parks (1913-2005) span the years 1866-2006, with the bulk of the material dating from 1955 to 2000. The collection, which contains approximately 7,500 items in the Manuscript Division, as well as 2,500 photographs in the Prints and Photographs Division, documents many aspects of Parks's private life and public activism on behalf of civil rights for African Americans.

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I listened to the story of Maceo Snipes, who was a World War II US Army veteran who, in 1946, tried to exercise his right to vote and was lynched by a white mob. This story resinated because when young Dr. King found this story, not even knowing who this man was, he took action and wrote a letter to the Atlants Journal Constitution, which was very powerful to be because of the fact that his family was forced to be silent about the situation.

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In 1945, World War II US Army veteran Maceo Snipes, returned home to Taylor County, Georgia. He voted in the county's primary in July of 1946, and the next day, he was murdered by a white mob.

The news of Snipes' lynching - and the killing of four other African Americans - reached a teenage Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., then studying at Morehouse College. These murders inspired King to write a letter to the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

A teenage Dr. King's letter to the editor of the Atlanta Journal Constitution. MLK was a Morehouse College student inspired to speak out following Maceo Snipes' lynching. Courtesy of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Raynita Snipes Johnson, Maceo Snipes' great niece, only recently learned of her uncle's story when she campaigned for Black voting rights in the 2016 presidential election.

Raynita Snipes Johnson at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The church was a destination for Martin Luther King, Jr. following a KKK bombing that killed four Black children in 1963. Photo courtesy of Raynita Snipes Johnson.

She sat down with her friend, Gene Robinson, to talk about her uncle's contribution to the Civil Rights Movement.

Gene Robinson and Raynita Snipes Johnson at their StoryCorps Virtual recording on August 29, 2020.

Find out more about the effort to honor Maceo Snipes' life at The Maceo Snipes 1946 Project.

Top Photo: United States Army veteran Maceo Snipes. He served in World War II, and was murdered shortly after returning home from service. Photo courtesy of Raynita Snipes Johnson.
This story was recorded in collaboration with the PBS series FRONTLINE as part of Un(re)solved- a major initiative documenting the federal effort to investigate more than 150 cold case murders dating back to the civil rights era. More such stories can be explored in an interactive documentary at Un(re)solved.
Originally aired January 14th, 2022 on NPR's Morning Edition.

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"The Black Vote Matters:" How An Army Veteran Inspired A Teenage Martin Luther King, Jr.

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In 1945, World War II US Army veteran Maceo Snipes, returned home to Taylor County, Georgia. He voted in the county's primary in July of 1946, and the next day, he was murdered by a white mob.

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I was actually made aware via social media that Florida is rewritting it's history, especially in regards to slavery. Please see the link attached.

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July 20 (Reuters) - Florida's board of education has approved new guidelines for teachers on how Black American history should be taught despite sharp criticism from some educators and civil rights groups.

Among the new guidelines, opens new tab for educators are "benchmark clarifications," including one for middle school students that states "instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit."

The board of education approved the new teaching guidelines for kindergarten through high school on Wednesday. Florida's Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. said during the board meeting in Orlando that the guidelines go into the "tougher subjects" of slavery and racist violence, as appropriate by age.

"Nothing was removed, including what we continue to say was the good, the bad and the ugly," Diaz said at the board meeting.

William Allen and Frances Presley Rice, both members of the working group that developed the new guidelines, said in a statement Thursday that the new language regarding slaves learning specialized skills was meant to show they were not merely victims.

"Florida students deserve to learn how slaves took advantage of whatever circumstances they were in to benefit themselves and the community of African descendants," according to the statement from Allen, a political scientist, and Presley Rice, an author who co-founded a non-profit dedicated to raising awareness about the roles African Americans have played in the nation's history.

But Derrick Johnson, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said in a statement that the school board's decision was an attempt "to bring our country back to a 19th-century America where Black life was not valued."

The Florida Education Association teachers' union said in a statement that the new standards "confirmed many of the worst fears" teachers had following passage of laws targeting "woke" ideology in the state.

The approval follows moves by Governor Ron DeSantis, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, to combat what he labeled "woke indoctrination."

Earlier this year Florida rejected a proposed Advanced Placement course in African American studies, saying it was littered with leftist ideology. DeSantis has battled against Disney over its criticism of a Florida law banning classroom discussion of sexuality and gender.

Florida is also one of several states to have banned the teaching of critical race theory, which posits that racial bias is woven into U.S. laws and institutions.

Reporting by Brad Brooks in Lubbock, Texas; Editing by Donna Bryson and Stephen Coates

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

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Florida introduces new guidelines on teaching Black history, critics give poor grade

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Florida's board of education has approved new guidelines for teachers on how Black American history should be taught despite sharp criticism from some educators and civil rights groups.

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I had no idea there were Chinese immigrants working alongside Welsh and Swedish coal miners in Wyoming! Even amongst immigrants there was extreme discrimination and hate crimes (European miners burned the homes of 75 Chinese families). I was surprised that federal troops accompanied Chinese families back to their homes to protect them. The article was written from a place of hatred toward the Chinese; by allowing the Chinese to return with the support of the federal troops, the "Rock Springs is killed as far as white men are concerned." Such racism!

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Printable Version

The Rock Springs Massacre
Digital History ID 28

Author: Alec Guinness
Date:1885

Annotation: The late 19th century was the site of intense labor strife. In September 2, 1885, in Rock Springs, Wyoming, Welsh and the Swedish coal miners, many of whom were members of the Knights of Labor, burned the homes of approximately 75 Chinese families, and killed at least 28 Chinese and 15 wounded. Federal troops had to be brought in to restore order.

The following editorial in the Rock Springs, Wyoming, Independent, denounces the return of Chinese miners.

Three hundred soldiers protecting them

Chinatown to be rebuilt

United and determined action needed.

It was rumored Wednesday noon that the Chinese were on their way back to Rock Springs. Few believed the rumor, as it was not thought they could be induced to return.

But about two o'clock a passenger train came in bearing two hundred armed soldiers. Closely following was a freight train of twenty-two cars loaded with 650 of the hated Chinese, the latter train switching off and went toward No. 3 mine, where the Chinese disembarked, and hurried over to the ruins of their houses. They began digging in the cellars, and soon unearthed a large amount of money. Six thousand dollars in gold and silver was dug up from one cellar, and as much more from another, where it had been concealed before their flight.

Numbers of them soon came up town. Some looked bold and defiant, while others were evidently fearful of being attacked, but no demonstration was made against them. The cars were afterwards brought down the track to a point near the soldiers' camp, where the Chinamen built fires, had supper, and spent the night.

The action of the company in bringing back the Chinese means that they are to be set to work in the mines, and that American soldiers are to prevent them from again being driven out.

It means that all the white miners in Rock Springs, except those absolutely required, are to be replaced by Chinese labor.

It means that the company intend to make a "Chinatown" out of Rock Springs, as they proposed to the Almy miners last Monday.

It means that Rock Springs is killed, as far as white men are concerned, if such program is carried out.

Source: Rock Springs Independent, 3 September 1885. Reprinted in Cheng-Tsu Wu, ed., Chink! (New York: The World Publishing Company, 1972), 167.

Copyright 2021 Digital History

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Printable Version The Rock Springs Massacre Digital History ID 28 Author: Alec Guinness Date:1885 Annotation: The late 19th century was the site of intense labor strife. In September 2, 1885, in Rock Springs, Wyoming, Welsh and the Swedish coal miners, many of whom were members of the Knights of Labor, burned the homes of approximately 75 Chinese families, and killed at least 28 Chinese and 15 wounded.

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This story I feel like is very representative of many peoples’ experiences with the prison system. It made me think about every time I have filled out some sort of job application or school form and it asking the question “have you ever been convicted of a crime”. This is almost a way to discriminate against people for mistakes that were made in their past, but it seems they will never escape these mistakes. The threat of going back to jail is so real for many of the formerly incarcerated and it very much is not fair. People should not have to have these mistakes follow and haunt them for the rest of their lives. In a system that is already discriminatory, this only creates further division.

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Jayne Fuentes has been working to rebuild her life after spending more than 15 years in and out of jail on drug and theft charges. After her last jail sentence ended in 2013, she found that she owed tens of thousands of dollars in court fines and fees. At StoryCorps in Richland, Washington, she sat down with her son, Luis, to talk about the impact of these fines on both of their lives.

Jayne and Luis's conversation was recorded through the StoryCorps Justice Project , which preserves and amplifies the stories of people who have been directly impacted by mass incarceration. The Justice Project is made possible, in part, with support from the and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Safety and Justice Challenge, #RethinkJails, Robert Sterling Clark Foundation .
Released May 4, 2017.

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Jayne Fuentes has been working to rebuild her life after spending more than 15 years in and out of jail on drug and theft charges. After her last jail sentence ended in 2013, she found that she owed tens of thousands of dollars in court fines and fees.

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http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=3&psid=50
I read about the Asian internment camps after the attack at Pearl Harbor. It is baffling that so many people just let it happen without stopping it and it was not that long ago!

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Printable Version

The Legal Battle Against Internment
Digital History ID 50

Annotation: Japanese-Americans protested their treatment in court. In 1944, the Supreme Court upheld the internment order by a six to three vote. Citing national security considerations, the Supreme Court in 1944 backed the government six to three in Korematsu v. U.S. But in a dissenting opinion, Frank Murphy admitted federal policy had fallen "into the ugly abyss of racism." On December 18, 1944, in the Endo case, the Supreme Court ruled a civilian agency, the War Relocation Authority, had no right to incarcerate law-abiding citizens. Two weeks later the federal government began closing down the camps, ending one of the most shameful chapters in American history.

Document: Ex parte Endo 323 U.S. 283 (1944)

Mr. Justice Douglas delivered the opinion of the Court.

This case comes here on a certificate of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, certifying to us questions of law upon which it desires instructions for the decision of the case. Judicial Code 239, 28 U.S.C. 346, 28 U.S.C.A. 346. Acting under that section we ordered the entire record to be certified to this Court so that we might proceed to a decision, as if the case had been brought here by appeal.

Mitsuye Endo, hereinafter designated as the appellant, is an American citizen of Japanese ancestry. She was evacuated from Sacramento, California, in 1942, pursuant to certain military orders which we will presently discuss, and was removed to the Tule Lake War Relocation Center located at Newell, Modoc County, California. In July, 1942, she filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the District Court of the United States for the Northern District of California, asking that she be discharged and restored to liberty. That petition was denied by the District Court in July, 1943, and an appeal was prefected to the Circuit Court of Appeals in August, 1943. Shortly thereafter appellant was transferred from the Tule Lake Relocation Center to the Central Utah Relocation Center located at Topaz, Utah, where she is presently detained. The certificate of questions of law was filed here on April 22, 1944, and on May 8, 1944, we ordered the entire record to be certified to this Court. It does not appear that any respondent was ever served with process or appeared in the proceedings. But the United States Attorney for the Northern District of California argued before the District Court that the petition should not be granted. And the Solicitor General argued the case here.

The history of the evacuation of Japanese aliens and citizens of Japanese ancestry from the Pacific coastal regions, following the Japanese attack on our Naval Base at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and the declaration of war against Japan on December 8, 1941, 55 Stat. 795, 50 U.S. C.A. Appendix note preceding section 1, has been reviewed in Kiyoshi Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81, 63 S. Ct. 1375. It need be only briefly recapitulated here. On February 19, 1942, the President promulgated Executive Order No. 9066, 7 Fed. Reg. 1407. It recited that 'the successful prosecution of the war requires every possible protection against espionage and against sabotage to national defense material, national-defense premises, and national-defense utilities as defined in Section 4, Act of April 20, 1918, 40 Stat. 533, as amended by the Act of November 30, 1940, 54 Stat. 1220, and the Act of August 21, 1941, 55 Stat. 655 (U.S.C., Title 50, Sec. 104).' And it authorized and directed 'the Secretary of War, and the Military Commanders whom he may from time to time designate, whenever he or any designated Commander deems such action necessary or desirable, to prescribe military areas in such places and of such extent as he or the appropriate Military Commander may determine, from which any or all persons may be excluded, and with respect to which, the right of any person to enter, remain in, or leave shall be subject to whatever restrictions the Secretary of War or the appropriate Military Commander may impose in his discretion. The Secretary of War is hereby authorized to provide for residents of any such area who are excluded there from, such transportation, food, shelter, and other accommodations as may be necessary, in the judgment of the Secretary of War or the said Military Commander, and until other arrangements are made, to accomplish the purpose of this order.'

***

Mitsuye Endo made application for leave clearance on February 19, 1943, after the petition was filed in the District Court. Leave clearance was granted her on August 16, 1943. But she made no application for indefinite leave.

Her petition for a writ of habeas corpus alleges that she is a loyal and law-abiding citizen of the United States, that no charge has been made against her, that she is being unlawfully detained, and that she is confined in the Relocation Center under armed guard and held there against her will.

It is conceded by the Department of Justice and by the War Relocation Authority that appellant is a loyal and law-abiding citizen. They make no claim that she is detained on any charge or that she is even suspected of disloyalty. Moreover, they do not contend that she be held any longer in the Relocation Center. They concede that it is beyond the power of the War Relocation Authority to detain citizens against whom no charges of disloyalty or subversiveness have been made for a period longer than that necessary to separate the loyal from the disloyal and to provide the necessary guidance for relocation. But they maintain that detention for an additional period after leave clearance has been granted is an essential step in the evacuation program. Reliance for that conclusion is placed on the following circumstances.

When compulsory evacuation from the West Coast was decided upon, plans for taking care of the evacuees after their detention in the Assembly Centers, to which they were initially removed, remained to be determined. On April 7, 1942, the Director of the Authority held a conference in Salt Lake City with various state and federal officials including the Governors of the inter-mountain states. 'Strong opposition was expressed to any type of unsupervised relocation and some of the Governors refused to be responsible for maintenance of law and order unless evacuees brought into their States were kept under constant military surveillance. Sen. Doc. No. 96, supra, note 7, p. 4. As stated by General De Witt in his report to the Chief of Staff: 'Essentially, military necessity required only that the Japanese population be removed from the coastal area and dispersed in the interior, where the danger of action in concert during any attempted enemy raids along the coast, or in advance thereof as preparation for a full scale attack, would be eliminated. That the evacuation program necessarily and ultimately developed into one of complete Federal supervision, was due primarily to the fact that the interior states would not accept an uncontrolled Japanese migration.' Final Report, supra, note 2, pp. 43-44. The Authority thereupon abandoned plans for assisting groups of evacuees in private colonization and temporarily put to one side plans for aiding the evacuees in obtaining private employment. As an alternative the Authority 'concentrated on establishment of Government-operated centers with sufficient capacity and facilities to accommodate the entire evacuee population.' Sen.Doc. No. 96, supra, note 7, p. 4. Accordingly, it undertook to care for the basic needs of these people in the Relocation Centers, to promote as rapidly as possible the permanent resettlement of as many as possible in normal communities, and to provide indefinitely for those left at the Relocation Centers. An effort was made to segregate the loyal evacuees from the others. The leave program which we have discussed was put into operation and the resettlement program commenced.

It is argued that such a planned and orderly relocation was essential to the success of the evacuation program; that but for such supervision there might have been a dangerously disorderly migration of unwanted people to unprepared communities; that unsupervised evacuation might have resulted in hardship and disorder; that the success of the evacuation program was thought to require the knowledge that the federal government was maintaining control over the evacuated population except as the release of individuals could be effected consistently with their own peace and well-being and that of the nation; that although community hostility towards the evacuees has diminished, it has not disappeared and the continuing control of the Authority over the relocation process is essential to the success of the evacuation program. It is argued that supervised relocation, as the chosen method of terminating the evacuation, is the final step in the entire process and is a consequence of the first step taken. It is conceded that appellant's detention pending compliance with the leave regulations is not directly connected with the prevention of espionage and sabotage at the present time. But it is argued that Executive Order No. 9102 confers power to make regulations necessary and proper for controlling situations created by the exercise of the powers expressly conferred for protection against espionage and sabotage. The leave regulations are said to fall within that category.

First. We are of the view that Mitsuye Endo should be given her liberty. In reaching that conclusion we do not come to the underlying constitutional issues which have been argued. For we conclude that, whatever power the War Relocation Authority may have to detain other classes of citizens, it has no authority to subject citizens who are concededly loyal to its leave procedure.

***

We approach the construction of Executive Order No. 9066 as we would approach the construction of legislation in this field. That Executive Order must indeed be considered along with the Act of March 21, 1942, which ratified and confirmed it (Kiyoshi Hirabayashi v. United States, supra, 320 U.S. at pages 87-91, 63 S. Ct. at pages 1379-1381) as the Order and the statute together laid such basis as there is for participation by civil agencies of the federal government in the evacuation program. Broad powers frequently granted to the President or other executive officers by Congress so that they may deal with the exigencies of war time problems have been sustained. And the Constitution when it committed to the Executive and to Congress the exercise of the war power necessarily gave them wide scope for the exercise of judgment and discretion so that war might be waged effectively and successfully. Kiyoshi Hirabayashi v. United States, supra, 320 U.S. at page 93, 63 S. Ct. at page 1382. At the same time, however, the Constitution is as specific in its enumeration of many of the civil rights of the individual as it is in its enumeration of the powers of his government. Thus it has prescribed procedural safeguards surrounding the arrest, detention and conviction of individuals. Some of these are contained in the Sixth Amendment, compliance with which is essential if convictions are to be sustained. Tot v. United States, 319 U.S. 463, 63 S. Ct. 1241. And the Fifth Amendment provides that no person shall be deprived of liberty (as well as life or property) without due process of law. Moreover, as a further safeguard against invasion of the basic civil rights of the individual it is provided in Art. I, Sec. 9 of the Constitution that 'The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.' See Ex parte Milligan, supra.

We mention these constitutional provisions not to stir the constitutional issues which have been argued at the bar but to indicate the approach which we think should be made to an Act of Congress or an order of the Chief Executive that touches the sensitive area of rights specifically guaranteed by the Constitution. This Court has quite consistently given a narrower scope for the operation of the presumption of constitutionality when legislation appeared on its face to violate a specific prohibition of the Constitution. We have likewise favored that interpretation of legislation which gives it the greater chance of surviving the test of constitutionality. Those analogies are suggestive here. We must assume that the Chief Executive and members of Congress, as well as the courts, are sensitive to and respectful of the liberties of the citizen. In interpreting a war-time measure we must assume that their purpose was to allow for the greatest possible accommodation between those liberties and the exigencies of war. We must assume, when asked to find implied powers in a grant of legislative or executive authority, that the law makers intended to place no greater restraint on the citizen than was clearly and unmistakably indicated by the language they used.

The Act of March 21, 1942, was a war measure. The House Report (H. Rep. No. 1906, 77th Cong., 2d Sess., p. 2) stated, 'The necessity for this legislation arose from the fact that the safe conduct of the war requires the fullest possible protection against either espionage or sabotage to national defense material, national defense premises, and national defense utilities.' That was the precise purpose of Executive Order No. 9066, for, as we have seen, it gave as the reason for the exclusion of persons from prescribed military areas the protection of such property 'against espionage and against sabotage.' And Executive Order No. 9102 which established the War Relocation Authority did so, as we have noted, 'in order to provide for the removal from designated areas of persons whose removal is necessary in the interests of national security.' The purpose and objective of the Act and of these orders are plain. Their single aim was the protection of the war effort against espionage and sabotage. It is in light of that one objective that the powers conferred by the orders must be construed.

Neither the Act nor the orders use the language of detention. The Act says that no one shall 'enter, remain in leave, or commit any act' in the prescribed military areas contrary to the applicable restrictions. Executive Order No. 9066 subjects the right of any person 'to enter, remain in, or leave' those prescribed areas to such restrictions as the military may impose. And apart from those restrictions the Secretary of War is only given authority to afford the evacuees 'transportation, food, shelter, and other accommodations.' Executive Order No. 9102 authorizes and directs the War Relocation Authority 'to formulate and effectuate a program for the removal' of the persons covered by Executive Order No. 9066 from the prescribed military areas and 'for their relocation, maintenance, and supervision.' And power is given the Authority to make regulations 'necessary or desirable to promote effective execution of such program.' Moreover, unlike the case of curfew regulations (Kiyoshi Hirabayashi v. United States, supra), the legislative history of the Act of March 21, 1942, is silent on detention. And that silence may have special significance in view of the fact that detention in Relocation Centers was no part of the original program of evacuation but developed later to meet what seemed to the officials in charge to be mounting hostility to the evacuees on the part of the communities where they sought to go.

We do not mean to imply that detention in connection with no phase of the evacuation program would be lawful. The fact that the Act and the orders are silent on detention does not of course mean that any power to detain is lacking. Some such power might indeed be necessary to the successful operation of the evacuation program. At least we may so assume. Moreover, we may assume for the purposes of this case that initial detention in Relocation Centers was authorized. But we stress the silence of the legislative history and of the Act and the Executive Orders on the power to detain to emphasize that any such authority which exists must be implied. If there is to be the greatest possible accommodation of the liberties of the citizen with this war measure, any such implied power must be narrowly confined to the precise purpose of the evacuation program.

A citizen who is concededly loyal presents no problem of espionage or sabotage. Loyalty is a matter of the heart and mind not of race, creed, or color. He who is loyal is by definition not a spy or a saboteur. When the power to detain is derived from the power to protect the war effort against espionage and sabotage, detention which has no relationship to that objective is unauthorized.

Nor may the power to detain an admittedly loyal citizen or to grant him a conditional release be implied as a useful or convenient step in the evacuation program, whatever authority might be implied in case of those whose loyalty was not conceded or established. If we assume (as we do) that the original evacuation was justified, its lawful character was derived from the fact that it was an espionage and sabotage measure, not that there was community hostility to this group of American citizens. The evacuation program rested explicitly on the former ground not on the latter as the underlying legislation shows. The authority to detain a citizen or to grant him a conditional release as protection against espionage or sabotage is exhausted at least when his loyalty is conceded. If we held that the authority to detain continued thereafter, we would transform an espionage or sabotage measure into something else. That was not done by Executive Order No. 9066 or by the Act of March 21, 1942, which ratified it. What they did not do we cannot do. Detention which furthered the campaign against espionage and sabotage would be one thing. But detention which has no relationship to that campaign is of a distinct character. Community hostility even to loyal evacuees may have been (and perhaps still is) a serious problem. But if authority for their custody and supervision is to be sought on that ground, the Act of March 21, 1942, Executive Order No. 9066, and Executive Order No. 9102, offer no support. And none other is advanced. To read them that broadly would be to assume that the Congress and the President intended that this discriminatory action should be taken against these people wholly on account of their ancestry even though the government conceded their loyalty to this country. We cannot make such an assumption. As the President has said of these loyal citizens: 'Americans of Japanese ancestry, like those of many other ancestries, have shown that they can, and want to, accept our institutions and work loyally with the rest of us, making their own valuable contribution to the national wealth and well-being. In vindication of the very ideals for which we are fighting this war it is important to us to maintain a high standard of fair, considerate, and equal treatment for the people of this minority as of all other minorities.' Sen. Doc. No. 96, supra, note 7, p. 2.

Mitsuye Endo is entitled to an unconditional release by the War Relocation Authority.

Source: Ex Parte Mitsuye Endo. Certificate from the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. No. 70. Argued October 12, 1944. -- Decided December 18, 1944.

Copyright 2021 Digital History

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The Legal Battle Against Internment Digital History ID 50

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Born in Slavery: Library of Congress online collection that contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of U.S. slavery

Just the stories that this one slave went through looking through the first couple of pages makes me unreal. I just can't believe a time long ago people were treated this way all based on the color of their skin. Every person is a human being no matter what and the feeling that our history had this happen is something I cannot fathom. I care for all human beings and I believe if all humans stay together and work together that will create a powerful and encouraging government.

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Short, beautiful, tragic, and touching. Recounting of losing a close friend to a shooting in a Baptist church in 1963. One of the four young girls shot was her close friend that had spent the night with her before. Memories of a child through the eyes (and thought processes of her as an adult. I couldn't stop thinking about how this terrible act effects her feelings throughout life and how it effects her sense of value as a human being.

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Gwen Moten remembers her childhood best friend, Denise McNair, who was killed in the 1963 16th Street Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama.

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This interview was very interesting. The subject, who at the time of the interview was an educator, speaks of the experiences she had at an all black school versus an integrated school, and how the experiences shaped her. It was very difficult for her when attending the integrated school for many reasons, but the one that is memorable is that there was no one in the family who she could speak to and get empathy since she was the first one to attend an integrated school.

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K-0445 :: Southern Oral History Program Interview Database

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To link to the entire object, paste this link in email, IM or document To embed the entire object, paste this HTML in website To link to this page, paste this link in email, IM or document…

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Federal Writers' Project: Slave Narrative Project, Vol. 4, Georgia, Part 4, Telfair-Young

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Federal Writers' Project: Slave Narrative Project, Vol. 4, Georgia, Part 4, Telfair-Young

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I read some of this account with Ms. Georgia Telfair. She talks about how she doesn't remember much of life as being a slave as she was only six months when Black people were given their freedom, but she's able to recount the things her family told her, like who her parents were owned by, what they had them do, and how much of a struggle it was for her even after slavery had been abolished. It was very interesting to read about as Ms. Georgia is from Athens and is 74, thinking about how not that long ago how bad things were for us black people and to some extent still is gives me a lot to think about.

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Image 1 of Federal Writers' Project: Slave Narrative Project, Vol. 4, Georgia, Part 4, Telfair-Young (with combined interviews of others)

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I read part of Andrew Carnegie's autobiography from the year 1920. It talks about when he as 15 and his brother was 5 they took a boat and arrived in NYC. They then made their way to Pittsburgh where they knew of family. He learned of the mosquito for the first time on that trip to Pittsburgh and how they were eaten up, but he always slept soundly still. His mother would not allow him to work just any job. It had to be respectable. She would rather perish with her two boys than allow them to work in low company.

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The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie Digital History ID 3646

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This personal narrative showed me an example of and act of racism towards Indian Americans. This event made me think about how acts like this continue to occur and worse is that even though we have made some progress it is enfuriating to read how there are people who think and act in such dirsrespectful manners.

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Printable Version

Prejudice Against Indian Americans
Digital History ID 36

Annotation: Prejudice was a common occurrence, a Sikh observed. But he refused to respond passively.

Document: I used to go to Marysville [California] every Saturday.... One day a drunk ghora (white man) came out of a bar and motioned to me saying, "Come here, slave!" I said was no slave man. He told me that his race ruled India and America, too. All we were slaves. He came close to me and I hit him and got away fast.

Source: Bruce La Brack, "The Sikhs of Northern California (Ph.D. diss., Syracuse University, 1980), 130.

Copyright 2021 Digital History

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Printable Version Prejudice Against Indian Americans Digital History ID 36 Annotation: Prejudice was a common occurrence, a Sikh observed. But he refused to respond passively. Document: I used to go to Marysville [California] every Saturday.... One day a drunk ghora (white man) came out of a bar and motioned to me saying, "Come here, slave!"

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This was powerful to me as it shows that so many stories are deeper than they appear on the surface.

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I read Louisa Adams' account of being a slave in Rockingham, NC. She told about how she learned to read behind her masters' back, but she couldn't be caught with a book or she would be solde. That is so sad.
She also told about putting grease on her Daddy's back when the master beat him and how he still had to work. The master took the vegetables they grew in their own little garden and they didn't have any food. They had to work from sun up to sun down, then hunt at night for food.
I just don't understand how one human could treat other humans this way.

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Image 6 of Federal Writers' Project: Slave Narrative Project, Vol. 11, North Carolina, Part 1, Adams-Hunter

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Federal Writer's Project: Slave Narative Project, Vol. 2: Arkansas

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Federal Writer's Project: Slave Narative Project, Vol. 2: Arkansas

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I've read some of these personal narratives before, but I felt that the voices were clearer in my mind this time. You could hear the love for families and a need to somehow find a place that you could call home. Often, the relationships that the slaves had with their "white folks" as one former slave used the term, was complex. Very interesting reading.

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Federal Writers' Project: Slave Narrative Project, Vol. 2, Arkansas, Part 1, Abbott-Byrd

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Title Federal Writers' Project: Slave Narrative Project, Vol. 2, Arkansas, Part 1, Abbott-Byrd Created / Published November-December 1938 Genre Interviews Notes - Includes narratives by Dina Beard, Aunt Adeline, John W. H. Barnett, Josephine Ann Barnett, Lizzie Barnett, Silas Abbott, Lucian Abernathy, Laura Abromson, Spencer Barnett, Emma Barr, Robert Barr, Mose Banks, Emmett Beal, William Baltimore, Annie Beck, J.H.

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This text displays information about the Indians reaction to the arrival of the first European ships. They were admiring the beautiful site to which they were seeing, when they saw Europeans. They then stated, "What much hoggery, so big walk, and so big speak, and by and by kill." This was 1634.

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I clicked the link to look at "Born Into Slavery" where it showed collections of first person accounts of US Slavery. While looking at both letters and devices used to confine slaves from this website I kept thinking of how short ago this was in the worlds history. With how recent these acts were its quite perspective shifting for me, Im personally concerned about problems that are effecting me without even thinking about this time in our world. When thinking about it it makes my problems nearly nothing in my eyes, I instead after being educated about this wish to be a person actively contributing to resolving problems arising from this time.

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I also read "The Americanization of Edward Bok," and it stuck out to me for a few reasons.
First, it was interesting to read about how American hypocrisy about ideals such as thrift and hard work have been around for such a long time. I feel like we often hear about laziness and waste in terms of "kids today," but this account was from around the turn of the last century!
Second, and perhaps relatedly, it brought to mind how often first-generation immigrants are more politically conservative than subsequent generations, and I realized that this may be because the "American Dream" requires that mindset, and perhaps first-generation immigrants need to believe that in order to feel like they made a good decision in coming here.
Third, Bok was so convinced that America, for all its faults, was still the land of opportunity, and would treat immigrants fairly if they were honest and worked hard. It was so clear to me that he was able to retain this belief because, even as an immigrant, he had the benefit of whiteness.

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The Americanization of Edward Bok Digital History ID 3651

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This excerpt from the period of "Prince Philip's War" in "New England" is very moving. It exposes the hypocrisy of the English in Massachusetts. Apess was an exceptional man in this period, and his courage in publicly criticizing the English is inspiring. However, I don't think that someone without background knowledge of the period and the man would understand this excerpt at all. It needs a better presentation with more context. Also the spelling of Apess's name: please use a more modern orthography: Apess, not Apes. Thank you.

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This was such an insightful look into the way the justice system continues to oppress families even after a sentence is served. Jayne served 15 years of her life in jail, and once she was released, she realized she had thousands of dollars of court fees to pay. If she wasn't able to keep up with her payments, she would be sent back to jail. However, because of her record, she had an incredibly hard time getting a job to pay those bills. Because of that, she found herself depending on her son, Luis, more than she or he wanted. The way we treat people who have served time in jail or prison not only impacts them, but it creates greater hardship for everyone in their lives. Luis has to work harder than his peers in order to support himself and his mother because we don't have sufficient support systems for people when they leave jail or prison.

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Jayne Fuentes has been working to rebuild her life after spending more than 15 years in and out of jail on drug and theft charges. After her last jail sentence ended in 2013, she found that she owed tens of thousands of dollars in court fines and fees. At StoryCorps in Richland, Washington, she sat down with her son, Luis, to talk about the impact of these fines on both of their lives.

Jayne and Luis's conversation was recorded through the StoryCorps Justice Project , which preserves and amplifies the stories of people who have been directly impacted by mass incarceration. The Justice Project is made possible, in part, with support from the and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Safety and Justice Challenge, #RethinkJails, Robert Sterling Clark Foundation .
Released May 4, 2017.

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Jayne Fuentes has been working to rebuild her life after spending more than 15 years in and out of jail on drug and theft charges. After her last jail sentence ended in 2013, she found that she owed tens of thousands of dollars in court fines and fees.

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Great snippets into the lives of real people. Some of these could be used with my students. This is a wonderful resourse

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I wanted to read a narrative from a Native American perspective because it's one that I feel least familiar with. Having grown up in the West, I wanted to learn more. While short, this narrative introduced me to the Ghost Dance religion which I plan to explore more fully. I also found it really powerful to hear about the government's failure to honor promises and treaties in first person. The line "We looked forward with hope to the time when we could be as independent as the whites, and have a voice in the Government." made it clear just how cruel the broken promises were. It also got me wanting to dive deeper into the ramifications of this broken trust for Indigenous communities today.

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Printable Version

The Ghost Dance and the Wounded Knee Massacre
Digital History ID 705

Author: Red Cloud
Date:1891

Annotation: A member of the Ogala Sioux describes the pattern of conflict between Indians and the government that contributed to the rise of the Ghost Dance religion.

Document: Everybody seems to think that the belief in the coming of the Messiah has caused all the trouble. This is a mistake. I will tell you the cause.

When we first made treaties with the Government...the Government promised us all the means necessary to make our living out of our land, and to instruct us how to do it, and abundant food to support us until we could take care of ourselves. We looked forward with hope to the time when we could be as independent as the whites, and have a voice in the Government.

The officers of the army could have helped us better than any others, but we were not left to them. An Indian Department was made, with a large number of agents and other officials drawing large salaries, and these men were supposed to teach us the ways of the whites. Then came the beginning of trouble. These men took care of themselves but not of us. It was made very hard to deal with the Government except through them.... We did not get the means to work our land.... Our rations began to be reduced....

Remember that even our little ponies were taken away under the promise that they would be replaced by oxen and large horses, and that it was long before we saw any, and then we got very few.... Great efforts were made to break up our customs, but nothing was done to introduce the customs of the whites. Everything was done to break the power of the real chiefs, who really wished their people to improve, and little men, so-called chiefs, were made to act as disturbers and agitators. Spotted Tail wanted the ways of the whites, and a cowardly assassin was found to remove him....

Rations were further reduced, and we were starving....The people were desperate from starvation--they had no hope. They did not think of fighting. What good would it do? They might die like men, but what would all the women and children do? Some say they saw the son of God. All did not see Him. I did not see Him.... We doubted it, because we saw neither Him nor His works....

We were faint with hunger and maddened by despair. We held our dying children, and felt their little bodies tremble as their souls went out and left only a dead weight in our hands.... There was no hope on earth, and God seemed to have forgotten us. Some one had again been speaking of the Son of God, and said He had come. The people did not know; they did not care. They snatched at the hope. They screamed like crazy to Him for mercy. They caught at the promises they heard He had made.

The white men were frightened, and called for soldiers.... We heard that soldiers were coming. We did not fear. We hoped that we could tell them our troubles and get help. A white man said the soldiers meant to kill us. We did not believe it, but some were frightened and ran away to the Bad Lands. The soldiers came. They said: "Don't be afraid; we come to make peace, and not war." It was true. They brought us food, and did not threaten us.

Source: W. Fletcher Johnson, Life of Sitting Bull and History of the Indian War (Philadelphia, 1891), 460-67.

Copyright 2021 Digital History

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Printable Version The Ghost Dance and the Wounded Knee Massacre Digital History ID 705 Author: Red Cloud Date:1891 Annotation: A member of the Ogala Sioux describes the pattern of conflict between Indians and the government that contributed to the rise of the Ghost Dance religion.

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I read a few of the Federal Writers' Project Slave Narratives and was struck by the normalcy with which these stories were recounted. The descriptions are so straightforward and pragmatic in the telling my brain almost can't comprehend the reality of what is being described. The experience of cognitive dissonance, the tension between my understanding that what was happening was wrong and weird and gross and bizarre and the reality that that reprehensible history was another person's everyday, humdrum reality strains my brain. It makes me wonder what kind of person I would be in that time. Would I be resigned and accept the circumstances controlling me? Would I rail against them in private while fearing the consequences of attempted escape or rebellion? Would the narratives around me and the structural components preventing organization and literacy amongst slaves function as intended and cloud my perception of my life? It's an uncanny feeling.

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Almost 65 Years after Father's Lynching, Two Daughters are Still Looking for Justice 

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Almost 65 Years after Father's Lynching, Two Daughters are Still Looking for Justice 

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"Don't you let your husband go out the door without knowing what he has on every day, cause you don't know if he's coming back." This was advice passed on from mother to daughter, because his clothes were how she was able to identify he husband's body after he was found washed up in a river months after his death by lynching. I can't imagine having to live every day with this type of fear, but it did remind me of the talks that Black parents need to have with their teenagers about how to handle being pulled over by police. There are so many situations where I, as a white person, get to take my safety for granted.

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The story talks about the connection to Martin Luther King Jr., but that part didn't even need to be mentioned in my opinion. His act of voting when he knew the risks, but did it anyway to show how much his vote and Black votes mattered, was so admirable. His great niece expressed how honored she was to found out about the story when she too was campaigning for Black voting rights. Her great uncle didn't bow down to intimidation and is a symbol of strength and perseverance.

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In 1945, World War II US Army veteran Maceo Snipes, returned home to Taylor County, Georgia. He voted in the county's primary in July of 1946, and the next day, he was murdered by a white mob.

The news of Snipes' lynching - and the killing of four other African Americans - reached a teenage Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., then studying at Morehouse College. These murders inspired King to write a letter to the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

A teenage Dr. King's letter to the editor of the Atlanta Journal Constitution. MLK was a Morehouse College student inspired to speak out following Maceo Snipes' lynching. Courtesy of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Raynita Snipes Johnson, Maceo Snipes' great niece, only recently learned of her uncle's story when she campaigned for Black voting rights in the 2016 presidential election.

Raynita Snipes Johnson at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The church was a destination for Martin Luther King, Jr. following a KKK bombing that killed four Black children in 1963. Photo courtesy of Raynita Snipes Johnson.

She sat down with her friend, Gene Robinson, to talk about her uncle's contribution to the Civil Rights Movement.

Gene Robinson and Raynita Snipes Johnson at their StoryCorps Virtual recording on August 29, 2020.

Find out more about the effort to honor Maceo Snipes' life at The Maceo Snipes 1946 Project.

Top Photo: United States Army veteran Maceo Snipes. He served in World War II, and was murdered shortly after returning home from service. Photo courtesy of Raynita Snipes Johnson.
This story was recorded in collaboration with the PBS series FRONTLINE as part of Un(re)solved- a major initiative documenting the federal effort to investigate more than 150 cold case murders dating back to the civil rights era. More such stories can be explored in an interactive documentary at Un(re)solved.
Originally aired January 14th, 2022 on NPR's Morning Edition.

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"The Black Vote Matters:" How An Army Veteran Inspired A Teenage Martin Luther King, Jr.

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In 1945, World War II US Army veteran Maceo Snipes, returned home to Taylor County, Georgia. He voted in the county's primary in July of 1946, and the next day, he was murdered by a white mob.

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I listened to Silvia's Legacy on StoryCorps.  The story is retold by Ellaraimo who was 16 in 1950, and was forced to by her parents to go to Louisiana that summer to visit her great grandmother, who she had never met. Her parents did not like her boyfriend, and wanted to separate the two lovers. She met her Great Grandmother, Silvia, who had been a slave.  Silvia was 16 years old when the Civil War ended and when the slaves were emancipated. I found what Silvia told her great granddaughter about the experience to be very significant.  She told her great granddaugher, " Not knowing how to read and write made me feel like a jigsaw puzzle." At the age of 85, she said to herself, "It stops here." With the help of grownups and sometimes children, she studied taught herself to read and write.  Ellaraimo retells how her great grandmother went to a cedar chest at the end of her bed and took out a round fan. She turned it over, and written on the back of the fan were the words, Silvia. Grandma Silvia said when she could spell her name that was when she got her freedom.

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“The Black Vote Matters:" How An Army Veteran Inspired A Teenage Martin Luther King, Jr.

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“The Black Vote Matters:" How An Army Veteran Inspired A Teenage Martin Luther King, Jr.

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I listened to this story on Story Corps Griot and it was heartbreaking. A war veteran exercising his right to vote, killed. A family threatened into silence not being safe enough to share their story or seek justice. It's just astounding and absolutely deplorable that he would be entrusted enough to go fight within a war but not enough to vote. The blatant abuse of power was and is just sickening.

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In 1945, World War II US Army veteran Maceo Snipes, returned home to Taylor County, Georgia. He voted in the county's primary in July of 1946, and the next day, he was murdered by a white mob.

The news of Snipes' lynching - and the killing of four other African Americans - reached a teenage Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., then studying at Morehouse College. These murders inspired King to write a letter to the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

A teenage Dr. King's letter to the editor of the Atlanta Journal Constitution. MLK was a Morehouse College student inspired to speak out following Maceo Snipes' lynching. Courtesy of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Raynita Snipes Johnson, Maceo Snipes' great niece, only recently learned of her uncle's story when she campaigned for Black voting rights in the 2016 presidential election.

Raynita Snipes Johnson at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The church was a destination for Martin Luther King, Jr. following a KKK bombing that killed four Black children in 1963. Photo courtesy of Raynita Snipes Johnson.

She sat down with her friend, Gene Robinson, to talk about her uncle's contribution to the Civil Rights Movement.

Gene Robinson and Raynita Snipes Johnson at their StoryCorps Virtual recording on August 29, 2020.

Find out more about the effort to honor Maceo Snipes' life at The Maceo Snipes 1946 Project.

Top Photo: United States Army veteran Maceo Snipes. He served in World War II, and was murdered shortly after returning home from service. Photo courtesy of Raynita Snipes Johnson.
This story was recorded in collaboration with the PBS series FRONTLINE as part of Un(re)solved- a major initiative documenting the federal effort to investigate more than 150 cold case murders dating back to the civil rights era. More such stories can be explored in an interactive documentary at Un(re)solved.
Originally aired January 14th, 2022 on NPR's Morning Edition.

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"The Black Vote Matters:" How An Army Veteran Inspired A Teenage Martin Luther King, Jr.

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In 1945, World War II US Army veteran Maceo Snipes, returned home to Taylor County, Georgia. He voted in the county's primary in July of 1946, and the next day, he was murdered by a white mob.

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"What was it like to be pregnant with me in jail?"

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"What was it like to be pregnant with me in jail?"

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This was an emotional audio clip of a child interviewing his mother who was incarcerated while she was pregnant and gave birth. She was sent to jail because of a drug use problem that developed after she was prescribed painkillers for a doctor, a story that is unfortunately common. While it was heartening to hear how having her child saved her and made her determined to give her son a better life, it's still worrying to think of how many pregnant prisoners and their children may have their lives horribly altered by being in jail.

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What does freedom mean to you? What does justice mean for us? Tell me about the first time you were aware the justice system existed. How has it affected your life? Do you think others understand the justice system the way you do? What changes would you like to see in the system overall? What do you wish others knew about it? What do you want for your family? What are your hopes for the future? Through the Justice Project, StoryCorps preserves and amplifies the stories of people who have been directly impacted by mass incarceration. We launched the initiative in 2016 to document the experiences of youth of color involved with the juvenile or adult justice system in New York City, and people of all ages affected by jail incarceration across the U.S. We are working to ensure that first-person voices from this era of mass incarceration are preserved in the historical record and amplified locally and nationwide.
Featured Stories from the Justice Project

"I remember feeling this tremendous weight of fear of what my life would be like."

Advisory Group

Piper Anderson, Founder/Chief Creative Strategist at Create Forward (New York, NY)

Jarrett M. Drake, Digital Archivist at Princeton University Archives (Princeton, NJ)

Marc Mauer, Executive Director at the Sentencing Project (Washington, D.C.)

Abraham Paulos, Executive Director at Families for Freedom (New York, NY)

Featured Partners

Bronx Freedom Fund (Bronx, NY)

Cabrini Green Legal Aid (Chicago, IL)

Create Forward's Mass Story Lab (New York, NY)

Community Connections for Youth (Bronx, NY)

Friends of the Island Academy (New York, NY)

Just Leadership USA (New York, NY)

Osborne Association (Bronx & Brooklyn, NY)

Precious Blood Ministries (Chicago, IL)

Save Our Streets (Brooklyn, NY)

Truth-Telling Project (Ferguson, MO)

Learn more about partnerships

Contact us at JusticeProject@storycorps.org, or call us at 646.723.7020 Ext. 30.

Support for StoryCorps Justice Project
Original support provided by

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What does freedom mean to you? What does justice mean for us? Tell me about the first time you were aware the justice system existed. How has it affected your life? Do you think others understand the justice system the way you do? What changes would you like to see in the system overall?

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"I Just Hugged the Man Who Murdered My Son..."

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"I Just Hugged the Man Who Murdered My Son..."

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I listened to this on StoryCorps Griot and it was just heartbreaking but also refreshing in it's own way. It was amazing to see the courage of a mother who lost a son find the strength to basically adopt the man who murdered her son as her new son. I don't know that I could have done what she did. She was outstanding!

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In 1993, Oshea Israel was a teenager in Minneapolis, Minnesota. One night at a party Oshea got into a fight, which ended when he shot and killed a teenager named Laramiun Byrd. Laranium was the only child of Mary Johnson.

A dozen years later, Mary went to the penitentiary to visit the man who murdered her son.

After serving 15 years, Oshea was released from prison. Soon after, Mary brought him to StoryCorps to talk about their friendship.

Mary Johnson founded From Death to Life, an organization that supports mothers who have lost children to homicide, and encourages forgiveness between families of murderers and victims.

Originally aired May 20, 2011, on NPR's Morning Edition.

Photos courtesy of Brian Mogren.

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In 1993, Oshea Israel was a teenager in Minneapolis, Minnesota. One night at a party Oshea got into a fight, which ended when he shot and killed a teenager named Laramiun Byrd. Laranium was the only child of Mary Johnson. A dozen years later, Mary went to the penitentiary to visit the man who murdered her son.

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I read about the Hawaiian labor changes for the sugar plantation from William Hooper's personal statement. He was sent to Hawaii to gather free labor from the chiefs' (royal family) citizens to work as free labor at the sugar plantation. Men like him caused a rift between the citizens and the royal family's governance. Eventually men like himself took powers from the royal family, locking Queen Lilioukalani in the Iolani palace, so that America could become it governing authority over time. I remember this history from my Social Studies class in Hawaii.

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The stereotypes of these two races are just based on perception. What is considered "close together," "kindly," or "arrogant" for one person can be totally different to another. As a half-Korean, the racist remarks about Asian eyes always hurt me. This is how God made us, we are all different. The fact that is what written in what is considered a decent news source just blows my mind! I'm thankful that I didn't live during this time, but it is still sad to think of all the racism that still exists in this world.

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How to Tell Your Friends from the Japs Digital History ID 45

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The Black Americans for Democracy student newspaper

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The Black Americans for Democracy student newspaper

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I looked at the Black Americans for Democracy Newspaper and I was deeply impressed by the professionalism yet passion within the publications. I was impressed at how it took the time to acknowledge small victories and accomplishments of black students at the university, both in general and for civil rights, but kept focused on major issues. One article that stood out to me was one that spoke in a very frank voice as it called for black students to get as involved as possible, stating that black students should not complain about getting "shafted" year after year if they did nothing to try and get involved. This struck me as an attempt to counter the cynical view of "why even bother," which I think often bogs down movements for change. The scope of issues discussed were interesting as well, one article mentioning something as basic as the lack of beauty products for black women. Issues like that echo ones we are still fighting for today to ensure that diversity is acknowledged throughout all of our popular culture and society.

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I read the Diversity of Native America: The Northeast by Pierre de Charlevoix. He describes "good qualities" upon closer inspection of northeastern tribes , and how even though they have a male chief, the tribe is very matriarchal. There is a distinct tone that the writer is maybe surprised to discover that these tribes are not the barbarians he has perhaps been led to believe they are. He writes of family counselors, chosen by the families, and often women choosing other women to represent them. That chiefs do not command but request, and never exceed the bounds of their authority.
It is very interesting that these relationships were noted in 1761, and yet the perpetuation of barbarian stereotypes continued for centuries.

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Printable Version

The Diversity of Native America: The Northeast
Digital History ID 640

Author: Pierre de Charlevoix
Date:1761

Annotation: Europeans expressed utter astonishment at women's important economic and political role within many Indian societies. A Jesuit priest describes life among Iroquoian-speaking Hurons whom he encountered.

Document: It must be agreed Madam, that the nearer we view our Indians, the more good qualities we discover in them: most of the principles which serve to regulate their conduct, the general maxims by which they govern themselves, and the essential part of their character, discover nothing of the barbarian....

In the northern parts, and wherever the Algonquin tongue prevails, the dignity of chief is elective; and the whole ceremony of election and installation consists in some feasts, accompanied with dances and songs: the chief elect likewise never fails to make the panegyric of his predecessor, and to invoke his genius. Among the Hurons, where this dignity is hereditary, the succession is continued through the women, so that at the death of a chief, it is not his own, but his sister's son who succeeds him; or, in default of which, his nearest relation in the female line. When the whole branch happens to be extinct, the noblest matron of the tribe or in the nation chooses the person she approves of most, and declares him chief.... These chiefs generally have no great marks of outward respect paid them, and if they are never disobeyed, it is because they know how to set bounds to their authority. It is true that they request or propose, rather than command; and never exceed the boundaries of that small share of authority with which they are vested....

Nay more, each family has a right to choose a counselor of its own, and an assistant to the chief, who is to watch for their interest; and without whose consent the chief can undertake nothing.... Amongst the Huron nations, the women name the counselors, and often choose persons of their own sex....

The women have the chief authority amongst all the nations of the Huron language.... But if this be their lawful constitution, their practice is seldom agreeable to it. In fact, the men never tell the women anything they would have to be kept secret; and rarely any affair of consequence is communicated to them, though all is done in their name, and the chiefs are no more than their lieutenants....

Source: Pierre de Charlevoix, Journal of a Voyage to North America (London, 1761).

Copyright 2021 Digital History

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Printable Version The Diversity of Native America: The Northeast Digital History ID 640 Author: Pierre de Charlevoix Date:1761 Annotation: Europeans expressed utter astonishment at women's important economic and political role within many Indian societies. A Jesuit priest describes life among Iroquoian-speaking Hurons whom he encountered.

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"The last time I saw Denise was the night before the bombing."

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"The last time I saw Denise was the night before the bombing."

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I just listened to the StoryCorps by the woman reflecting on her best friend, Denise, who died in a church bombing when they were girls. She explained that bombings like these were common in the South when she was growing up. The more recent church shooting in South Carolina triggered the feelings she carried around as a child. What is so tragic is that this woman's story is something that so many Black people have had to shoulder as well - they have experienced the same. And it still occurs. it's not a thing of the past.

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Reading this account helps understand just how pervasive segregation was. I also like that this talks about how Black women were employed in domestic work. I think this sometimes is overlooked/forgotten, but many households needed 2 incomes at the time as wages were so low, and with such limited opportunities you did what you could. It continues to astound me how employers (companies or individuals) *just*didn't* care* about the lives of their employees (though not much has changed...)

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R-0042 :: Southern Oral History Program Interview Database

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Southern Oral History Program Interview Database

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I watched a few different news clips from http://www2.vcdh.virginia.edu/civilrightstv/     It makes me sick to think that my parents were children watching this. Growing up, I believes that blatant racism to be a thing of the past, but it is clear that it was just not that long ago.

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I heard the story of Denise's friend. Her last words to her friend were, "See you later." She had been invited to go to church with Denise, but her mother said no. Denise was in the 16th Street Baptist Church when it was bombed, and died the next day. I was born in 1961, in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement. I remember hearing only my family's point of view and being afraid of people of color. I never heard of the bombing until I was an adult. When I read "The Watsons Go to Birmingham", I was shaken to the core by the image of the shoe after the bombing. Why? Why didn't I know about this horrendous thing? Why was I allowed to go to church in safety and find refuge and peace there, but children just a little older than me were brutally murdered in their church? That was the beginning of my inkling of understanding of the injustices. Hearing Denise's friend tell about Denise broke my heart all over again.

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I listened to a few stories from different points of view. This one: https://storycorps.org/animation/facundo-the-great/ particularly struck me about how students' names get changed to make it "easy" for the teacher & other students.

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http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/voices/voices_content.cfm?vid=4
The most moving document for me was the declaration of war on the theft of Lakota traditions and spirituality.     White Americans do not have any rights to appropriate other cultures spiritual traditions, especially not for our own profit.    There is a short Youtube video my daughters have shared with me of a Native American person telling white people to stop buying and using White Sage.  It has become scarce because it is trending among white people as a natural remedy.  The result being that it is sometimes too scarce and expensive for the original users of it.

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https://storycorps.org/stories/savannah-phelan-and-kellie-phelan-080516/  Hearing this story in particular really moved me because of the young child's voice interviewing their mother about having a baby in prison. "I don't want you to be lonely...and it makes me understand why you went to jail."

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Historias: A Woman Providing Life-Saving Aid at the Mexico-Arizona Border Shares Her Story

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Historias: A Woman Providing Life-Saving Aid at the Mexico-Arizona Border Shares Her Story

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One story that stood out to me from Historias was about a woman who searches the desert to provide water/food and aid to people who were left by groups crossing the border. The part that was hard to stomach is that she can legally only do so much - she can't take anyone with her onto private land. She also shared about a pregnant woman who went missing and was never found, someone she still thinks about. I am impressed by her efforts and the hard and crucial work she does.

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Maria Ochoa is a 70-year-old grandmother who has walked the Arizona desert well over 100 times providing water and aid to migrants who have crossed the border from Mexico. The humanitarian aid she and other Tucson Samaritans provide is legal, as long as they don't transport migrants or venture onto private land.

She came to StoryCorps in Tucson with her friend and fellow volunteer, Alma Schlor, to share her connection to the work.

This summer, Maria will have been doing this work with the Tucson Samaritans for seventeen years. She was one of the founders of the organization in 2002.

Top photo: Maria Ochoa poses by the Arizona/Mexico border wall, south of Tucson, Arizona. By Camila Kerwin for StoryCorps.

Middle photo: Alma Schlor and Maria Ochoa at their StoryCorps interview in Tucson, Arizona on April 20, 2016. By Camila Kerwin for StoryCorps.

Bottom photo: Maria Ochoa walks one of the trails she monitors with the Tucson Samaritans. By Camila Kerwin for StoryCorps.
Originally aired June 21, 2019 on NPR's Morning Edition.

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A Woman Providing Life-Saving Aid at the Mexico-Arizona Border Shares Her Story

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Maria Ochoa is a 70-year-old grandmother who has walked the Arizona desert well over 100 times providing water and aid to migrants who have crossed the border from Mexico. The humanitarian aid she and other Tucson Samaritans provide is legal, as long as they don't transport migrants or venture onto private land.

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http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/voices/voices_content.cfm?vid=4
I looked through the Native American Voices resources, because I am part native American. I am related to Cherokee Chief John Ross, so it was interesting to read his views on being pushed out of the Cherokee land and the Trail of Tears.

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Baptism and Churning Songs with Irene Williams, 1940 Interview
Baptism and Churning Songs with Irene Williams, 1940 Interview
The audio shares the singing of former enslaved woman of baptism and churning. Attached is the transcript from the interview.  In Part 2 of her interview, she shares experience of going to church on Sunday and dressing in the finest clothes. Part 3 brings more songs. Singing songs and going to church were joyous occasions in the bleak life of a slave. This narrative was easy to hear. Some of the others from the collection were poor recordings or did not seem to have clear recollections from interviewees. It is sad this part of history wasn't better documented and so long after the time when people were still enslaved. 
Gwen Moten- Storycorps
https://storycorps.org/stories/gwen-moten-150626/
Gwen Moten recounts being best friends with Denise McNair (one of the 4 girls killed in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama.  Ms. Moten mentions they were so close that their teacher had to separate them in school, and they had played together the night before the tragedy and her last words to her friend were, "I'll see you later."  That happened in September of 1963, but 51 years later after hearing about the shooting at the Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston on June 15, 2015, Ms. Moten began to "shake and cry", recounting this as just another "link of death".  She wonders, as so many of us do, "When will we break this link?"  
This also brought the Chauvin trial to mind as we witnessed the 61 year old Charles McMillian being moved to tears in his testimony of seeing yet another "link" of unfair death.  These, and other stories break my heart, and I continuously wonder how we can help break this continued cycle.

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Baptism and Churning Songs with Irene Williams, 1940 Interview
Baptism and Churning Songs with Irene Williams, 1940 Interview
The audio shares the singing of former enslaved woman of baptism and churning. Attached is the transcript from the interview.  In Part 2 of her interview, she shares experience of going to church on Sunday and dressing in the finest clothes. Part 3 brings more songs. Singing songs and going to church were joyous occasions in the bleak life of a slave. This narrative was easy to hear. Some of the others from the collection were poor recordings or did not seem to have clear recollections from interviewees. It is sad this part of history wasn't better documented and so long after the time when people were still enslaved. 
Gwen Moten- Storycorps
https://storycorps.org/stories/gwen-moten-150626/
Gwen Moten recounts being best friends with Denise McNair (one of the 4 girls killed in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama.  Ms. Moten mentions they were so close that their teacher had to separate them in school, and they had played together the night before the tragedy and her last words to her friend were, "I'll see you later."  That happened in September of 1963, but 51 years later after hearing about the shooting at the Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston on June 15, 2015, Ms. Moten began to "shake and cry", recounting this as just another "link of death".  She wonders, as so many of us do, "When will we break this link?"  
This also brought the Chauvin trial to mind as we witnessed the 61 year old Charles McMillian being moved to tears in his testimony of seeing yet another "link" of unfair death.  These, and other stories break my heart, and I continuously wonder how we can help break this continued cycle.

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I read this story after watching the documentary "Slavery By Another Name" and I noticed the same practices of unfair mass arrests of African Americans. Their innocence didn't matter and they were guilty of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and for being black. Thankfully for the support of family, once released they could be treated with respect and told you are not an animal but a MAN.

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by Carrie FIsher and Leo Fitzpatrick
This is a song from 1910 about waking up early to work in the cane fields. The song shows the abuse that the workers received if they did not get up and work.

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Asia Discovers America

1. Introduction: Nakahama Manjiro

2. Working in the Cane Fields

3. A Poem About Cane Work

4. The First Chinese Newspaper in America

5. Racism and the Law

6. Conditions in China

7. The Human Meaning of Migration

8. Singing About Migration

9. The Pangs of Family Separation

10. How Emigrants Could Afford to Migrate

11. Signing a Labor Contract

12. Women Migrants

Asians and the Making of America

1. Introduction: Chinese Immigrants and the Building

2. Chinese Miners Describe the Rock Springs Massacre

3. The Supreme Court Speaks Out on Equal Protection

4. The Citizenship Rights of Chinese Born in the United States

5. Housing Discrimination

6. Prejudice Against Indian Americans

7. A Protest Song

8. Barring Female Immigration

9. The San Francisco Building Trades Council Denounces Chinese Immigration

10. Can Indians Become American Citizens?

11. Angel Island Immigration Station Poetry

12. A Message to the President about Anti-Chinese Sent

13. A Petition for Separate Chinese Schools

14. A White Labor Leader Attacks Chinese Immigration

15. A Defense of Chinese Immigration

World War II and Asian Americans

1. Introduction: Internment

2. How to Tell Your Friends from the Japs

3. Repealing the Chinese Exclusion Act

4. The Repeal Act

5. Was Internment Constitutional?

6. The Legal Battle Against Internment

Introduction: Arn Chorn

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Asia Discovers America Introduction: Nakahama Manjiro Working in the Cane Fields A Poem About Cane Work The First Chinese Newspaper in America Racism and the Law Conditions in China The Human Meaning of Migration Singing About Migration The Pangs of Family Separation How Emigrants Could Afford to Migrate Signing a

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Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the United States

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Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the United States

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I had encountered David Walker's pamphlet at some point in a history class, but never read the text. Although the pamphlet was suppressed, it reached Black people across the country and created a legacy of Black thought extending to the present day. It's incredible that Walker's words are not taught alongside those of DuBois and King--but then again, considering the radical nature of his message and views, maybe it's not so incredible.

Which Black voices are taught in schools or memorialized as influential is part of a larger conversation about how we view Black Americans of the past. I found another interesting article about journalistic preservation, history, and which myths of Black American literacy continue to hold sway.

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In the 1950s, my father discovered a pile of wet ledgers on the back of a dump truck in our neighborhood. He brought them to our house, dried them on our sunny porch, and put them into the closet. In 1997, I opened and read them. What I found was a treasure trove, one that could contribute significantly to our understanding of Black history and literature.

Approximately 3,000 pages of French handwriting distributed throughout 24 journals described the lives of Black men in their own words. The journals, containing the minutes of meetings from 1836-1935 of the Société d'Economie et d'Assistance Mutuelle in New Orleans, contained the names of soldiers, activists, lovers, and builders of a community that nurtured my family and spoke to America, but were silenced.

When the society organized, the law in Louisiana not only forbade reading by the enslaved but writing or conversation by free people of color that might "produce discontent." There was even a statute that decreed free Blacks should not "conceive themselves equal to the white." The Economie formed seven years after the publication of David Walker's "Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the United States" to join together and rise up for their rights. The banned pamphlet was known to have reached Louisiana. Nat Turner's 1831 rebellion was only five years before the Economie began.

I heard many times during my university studies and journalism career both in the North and South that Black history was scarce because of a lack of proof. Well-meaning mentors explained that the African past had been taken away after the slave ships landed and the law denied Blacks the ability to read and write. It was true that the Freedmen's schools after the Civil War offered the first public education for the Black public, and in my hometown, New Orleans, the city provided no high school for Negroes from the late 1870s to 1917. A second school to serve Black young people beyond eighth grade came only in 1942. That year, the Black population reached almost 150,000.

Now, looking at the language of the society's journals, I saw the double entendres of Black speech that I heard in my childhood neighborhood, described by Zora Neale Hurston's "Characteristics of Negro Expression," and explained as double consciousness in W. E. B. Dubois's Souls of Black Folk. As with the spirituals, one of our clearest thru-lines of Black history, I knew that the meanings depended less on the words and more on the context, audience, and speaker. The Economie's first president, Pierre Crocker, encouraged the members "to conquer all the obstacles that chain our efforts." "Enchaine" had an unambiguous interpretation among people living in a city that boasted the biggest slave market in the nation. The words held a deep sense of oppression and the tangible reality of impending restraint. What outsiders might consider a simple metaphor was a call to action.
I heard many times during my university studies and journalism career both in the North and South that Black history was scarce because of a lack of proof.
I set out on a quest that took decades longer than I expected to unpack what I found there, cross referencing the minutes and Economie members' names with property records, civil suits, military muster lists, and more. Some entries took me years to puzzle, such as an 1846 case in which every one of the witnesses for an Economie member lied to the Louisiana Supreme Court in order to keep Denise, an enslaved woman held by the mother of Economie member Ludger Boguille. After research and consultations with editors and lawyers, I realized that, without the lies, Denise may have been sold to satisfy a debt. (When the suit ended, the court decided not to include her in the accounting.) I also found records of children with the same names as my daughters being auctioned or pursued as runaways. I walked around in a daze for months, unable to think clearly.

The raw commerce of these exchanges shattered any lies about American innocence. I saw financial calculations of people's worth in the documents of the church, government, and banks. Newspaper advertisements gave addresses of slave markets; I walked past these now beautifully-renovated spaces with a heavy heart.

Despite all the restrictions, by 1857, New Orleans' free Blacks owned $15 million in property and had a literacy rate of about 65 percent. That year, the members built "la Salle d'Economie"-Economy Hall. Self-exiled Black men returned from France, Italy, Haiti, and Mexico to attend meetings. Musicians who were celebrated in Europe and segregated in their hometown returned to play in the Economie's 70-foot-long theater. The building hosted public balls, opera, philharmonic performances, and school recitals. The Economistes were unbowed.

Then-president Pierre Casanave told the men, "Let us prove, say I, to the world entire that we do not deserve to be diminished by this senseless prejudice which seeks to demoralize us...only because of this African blood which runs in our veins! There it is, all our crime!... As the rocks beaten by the waves of the ocean, let us remain steadfast with courage and dignity so that ignorance does not intimidate us."

One hundred years later, when my father rescued the Economie journals and tried to understand their importance, there was little history about Black cooperation available.

Among the most well-known was the U. S. Supreme Court's majority opinion in the Dred Scott decision, which decreed in 1857 that the Declaration of Independence had not been "supposed to embrace the negro race, which, by common consent, had been excluded from civilized Governments and the family of nations, and doomed to slavery."
Despite all the restrictions, by 1857, New Orleans' free Blacks owned $15 million in property and had a literacy rate of about 65 percent.
The society's president responded in the privacy of Economy Hall. He told the members, "May our behaviors always strike down our oppressors, so that, in each of us, our miserable enemies may discover the proof that we understand that man was born to live with his equals."

Ludger Boguille was the secretary of the Economie that year. I grew up near his descendants. Boguille ran a private school of 40 pupils under the age of 23 in 1840. He was the principal of a Freedmen's school in 1866 when whites massacred Blacks in the Mechanics Hall in New Orleans. They had convened with their allies to acquire the vote. "I saw a colored man killed," Boguille later told a committee of three U.S. Congressmen investigating the scene. "We seized some chairs and tried to defend ourselves, and succeeded in repulsing those who fired the volleys. . . . I received one wound in the left arm and another in the knee, and several blows which did not injure me much."

Two years earlier, Boguille had been the grand marshal of an Emancipation celebration in Congo Square. For many years afterwards, Economie men filled the hall for political meetings and marched en masse with a brass band to demand their rights as American citizens. For a brief time, they won. The 1868 Louisiana constitution conferred citizenship on all Blacks-from those free before the war to those who had just arrived and been emancipated. The law also required integrated public facilities, including public education which went further than the United States Congress. Economie members put their children in integrated schools on principle.

Then, in 1874, white supremacists attacked the Metropolitan Police force, which had been integrated through the efforts of Radical Republicans. Its captain was an Economie member, as were others who died at the scene or shortly afterwards. When Reconstruction ended a few years later, the police became the enforcement arm of white supremacists.

The Louisiana Historical Association began in 1889 accepting only "white persons of good moral character, who were in the service of the Southern Confederacy, and of their white descendants of good moral character, and also of white persons of good moral character who were not in such service, but who have been citizens of Louisiana for more than five years." Across the South, similar parameters segregated academics. As a result, the history and literature of the South was always lacking and incomplete.

New Orleans' Black past was neutered to the image of a postcard of old men in white shirts playing music in a place called Preservation Hall. There was no such hall in the 19th century; Preservation Hall opened in 1961. But there was Economy Hall, where Black organizations like Le Silence, Les Nouveau Amis Sincères, Les Frères de la Louisiane, Les Amis-Inséparable, Les Vrais-Amis, and L'Equite met to attain their citizenship rights, where freed composer Basile Barés played with former free man of color Victor McCarty at a fund raiser for suffrage. Economy Hall hosted the Philharmonic Society, Eagle Brass Band, and Louis Armstrong, who sang in a language that overcame violence and humiliation, even if for only a few moments.
New Orleans' Black past was neutered to the image of a postcard of old men in white shirts playing music in a place called Preservation Hall.
Every spring since the 1970s, millions of people have sped their cars through my childhood neighborhood, avoiding a part of town with a dangerous reputation. They've passed the porch, where my father had dried the Economie journals before storing them for safekeeping, before entering the nearby Fairgrounds for the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. My father could hear the music from the front swing where he sat every night.

When I was young and my father brought home the Economie journals, I snuck into the living room where he stored them. I carried a flashlight and walked barefoot so as not to make noise. I opened the cabinet doors that he had stained red and I stood nearby as his assistant. I pulled out a book and ran my fingers over a page. I wished to decode the swirls of ink over the paper. I couldn't then. Today, I know that the words were the proof of an unchronicled legacy. My father showed me the values contained in those books-joy in community, hope in humanity, resilience to escape or adapt, and, most of all, the practice of everyday courage.

__________________________________

From Economy Hall: The Hidden History of a Free Black Brotherhood by Fatima Shaik. Used with the permission of Historic New Orleans Collections. Copyright © 2021 by Fatima Shaik.

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On Mutual Aid, the Archive, and Uncovering the History of Black Brotherhood

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In the 1950s, my father discovered a pile of wet ledgers on the back of a dump truck in our neighborhood. He brought them to our house, dried them on our sunny porch, and put them into the closet. ...

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"I just hugged a man who murdered my son"

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"I just hugged a man who murdered my son"

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An amazing story about the mother of a son who was murdered forming a relationship with his murderer. Through the relationship they have both begun the act of healing. I do not know if I could have the same reaction. Both people in this story sound so content and supportive of each other.

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I found this virtual exhibition to be very good. I really love the way that we get primary accounts of the people in the photographs. I feel that this is an immersive way to tell the untold story of the many people that played a role in the Civil Rights movement.

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Baptism and Churning Songs with Irene Williams, 1940 Interview

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Baptism and Churning Songs with Irene Williams, 1940 Interview

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The audio shares the singing of former enslaved woman of baptism and churning. Attached is the transcript from the interview. In Part 2 of her interview, she shares experience of going to church on Sunday and dressing in the finest clothes. Part 3 brings more songs. Singing songs and going to church were joyous occasions in the bleak life of a slave. This narrative was easy to hear. Some of the others from the collection were poor recordings or did not seem to have clear recollections from interviewees. It is sad this part of history wasn't better documented and so long after the time when people were still enslaved.

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https://storycorps.org/stories/gwen-moten-150626/
Gwen Moten recounts being best friends with Denise McNair (one of the 4 girls killed in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama.  Ms. Moten mentions they were so close that their teacher had to separate them in school, and they had played together the night before the tragedy and her last words to her friend were, "I'll see you later."  That happened in September of 1963, but 51 years later after hearing about the shooting at the Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston on June 15, 2015, Ms. Moten began to "shake and cry", recounting this as just another "link of death".  She wonders, as so many of us do, "When will we break this link?"
This also brought the Chauvin trial to mind as we witnessed the 61 year old Charles McMillian being moved to tears in his testimony of seeing yet another "link" of unfair death.  These, and other stories break my heart, and I continuously wonder how we can help break this continued cycle.

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This was a brief but beautiful story about two daughters spending time connecting with their father in his last days of life. It's so interesting because on the one hand, their are aspects of their upbringing and connection to their dad that I can't relate to, but the one thing that resonated with me so much is that one of the daughters made her dad a meal she knew he would really love and fed it to him to show how much she loved him. Making good food and sharing a meal with people we care about speaks to so many of us regardless of culture/race and it really reminded me that for all of our differences and uniqueness, this is something that really brings us together as humans.

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Juan Reyes grew up in a small town in Mexico and immigrated to the United States in the 1940s. He eventually settled in Texas, where he raised his two daughters, Estela and Candi Reyes.

In Juan's later years, his struggle with diabetes intensified, and he became more sick. At StoryCorps in El Paso, Estela and Candi remembered caring for him in his final days.

Top Photo: Candi and Estela Reyes at their StoryCorps interview in El Paso, Texas in 2012. By Anaid Reyes for StoryCorps.

Bottom Photo: Juan Reyes in the early 1970s. Courtesy of the Reyes family.
Originally aired June 14th, 2019, on NPR's Morning Edition.

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For a Father's Last Meal, the Main Ingredient Is Love

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Juan Reyes grew up in a small town in Mexico and immigrated to the United States in the 1940s. He eventually settled in Texas, where he raised his two daughters, Estela and Candi Reyes. In Juan's later years, his struggle with diabetes intensified, and he became more sick.

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i listened to a Storycorps story about Edwin Pratt, a Seattle Civil Rights leader who was murdered in his home. It makes me think about all the people of color who were brave enough to stand up and advocate for change and ended up paying with their lives. And I think about how the injustices continue and people are still dying just because of the color of their skin. My heart aches.

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Establishing Hawaii’s First Sugar Plantation

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Establishing Hawaii’s First Sugar Plantation

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This first hand account from a white man, sent to Hawaii to establish a sugar plantation and introduce free labor really shows the entitlement and self-righteousness that white male Americans felt. He comments that the Chief and the "Natives" have been such an annoyance and that he is simply trying to free them from their backward way of doing things. It is interesting/disturbing how ingrained that belief was - white supremacy, as well as the superiority of capitalism, that you could go to a place completely foreign and unknown, and assume you know best.

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Printable Version

Establishing Hawaii's First Sugar Plantation
Digital History ID 12

Author: William Hooper
Date:1836

Annotation: William Hooper was sent by Boston merchants to develop Hawaii's first sugar plantation. His mission was not simply to produce sugar, but introduce "free labor" to the Islands.

Document: Just one year to day since I commenced work on this plantation, during which I have had more annoyances from the chiefs and difficulties with the natives (from the fact of this land being the first that has ever been cultivated , on the plan of free labour, at these islands) than I ever tho't it possible for one white man to bear, which, if followed up by other foreign residents, will eventually emancipate the natives from the miserable system of "chief labour" which has ever existed at these Islands, and which if not broken up, will be an effective preventitive to the progress of civilization, industry and national prosperity.... The tract of land in Koloa was [developed] after much pain...for the purpose of breaking up the system aforesaid or in other words to serve as an entering wedge...[to] upset the whole system.

Source: William Hooper diary quoted in Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore (Boston, 1989), 22.

Copyright 2019 Digital History

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Printable Version Establishing Hawaii's First Sugar Plantation Digital History ID 12 Author: William Hooper Date:1836 Annotation: William Hooper was sent by Boston merchants to develop Hawaii's first sugar plantation. His mission was not simply to produce sugar, but introduce "free labor" to the Islands.

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Jamal is overwhelmed about having a prison record and he could have spiraled down while imprisoned, also. Thanks goodness he has a caring and nurturing uncle who offers him unconditional love.

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I read an interview with an 83-year-old Black woman who helped CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) in Louisiana in the 1960s. She signed a letter advocating for voting rights for Black people and was arrested for "conspiracy against the mayor" with bail set at $4000. Later she went up to her former home of Chicago, IL to raise money to buy a car for CORE volunteers in Louisiana to use as part of their work. The interviewer asked her why she wasn't afraid of speaking up as some others were and she said she was too old, she didn't care! And she didn't have to worry about losing her job like younger people did. What a lady!

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I read about Cries-for-salmon who is described as " An Alaskan informant" as she described "childbirth, childrearing, and girlhood in that culture area." I found it interesting she is not identified by tribe. It was interesting to hear the division of gender roles, and how things such as childbirth and menstruation were treated. I found the cultural taboo around her menstruating (being forced to stay indoors in a small area of the home where she could hardly lay down, having to drink separate water, not being able to make eye contact with men) very interesting as there is still so much cultural taboo around periods all over the world - including in the United States.

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After reading George Takei's "They Called Us Enemy" I've been interested in the Japanese American experience in relation to World War II. Keiho Soga explains how quickly they were taken from home, forced to give up all property (homes and businesses) and were stuck in "apartments" that were mud, tar paper and pine boards. No heat, no space, bad and scarce food, no privacy or schools. It's a jarring look at what they went through as a reaction of social judgement- not because they personally had done anything wrong.

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Printable Version

Experiencing Internment
Digital History ID 46

Author: Keiho Soga
Date:

Annotation: For Japanese Americans, internment meant severe economic hardship, physical dislocation, and a sharp reordering of family roles. Some families were given as little as 48 hours to dispose of their homes, businesses, farms, and personal property, which were sold for a fraction of their worth. The internees were only allowed to take what they could carry. Even pets had to be left behind. Children with serious disabilities were barred from the camps. Mary Tsukamoto's son, Toyoki, who was blind and mentally retarded, was taken away by a social worker and died within a month. Japanese Americans remained in the camps for an average of 900 days.

The camps' barracks were built of tar paper over pine boards. When the pine dried, the floorboards separated, allowing dust to blow through. Wintertime temperatures in the camps sometimes fell to 30 degrees below zero, and the buildings were uninsulated. The "apartments" consisted of a single drafty room, averaging 16 by 20 feet, shared by an entire family. Nine members of Marge Tanwaki's extended family lived in a single room in the Amache Relocation Center in southeastern Colorado. Furnishings were limited to cots, blankets, and a light bulb. One young Japanese American described conditions in his family's camp:

The apartments, as the Army calls them, are stables...mud is everywhere...We have absolutely no fresh meat, vegetables, or butter. Mealtime queues extend for blocks; standing in a rainswept line, feet in the mud, for scant portions of canned wieners and boiled potatoes, hash...or beans...and stale bread.

The internees slept on cotton sacks stuffed with hay and fashioned furniture out of discarded crates. They used communal latrines, washed clothes by hand, and ate meals in a mess hall. Phones were forbidden and there were no stores. Food poisoning, measles, and pneumonia were rampant.

The internees' biggest complaints were a lack of privacy and proper schools for their children. Toilets, showers, and dining facilities were communal, precluding family privacy. Dining ceased to be a private family ritual, and strict parental control over children loosened. Children attended make-shift schools, lacking books, blackboards, and other teaching supplies. Students often had to sit on the floor. At one camp, physics was taught in a laundry room because it was the only available space with running water.

The internment camps tended to invert traditional roles and relationships within Japanese American families. Men and women, regardless of age, worked at interchangeable jobs paying $12 to $19 a month. Within the camps, influence shifted away from the older generation, the Issei, who had been born abroad, to the younger generation, the Nisei, who had been born in the United States. A disproportionate share of those who were the released early from the camps was from the younger generation.

Document: Like a dog
I am commanded
At bayonet point.
My heart is inflamed
With burning anguish.

Source: Poem by Keiho Soga, in Jiro Nakano and Kay Nakano, Poets Behind Barbed Wire (Honolulu, 1983)

Copyright 2019 Digital History

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Printable Version Experiencing Internment Digital History ID 46 Author: Keiho Soga Date: Annotation: For Japanese Americans, internment meant severe economic hardship, physical dislocation, and a sharp reordering of family roles. Some families were given as little as 48 hours to dispose of their homes, businesses, farms, and personal property, which were sold for a fraction of their worth.

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I read about Wednesdays in Mississippi (WIMS)--a group that "brought interracial, interfaith teams of northern middle-aged, middle- and upper-class women to Jackson, Mississippi, in the summer of 1964 to meet with their southern counterparts." While I am somewhat familiar with activists of Freedom Summer, I was completely unaware of this group of northern women who operated on the "principle that the team members’ gender, age, and class would serve as an entrée to southern women who had criticized and dismissed other civil rights activists as radicals." I think we are used to hearing about the "louder" and more "active" activists that it was interesting to learn at least a little about this group of women who worked together to bring women together using a more "quiet" approach. It was a short piece and I'm interested to learn more about this program.

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I listened to Francine Anderson's story about the time her black father ran out of gas when she was 5 years old. After pushing his car to the gas station, he was told he couldn't buy gas there. Francine focuses on how that experience affected her father and how she viewed her father differently after that experience.  I also found it interesting that when she shares the story with black people, they get a different message out of it than the white people with whom she shares her story.

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Francine Anderson remembers a night during the 1950s when her family ran out of gas on a rural road in the Jim Crow south.

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River of Blood edited by Richard Cahan and Micheal Williams

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River of Blood edited by Richard Cahan and Micheal Williams

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The editors collected photos from the Library of Congress' Slave Narratives online collection to create an oversize book. I found this book extremely moving though it does not cover one person's in depth but offers a "photo" of many different lives. These interviews and and photos were collected in the 1930's. To me it was very moving, because thousands of formerly enslaved people were alive less than one hundred years ago. The trauma of slavery isn't really that long ago. I know that the curriculum is calling for online resources, but I can't help but recommend this print book.

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I enjoyed listening to the recollections of a family on the sacrifices and many acts of love demonstrated by their beloved Lola, a Philippines-born immigrant. This story was more positive than much of what I read in the History of Race and Racism module. However, I appreciate it for its focus on simple acts of love, and how a grandmother's sacrifice had a profound effect on this multi-generational family. Having just finished this module, it is not lost on me that the dire circumstances Lola grew up in were due in no small part to her race and immigrant status.

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To Crescenciana Tan, family meant everything. Her grandchildren called her Lola. And they grew up hearing stories about where she came from and the many sacrifices she made for loved ones.

Lola was born in the Philippines and survived the Japanese Occupation of World War II. After her father passed away, Lola, the youngest of four siblings, started working to support the family. She worked the rice fields in the hot sun. She rode to market in a cart pulled by water buffalo to sell dry goods. And when she became a parent herself, Lola left home to work as a servant to earn money for her children.

Photo: (L) Crescenciana "Lola" Tan with grandson Kenneth and daughter Olivia at their home in San Jose, California in 1990. (R) The family in Oakland, California in 2016. Courtesy of Kenneth Tan.

Eventually, after years of labor, Lola came to the U.S. in 1982 to help raise her grandchildren. She passed away in 2016, at the age of 96. She spent her final years in the company of her grandson Kenneth, who has immortalized her stories in the artwork featured here.

This October Kenneth came to StoryCorps in San Jose, California to tell his mother Olivia about the greatest lesson Lola ever taught him.

'Dancing Shoes': One evening during the Japanese Occupation of the Philippines, Lola attended a dance at a neighboring village. In the middle of the dance, someone alerted the crowd that Japanese soldiers had arrived. Fleeing for safety, Lola hopped onto the back of a cart and made her way home. Along the way, she dropped one of her red shoes. Painting courtesy of Kenneth Tan.

Top photo: Y oung Crescenciana working as a cashier at a local grocery in the Philippines in 1960. Courtesy of Kenneth Tan.

Bottom photo: (L) Olivia Tan Ronquillo and her mother Crescenciana at the Manila Airport in 1965. (R) Olivia and mother in Oakland, CA in 2016. Courtesy of Kenneth Tan.
Originally aired November 27, 2020, on NPR's Morning Edition.

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Lola's Work: What a Grandmother Taught Her Family About Love

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Grandma Crescenciana was no stranger to sacrificing for family. Her grandchildren called her Lola. They grew up hearing stories about her life in the Philippines and how hard she worked to survive. Four years after Lola passed, her grandson Kenneth came to StoryCorps to tell his mother Olivia about the greatest lesson Lola ever taught...

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I listened to a story about a young woman who was incarcerated during her pregnancy and had her baby during her time in jail. It was an emotional piece to listen to as the interviewer was her young son.

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What does freedom mean to you? What does justice mean for us? Tell me about the first time you were aware the justice system existed. How has it affected your life? Do you think others understand the justice system the way you do? What changes would you like to see in the system overall? What do you wish others knew about it? What do you want for your family? What are your hopes for the future? Through the Justice Project, StoryCorps preserves and amplifies the stories of people who have been directly impacted by mass incarceration. We launched the initiative in 2016 to document the experiences of youth of color involved with the juvenile or adult justice system in New York City, and people of all ages affected by jail incarceration across the U.S. We are working to ensure that first-person voices from this era of mass incarceration are preserved in the historical record and amplified locally and nationwide.
Featured Stories from the Justice Project

"I remember feeling this tremendous weight of fear of what my life would be like."

Advisory Group

Piper Anderson, Founder/Chief Creative Strategist at Create Forward (New York, NY)

Jarrett M. Drake, Digital Archivist at Princeton University Archives (Princeton, NJ)

Marc Mauer, Executive Director at the Sentencing Project (Washington, D.C.)

Abraham Paulos, Executive Director at Families for Freedom (New York, NY)

Featured Partners

Bronx Freedom Fund (Bronx, NY)

Cabrini Green Legal Aid (Chicago, IL)

Create Forward's Mass Story Lab (New York, NY)

Community Connections for Youth (Bronx, NY)

Friends of the Island Academy (New York, NY)

Just Leadership USA (New York, NY)

Osborne Association (Bronx & Brooklyn, NY)

Precious Blood Ministries (Chicago, IL)

Save Our Streets (Brooklyn, NY)

Truth-Telling Project (Ferguson, MO)

Learn more about partnerships

Contact us at JusticeProject@storycorps.org, or call us at 646.723.7020 Ext. 30.

Support for StoryCorps Justice Project
Original support provided by

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What does freedom mean to you? What does justice mean for us? Tell me about the first time you were aware the justice system existed. How has it affected your life? Do you think others understand the justice system the way you do? What changes would you like to see in the system overall?

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After reading the history of prisoner slavery in Post-Reconstruction era, (a part of history I wasn't really aware of or was not emphasized), I can only imagine the generations of angry defeat mixed with shame and self-hate that BIPOC carry with them today because of the prison system. Jamal Faison talks about the "tremendous weight of fear" he felt in prison and continued to carry with him once out. And how many young men were not as lucky as Jamal to have an uncle who walked alongside him and kept lifting him up and reminding him of his self-worth and potential.

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The Ghost Dance and the Wounded Knee Massacre

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The Ghost Dance and the Wounded Knee Massacre

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I explored the "Native American Voices" resource. I was disappointed at how many resources were actually white accounts of their observations of Native Americans/white accounts of historical events. There were some first-person perspectives, but they were not the majority. One that really struck me was "The Ghost Dance and the Wounded Knee Massacre" by Masse Hadjo, a member of the Sioux. He wrote this article for the Chicago Tribune in 1890. He defends the Ghost Dance religion in the face of forced government assimilation and makes on-point commentary of the hypocritical Christianity practiced by most whites.

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Printable Version

The Ghost Dance and the Wounded Knee Massacre
Digital History ID 702

Author: Masse Hadjo
Date:1890

Annotation: In the Chicago Tribune, Masse Hadjo, a member of the Sioux, defended the Ghost Dance religion.

Document: You say, "If the United States army would kill a thousand or so of the dancing Indians there would be no more trouble." I judge by the above language you are a "Christian," and are disposed to do all in your power to advance the cause of Christ. You are doubtless a worshiper of the white man's Saviour, but are unwilling that the Indians should have a "Messiah" of their own.

The Indians have never taken kindly to the Christian religion as preached and practiced by the whites. Do you know why this is the case? Because the Good Father of all has given us a better religion--a religion that is all good and no bad, a religion that is adapted to our wants. You say if we are good, obey the Ten Commandments and never sin any more, we may be permitted eventually to sit upon a white rock and sing praises to God forevermore, and look down upon our heathen fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters who are howling in hell.

It won't do. The code of morals as practiced by the white race will not compare with the morals of the Indians. We pay no lawyers or preachers, but we have not one-tenth part of the crime that you do. If our Messiah does come we shall not try to force you into our belief. We will never burn innocent women at the stake or pull men to pieces with horses because they refuse to join in our ghost dances....You are anxious to get hold of our Messiah, so you can put him in irons. This you may do--in fact, you may crucify him as you did that other one, but you cannot convert the Indians to the Christian religion until you contaminate them with the blood of the white man. The white man's heaven is repulsive to the Indian nature, and if the white man's hell suits you, why, you keep it. I think there will be white rogues enough to fill it.

Source: "An Indian on the Messiah Craze," Chicago Tribune, December 5, 1890.

Copyright 2019 Digital History

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Printable Version The Ghost Dance and the Wounded Knee Massacre Digital History ID 702 Author: Masse Hadjo Date:1890 Annotation: In the Chicago Tribune, Masse Hadjo, a member of the Sioux, defended the Ghost Dance religion. Document: You say, "If the United States army would kill a thousand or so of the dancing Indians there would be no more trouble."

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A group of girls were locked up for protesting at an anti-segregation rally. Peaceful. One girl was pregnant. They were detained, without parents knowing where they were for over two months. They were treated less than human for a peaceful protest. A right we have under the 5th amendment.

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In July of 1963, a group of African American protesters were arrested during a series of non-violent, anti-segregation demonstrations in Americus, Georgia. More than a dozen girls, some as young as 12, were taken to the county jail before being transferred almost 30 miles away to the Lee County Stockade - a small cement building being used as a makeshift jail.

And although the girls were never formally charged with a crime, they'd stay there for nearly two months without their parents' knowledge. One guard watched over them in this run-down structure with barred windows, a broken toilet, and very little food.

The girls were released after nearly two months when discovered their location and sent a photographer, who published photos of the living conditions at the stockade. Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

More than fifty years later, a few of the Leesburg girls, now women in their sixties, sat down for StoryCorps to shine a light on this overlooked moment in civil rights history.

Also Verna Hollis, who was pregnant while imprisoned at the stockade, sat down for StoryCorps with her now-adult son, Joseph Jones III.

Top photo: (From left) Emmarene Kaigler-Streeter (who also recorded an interview with StoryCorps), Carol Barner-Seay, Shirley Green-Reese and Diane Bowens in 2016 outside the stockade building in Leesburg, Georgia where they were jailed as teenagers. By Alletta Cooper for StoryCorps.

Middle photo: Young women are held in the Leesburg Stockade after being arrested for demonstrating in Americus, GA. They have no beds or sanitary facilities. From left to right: Melinda Jones Williams (13), Laura Ruff Saunders (13), Mattie Crittenden Reese, Pearl Brown, Carol Barner Seay (12), Annie Ragin Laster (14), Willie Smith Davis (15), Shirley Green (age 14, later Dr. Shirley Green-Reese), and Billie Jo Thornton Allen (13). Seated: Verna Hollis (15). Photo by Danny Lyon for Magnum Photos.

Bottom photo: Joseph Jones III with his mother, Verna Hollis, in Americus, Georgia after their StoryCorps recording in 2016. Verna Hollis died the following year. By Alletta Cooper for StoryCorps.

Originally aired January 18, 2019, on NPR's Morning Edition.

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The Leesburg Stockade Girls, a Forgotten Moment in Civil Rights History

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In 1963, more than a dozen African American girls, including Carol Barner-Seay, Shirley Reese, Diane Bowens, and Verna Hollis, were arrested for protesting segregation in Americus, Georgia. At StoryCorps, they remember being held in a small makeshift jail for nearly two months.

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Edward Bok is an immigrant from the Netherlands who reflects on what it means to be an American to the foreign born versus to the American born. His perspective is eye opening in that he wonders who is the better American. One who is foreign born or one who is American born. He claims that schools are not equipped to teach to those who are not American by birth and even then, they do a poor job of educating the young on what it means to be American. His experience with the political parties in his attempt to find out what it means to vote is so sad. His view of America leaves me embarrassed and wondering how it can be fixed. Sadly, while American touts freedom of speech, we are not consistent in enforcing it. After going through this module, Bok's point about America making laws and then not enforcing them and how policemen have become objects of fear instead of objects of safety, resonated strongly with me. There is so much history in America to be ashamed of and more people need to stand up and speak for the equal rights of all. After all, America is supposed to be the land of opportunity-why should anyone be denied that opportunity?

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Story Corps - Jerome Smith and Carol Bebelle

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Story Corps - Jerome Smith and Carol Bebelle

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A man talks about a defining moment in his life on a New Orleans streetcar before the Civil Rights era. His father had torn the divider down between blacks and whites and so he did the same a few months later. It caused a hostile situation and he was eventually slapped by an older black woman. This woman followed him out and down the street where she then told him not to stop. She said, "Don't ever quit." This moment opened the door for him to be the person he is today.

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"The Pilgrims from the Indian Perspective" discusses the moral and religious hypocrisy of the settlers, who made treaties and laws with the Native Americans nearby, but refused to abide by it. When they were sick and starving, they relied on the Native Americans for food and work, but often stole from them. When individuals committed crimes, they received harsh punishments if they were Native American, but were either protected or given lesser sentences if they were settlers. Anyone who spoke of the double standard was punished. This is sadly very applicable to today's problems, with the double-standard of many supposed Christians or conservatives.

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Printable Version

The Pilgrims from the Indian Perspective
Digital History ID 699

Author: William Apes
Date:1636

Annotation: In his autobiography, William Apes, a Pequot, offers an Indian perspective on the early history of relations between the English colonists and the native peoples of New England.

Document: December 1620, the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, and without asking liberty from anyone, they possessed themselves of a portion of the country, and built themselves houses, and then made a treaty and commanded them [the Indians] to accede to it.... And yet for their kindness and resignation towards the whites, they were called savages, and made by God on purpose for them to destroy....

The next we present before you are things very appalling. We turn our attention to dates, 1623, January and March, when Mr. Weston Colony, came very near to starving to death; some of them were obliged to hire themselves to the Indians, to become their servants in order that they might live. Their principal work was to bring wood and water; but not being contented with this, many of the white sought to steal the Indians' corn; and because the Indians complained of it, and through their complaint, some one of their number being punished, as they say, to appease the savages. Now let us see who the greatest savages were; the person that stole the corn was a stout athletic man, and because of this, they wished to spare him, and take an old man who was lame and sickly...and because they thought he would not be of so much use to them, he was, although innocent of any crime, hung in his stead....Another act of humanity for Christians, as they call themselves, that one Capt. Standish, gathering some fruit and provisions, goes forward with a black and hypocritical heart, and pretends to prepare a feast for the Indians; and when they sit down to eat, they seize the Indians' knives hanging around their necks, and stab them in the heart....

The Pilgrims promised to deliver up every transgressor of the Indian treaty, to them, to be punished according to their laws, and the Indians were to do likewise. Now it appears that an Indian had committed treason, by conspiring against the king's [Massasoit's] life, which is punishable with death...and the Pilgrims refused to give him, although by their oath of alliance they had promised to do so....

In this history of Massasoit we find that his own head men were not satisfied with the Pilgrims; that they looked upon them to be intruders, and had a wish to expel those intruders out of their coast. A false report was made respecting one Tisquantum, that he was murdered by an Indian.... Upon this news, one Standish, a vile and malicious fellow, took fourteen of his lewd Pilgrims with him...at midnight....At that late hour of the night, meeting at house in the wilderness, whose inmates heard--Move not, upon the peril of your life. At the same time some of the females were so frightened, that some of them undertook to make their escape, upon which they were fired upon.... These Indians had not done one single wrong act to the whites, but were as innocent of any crime, as any beings in the world. But if the real suffers say one word, they are denounced, as being wild and savage beasts....

We might suppose that meek Christians had better gods and weapons than cannon. But let us again review their weapons to civilize the nations of this soil. What were they: rum and powder, and ball, together with all the diseases, such as the small pox, and every other disease imaginable; and in this way sweep of thousands and tens of thousands.

Source: William Apes, Eulogy on King Philip (Boston, 1836), 10 ff.

Copyright 2019 Digital History

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Printable Version The Pilgrims from the Indian Perspective Digital History ID 699 Author: William Apes Date:1636 Annotation: In his autobiography, William Apes, a Pequot, offers an Indian perspective on the early history of relations between the English colonists and the native peoples of New England.

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"You can hear the shopping cart coming down the sidewalk."                          Herman Travis  and Robert Cochran

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"You can hear the shopping cart coming down the sidewalk."                          Herman Travis  and Robert Cochran

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Herman Travis goes to the grocery store in his neighborhood and delivers groceries to the homes of the elderly in his community including Robert Cochran. HE shares that in the beginning, people were so afraid, they didn't allow him into their homes, but eventually the sound of his grocery cart coming down the sidewalk was a sound they looked forward to. What a beautiful way to serve your community.

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The look back at school integration is a realistic sad perspective.  Woman describes her fear on when the KKK enter her classroom.  Much and Little have changed.

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This was an extremely powerful interview with Ms. Ester, who witnessed the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. after hearing his speech the day before.  Her story was so powerful, and this quote struck me: "I think every time I want to believe that Dr. King’s life changed everything… I’ve witnessed George Floyds and so many others that have lost their lives. But you think that that’s gonna destroy his dream?"
It's so easy to feel disheartened when doing anti-racism work. This lifted me.

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In 1968, more than 1,300 Black sanitation workers began to strike in Memphis, Tennessee, demanding better working conditions and fair wages. Clara Jean Ester, then a 19-year-old college junior, joined the protests in solidarity.

Photo: A young Clara Jean Ester, who graduated from Memphis State College, now known as the University of Memphis, in 1969. Courtesy of Clara Jean Ester.

When Clara wasn't in school, every spare moment she had was spent on the picket lines or at the strike headquarters, Clayborn Temple. And later that year, Clara witnessed Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. give his final speech in Memphis. The next day, she was at the Lorraine Motel when Dr. King was assassinated.

Clara, now 72, sat down for StoryCorps in Mobile, Alabama, to talk about bearing witness to Dr. King's final days.

Top Photo: The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. stands on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, TN, a day before he was assassinated at approximately the same place. From left to right, Hosea Williams, Jesse Jackson, King, and Ralph Abernathy. (AP Photo/Charles Kelly, File).
Originally aired January 15, 2021, on NPR's Morning Edition.

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"He Did His Own Eulogy": An Eyewitness Recalls Dr. King's Final Speech

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In 1968, more than 1,300 Black sanitation workers began to strike in Memphis, Tennessee, demanding better working conditions and fair wages. Clara Jean Ester, then a 19-year-old college junior, joined the protests in solidarity. Photo: A young Clara Jean Ester, who graduated from Memphis State College, now known as the University of Memphis, in 1969.

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"Why Do You Take Me To Protests So Much?" - StoryCorps Griot Interview

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"Why Do You Take Me To Protests So Much?" - StoryCorps Griot Interview

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I enjoyed listening to Aidan Sykes interview his dad, Albert, particularly on the topic of protest activism in the black community and why his father would involve him.

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When 9-year-old Aidan Sykes sat down to interview his dad, Albert Sykes, he had some serious questions. Albert, who runs an education nonprofit and mentors kids who are struggling in school, talked to Aidan about Black fatherhood, and his hopes for his son's future.

Aidan interviewed Albert at StoryCorps in Jackson, Mississippi.

Top Photo: Albert and Aidan Sykes at their StoryCorps interview in Jackson, Mississippi in 2015. By Vanessa Gonzalez-Block for StoryCorps.

Middle Photo: Albert and Aidan Sykes in Jackson, Mississippi, 2020. Photo courtesy of Albert Sykes.
Originally aired March 20, 2015, on NPR's Morning Edition. Rebroadcast on June 5, 2020, on the same program.

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'Why Do You Take Me To Protests So Much?': A Black Father Answers Tough Questions From His Son

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When 9-year-old Aidan Sykes sat down to interview his dad, Albert Sykes, he had some serious questions. Albert, who runs an education nonprofit and mentors kids who are struggling in school, talked to Aidan about Black fatherhood, and his hopes for his son's future. Aidan interviewed Albert at StoryCorps in Jackson, Mississippi.

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I explored the march on washington and was struck by how similar it was to this past summer.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/march-on-washington-eyewitnesses-to-history-photos_n_3792414?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAACIjRs3eiUTvCyfi7O1IlDfdcp7C-mgGbu21EihAGsPWhtWXCPAvU4G6A4O12taAc-0rCp1H1X5JC4j2C5SW8fg_Z5W9zBRyOdiUw38gk3kD89aXb0tKAiHxw7sAqOuJjCBeoCGkasnW1aePcxH5MuAiBxTReIrmcHaJ56PZPlbe

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https://madeintoamerica.org/no-return-trip-lithuania/
This is the story of a mother and her 3-year-old coming to America to visit relatives in 1939. She was planning to stay only 6 months and then return to her husband and home in Lithuania. However, her husband stopped wriiting back. She later found out that he and his entire family were killed by Nazis. She stayed in America with her daughter and eventually remarried another Jewish man. This story of loss and tragedy really struck me as my father's family immigrated from Lithuania. I don't know any details of their relocation. It moves me to want to uncover my family's story of immigration to America.

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Early Spanish Account of Plains Indians (1542)

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Early Spanish Account of Plains Indians (1542)

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I found it interesting in this paragraph about the first impressions of this tribe that the author, Pedro de Castenada, mentions the similarities this group of people has with what de Castenada is familiar with from where he lives. He writes about their houses and dogs, and how they utilize Bison (what he refers to as "cows"). I thought it was incredibly interesting to read this perspective that doesn't mention the Indians as being less than or "savages". It appears to be a simple report on how they lived with similarities and differences pointed out.
Digital History (uh.edu)

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The story of the pilgrims has gone through many transformations for me, from the joyous dressing up and hosting a feast for parents in Kindergarten, to when I started to hear the truth of what actually happened in college. This narrative captures specific events that happened after the pilgrims arrived, and disrupts the stereotype that the tribes encountering them were naive or docile. They were the victims of abuse, violence, and malice at the hands of the pilgrims, and some of them wanted to retaliate. It also breaks the narrative of innocence in regards to the settlers that we learn about when we're young. They were sneaky, cruel, and nearly always un-Christian. It's easy to see that, even from the very start, the arrival of Europeans marked the beginning of pain, hardship, violence and trauma for the Indigenous people who had the misfortune of encountering them.

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Printable Version

The Pilgrims from the Indian Perspective
Digital History ID 699

Author: William Apes
Date:1636

Annotation: In his autobiography, William Apes, a Pequot, offers an Indian perspective on the early history of relations between the English colonists and the native peoples of New England.

Document: December 1620, the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, and without asking liberty from anyone, they possessed themselves of a portion of the country, and built themselves houses, and then made a treaty and commanded them [the Indians] to accede to it.... And yet for their kindness and resignation towards the whites, they were called savages, and made by God on purpose for them to destroy....

The next we present before you are things very appalling. We turn our attention to dates, 1623, January and March, when Mr. Weston Colony, came very near to starving to death; some of them were obliged to hire themselves to the Indians, to become their servants in order that they might live. Their principal work was to bring wood and water; but not being contented with this, many of the white sought to steal the Indians' corn; and because the Indians complained of it, and through their complaint, some one of their number being punished, as they say, to appease the savages. Now let us see who the greatest savages were; the person that stole the corn was a stout athletic man, and because of this, they wished to spare him, and take an old man who was lame and sickly...and because they thought he would not be of so much use to them, he was, although innocent of any crime, hung in his stead....Another act of humanity for Christians, as they call themselves, that one Capt. Standish, gathering some fruit and provisions, goes forward with a black and hypocritical heart, and pretends to prepare a feast for the Indians; and when they sit down to eat, they seize the Indians' knives hanging around their necks, and stab them in the heart....

The Pilgrims promised to deliver up every transgressor of the Indian treaty, to them, to be punished according to their laws, and the Indians were to do likewise. Now it appears that an Indian had committed treason, by conspiring against the king's [Massasoit's] life, which is punishable with death...and the Pilgrims refused to give him, although by their oath of alliance they had promised to do so....

In this history of Massasoit we find that his own head men were not satisfied with the Pilgrims; that they looked upon them to be intruders, and had a wish to expel those intruders out of their coast. A false report was made respecting one Tisquantum, that he was murdered by an Indian.... Upon this news, one Standish, a vile and malicious fellow, took fourteen of his lewd Pilgrims with him...at midnight....At that late hour of the night, meeting at house in the wilderness, whose inmates heard--Move not, upon the peril of your life. At the same time some of the females were so frightened, that some of them undertook to make their escape, upon which they were fired upon.... These Indians had not done one single wrong act to the whites, but were as innocent of any crime, as any beings in the world. But if the real suffers say one word, they are denounced, as being wild and savage beasts....

We might suppose that meek Christians had better gods and weapons than cannon. But let us again review their weapons to civilize the nations of this soil. What were they: rum and powder, and ball, together with all the diseases, such as the small pox, and every other disease imaginable; and in this way sweep of thousands and tens of thousands.

Source: William Apes, Eulogy on King Philip (Boston, 1836), 10 ff.

Copyright 2019 Digital History

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Printable Version The Pilgrims from the Indian Perspective Digital History ID 699 Author: William Apes Date:1636 Annotation: In his autobiography, William Apes, a Pequot, offers an Indian perspective on the early history of relations between the English colonists and the native peoples of New England.

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Slave Narrative Project, Vol. 2, Arkansas, Part 1, Abbott-Byrd

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Slave Narrative Project, Vol. 2, Arkansas, Part 1, Abbott-Byrd

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I looked through the LOC Slave Narrative Projects, and read in-depth one interview with Silas Abbott. It was interesting, because it talked about the dynamic he had being friend's with the children of his family's owners, and also the relationships between his family and the other slaves on the plantation. As he is being interviewed as a former slave, he also has unique perspectives into the mentally surrounding work, as felt by younger generations.

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About this Item

About this Item

Title

Federal Writers' Project: Slave Narrative Project, Vol. 2, Arkansas, Part 1, Abbott-Byrd

Created / Published

November-December 1938

Genre

Interviews

Notes

- Includes narratives by Dina Beard, Aunt Adeline, John W. H. Barnett, Josephine Ann Barnett, Lizzie Barnett, Silas Abbott, Lucian Abernathy, Laura Abromson, Spencer Barnett, Emma Barr, Robert Barr, Mose Banks, Emmett Beal, William Baltimore, Annie Beck, J.H. Beckwith, Enoch Beel, Sophie D. Belle, Cyrus Bellus, Bob Benford, Carrie Bradley Logan Bennet, George Benson, Kato Benton, James Bertrand, Alice Biggs, Matilda Bass, R.B. Anderson, Rose Adway, Liddie Aiken, Mattie Aldridge, Amsy O. Alexander, Diana Alexander, Fannie Alexander, Lucretia Alexander, Ed Allen, Lucindy Allison, Josephine Ames, Henry Banner, Nancy Anderson, Beatrice Black, Sarah Anderson, Selie Anderson, W.A. Anderson, Henry Anthony, Katie Arbery, Campbell Armstrong, Cora Armstrong, Lillie Baccus, Joseph Samuel Badgett, Jeff Bailey, James Baker, Charles Anderson, Maggie Broyles, F.H. Brown, George Brown, J.N. Brown, Lewis Brown, Lewis Brown, Mag Brown, Mary Brown, Mattie Brown, Molly Brown, Peter Brown, Mandy Billings, William Brown, Waters Brooks, Ida Bryant, Belle Buntin, Jeff Burgess, Norman Burkes, Will Burks, Sr., Adeline Burris, Jennie Butler, E.L. Byrd, Emmett Augusta Byrd, Casper Rumple, Lewis Brown, William Brown, Mal Boyd, Lewis Brown, Boston Blackwell, Henry Blake, Adeline Blakeley, Vera Roy Bobo, Liddie Boechus, Maggie (Bunny) Bond, Caroline Bonds, Rev. Frank T. Boone, J.F. Boone, Jonas Boone, Elcie Brown, Jack Boyd, Casie Jones Brown, George Braddox, George Braddox, Edward Bradley, Rachel Bradley, Elizabeth Brannon, Mack Brantley, Ellen Brass, Alice Bratton, Frank Briles, Mary Ann Brooks, Jane Birch, John Bowdry.

- Interviews were conducted by Beaulah Sherwood Hagg, Bernice Bowden, Irene Robertson, Mary D. Hudgins, Miss Sallie C. Miller, Mrs. Annie L. LaCotts, Mrs. Bernice Bowden, Mrs. Rosa B. Ingram, Mrs. Zillah Cross Peel, Pernella M. Anderson, R. S. Taylor, Samuel S. Taylor, Thomas Elmore Lucy, Velma Sample, and Watt McKinney.

- Interviews were conducted in Biscoe, Brinkley, Clarendon, Clarksville, Conway, De Valls Bluff, Des Arc, Dewitt, El Dorado, Fayetteville, Fordville, Forrest City, Hazen, Helena, Holly Grove, Hot Springs, Little Rock, Madison, Marianna, Marvell, North Little Rock, Paragould, Pine Bluff, Pine City, Russellville, St. Charles, West Memphis and Wheatley, Arkansas.

Medium

356 pages

Source Collection

Federal Writer's Project, United States Work Projects Administration (USWPA)

Repository

Manuscript Division

Digital Id

http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/mesn.021

Online Format

image

online text

Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.

Chicago citation style:

Federal Writers' Project: Slave Narrative Project, Vol. 2, Arkansas, Part 1, Abbott-Byrd. November-December, 1936. Manuscript/Mixed Material. https://www.loc.gov/item/mesn021/.

APA citation style:

(1936) Federal Writers' Project: Slave Narrative Project, Vol. 2, Arkansas, Part 1, Abbott-Byrd. November-December. [Manuscript/Mixed Material] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/mesn021/.

MLA citation style:

Federal Writers' Project: Slave Narrative Project, Vol. 2, Arkansas, Part 1, Abbott-Byrd. November-December, 1936. Manuscript/Mixed Material. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/mesn021/>.

More Manuscripts/Mixed Material like this

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Image 3 of Federal Writers' Project: Slave Narrative Project, Vol. 2, Arkansas, Part 1, Abbott-Byrd

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About this Item Title Federal Writers' Project: Slave Narrative Project, Vol. 2, Arkansas, Part 1, Abbott-Byrd Created / Published November-December 1938 Genre Interviews Notes - Includes narratives by Dina Beard, Aunt Adeline, John W. H. Barnett, Josephine Ann Barnett, Lizzie Barnett, Silas Abbott, Lucian Abernathy, Laura Abromson, Spencer Barnett, Emma Barr, Robert Barr, Mose Banks, Emmett Beal, William Baltimore, Annie Beck, J.H.

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As I listen to the stories of those who were incarcerated and their path since, I am so grateful for this place to share their stories, their struggles, and their successes. This project shines a line on our justice system and the struggles to escape its clutches.

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I read Are These Cats Red?, a pamphlet put out by The Conservative Society of America in 1969 accusing the Black Panthers of being Communists. It’s crazy how the same scare tactics and many of the same buzzwords are used today. It honestly barely seemed dated—if it wasn’t scanned in (obviously dating it) and you replaced Black Panthers with Black Lives Matter activists, I could see it circulating online now.

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This account of colonist history, along with multiple other accounts presented in this module, for the most part seem to be fairly consistent with what I encountered in school.

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Printable Version

Introduction: Pocahontas
Digital History ID 646

Annotation: Pocahontas is perhaps best known for rescuing Captain John Smith, the leader of the colonists in Jamestown, Virginia, from execution by her father's people. This passage about the life of Pocahontas demonstrates the difficulty of achieving an accommodation between the Indian and English ways of life.

Document: Hers is the one Indian name that every school child knows. Today, Pocahontas is best remembered as a romantic heroine who rescued Captain John Smith, the leader of the colonists in Jamestown, Virginia, from execution by her father's people. But her brief life also illustrates the broader collision of cultures that occurred when English settlers arrived in colonial America.

She was born about 1595, the daughter of the Indian chief Powhatan, the leader of a powerful Indian confederacy. Comprised of some 30 tribes totaling about 20,000 people, the confederacy occupied much of what is now known as Virginia. She was about twelve years old when the English established their first permanent America settlement at Jamestown. During her life, she would play a pivotal role in maintaining friendly relations between the Indians and the English.

According to a story told by Captain John Smith in his book True Relation of Virginia, Smith was captured by local Indians while exploring the countryside. Powhatan, the Indian chief, was about to have him executed with a stone club. But Pocahontas, Smith claimed, placed her head upon his and begged her father to spare him. No one knows for sure if the story is true, because Smith did not mention the incident in the earliest edition of his book. But it appears that Pocahontas remained Smith's friend, warning him of at least one Indian plan to attack Jamestown.

When she was about 14, she reportedly married a chief in her tribe. Temporarily, she disappears from the colonial records only to reappear in 1613, when she was lured aboard an English ship and held captive. It isaround this time that she is said to have fallen in love with her future husband.

Her marriage in 1614 to John Rolfe, the Virginia settler who learned how to cure tobacco, helped bring peace between the English and the Powhatan confederacy. In a letter to his patron, Rolfe addresses some of the concerns raised by his marriage, the first important English-Indian marriage in colonial American history.

This letter documents the mixture of motives that led him to marry someone (in his words) "whose education hath bin rude, her manners barbarous...and so discrepant in all nurtriture from my selfe." After her marriage, Pocahontas converted to Christianity and adopted an English name, Rebecca.

Pocahontas's story ends tragically. In 1616 she went with her husband to London to help raise funds for the struggling colonists in Virginia. The English celebrated her as an Indian "princess," but while she was waiting to return to America, she contracted smallpox and died in 1617--one of countless Indians to die from European diseases.

Her husband's life also had an unhappy ending. After her death, he returned to Virginia, where he became a member of the Virginia council. But in 1622, he was one of several hundred colonists killed during an uprising led by Pocahontas' uncle.

An important cultural intermediary between two cultures, Pocahontas's life demonstrates the difficulty of achieving an accommodation between the Indian and English ways of life.

Copyright 2019 Digital History

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Printable Version Introduction: Pocahontas Digital History ID 646 Annotation: Pocahontas is perhaps best known for rescuing Captain John Smith, the leader of the colonists in Jamestown, Virginia, from execution by her father's people. This passage about the life of Pocahontas demonstrates the difficulty of achieving an accommodation between the Indian and English ways of life.

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Federal Writers' Project: Slave Narrative Project, Vol. 16, Texas, Part 1, Adams-Duhon

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Federal Writers' Project: Slave Narrative Project, Vol. 16, Texas, Part 1, Adams-Duhon

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I read about the Adams-Duhon family and their experiences on a Texas farm. Fortuneately they were treated with an ounce of respect and dignity. They had adequate housing and food. They were allow

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"This is Ours Too"

Listening to this story just makes me sad for the little boy the father was and the young girl the daughter was. They were exposed to some very harsh realities of live for BIPOC people in this country. This family moved from Northern California to Iowa and the daughter was excited to be moving to a new place with "all this open sky" and she still experienced racism. She said her dad raised them to be hyper aware of their blackness and that America is their country and anywhere they go belongs to them. The dad shared a story about walking home from school and a white couple sitting on their porch with guns pretty much daring him to step on the grass. It really boggles my mind that some people can be so filled with hate because of someone's skin color, religion or gender identity but that definitely doesn't give anyone the right to express that disagreement with violence. Just because something is different, doesn't make it bad! If we took the time to actually get to know people and understand their background and culture, we'd be in a much better place. We are raising our children to be aware of their "blackness" as well so that they understand what it means to be black in America and that not everyone thinks their  "Black is Beautiful"

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Listening to the story of a man who was released from jail and then struggled with how he will make it in the "real world" now that he has a criminal record  made me look back on an experience I had. I was involved with sending a man to jail. I testified against him for stalking me and being involved with vandalizing my car. I said he should be in jail and that I feel safer with him there. Did I have a hand in messing up his life. He did mention how more prison time on his record would hurt his chances of gaining employment. He also called me racist. Am I?

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I listened to two stories from the Justice Project. The first story was from an inmate who was a teenager when her was in jail and he was interviewed by his nephew. The second story was from an inmate who was pregnant while in prison and she was interviewed by her daughter. I became really emotional while listening to both stories but in a different way. When I listened to the first story, I got emotional when he said that no matter how hard he tried to "pretty-up" or down play his jail sentence to employers or others in his community it still felt like his charge was written all over him and the one thing he was scared of was that his son would be embarrassed by him. This it made me cry and I also understood what he was saying, because as much as I hate to admit it often times society does judge you based on your past. When I listened to the second story that made me cry also but on a different level. When the speaker spoke about how she felt when she was pregnant in prison and that she felt alone and scared it really made me cry, because when your going through something like being pregnant you want the love and support of your family and friends. However when you are in prison you don't have that. She also expressed how after the baby was born the baby came back to the prison with her and she felt embarrassed by that. That touched me because when you are taking care of someone rather it's you child or a family member you want them to grow up in a safe place. What I learned from both experiences is that once you are incarcerated and after you are released from prison that charge stays with you no matter what type of charge it hinders the opportunities they get in life. However, what I also learned is that it does not have to define who that person is after they get out of prison and that they can still make a better life for themselves after prison.

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What does freedom mean to you? What does justice mean for us? Tell me about the first time you were aware the justice system existed. How has it affected your life? Do you think others understand the justice system the way you do? What changes would you like to see in the system overall? What do you wish others knew about it? What do you want for your family? What are your hopes for the future? Through the Justice Project, StoryCorps preserves and amplifies the stories of people who have been directly impacted by mass incarceration. We launched the initiative in 2016 to document the experiences of youth of color involved with the juvenile or adult justice system in New York City, and people of all ages affected by jail incarceration across the U.S. We are working to ensure that first-person voices from this era of mass incarceration are preserved in the historical record and amplified locally and nationwide.
Featured Stories from the Justice Project

"I remember feeling this tremendous weight of fear of what my life would be like."

Advisory Group

Piper Anderson, Founder/Chief Creative Strategist at Create Forward (New York, NY)

Jarrett M. Drake, Digital Archivist at Princeton University Archives (Princeton, NJ)

Marc Mauer, Executive Director at the Sentencing Project (Washington, D.C.)

Abraham Paulos, Executive Director at Families for Freedom (New York, NY)

Featured Partners

Bronx Freedom Fund (Bronx, NY)

Cabrini Green Legal Aid (Chicago, IL)

Create Forward's Mass Story Lab (New York, NY)

Community Connections for Youth (Bronx, NY)

Friends of the Island Academy (New York, NY)

Just Leadership USA (New York, NY)

Osborne Association (Bronx & Brooklyn, NY)

Precious Blood Ministries (Chicago, IL)

Save Our Streets (Brooklyn, NY)

Truth-Telling Project (Ferguson, MO)

Learn more about partnerships

Contact us at JusticeProject@storycorps.org, or call us at 646.723.7020 Ext. 30.

Support for StoryCorps Justice Project
Original support provided by

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What does freedom mean to you? What does justice mean for us? Tell me about the first time you were aware the justice system existed. How has it affected your life? Do you think others understand the justice system the way you do? What changes would you like to see in the system overall?

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I read an account of 14 Native American college students who occupied Alcatraz Island in 1968, arguing when Alcatraz Prison was closed that it should be returned to Native Americans as a symbol of how the US has treated them in this country. It was full of sarcasm but is also a very sad look at how Americans have stolen land from and disenfranchised the Indigenous Sovereign Nations living here prior to American Colonialization, leaving them infantilized in a system that underfunds systems supporting the descendants of these people.

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Author Keiho Soga
This is about the Internment of Japanese Americans and the physical dislocation of their families from their homes to internment camps.  They had to leave everything behind except one bag of items and were forced into a single drafty room apartment.  I am currently reading a fiction book Internment and it is similar situation to the Japanese Americans but it is a telling of Muslims being treated this way because of their faith.  It is scary to think of the past and the future that this could happen again if too many people sit by, say, and do nothing.

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DIGITAL HISTORY: WOMEN'S VOICES: I read Margaret Fuller's history - as she is a transcendentalist who has always inspired me. She is considered an early feminist who explored, and allowed others to explore, the topics of work, marriage, prostitution and reform. The irony, of course, is we are still talking and writing, singing, etc. about these topics and finding problems in equity.

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DIGITAL HISTORY: WOMEN'S VOICES: I read Margaret Fuller's history - as she is a transcendentalist who has always inspired me. She is considered an early feminist who explored, and allowed others to explore, the topics of work, marriage, prostitution and reform. The irony, of course, is we are still talking and writing, singing, etc. about these topics and finding problems in equity.

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Tell Me About Your Childhood in Mexico. I listed to several StoryCorps Historias episodes. This one really touched me. When the dad was a little boy his parents left him with an aunt and went to the U.S. to find work. He didn't see them again for 3.5 years! He told his daughter he used to sit at night crying for his mom. She asked him "didn't you see that she was doing this for you and not for herself" and his reply was that all he saw was that they'd left him. So powerful and disturbing...  Especially b/c I know this type of situation still continues today.

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Tell Me About Your Childhood in Mexico. I listed to several StoryCorps Historias episodes. This one really touched me. When the dad was a little boy his parents left him with an aunt and went to the U.S. to find work. He didn't see them again for 3.5 years! He told his daughter he used to sit at night crying for his mom. She asked him "didn't you see that she was doing this for you and not for herself" and his reply was that all he saw was that they'd left him. So powerful and disturbing...  Especially b/c I know this type of situation still continues today.

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I listened to an interview between a teacher and his former student, Noe Rueda, about what it was like for Noe to grow up extremely poor on Chicago's west side. Noe's mother made less than $8,000 a year and Noe would often sell things or work construction when he was as young as 5th grade to help his family make ends meet.

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Noe Rueda grew up poor in Little Village, a neighborhood on Chicago's West Side. When he was as young as 8 years old, Noe often relied on his entrepreneurial talents to help his mom and three siblings make ends meet. At StoryCorps, Noe tells his high school teacher Alex Fernandez about his childhood, and Alex shares his dreams for Noe's future.

"Making It" is part of StoryCorps' first-ever half-hour animated special, Listening Is an Act of Love, which premiered November 28, 2013 on the PBS documentary series, POV. Watch the special for free on our YouTube channel. Now also available for download on iTunes-or purchase the DVD!

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Nineteen-year-old Noe Rueda tells his former teacher, Alex Fernandez, about his clever money-making endeavors as a kid in Chicago's Little Village.

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StoryCorps: Shirley Darkeh and Ayim Darkeh

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StoryCorps: Shirley Darkeh and Ayim Darkeh

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I listened to a conversation between a mother and son. Ayim talked about experiencing racism at school and Shirley talked about how she tried to shield him from racism as much as she could. Ayim also spoke about his experiences as a black doctor, and how there are some subtle racist things that anger him.

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I searched the StoryCorps Griot collection and listened to a mother telling her son about growing up in a large Black suburb in Virginia where she helped integrate a local school. It was so powerful to hear how a small child felt it was up to her and her peers to ignore all the taunts and threats and do well at that school so she could
"represent our whole race."

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More than half a million Americans have recorded StoryCorps interviews across the country. Often, participants use the opportunity to pass vital wisdom and stories from one generation to the next. That was the case in this StoryCorps recording from Norfolk, Virginia.

Charisse Spencer came to StoryCorps with her teenage son Myles to tell him what it was like growing up in the 1960s in Cavalier Manor, Virginia - at the time, one of the largest black suburbs in the country.

Bottom Photo: Charisse Spencer (right) with her sister Carol in 1967. Courtesy of Charisse Spencer.
Originally aired April 27, 2018, on NPR's Morning Edition.

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A Mother on Growing Up in the 1960s in a Large Black Suburb

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More than half a million Americans have recorded StoryCorps interviews across the country. Often, participants use the opportunity to pass vital wisdom and stories from one generation to the next. That was the case in this StoryCorps recording from Norfolk, Virginia.

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https://storycorps.org/stories/they-called-him-papu-the-life-of-a-beloved-grandfather/

This conversation about their grandfather Papu was very touching. He came to the US from Mexico during World War II as part of the Bracero Program. He was very outgoing and loved to talk to make everyone laugh and smile. He worked hard his entire life picking fruit and laying railroad tracks. When he finally became a citizen, he would carry his passport with him everywhere he went because he was afraid that people would not think that he belonged in this country. I think his fear of being sent away is something that many naturalized citizens contend with on a daily basis. I think that is something that even people who are born here but seen as other also fear.

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https://storycorps.org/stories/jamal-faison-and-born-blackwell-160603/

This is a conversation between Jamal Faison and his uncle, Born Blackwell. Jamal reflects on his feelings as he was released from Rikers prison after 8 months following an arrest while home from college break for robbery. He says being a convicted felon doesn't just effect his ability to get a job. It effects every aspect of his life: will his son be embarrassed of him? He feels the fact that he's a felon is written all over him, limiting opportunities. Listening to this conversation, I have realized that Jamal's future is forever changed. While he "paid" for his crime with his 8 months in prison, he will continue paying for it for the rest of his life. His ability to obtain an education or a job has become limited. The way people perceive him has changed.

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I listed to both featured videos they provided. One was a conversation between a father and his daughter. She asked him what it was like for him to grow up in Mexico. They other was a conversation between two sisters discussing the last days of their father's life. What struck me in both videos was the simple, human connection between parents and their children and how important it is. This amplifies the horror of separating families at border crossings, a practice that should never be allowed.

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March (Autobiographical Graphic Novel Series by John Lewis)

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March (Autobiographical Graphic Novel Series by John Lewis)

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John Lewis wrote 3 graphic novels about his experiences in the civil rights movement. I read all three within the past five years. The illustrations depicted the brutal violence he and his collaborators faced standing up for civil rights. As a child of fairly-recent immigrants, I have no personal familial connection to US history prior to the 1970s. I was educated in predominantly-white schools from pre-school through graduate school, so I learned the mainstream version of history. Reading the graphic novels helped me understand the disparities and challenges John Lewis and other activists faced and the real danger they faced. I recommend reading these books.

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Genre/Form:

Autobiographical comics
Comic books, strips, etc
Graphic novels
Historical comics
History
Juvenile works
Comic books, strips, etc. Juvenile literature
Biography Comic books, strips, etc. Juvenile literature

Named Person:

John Lewis; John Lewis

Material Type:

Biography, Juvenile audience

All Authors / Contributors:

John Lewis; Andrew Aydin; Nate Powell; Top Shelf Productions (Marietta, Ga.),

ISBN:

9781603093835 1603093834

Description:

3 volumes : chiefly illustrations ; 31 cm

Responsibility:

John Lewis, Andrew Aydin ; Nate Powell.

Abstract:

This graphic novel trilogy is a first-hand account of Congressman John Lewis' lifelong struggle for civil and human rights, meditating in the modern age on the distance traveled since the days of Jim Crow and segregation. Rooted in Lewis' personal story, it also reflects on the highs and lows of the broader civil rights movement. Book one spans Lewis' youth in rural Alabama, his life-changing meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., the birth of the Nashville Student Movement, and their battle to tear down segregation through nonviolent lunch counter sit-ins, building to a stunning climax on the steps of City Hall. Book two takes place after the Nashville sit-in campaign. His commitment to justice and nonviolence has taken him from an Alabama sharecropper's farm to the halls of Congress, from a segregated schoolroom to the 1963 March on Washington D.C., and from receiving beatings from state troopers, to receiving the Medal of Freedom awarded to him by Barack Obama, the first African-American president.

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Get this from a library! March. [John Lewis; Andrew Aydin; Nate Powell; Top Shelf Productions (Marietta, Ga.),] -- This graphic novel trilogy is a first-hand account of Congressman John Lewis' lifelong struggle for civil and human rights, meditating in the modern age on the distance traveled since the days of Jim ...

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The capacity for forgiveness in this story is amazing to me. Mary Johnson's son was murdered by Oshea Israel when he was a teenager. Now she sees him as a son. They are neighbors. I keep thinking about the racist system that caused the confrontation between Oshea and Mary's son in the first place. And how big it is of Mary to recognize that people can change and that one action doesn't define someone's life.

So many Black people are not given this courtesy by our system. So many Black people who are just existing and trying to live and haven't done a single thing besides live haven't been given the courtesy of being treated as human and as equal and as worthy of opportunity and love.

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In 1993, Oshea Israel was a teenager in Minneapolis, Minnesota. One night at a party Oshea got into a fight, which ended when he shot and killed a teenager named Laramiun Byrd. Laranium was the only child of Mary Johnson.

A dozen years later, Mary went to the penitentiary to visit the man who murdered her son.

After serving 15 years, Oshea was released from prison. Soon after, Mary brought him to StoryCorps to talk about their friendship.

Mary Johnson founded From Death to Life, an organization that supports mothers who have lost children to homicide, and encourages forgiveness between families of murderers and victims.

Originally aired May 20, 2011, on NPR's Morning Edition.

Photos courtesy of Brian Mogren.

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In 1993, Oshea Israel was a teenager in Minneapolis, Minnesota. One night at a party Oshea got into a fight, which ended when he shot and killed a teenager named Laramiun Byrd. Laranium was the only child of Mary Johnson. A dozen years later, Mary went to the penitentiary to visit the man who murdered her son.

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I read an issue of a newspaper made by black University of Arkansas students in 1971. In this specific issue, they were highlighting a "Black Emphasis Week" which I think would be akin to Black History Month activities in schools. One of the days featured a rap battle with Huey Newton - could you imagine?? Another thing I noticed was an article talking about a prevalent motivation of black students to go to university so they could (essentially) provide a better life for their kids than their parents did. The author wrote, "The life we started out to ascertain isn't the way it was yesterday" and mentioned that the door to opportunities had a "combination lock," a phrase that resonated with me. That's definitely something that's relevant today, possibly more so than at the time this was published. It's hard to find a good opportunity without a college degree, and even if you have a college degree as a BIPOC, you can be denied a job for your hair, an "ethnic" name, etc...for simply existing.