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1937: Zora Neale Hurston publishes "Their Eyes Were Watching God"

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1937: Zora Neale Hurston publishes "Their Eyes Were Watching God"

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Zora Neale Hurston - Quotes, Books & Sweat

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Writer and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston was a fixture of the Harlem Renaissance and author of the masterwork ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God.’

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1918-mid 1930's: Harlem Renaissance in New York City, NY

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1918-mid 1930's: Harlem Renaissance in New York City, NY

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"The Harlem Renaissance was the development of the Harlem neighborhood in New York City as a black cultural mecca in the early 20th Century and the subsequent social and artistic explosion that resulted. Lasting roughly from the 1910s through the mid-1930s, the period is considered a golden age in African American culture, manifesting in literature, music, stage performance and art."

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Great Migration

The northern Manhattan neighborhood of Harlem was meant to be an upper-class white neighborhood in the 1880s, but rapid overdevelopment led to empty buildings and desperate landlords seeking to fill them.

In the early 1900s, a few middle-class Black families from another neighborhood known as Black Bohemia moved to Harlem, and other Black families followed. Some white residents initially fought to keep African Americans out of the area, but failing that many whites eventually fled.

How Did the Harlem Renaissance Start?

Outside factors led to a population boom: From 1910 to 1920, African American populations migrated in large numbers from the South to the North, with prominent figures like W.E.B. Du Bois leading what became known as the Great Migration.

In 1915 and 1916, natural disasters in the south put Black workers and sharecroppers out of work. Additionally, during and after World War I, immigration to the United States fell, and northern recruiters headed south to entice Black workers to their companies.

By 1920, some 300,000 African Americans from the South had moved north, and Harlem was one of the most popular destinations for these families.

Langston Hughes

This considerable population shift resulted in a Black Pride movement with leaders like Du Bois working to ensure that Black Americans got the credit they deserved for cultural areas of life. Two of the earliest breakthroughs were in poetry, with Claude McKay's collection Harlem Shadows in 1922 and Jean Toomer's Cane in 1923. Civil rights activist James Weldon Johnson's The Autobiography of An Ex-Colored Man in 1912, followed b y God's Trombones in 1927, left their mark on the world of fiction.

Novelist and du Bois protege Jessie Redmon Fauset's 1924 novel There Is Confusion explored the idea of Black Americans finding a cultural identity in a white-dominated Manhattan. Fauset was the literary editor of the NAACP magazine The Crisis and developed a magazine for Black children with Du Bois.

Sociologist Charles Spurgeon Johnson, who was integral in shaping the Harlem literary scene, used the debut party for There Is Confusion to organize resources to create Opportunity, the National Urban League magazine he founded and edited, a success that bolstered writers like Langston Hughes.

Hughes was at that party along with other promising Black writers and editors, as well as powerful white New York publishing figures. Soon many writers found their work appearing in mainstream magazines like Harper's.

Zora Neale Hurston

Anthropologist and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston courted controversy through her involvement with a publication called FIRE!!

Helmed by white author and Harlem writers' patron Carl Van Vechten and filled with works from prolific Black writers including Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston and Aaron Douglas, the magazine exoticized the lives of Harlem residents. Van Vechten's previous fiction stirred up interest among whites to visit Harlem and take advantage of the culture and nightlife there.

Though Van Vechten's work was condemned by older luminaries like DuBois, it was embraced by Hurston, Hughes and others.

Countee Cullen

Poetry, too, flourished during the Harlem Renaissance. Countee Cullen was 15 when he moved into the Harlem home of Reverend Frederick A. Cullen, the pastor of Harlem's largest congregation, in 1918.

The neighborhood and its culture informed his poetry, and as a college student at New York University, he obtained prizes in a number of poetry contests before going on to Harvard's master's program and publishing his first volume of poetry: Color. He followed it up with Copper Sun and The Ballad of the Brown Girl and went on to write plays as well as children's books.

Cullen received a Guggenheim fellowship for his poetry and married Nina Yolande, the daughter of W.E.B. DuBois. Their wedding was a major social event in Harlem. Cullen's reviews for Opportunity magazine, which ran under the column "Dark Tower," focused on works from the African-American literati and covered some of the biggest names of the age.

Harlem Renaissance Musicians

The music that percolated in and then boomed out of Harlem in the 1920s was jazz, often played at speakeasies offering illegal liquor. Jazz became a great draw for not only Harlem residents but outside white audiences also.

Some of the most celebrated names in American music regularly performed in Harlem- Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith, Fats Waller and Cab Calloway, often accompanied by elaborate floor shows. Tap dancers like John Bubbles and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson were also popular.

Cotton Club

With the groundbreaking new music came vibrant nightlife. The Savoy opened in 1927, an integrated ballroom with two bandstands that featured continuous jazz and dancing well past midnight, sometimes in the form of battling bands helmed by Fletcher Henderson, Jimmie Lunceford and King Oliver.

While it was fashionable to frequent Harlem nightlife, entrepreneurs realized that some white people wanted to experience Black culture without having to socialize with African Americans and created clubs to cater to them.

The most successful of these was the Cotton Club, which featured frequent performances by Ellington and Calloway. Some in the community derided the existence of such clubs, while others believed they were a sign that Black culture was moving toward greater acceptance.

Paul Robeson

The cultural boom in Harlem gave Black actors opportunities for stage work that had previously been withheld. Traditionally, if Black actors appeared onstage, it was in a minstrel show musical and rarely in a serious drama with non-stereotypical roles.

At the center of this stage revolution was the versatile Paul Robeson, an actor, singer, writer, activist and more. Robeson first moved to Harlem in 1919 while studying law at Columbia University and continually maintained a social presence in the area, where he was considered an inspirational but approachable figure.

Robeson believed that arts and culture were the best paths forward for Black Americans to overcome racism and make advances in a white-dominated culture.

Josephine Baker

Black musical revues were staples in Harlem, and by the mid-1920s had moved south to Broadway, expanding into the white world. One of the earliest of these was Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle's Shuffle Along, which launched the career of Josephine Baker.

White patron Van Vechten helped bring a more serious lack of stage work to Broadway, though largely the work of white authors. It wasn't until 1929 that a Black-authored play about Black lives, Wallace Thurman and William Rapp's Harlem, played Broadway.

Playwright Willis Richardson offered more serious opportunities for Black actors with several one-act plays written in the 1920s, as well as articles in Opportunity magazine outlining his goals. Stock companies like the Krigwa Players and the Harlem Experimental Theater also gave Black actors serious roles.

Aaron Douglas

The visual arts were never welcoming to Black artists, with art schools, galleries and museums shutting them out. Sculptor Meta Warrick Fuller, a protégé of Auguste Rodin, explored African American themes in her work and influenced Du Bois to champion Black visual artists.

The most celebrated Harlem Renaissance artist is Aaron Douglas, often called "the Father of Black American Art," who adapted African techniques to realize paintings and murals, as well as book illustrations.

Sculptor Augusta Savage's 1923 bust of Du Bois garnered considerable attention. She followed that up with small, clay portraits of everyday African Americans, and would later be pivotal to enlisting black artists into the Federal Art Project, a division of the Work Progress Administration (WPA).

James VanDerZee 's photography captured Harlem's daily life, as well as commissioned portraits in his studio that he worked to fill with optimism and separate philosophically from the horrors of the past.

Marcus Garvey

Black nationalist and leader of the Pan-Africanism movement Marcus Garvey was born in Jamaica but moved to Harlem in 1916 and began publishing the influential newspaper Negro World in 1918. His shipping company, Black Star Line, established trade between Africans in America, the Caribbean, South and Central America, Canada and Africa.

Garvey is perhaps best known for founding the Universal Negro Improvement Association, or UNIA, which advocated for "separate but equal" status for persons of African ancestry with the goal of establishing Black states around the world. Garvey was famously at odds with W.E.B. DuBois, who called him "the most dangerous enemy of the Negro race in America." His outspoken views also made him a target of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI.

Harlem Renaissance Ends

The end of Harlem's creative boom began with the stock market crash of 1929 and The Great Depression. It wavered until Prohibition ended in 1933, which meant white patrons no longer sought out illegal alcohol in uptown clubs.

By 1935, many pivotal Harlem residents had moved on to seek work. They were replaced by the continuous flow of refugees from the South, many requiring public assistance.

The Harlem Race Riot of 1935 broke out following the arrest of a young shoplifter, resulting in three dead, hundreds injured and millions of dollars in property damage. The riot was a death knell for the Harlem Renaissance.

Why Was the Harlem Renaissance Important?

The Harlem Renaissance was a golden age for African American artists, writers and musicians. It gave these artists pride in and control over how the Black experience was represented in American culture and set the stage for the civil rights movement.

Sources

Harlem Stomp! A Cultural History of the Harlem Renaissance. Laban Carrick Hill.
The Harlem Renaissance: Hub of African-American Culture, 1920-1930. Steven Watson.
The Harlem Renaissance: A Historical Dictionary For The Era. Bruce Kellner, Editor.

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Harlem Renaissance - Definition, Artists & How It Started | HISTORY

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The Harlem Renaissance was the development of the Harlem neighborhood in NYC as a black cultural mecca in the early 20th century and the subsequent social and artistic explosion that resulted. Lasting roughly from the 1910s through the mid-1930s, the period is considered a golden age in African American culture.

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1845: Frederick Douglass publishes the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

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1845: Frederick Douglass publishes the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

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"Abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass was born into slavery sometime around 1818 in Talbot County, Maryland. He became one of the most famous intellectuals of his time, advising presidents and lecturing to thousands on a range of causes, including women’s rights and Irish home rule."

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1892: Ida B. Wells, journalist, led an anti-lynching campaign in 1892

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1892: Ida B. Wells, journalist, led an anti-lynching campaign in 1892

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2020: Breonna Taylor was murdered in Louisville, KY (Police Involvement)

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2020: Breonna Taylor was murdered in Louisville, KY (Police Involvement)

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2020: George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis, MN (Police Involvement)

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2020: George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis, MN (Police Involvement)

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2015: Freddie Gray Jr. was murdered in Baltimore, MD (Police Involvement)

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2015: Freddie Gray Jr. was murdered in Baltimore, MD (Police Involvement)

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2014: Eric Garner was murdered in New York City, NY (Police Involvement)

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2014: Eric Garner was murdered in New York City, NY (Police Involvement)

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2014: Michael Brown Jr. was murdered in Ferguson, MO (Police Involvement)

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2014: Michael Brown Jr. was murdered in Ferguson, MO (Police Involvement)

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2014: Tamir Rice was murdered in Cleveland, OH (Police Involvement)

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2014: Tamir Rice was murdered in Cleveland, OH (Police Involvement)

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2015: Eric Harris was murdered in Tulsa, OK (Police Involvement)

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2015: Eric Harris was murdered in Tulsa, OK (Police Involvement)

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2015: Walter Scott was murdered in North Charleston, S.C. (Police Involvement)

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2015: Walter Scott was murdered in North Charleston, S.C. (Police Involvement)

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2016: Alton Sterling was murdered in Baton Rouge, LA (Police Involvement)

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2016: Alton Sterling was murdered in Baton Rouge, LA (Police Involvement)

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2016: Philando Castile was murdered in Falcon Heights, MN (Police Involvement)

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2016: Philando Castile was murdered in Falcon Heights, MN (Police Involvement)

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1991/1992: Beating of Rodney King/LA Race Riots

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1991/1992: Beating of Rodney King/LA Race Riots

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"Born on April 2, 1965, in Sacramento, California, Rodney Glen King was an African American who became a symbol of racial tension in America, after his beating by Los Angeles police officers in 1991 was videotaped and broadcast to the nation."

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Photo: Douglas Burrows/Liaison/Getty Images

Quick Facts
"As far as having peace within myself, the one way I can do that is forgiving the people who have done wrong to me. It causes more stress to build up anger. Peace is more productive.""I had to learn to forgive. I couldn't sleep at night. I got ulcers. I had to let go, to let God deal with it. No one wants to be mad in their own house. I didn't want to be angry my whole life.""It was like being raped, stripped of everything, being beaten near to death there on the concrete, on the asphalt. I just knew how it felt to be a slave. I felt like I was in another world."[On his brutal beating by L.A.P.D. officers in 1991.]""It's not painful to relive it. I'm comfortable with my position in American history."[On his brutal beating by L.A.P.D. officers in 1991.]""People, I just want to say, can't we all get along? Can't we all get along?"

Name

Rodney King

Birth Date

April 2, 1965

Death Date

June 17, 2012

Place of Birth

Sacramento, California

Place of Death

Rialto, California

Full Name

Rodney Glen King

Who Was Rodney King?

Rodney King was caught by the Los Angeles police after a high-speed chase on March 3, 1991. The officers pulled him out of the car and beat him brutally, while amateur cameraman George Holliday caught it all on videotape. The four L.A.P.D. officers involved were indicted on charges of assault with a deadly weapon and excessive use of force by a police officer. However, after a three-month trial, a predominantly white jury acquitted the officers, inflaming citizens and sparking the violent 1992 Los Angeles riots. Two decades after the riots, King told CNN that he had forgiven the officers. King was found dead in his swimming pool on June 17, 2012, in Rialto, California, at the age of 47.

Beating by LAPD

Born on April 2, 1965, in Sacramento, California, Rodney Glen King was an African American who became a symbol of racial tension in America, after his beating by Los Angeles police officers in 1991 was videotaped and broadcast to the nation.

The officers - Laurence Powell, Timothy Wind, Theodore Briseno and Stacey Koon - were charged with criminal offenses, including assault with a deadly weapon. Their trial was originally set to be held in Los Angeles, but defense attorneys successfully argued that a fair trial in Los Angeles would be impossible because of the publicity.

The trial was moved to Simi Valley, a predominantly white suburb of L.A. The jury was comprised of ten white people, one Hispanic person and one Asian person, and many objected to the fact that there were no African American jurors.

The L.A. Riots

The officers' acquittal in April 1992 triggered riots in South Central, Los Angeles. More than 50 people were killed, more than 2,000 were injured and 9,500 were arrested for rioting, looting and arson, resulting in $1 billion in property damage.

Rodney King's Famous Quote

On the third day of the riots, King made a public appearance, making his now-famous plea: "People, I just want to say, can't we all get along? Can't we all get along?"

The United States Department of Justice filed federal civil rights charges against the four officers, and in August 1992, two of them were found guilty while the other two were acquitted. King was eventually awarded $3.8 million in a civil trial for the injuries he sustained.

The riots and police response to the violent aftermath resulted in the resignation of L.A.P.D. Chief Darryl Gates, thought by many minorities to symbolize institutionalized racial intolerance. He was replaced by a Black chief, Willie Williams, who introduced several changes suggested by an independent commission that investigated the riots.

More than two decades after being brutally beaten by police officers, in May 2012, King discussed the incident with The Guardian, stating, "It's not painful to relive it. I'm comfortable with my position in American history. It was like being raped, stripped of everything, being beaten near to death there on the concrete, on the asphalt. I just knew how it felt to be a slave. I felt like I was in another world."

He went on to talk about his healing process, which included forgiving the officers who injured him. "I had to learn to forgive," he said. "I couldn't sleep at night. I got ulcers. I had to let go, to let God deal with it. No one wants to be mad in their own house. I didn't want to be angry my whole life. It takes so much energy out of you to be mean."

Troubled Life and Death

After the 1991 beating, King continued to lead a troubled life, struggling with alcoholism and having brushes with the law. In 2004, he pleaded guilty to driving under the influence of the drug PCP, after he lost control of his SUV and slammed into a power pole in Rialto, California. In 2005, he was arrested on suspicion of domestic violence, and in 2007, police found him drunk with non-life threatening gunshot wounds also believed to be the result of a domestic dispute.

King shared his struggles as a reality TV star on VH1's Celebrity Rehab, and in his 2012 memoir, The Riot Within: My Journey from Rebellion to Redemption.

Upon the 20th anniversary of the L.A. riots, King told CNN he had forgiven the officers who had beaten him, saying, "Yes, I have forgiven them because I have been forgiven so many times. My country's been good to me, and I've done some things that wasn't pleasant in my lifetime, and I've been forgiven for that."

In a final tragic twist, Rodney King's life ended on June 17, 2012. His fiancee, Cynthia Kelley, found him at the bottom of a swimming pool in Rialto, California. Kelley had previously served as a juror in King's civil law suit against the City of Los Angeles. According to police who responded to the scene, there were no preliminary signs of foul play. King was pronounced dead at a local hospital, 20 years after the L.A. riots threw him into the center of the fight against racial tension in America.

Documentaries

Upon the 25th anniversary of the L.A. Riots, a slew of documentaries were released in the spring of 2017. Among them were L.A. Burning, Let It Fall, and Spike Lee's Netflix special Rodney King.

Fact Check

We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us!

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"As far as having peace within myself, the one way I can do that is forgiving the people who have done wrong to me. It causes more stress to build up anger. Peace is more productive." "I had to learn to forgive. I couldn't sleep at night. I got ulcers.

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Housing is not determined by color of skin, ethnicity, or racial background. This case brought on an open housing movement where racial covenants or contracts were no longer upheld.

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Shelley v. Kraemer Summary | quimbee.com

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1915: Birth of a Nation (aka "The Clansman") Racist Propaganda Movie Premieres

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1915: Birth of a Nation (aka "The Clansman") Racist Propaganda Movie Premieres

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"However, because of its explicit racism, Birth of a Nation is also regarded as one of the most offensive films ever made. Actually titled The Clansman for its first month of release, the film provides a highly subjective history of the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan."

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On February 8, 1915, D.W. Griffith's The B irth of a Nation, a landmark film in the history of cinema, premieres at Clune's Auditorium in Los Angeles. The film was America's first feature-length motion picture and a box-office smash, and during its unprecedented three hours Griffith popularized countless filmmaking techniques that remain central to the art today. However, because of its explicit racism, Birth of a Nation is also regarded as one of the most offensive films ever made. Actually titled The Clansman for its first month of release, the film provides a highly subjective history of the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. Studied today as a masterpiece of political propaganda, Birth of a Nation caused riots in several cities and was banned in others but was seen by millions.

David Wark Griffith was born in La Grange, Kentucky, in 1875, the son of an ex-Confederate colonel. His father died when he was seven, and he later dropped out of high school to help support his family. After holding various jobs, he began a successful career as a theater actor. He wrote several plays and, on the advice of a colleague, sent some scenarios for one-reel films to the Edison Film Company and the Biograph Company. In 1908, he was hired as an actor and writer for the Biograph studio and soon was promoted to a position as director.
READ MORE: How 'The Birth of a Nation' Revived the Ku Klux Klan
Between 1908 and 1913, Griffith made more than 400 short films for Biograph. With the assistance of his talented cinematographer, G W. "Billy" Bitzer, he invented or refined such important cinematic techniques as the close-up, the scenic long shot, the moving-camera shot, and the fade-in and fade-out. His contributions to the art of editing during this period include the flashback and parallel editing, in which two or more separate scenes are intermixed to give the impression that the separate actions are happening simultaneously. He also raised the standard on movie acting, initiating scene rehearsals before shooting and assembling a stock company of film professionals. Many of these actors, including Lillian and Dorothy Gish, Mary Pickford, Mae Marsh, and Lionel Barrymore, went on to become some of Hollywood's first movie stars.

Taking his cue from the longer spectacle films produced in Italy, in 1913 Griffith produced Judith of Bethulia, a biblical adaptation that, at four reels, was close to an hour long. It was his last Biograph film. Two years later, he released his 10-reel film, Birth of a Nation, for Mutual Films.

Birth of a Nation, based on Thomas Dixon's novel The Clansman, tells the turbulent story of American history in the 1860s, as it followed the fictional lives of two families from the North and the South. Throughout its three hours, African Americans are portrayed as brutish, lazy, morally degenerate and dangerous. In the film's climax, the Ku Klux Klan rises up to save the South from the Reconstruction Era-prominence of African Americans in Southern public life.

Riots and protests broke out at screenings of Birth of a Nation in a number of Northern cities, and the recently formed National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP) embarked on a major campaign to have the film banned. It eventually was censored in several cities, and Griffith agreed to change or cut out some of the film's especially offensive scenes.

Nevertheless, millions of people paid to witness the spectacle of Birth of a Nation, which featured a cast of more 10,000 people and a dramatic story line far more sophisticated than anything released to that date. For all the gross historical inaccuracies, certain scenes, such as meetings of Congress, Civil War battles, and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, were meticulously recreated, lending the film an air of legitimacy that made it so effective as propaganda.

The Ku Klux Klan, suppressed by the federal government in the 1870s, was re-founded in Georgia in December 1915 by William J. Simmons. In addition to being anti-Black, the new Klan was anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, and anti-immigrant, and by the early 1920s it had spread throughout the North as well as the South. At the peak of its strength in 1924, membership in the KKK is estimated to have been as high as three million. There is no doubt that Birth of a Nation played no small part in winning wide public acceptance for an organization that was originally founded as an anti-Black and anti-federal terrorist group.

Of Griffith's later films, Intolerance (1916) is the most important. Hailed by many as the finest achievement of the silent-film era, it pursues four story lines simultaneously, which cumulatively act to prove humanity's propensity for persecution. Some regard it as an effort at atonement by Griffith for Birth of a Nation, while others believe he meant it as an answer to those who persecuted him for his political views. Intolerance was a commercial failure but had a significant influence on the development of film art.

Griffith went on to make 27 more films. In 1919, he founded United Artists with Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin.

Before D. W. Griffith's time, motion pictures were short, uninspiring, and poorly produced, acted, and edited. Under his guidance, filmmaking became an art form. Despite the harm his Birth of a Nation inflicted on African Americans, he will forever be regarded as the father of cinema.
READ MORE: Ku Klux Klan

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"The Birth of A Nation" opens, glorifying the KKK

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On February 8, 1915, D.W. Griffith's The B irth of a Nation, a landmark film in the history of cinema, premieres at Clune's Auditorium in Los Angeles. The film was America's first feature-length motion picture and a box-office smash, and during its unprecedented three hours Griffith popularized countless filmmaking techniques that remain central to the art today.

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PRESENT DAY CHAPTER 6: Candice finds the letter from her grandmother. 

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PRESENT DAY CHAPTER 6: Candice finds the letter from her grandmother. 

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p. 32: "Find the path. Solve the puzzle."

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PRESENT DAY CHAPTER 2-5: Candice Miller moves to Lambert, South Carolina. 

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PRESENT DAY CHAPTER 2-5: Candice Miller moves to Lambert, South Carolina. 

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2007: Abigail Caldwell digs up the park in hopes of finding the fortune left behind. She was forced to resign from her job as city manager. 

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2007: Abigail Caldwell digs up the park in hopes of finding the fortune left behind. She was forced to resign from her job as city manager. 

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pp 1-3

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Juneteenth honors the end to slavery in the United States and is considered the longest-running African American holiday.

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Juneteenth (short for "June Nineteenth") marks the day when federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas in 1865 to take control of the state and ensure that all enslaved people be freed. The troops' arrival came a full two and a half years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Juneteenth honors the end to slavery in the United States and is considered the longest-running African American holiday. On June 17, 2021, it officially became a federal holiday. Juneteenth 2023 will occur on Monday, June 19.

Confederate General Robert E. Lee had surrendered at Appomattox Court House two months earlier in Virginia, but slavery had remained relatively unaffected in Texas-until U.S. General Gordon Granger stood on Texas soil and read General Orders No. 3: "The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free."

The Emancipation Proclamation

The Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, had established that all enslaved people in Confederate states in rebellion against the Union "shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free."

But in reality, the Emancipation Proclamation didn't instantly free any enslaved people. The proclamation only applied to places under Confederate control and not to slave-holding border states or rebel areas already under Union control. However, as Northern troops advanced into the Confederate South, many enslaved people fled behind Union lines.

Juneteenth and Slavery in Texas

In Texas, slavery had continued as the state experienced no large-scale fighting or significant presence of Union troops. Many enslavers from outside the Lone Star State had moved there, as they viewed it as a safe haven for slavery.

After the war came to a close in the spring of 1865, General Granger's arrival in Galveston that June signaled freedom for Texas's 250,000 enslaved people. Although emancipation didn't happen overnight for everyone-in some cases, enslavers withheld the information until after harvest season-celebrations broke out among newly freed Black people, and Juneteenth was born. That December, slavery in America was formally abolished with the adoption of the 13th Amendment.

The year following 1865, freedmen in Texas organized the first of what became the annual celebration of "Jubilee Day" on June 19. In the ensuing decades, Juneteenth commemorations featured music, barbecues, prayer services and other activities, and as Black people migrated from Texas to other parts of the country the Juneteenth tradition spread.

In 1979, Texas became the first state to make Juneteenth an official holiday; several others followed suit over the years. In June 2021, Congress passed a resolution establishing Juneteenth as a federal holiday; President Biden signed it into law on June 17, 2021.

HISTORY Vault: Abraham Lincoln

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Juneteenth (short for "June Nineteenth") is a holiday commemorating this day, which marked an effective end of slavery in the United States.

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1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and Riots (Black Wall Street Attacks)

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1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and Riots (Black Wall Street Attacks)

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"Following World War I, Tulsa was recognized nationally for its affluent African American community known as the Greenwood District. This thriving business district and surrounding residential area was referred to as “Black Wall Street.” In June 1921, a series of events nearly destroyed the entire Greenwood area."

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The Attack on Greenwood

The 1921 Attack on Greenwood was one of the most significant events in Tulsa's history. Following World War I, Tulsa was recognized nationally for its affluent African American community known as the Greenwood District. This thriving business district and surrounding residential area was referred to as "Black Wall Street." In June 1921, a series of events nearly destroyed the entire Greenwood area.

May 31 - June 1, 1921

On the morning of May 30, 1921, a young black man named Dick Rowland was riding in the elevator in the Drexel Building at Third and Main with a white woman named Sarah Page. The details of what followed vary from person to person. Accounts of an incident circulated among the city's white community during the day and became more exaggerated with each telling.

Tulsa police arrested Rowland the following day and began an investigation. An inflammatory report in the May 31 edition of the Tulsa Tribune spurred a confrontation between black and white armed mobs around the courthouse where the sheriff and his men had barricaded the top floor to protect Rowland. Shots were fired and the outnumbered African Americans began retreating to the Greenwood District.

In the early morning hours of June 1, 1921, Greenwood was looted and burned by white rioters. Governor Robertson declared martial law, and National Guard troops arrived in Tulsa. Guardsmen assisted firemen in putting out fires, took African Americans out of the hands of vigilantes and imprisoned all black Tulsans not already interned. Over 6,000 people were held at the Convention Hall and the Fairgrounds, some for as long as eight days.

Twenty-four hours after the violence erupted, it ceased. In the wake of the violence, 35 city blocks lay in charred ruins, more than 800 people were treated for injuries and contemporary reports of deaths began at 36. Historians now believe as many as 300 people may have died.

In order to understand the Tulsa Race Massacre it is important to understand the complexities of the times. Dick Rowland, Sarah Page and an unknown gunman were the sparks that ignited a long smoldering fire. Jim Crow, jealousy, white supremacy, and land lust, all played roles in leading up to the destruction and loss of life on May 31 and June 1, 1921.

Race Riot Commission

In 2001, an official Race Riot Commission was organized to review the details of the event. No one will ever know the absolute truth of what happened during the hours of the Race Massacre.

However, by examining historical resources, members of the Race Riot Commission determined a number of details to be undeniable. "These are not myths, not rumors, not speculations, not questioned. They are the historical record."

Historical Facts
The following information comes from the 2001 Race Riot Commission Report:
Black Tulsans had every reason to believe that Dick Rowland would be lynched after his arrest. His charges were later dismissed and highly suspect from the start. They had cause to believe that his personal safety, like the defense of themselves and their community, depended on them alone. As hostile groups gathered and their confrontation worsened, municipal and county authorities failed to take actions to calm or contain the situation.

At the eruption of violence, civil officials selected many men, all of them white and some of them participants in that violence, and made those men their agents as deputies. In that capacity, deputies did not stem the violence but added to it, often through overt acts that were themselves illegal. Public officials provided fire arms and ammunition to individuals, again all of them white. Units of the Oklahoma National Guard participated in the mass arrests of all or nearly all of Greenwood's residents.

They removed them to other parts of the city, and detained them in holding centers. Entering the Greenwood district, people stole, damaged, or destroyed personal property left behind in homes and businesses. People, some of them agents of government, also deliberately burned or otherwise destroyed homes credibly estimated to have numbered 1,256, along with virtually every other structure - including churches, schools, businesses, even a hospital and library - in the Greenwood district. Despite duties to preserve order and to protect property, no government at any level offered adequate resistance, if any at all, to what amounted to the destruction of the Greenwood neighborhood. Although the exact total can never be determined, credible evidence makes it probable that many people, likely numbering between 100-300, were killed during the massacre.

Not one of these criminal acts was then or ever has been prosecuted or punished by government at any level: municipal, county, state, or federal. Even after the restoration of order it was official policy to release a black detainee only upon the application of a white person, and then only if that white person agreed to accept responsibility for that detainee's subsequent behavior. As private citizens, many whites in Tulsa and neighboring communities did extend invaluable assistance to the massacre's victims, and the relief efforts of the American Red Cross in particular provided a model of human behavior at its best. Although city and county government bore much of the cost for Red Cross relief, neither contributed substantially to Greenwood's rebuilding, in fact, municipal authorities acted initially to impede rebuilding.

Despite being numerically at a disadvantage, black Tulsans fought valiantly to protect their homes, their businesses, and their community. But in the end, the city's African-American population was simply outnumbered by the white invaders. In the end, the restoration of Greenwood after its systematic destruction was left to the victims of that destruction. While Tulsa officials turned away some offers of outside aid, a number of individual white Tulsans provided assistance to the city's now virtually homeless black population. But it was the American Red Cross, which remained in Tulsa for months following the massacre, that provided the most sustained relief effort. Maurice Willows, the compassionate director of the Red Cross relief, kept a history of the event (available in full under the "Documents" section of this online exhibit).

What's in a Name? Riot vs. Massacre

In recent years there has been ongoing discussion about what to call the event that happened in 1921. Historically, it has been called the Tulsa Race Riot. Some say it was given that name at the time for insurance purposes. Designating it a riot prevented insurance companies from having to pay benefits to the people of Greenwood whose homes and businesses were destroyed. It also was common at the time for any large-scale clash between different racial or ethnic groups to be categorized a race riot.

What do YOU think?

Definition of RIOT: a tumultuous disturbance of the public peace by three or more persons assembled together and acting with common intent. Definition of MASSACRE: the act or an instance of killing a number of usually helpless or unresisting human beings under circumstances of atrocity or cruelty.

Mass Graves Investigation

"Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum launched an investigation into longstanding oral history accounts of mass graves at various sites in Tulsa, alleged burial sites for scores of mostly-black victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Mayor Bynum continues to emphasize that this process, which may be long and tedious, is an investigation.

There is no certainty that one or more mass graves will be located. The investigation is geared toward answering, as best we can, the lingering historical question, originating through oral histories, about the existence of one or more mass graves linked to the massacre.

By this undertaking, we honor our oral history and its tellers. This history, separate and apart from its truth, has value.

Who told what to whom? Why? Was it accurate? These are all questions worth exploring.

The current Mass Graves Investigation seeks to address those questions and more. It deserves the support of the entire community. "

- Hannibal B. Johnson, www.hannibalbjohnson.com

Learn more about the on-going investigation on the City of Tulsa website here: www.cityoftulsa.org/1921graves

Traveling Exhibit

The Tulsa Historical Society & Museum has created a traveling exhibit on the history of the Greenwood Area and the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre for the purpose of educating the community.
Learn more or request this free exhibit.

Online Collection

To view the entire collection of artifacts related to the Tulsa Race Massacre please visit our online collection.

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1921 Tulsa Race Massacre - Tulsa Historical Society & Museum

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Following World War I, Tulsa was recognized nationally for its affluent African American community known as the Greenwood District. This thriving business district and surrounding residential area was referred to as "Black Wall Street."

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2008: Barack Obama is elected first African American US President. 

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2008: Barack Obama is elected first African American US President. 

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"Security was increased early for Obama due to fears and overt threats of possible assassination attempts by white supremacist or other racist groups or individuals."

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Barack Obama: America’s First Black President

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The 44th president of the United States, Barack Obama is the first Black American who has been elected to the Oval Office. He served from 2009 until 2017.

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1993: Mae Jemison, first African American woman astronaut in space

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1993: Mae Jemison, first African American woman astronaut in space

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1989: Gen. Colin Powell is first African American Chair of JointChiefs of Staff of US Military

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1989: Gen. Colin Powell is first African American Chair of JointChiefs of Staff of US Military

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Who Was Colin Powell?

Colin Luther Powell was a United States statesman and a retired four-star general in the United States Army. He was the 65th United States Secretary of State (2001-2005), serving under President George W. Bush. He was the first African American appointed to that position. He was the first, and so far the only, African American to serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Early Life and Education

Born Colin Luther Powell on April 5, 1937, in Harlem, New York, Powell was the son of Jamaican immigrants Luther and Maud Powell. He was raised in the South Bronx and educated in the New York City public schools, graduating from Morris High School in 1954 without any definite plans for where he wanted to go in life. It was at City College of New York, where Powell studied geology, that he found his calling - in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC). He soon became commander of his unit. This experience set him on a military career and gave him structure and direction in his life.

Graduation and Marriage

After graduation in 1958, Powell was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army. While stationed at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, Colin Powell met Alma Vivian Johnson of Birmingham, Alabama, and they married in 1962. The couple has three children: son Michael, and daughters Linda and Annemarie.

Early Military Career and Accomplishments

In 1962, he was one of 16,000 advisers sent to South Vietnam by President John F. Kennedy. In 1963, Powell was wounded by a punji-stick booby trap while patrolling the Vietnamese-Laotian border. During this first tour of duty, he was awarded a Purple Heart and, a year later, a Bronze Star.

While on his second Vietnam tour of duty from 1968 to 1969, the 31-year-old Army major was given the assignment of investigating the My Lai massacre. In this incident, more than 300 civilians were killed by U.S. Army forces. Powell's report seemed to refute the allegations of wrongdoing and stated, "Relations between American soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent." Also during this tour in Vietnam, Powell was injured in a helicopter crash. Despite his injury, he managed to rescue his comrades from the burning helicopter, for which he was awarded the Soldier's Medal. In all, Powell has received 11 military decorations, including the Legion of Merit.

Accomplishments Under the Reagan and Bush Administrations

Powell earned an MBA at George Washington University, in Washington, D.C., and won a White House fellowship in 1972. He was assigned to the Office of Management and Budget during the Nixon administration and made a lasting impression on Caspar Weinberger and Frank Carlucci. Both men would consult Powell for advice when they served as secretary of defense and national security adviser, respectively, in the Reagan administration.

Colonel Powell served a tour of duty in Korea in 1973 as a battalion commander and after that, he obtained a staff job at the Pentagon. He attended the National War College in Washington, D.C. from 1975-1976. He was promoted to brigadier general in 1976 and commanded the 2nd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division. In the Carter administration, Powell was an assistant to the deputy secretary of defense and the secretary of energy. Promoted to major general, he again assisted Frank Carlucci at the Department of Defense during the transition from the Carter to the Reagan administration. He then served as senior military aide to Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, helping to coordinate the invasion of Granada and the bombing of Libya.

National Security Adviser

In 1987, Powell became national security adviser, a post he held for the duration of the Reagan administration. While there, he coordinated technical and policy advisers during Reagan's summit meetings with Soviet President Gorbachev and his conferences to topple the pro-Communist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. It was discovered that the administration had arranged for covert and illegal shipments of U.S. weapons to Iran in exchange for the release of hostages. Proceeds from the sale of the weapons would go to support the counter-insurgency movement in Nicaragua, which was aimed at toppling the Sandinistas. Such support had been prohibited by Congress since 1982. Powell was asked to testify before Congress about the incident, but he was not implicated in any wrongdoing.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

In 1989, President George H. W. Bush appointed General Powell as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The post is the highest military position in the Department of Defense, and Powell was the first African American officer to receive that distinction. General Powell became a national figure during Desert Shield and Desert Storm operations in Iraq. As chief military strategist, he developed what became known as the "Powell Doctrine," an approach to military conflicts that advocates using overwhelming force to maximize success and minimize casualties. He continued as chairman of the Joint Chiefs in the first few months of the Clinton administration. He publicly disagreed with the president on the issue of admitting gays into the military, although he eventually agreed to the "don't ask, don't tell" compromise.

Iraq Controversy

Powell retired from the Army in 1993. In 1994, he joined Senator Sam Nunn and former President Carter on a last-minute peacekeeping expedition to Haiti, which resulted in the end of military rule and a peaceful return to elected government in that country. In 1995, he published a best-selling autobiography, My American Journey, which chronicles his life and its influences, the ins and outs of military bureaucracy, and what he learned in his life about personal rules and character. From 1997 to 2000, he was chairman of America's Promise, a nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering character and competence in young people. Powell and his wife, Alma, now co-chair the organization, which has a presence in more than 500 communities in all 50 states.

Secretary of State

In 2000, President George W. Bush appointed Powell secretary of state, and Powell was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate. At that time, this was the highest rank in civilian government ever held by an African American. During his tenure, Powell came under fire for his role in building the case for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Initially, Powell had serious misgivings about President Bush's plan to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein. Powell believed the policy of containment was sufficient to control the Iraqi regime. He warned Bush that a military invasion would consume the president's first term and that if an attack were to occur, it should use overwhelming force and have broad international support. This support would be key to the rebuilding of Iraq.

Bush decided to go to war and, in a crucial moment, Powell agreed to support the president. To advance the case for war with the international community, Powell appeared before the U.N. Security Council in February 2003 to present evidence that Iraq had concealed an ongoing weapons development program. Powell's reputation for integrity helped convince many in Congress and the country that Iraq posed an imminent threat.

For the remainder of Bush's first term, Powell tried to establish an international coalition to assist in the rebuilding of Iraq. In September 2004, he testified before Congress that the intelligence sources he used in his February presentation to the United Nations were "wrong" and it was unlikely that Saddam had any stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. Powell advised the committee of the necessity to reform the intelligence community in order to improve its gathering and analysis. In 2004, after acknowledging it was unlikely that Iraq possessed stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, Powell announced his resignation as secretary of state. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was his successor.

Retirement

After his retirement, Powell remained vocal on political topics, openly criticizing the Bush administration on a number of issues. In September 2006, Powell joined moderate Senate Republicans in supporting more rights and better treatment for detainees at the Guantanamo detention facility. In October 2008, Powell made headlines again when he announced his endorsement of Barack Obama for president.

Powell also spent much of his retirement in the business community. In 2006, he was a speaker at a special series called Get Motivated, along with former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Powell also joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, as a "strategic limited partner." He joined the board of directors at Steve Case's new company, Revolution Health, a health-related portal site and social network that provides online tools to help people better manage their health.

Powell spent much of his life inspiring many with his leadership skills and life experiences. Along with his wife, Powell began America's Promise Alliance, as part of their dedication to the wellbeing of children and youth of all socioeconomic levels and their commitment to seeing that young people receive the resources necessary to succeed.

Powell began his American journey from ordinary circumstances. His close-knit family provided support and a caring environment during his childhood. He found his calling in the military, and his entire adult life has been in the service of his country. As a soldier, he was committed to protecting the nation and advancing democratic values. While he gravitated toward support roles early in his career, his organizational talent and pragmatic outlook were recognized by those who placed him in key government advisory roles.

Death

He died of complications from COVID-19 on October 18, 2021. He was fully vaccinated and had been treated at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. He was 84 years old.

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Colin Luther Powell was a United States statesman and a retired four-star general in the United States Army. He was the 65th United States Secretary of State (2001-2005), serving under President George W. Bush. He was the first African American appointed to that position.

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1972: Equal Employment Opportunity Act passed, prohibiting job discrimination

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1972: Equal Employment Opportunity Act passed, prohibiting job discrimination

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1968:  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. 

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1968:  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. 

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"The assassination sparks unrest and civil disorders in 124 cities across the country, including the nation's capital, Washington, D.C."

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1967: Thurgood Marshall becomes the first African American justice of the SupremeCourt.

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1967: Thurgood Marshall becomes the first African American justice of the SupremeCourt.

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Who Was Thurgood Marshall?

Thurgood Marshall was an American lawyer who was appointed as an associate justice of the Supreme Court in 1967. He was the first African American to hold the position and served for 24 years, until 1991. Marshall studied law at Howard University. As counsel to the NAACP, he utilized the judiciary to champion equality for African Americans. In 1954, he won the Brown v. Board of Education case, in which the Supreme Court ended racial segregation in public schools.

Early Life and Family

Marshall was born on July 2, 1908, in Baltimore, Maryland. His father, William Marshall, was the grandson of a slave who worked as a steward at an exclusive club, and his mother, Norma, was a kindergarten teacher.

One of William's favorite pastimes was to listen to cases at the local courthouse before returning home to rehash the lawyers' arguments with his sons. Thurgood later recalled, "Now you want to know how I got involved in law? I don't know. The nearest I can get is that my dad, my brother and I had the most violent arguments you ever heard about anything. I guess we argued five out of seven nights at the dinner table."

Education

Marshall attended Baltimore's Colored High and Training School (later renamed Frederick Douglass High School), where he was an above-average student and put his finely honed skills of argument to use as a star member of the debate team. The teenage Marshall was also something of a mischievous troublemaker. His greatest high school accomplishment, memorizing the entire United States Constitution, was actually a teacher's punishment for misbehaving in class.

After graduating from high school in 1926, Marshall attended Lincoln University, a historically black college in Pennsylvania. There, he joined a remarkably distinguished student body that included Kwame Nkrumah, the future president of Ghana, poet Langston Hughes and jazz singer Cab Calloway.

After graduating from Lincoln with honors in 1930, Marshall applied to the University of Maryland Law School. Despite being overqualified academically, Marshall was rejected because of his race. This firsthand experience with discrimination in education made a lasting impression on Marshall and helped determine the future course of his career.

Instead of Maryland, Marshall attended law school in Washington, D.C. at Howard University, another historically black school. The dean of Howard Law School at the time was the pioneering civil rights lawyer Charles Houston. Marshall quickly fell under the tutelage of Houston, a notorious disciplinarian and extraordinarily demanding professor. Marshall recalled of Houston, "He would not be satisfied until he went to a dance on the campus and found all of his students sitting around the wall reading law books instead of partying."

Marshall graduated magna cum laude from Howard in 1933. He briefly attempted to establish his own practice in Baltimore, but without experience, he failed to land any significant cases.

Photo: Getty Images

Court Cases

In 1934, Marshall began working for the Baltimore branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1936, Marshall moved to New York City to work full time as legal counsel for the NAACP. Over several decades, Marshall argued and won a variety of cases to strike down many forms of legalized racism, helping to inspire the American civil rights movement.

Murray v. Pearson

In one of Marshall's first cases - which he argued alongside his mentor, Charles Houston - he defended another well-qualified undergraduate, Donald Murray, who like himself had been denied entrance to the University of Maryland Law School. Marshall and Houston won Murray v. Pearson in January 1936, the first in a long string of cases designed to undermine the legal basis for de jure racial segregation in the United States.

Chambers v. Florida

Marshall's first victory before the Supreme Court came in Chambers v. Florida (1940), in which he successfully defended four black men who had been convicted of murder on the basis of confessions coerced from them by police.

Smith v. Allwright

Another crucial Supreme Court victory for Marshall came in the 1944 case of Smith v. Allwright, in which the Court struck down the Democratic Party's use of whites-only primary elections in various Southern states.

Brown v. Board of Education

The great achievement of Marshall's career as a civil-rights lawyer was his victory in the landmark 1954 Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. The class-action lawsuit was filed on behalf of a group of black parents in Topeka, Kansas, whose children were forced to attend all-black segregated schools. Through Brown v. Board, one of the most important cases of the 20th century, Marshall challenged head-on the legal underpinning of racial segregation, the doctrine of "separate but equal" established by the 1896 Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson.

On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal," and therefore racial segregation of public schools violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

While enforcement of the Court's ruling proved to be uneven and painfully slow, Brown v. Board provided the legal foundation, and much of the inspiration, for the American civil rights movement that unfolded over the next decade. At the same time, the case established Marshall as one of the most successful and prominent lawyers in America.

Photo: Stock Montage/Getty Images

Circuit Court Judge and Solicitor General

In 1961, newly-elected President John F. Kennedy appointed Marshall as a judge for the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Serving as a circuit court judge over the next four years, Marshall issued more than 100 decisions, none of which was overturned by the Supreme Court.

In 1965, Kennedy's successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, appointed Marshall to serve as the first black U.S. solicitor general, the attorney designated to argue on behalf of the federal government before the Supreme Court. During his two years as solicitor general, Marshall won 14 of the 19 cases that he argued before the Supreme Court.

Supreme Court Justice

In 1967, President Johnson nominated Marshall to serve on the bench before which he had successfully argued so many times before the United States Supreme Court. On October 2, 1967, Marshall was sworn in as a Supreme Court justice, becoming the first African American to serve on the nation's highest court. Marshall joined a liberal Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren, which aligned with Marshall's views on politics and the Constitution.

As a Supreme Court justice, Marshall consistently supported rulings upholding strong protection of individual rights and liberal interpretations of controversial social issues. He was part of the majority that ruled in favor of the right to abortion in the landmark 1973 case Roe v. Wade, among several other cases. In the 1972 case Furman v. Georgia, which led to a de facto moratorium on the death penalty, Marshall articulated his opinion that the death penalty was unconstitutional in all circumstances.

Throughout Marshall's 24-year tenure on the Court, Republican presidents appointed eight consecutive justices, and Marshall gradually became an isolated liberal member of an increasingly conservative Court.

For the latter part of his time on the bench, Marshall was largely relegated to issuing strongly-worded dissents, as the Court reinstated the death penalty and limited affirmative action measures and abortion rights. Marshall retired from the Supreme Court in 1991; Justice Clarence Thomas replaced him.

Personal Life

Marshall married Vivian "Buster" Burey in 1929, and the couple remained married until her death in 1955. Shortly thereafter, Marshall married Cecilia Suyat, his secretary at the NAACP. The couple had two sons together, Thurgood Jr. and John Marshall.

Death

Marshall died on January 24, 1993, at the age of 84.

Legacy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X

Marshall stands alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X as one of the greatest and most important figures of the American civil rights movement. Although he may be the least popularly celebrated of the three, Marshall was arguably the most instrumental in the movement's achievements toward racial equality.

Marshall's strategy of attacking racial inequality through the courts represented a third way of pursuing racial equality, more pragmatic than King's soaring rhetoric and less polemical than Malcolm X's strident separatism. In the aftermath of Marshall's death, an obituary read: "We make movies about Malcolm X, we get a holiday to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, but every day we live with the legacy of Justice Thurgood Marshall."

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Thurgood Marshall was an American lawyer who was appointed as an associate justice of the Supreme Court in 1967. He was the first African American to hold the position and served for 24 years, until 1991. Marshall studied law at Howard University. As counsel to the NAACP, he utilized the judiciary to champion equality for African Americans.

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December 12, 1956: Clinton Twelve Integrate Clinton HS

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December 12, 1956: Clinton Twelve Integrate Clinton HS

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Twelve students were the first to integrate the high school in Clinton, Tennessee. The Promise of Change by Jo Ann Allen Boyce tells the story of these 12 courageous students.

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Remembering the Clinton 12 six decades later

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1966: Black Panthers is founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. 

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1966: Black Panthers is founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. 

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"The Black Panthers, also known as the Black Panther Party, was a political organization founded to challenge police brutality against the African American community."

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Contents

1. Black Panthers Origins and History

2. Political Activities And Social Programs

3. Black Panthers Violence And Controversies

4. The FBI And COINTELPRO

5. New Black Panther Party

The Black Panthers, also known as the Black Panther Party, was a political organization founded in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale to challenge police brutality against the African American community.

Dressed in black berets and black leather jackets, the Black Panthers organized armed citizen patrols of Oakland and other U.S. cities. At its peak in 1968, the Black Panther Party had roughly 2,000 members. The organization later declined as a result of internal tensions, deadly shootouts and FBI counterintelligence activities aimed at weakening the organization.

Black Panthers Origins and History

Black Panther Party founders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale met in 1961 while students at Merritt College in Oakland, California.

They both protested the college's "Pioneer Day" celebration, which honored the pioneers who came to California in the 1800s, but omitted the role of African Americans in settling the American West. Seale and Newton formed the Negro History Fact Group, which called on the school to offer classes in Black history.

They founded the Black Panthers in the wake of the assassination of Black nationalist Malcolm X and after police in San Francisco shot and killed an unarmed Black teen named Matthew Johnson.

Originally dubbed the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, the organization was founded in October 1966. The Black Panthers' early activities primarily involved monitoring police activities in Black communities in Oakland and other cities.

As they instituted a number of social programs and engaged in political activities, their popularity grew. The Black Panthers drew widespread support from urban centers with large minority communities, including Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia. By 1968, the Black Panthers had roughly 2,000 members across the country.
READ MORE: How the Black Power Movement Influenced the Civil Rights Movement
Political Activities And Social Programs

Newton and Seale drew on Marxist ideology for the party platform. They outlined the organization's philosophical views and political objectives in a Ten-Point Program.

The Ten-Point Program called for an immediate end to police brutality; employment for African Americans; and land, housing and justice for all.

The Black Panthers were part of the larger Black Power movement, which emphasized Black pride, community control and unification for civil rights.

While the Black Panthers were often portrayed as a gang, their leadership saw the organization as a political party whose goal was getting more African Americans elected to political office. They were unsuccessful on this front. By the early 1970s, FBI counterintelligence efforts, criminal activities and an internal rift between group members weakened the party as a political force.

The Black Panthers did, however, start a number of popular community social programs, including free breakfast programs for school children and free health clinics in 13 African American communities across the United States.

Black Panthers Violence And Controversies

The Black Panthers were involved in numerous violent encounters with police. In 1967, founder Huey Newton allegedly killed Oakland police officer John Frey. Newton was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in 1968 and was sentenced to two to 15 years in prison. An appellate court decision later reversed the conviction.

Eldridge Cleaver, editor of the Black Panther's newspaper, and 17-year old Black Panther member and treasurer Bobby Hutton, were involved in a shootout with police in 1968 that left Hutton dead and two police officers wounded.

Conflicts within the party often turned violent too. In 1969, Black Panther Party member Alex Rackley was tortured and murdered by other Black Panthers who thought he was a police informant.

Black Panther bookkeeper Betty Van Patter was found beaten and murdered in 1974. No one was charged with the death, though many believed that party leadership was responsible.

The FBI And COINTELPRO

The Black Panthers' socialist message and black nationalist focus made them the target of a secret FBI counterintelligence program called COINTELPRO.

In 1969, the FBI declared the Black Panthers a communist organization and an enemy of the United States government. The first FBI's first director, J. Edgar Hoover, in 1968 called the Black Panthers, "One of the greatest threats to the nation's internal security."

The FBI worked to weaken the Panthers by exploited existing rivalries between black nationalist groups. They also worked to undermine and dismantle the Free Breakfast for Children Program and other community social programs instituted by the Black Panthers.
READ MORE: How the Black Panthers' Breakfast Program Both Inspired and Threatened the Government
In 1969, Chicago police gunned down and killed Black Panther Party members Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, who were asleep in their apartment.

About a hundred bullets were fired in what police described as a fierce gun battle with members of the Black Panther Party. However, ballistics experts later determined that only one of those bullets came from the Panthers' side.

Although the FBI was not responsible for leading the raid, a federal grand jury later indicated that the bureau played a significant role in the events leading up to the raid.

The Black Panther Party officially dissolved in 1982.

New Black Panther Party

The New Black Panther Party is a black nationalist organization founded in Dallas, Texas, in 1989. Members of the original Black Panther Party say there's no relation between the New Black Panther Party and the original Black Panthers.

The United States Commission on Civil Rights and the Southern Poverty Law Center have called the New Black Panther Party a hate group.

Sources

5 things to know about the Black Panthers. USA Today.
Black Panther Party. Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The Black Panthers: Revolutionaries, free breakfast pioneers.

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The Black Panthers made up a political organization founded in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale to challenge police brutality against African Americans. Dressed in black berets and black leather jackets, the Black Panthers organized armed citizen patrols of Oakland and other U.S. cities.

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1965: A new Voting Rights Act, which made it illegal to force would-be voters to pass literacy tests in order to vote, is signed.

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1965: A new Voting Rights Act, which made it illegal to force would-be voters to pass literacy tests in order to vote, is signed.

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While three members of the Nation of Islam were arrested for his 1965 murder, more than 50 years later, mystery still surrounds who really killed the civil rights activist.

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1965: A march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, is organized to demand protection for voting rights.

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1965: A march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, is organized to demand protection for voting rights.

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The Selma to Montgomery march was part of a series of civil rights protests that occurred in 1965 in Alabama, a Southern state with deeply entrenched racist policies. In March of that year, in an effort to register Black voters in the South, protesters marching the 54-mile route from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery were confronted with deadly violence from local authorities and white vigilante groups. As the world watched, the protesters-under the protection of federalized National Guard troops-finally achieved their goal, walking around the clock for three days to reach Montgomery, Alabama. The historic march, and Martin Luther King Jr. 's participation in it, raised awareness of the difficulties faced by Black voters, and the need for a national Voting Rights Act.

Voter Registration Efforts in Alabama

Even after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbade discrimination in voting on the basis of race, efforts by civil rights organizations such as the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee ( SNCC) to register Black voters met with fierce resistance in southern states such as Alabama.

But the civil rights movement was not easily deterred. In early 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. and the SCLC decided to make Selma, located in Dallas County, Alabama, the focus of a Black voter registration campaign. King had won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, and his profile would help draw international attention to the events that followed.

Alabama Governor George Wallace was a notorious opponent of desegregation, and the local county sheriff in Dallas County had led a steadfast opposition to Black voter registration drives.

As a result, only 2 percent of Selma's eligible Black voters (about 300 out of 15,000) had managed to register to vote.

Did you know? Ralph Bunche, who participated in the Selma to Montgomery March with Martin Luther King Jr., won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950 for his successful negotiation of an Arab-Israeli truce in Palestine a year earlier.

Bloody Sunday

On February 18, white segregationists attacked a group of peaceful demonstrators in the town of Marion, Alabama. In the ensuing chaos, an Alabama state trooper fatally shot Jimmie Lee Jackson, a young African American demonstrator.

In response to Jackson's death, King and the SCLC planned a massive protest march from Selma to the state capitol of Montgomery, 54 miles away. A group of 600 people, including activists John Lewis and Hosea Williams, set out from Selma on Sunday, March 7, 1965 a day that would come to be known as " Bloody Sunday,"

The marchers didn't get far before Alabama state troopers wielding whips, nightsticks and tear gas rushed the group at the Edmund Pettus Bridge and beat them back to Selma. The brutal scene was captured on television, enraging many Americans and drawing civil rights and religious leaders of all faiths to Selma in protest.

Hundreds of ministers, priests, rabbis and social activists soon headed to Selma to join the voting rights march.

Edmund Pettus Bridge

On March 9, King led more than 2,000 marchers, Black and white, across the Edmund Pettus Bridge but found Highway 80 blocked again by state troopers. King paused the marchers and led them in prayer, whereupon the troopers stepped aside.

King then turned the protesters around, believing that the troopers were trying to create an opportunity that would allow them to enforce a federal injunction prohibiting the march. This decision led to criticism from some marchers, who called King cowardly.

That night, a group of segregationists attacked another protester; the young white minister James Reeb, beating him to death. Alabama state officials (led by Wallace) tried to prevent the march from going forward, but a U.S. district court judge ordered them to permit it.

LBJ Addresses Nation

Six days later, on March 15, President Lyndon B. Johnson went on national television to pledge his support to the Selma protesters and to call for the passage of a new voting rights bill that he was introducing in Congress.

"There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem," Johnson said, "Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not just Negros, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome."

Some 2,000 people set out from Selma on March 21, protected by U.S. Army troops and Alabama National Guard forces that Johnson had ordered under federal control. After walking some 12 hours a day and sleeping in fields along the way, they reached Montgomery on March 25.

Nearly 50,000 supporters-Black and white-met the marchers in Montgomery, where they gathered in front of the state capitol to hear King and other speakers including Ralph Bunche (winner of the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize) address the crowd.

"No tide of racism can stop us," King proclaimed from the building's steps, as viewers from around the world watched the historic moment on television.

Lasting Impact of the March

On March 17, 1965, even as the Selma-to-Montgomery marchers fought for the right to carry out their protest, President Lyndon Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress, calling for federal voting rights legislation to protect African Americans from barriers that prevented them from voting.

That August, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which guaranteed the right to vote (first awarded by the 15th Amendment) to all African Americans. Specifically, the act banned literacy tests as a requirement for voting, mandated federal oversight of voter registration in areas where tests had previously been used and gave the U.S. attorney general the duty of challenging the use of poll taxes for state and local elections.

Along with the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act was one of the most expansive pieces of civil rights legislation in American history. It greatly reduced the disparity between Black and white voters in the U.S. and allowed greater numbers of African Americans to participate in politics and government at the local, state and national level.

HISTORY Vault: Voices of Civil Rights

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Selma to Montgomery March - MLK, Purpose & Distance | HISTORY

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The Selma to Montgomery march was part of a series of civil-rights protests that occurred in 1965 in Alabama, a Southern state with deeply entrenched racist policies. The historic 54-mile march, and Martin Luther King Jr.'s participation in it, raised awareness of the difficulties faced by black voters, and the need for a national Voting Rights Act.

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1964: Martin Luther King Jr., receives the Nobel Peace Prize. Congress passes the Civil Rights Act of 1964, declaring racial discrimination illegal.

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1964: Martin Luther King Jr., receives the Nobel Peace Prize. Congress passes the Civil Rights Act of 1964, declaring racial discrimination illegal.

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1963: 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing

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1963: 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing

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"The 16th Street Baptist Church, center for Civil Rights
meetings, is bombed. Four young African American girls attending Sunday school are killed, 20 others are injured., Birmingham, Alabama."

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The Bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church

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1963: Martin Luther King Jr's "I Have a Dream Speech"

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1963: Martin Luther King Jr's "I Have a Dream Speech"

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"Over a quarter of a million people participate in the March on Washington. Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his "I Have a Dream" speech."

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On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr., delivered a speech to a massive group of civil rights marchers gathered around the Lincoln memorial in Washington DC. The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom brought together the nations most prominent civil rights leaders, along with tens of thousands of marchers, to press the United States government for equality.

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1963: Medgar Evers, NAACP secretary and Civil Rights activist is assasinated

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1963: Medgar Evers, NAACP secretary and Civil Rights activist is assasinated

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Early Life and Education

Medgar Wiley Evers was born on July 2, 1925, in Decatur, Mississippi. Growing up in a Mississippi farming family, Evers was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1943. He fought in both France and Germany during World War II and received an honorable discharge in 1946.

Evers went on to enroll at Alcorn College (now Alcorn State University) in Lorman, Mississippi, in 1948. He married fellow student Myrlie Beasley during his senior year, before graduating in 1952.

Early Civil Rights Work

After initially finding work as an insurance salesman, Evers soon became involved in the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL). Proving up to the task in his first experience as a civil rights organizer, he spearheaded the group's boycott against gas stations that refused to let Black people use their restrooms. With his brother Charles, Evers also worked on behalf of the NAACP, organizing local affiliates.

Lawsuit Against the University of Mississippi

Evers applied to the University of Mississippi Law School in February 1954. After being rejected, he volunteered to help the NAACP try to integrate the university with a lawsuit. Thurgood Marshall served as his attorney for this legal challenge to racial discrimination. While he failed to gain admission to the law school, Evers managed to raise his profile with the NAACP.

In May 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in the famous Brown v. Board of Education case. This decision legally ended segregation of schools, though it took many years for it to be fully implemented.

NAACP Leader

Later in 1954, Evers became the first field secretary for the NAACP in Mississippi and moved his family to Jackson. As state field secretary, Evers traveled around Mississippi extensively, recruiting new members for the NAACP and organizing voter-registration efforts. Evers also led demonstrations and economic boycotts of white-owned companies that practiced discrimination.

While a virtual unknown elsewhere, Evers was one of Mississippi's most prominent civil rights activists. He fought racial injustices in many forms, including how the state and local legal systems handled crimes against African Americans. Evers called for a new investigation into the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African American boy who had allegedly been killed for talking to a white woman. He also protested the conviction of his fellow Mississippi civil rights activist Clyde Kennard on theft charges in 1960.

Evers's efforts made him a target for those who opposed racial equality and desegregation. He and his family were subjected to numerous threats and violent actions, including a firebombing of his house in May 1963, shortly before his assassination.

Assassination and Aftermath

The first Mississippi state field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Evers was shot in the back in the driveway of his home in Jackson, Mississippi, shortly after midnight on June 12, 1963. He died less than an hour later at a nearby hospital.

Evers was buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery, and the NAACP posthumously awarded him its 1963 Spingarn Medal. The national outrage over Evers' murder increased support for legislation that would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Immediately after Evers's death, the NAACP appointed his brother, Charles, to his position. Charles Evers went on to become a major political figure in the state; in 1969, he was elected the mayor of Fayette, Mississippi, becoming the first African American mayor of a racially mixed Southern town since Reconstruction.

Investigation and Trials

A police and FBI investigation of the murder quickly unearthed a prime suspect: Byron De La Beckwith, a white segregationist and founding member of Mississippi's White Citizens Council. Despite mounting evidence against him - a rifle found near the crime scene was registered to Beckwith and had his fingerprints on the scope, and several witnesses placed him in the area - Beckwith denied shooting Evers. He maintained that the gun had been stolen, and produced several witnesses to testify that he was elsewhere on the night of the murder.

The bitter conflict over segregation surrounded the two trials that followed. Beckwith received the support of some of Mississippi's most prominent citizens, including then-Governor Ross Barnett, who appeared at Beckwith's first trial to shake hands with the defendant in full view of the jury. In 1964, Beckwith was set free after two all-white juries deadlocked.

New Evidence, Conviction and Death

After Beckwith's second trial, Evers' wife moved their children to California, where she earned a degree from Pomona College and was later named to the Los Angeles Commission of Public Works. Convinced that her husband's killer had not been brought to justice, she continued to search for new evidence in the case.

In 1989, the question of Beckwith's guilt was again raised when a Jackson newspaper published accounts of the files of the now-defunct Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, an organization that existed during the 1950s to help raise popular support for the maintenance of segregation. The accounts showed that the commission had helped lawyers for Beckwith screen potential jurors during the first two trials. A review by the Hinds County District Attorney's office found no evidence of such jury tampering, but it did locate a number of new witnesses, including several individuals who would eventually testify that Beckwith had bragged to them about the murder.

In December 1990, Beckwith was again indicted for the murder of Evers. After a number of appeals, the Mississippi Supreme Court finally ruled in favor of a third trial in April 1993. Ten months later, testimony began before a racially mixed jury of eight Black people and four white people. In February 1994, nearly 31 years after Evers' death, Beckwith was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. He died in January 2001 at the age of 80.

Legacy and Landmark

Since his untimely passing, Evers' contributions to the civil rights movement have been honored in many ways. His wife created what is now known as the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Institute in Jackson, Mississippi, to continue the couple's commitment to social change. The City University of New York named one of its campuses after the slain activist, and in 2009, the U.S. Navy also bestowed his name on one of its vessels.

In early 2017, President Obama designated Evers' home a national historic landmark. "The National Historic Landmark designation is an important step toward recognizing and preserving significant civil rights sites in Mississippi and around the country," Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran said in a statement. "The sacrifices made by Medgar and Myrlie Evers deserve this distinction."

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Medgar Wiley Evers was born on July 2, 1925, in Decatur, Mississippi. Growing up in a Mississippi farming family, Evers was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1943. He fought in both France and Germany during World War II and received an honorable discharge in 1946.

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1961: Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) organizes Freedom Rides into the South to test new Interstate Commerce Commission regulations and court orders barring segregation in interstate transportation. 

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1961: Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) organizes Freedom Rides into the South to test new Interstate Commerce Commission regulations and court orders barring segregation in interstate transportation. 

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"Riders are beaten by white mob in several places, including Birmingham and Montgomery, Alabama."

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1960: College student sit-ins at lunch counters begin in Greensboro, North Carolina. 

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1960: College student sit-ins at lunch counters begin in Greensboro, North Carolina. 

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"The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) founded."

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1957: Little Rock Nine integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. 

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1957: Little Rock Nine integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. 

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"Their attendance at the school was a test of Brown v. Board of Education, a landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling that declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional."

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Desegregation of Schools

In its Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision, issued May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation of America's public schools was unconstitutional.

Until the court's decision, many states across the nation had mandatory segregation laws, or Jim Crow laws, requiring African American and white children to attend separate schools. Resistance to the ruling was so widespread that the court issued a second decision in 1955, known as Brown II, ordering school districts to integrate "with all deliberate speed."

Little Rock Central High School

In response to the Brown decisions and pressure from the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP), the Little Rock, Arkansas, school board adopted a plan for gradual integration of its schools.

The first institutions to integrate would be the high schools, beginning in September 1957. Among these was Little Rock Central High School, which opened in 1927 and was originally called Little Rock Senior High School.

Two pro-segregation groups formed to oppose the plan: The Capital Citizens Council and the Mother's League of Central High School.

Who Were the Little Rock Nine?

Despite the virulent opposition, nine students registered to be the first African Americans to attend Central High School. Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Thelma Mothershed, Melba Patillo, Gloria Ray, Terrence Roberts, Jefferson Thomas and Carlotta Walls had been recruited by Daisy Gaston Bates, president of the Arkansas NAACP and co-publisher of the Arkansas State Press, an influential African American newspaper.

Daisy Bates and others from the Arkansas NAACP carefully vetted the group of students and determined they all possessed the strength and determination to face the resistance they would encounter. In the weeks prior to the start of the new school year, the students participated in intensive counseling sessions guiding them on what to expect once classes began and how to respond to anticipated hostile situations.

The group soon became famous as the Little Rock Nine.

Orval Faubus

On September 2, 1957, Governor Orval Faubus announced that he would call in the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the African American students' entry to Central High, claiming this action was for the students' own protection. In a televised address, Faubus insisted that violence and bloodshed might break out if Black students were allowed to enter the school.

The Mother's League held a sunrise service at the school on September 3 as a protest against integration. But that afternoon, federal judge Ronald Davies issued a ruling that desegregation would continue as planned the next day.

Elizabeth Eckford

The Little Rock Nine arrived for the first day of school at Central High on September 4, 1957. Eight arrived together, driven by Bates.

Elizabeth Eckford's family, however, did not have a telephone, and Bates could not reach her to let her know of the carpool plans. Therefore, Eckford arrived alone.

The Arkansas National Guard, under orders of Governor Faubus, prevented any of the Little Rock Nine from entering the doors of Central High. One of the most enduring images from this day is a photograph of Eckford, alone with a notebook in her hand, stoically approaching the school as a crowd of hostile and screaming white students and adults surround her.

Eckford later recalled that one of the women spat on her. The image was printed and broadcast widely in the United States and abroad, bringing the Little Rock controversy to national and international attention.

Ronald Davies

In the following weeks, federal judge Ronald Davies began legal proceedings against Governor Faubus, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower attempted to persuade Faubus to remove the National Guard and let the Little Rock Nine enter the school.

Judge Davies ordered the Guard removed on September 20, and the Little Rock Police Department took over to maintain order. The police escorted the nine African American students into the school on September 23, through an angry mob of some 1,000 white protesters gathered outside. Amidst ensuing rioting, the police removed the nine students.

The following day, President Eisenhower sent in 1,200 members of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and placed them in charge of the 10,000 National Guardsmen on duty. Escorted by the troops, the Little Rock Nine attended their first full day of classes on September 25.

Numerous legal challenges to integration continued throughout the year, and Faubus repeatedly expressed his wish that the Little Rock Nine be removed from Central High.

Although several of the Black students had positive experiences on their first day of school, according to a September 25, 1957, report in The New York Times, they experienced routine harassment and even violence throughout the rest of the year.

Melba Patillo, for instance, was kicked, beaten and had acid thrown in her face. At one point, white students burned an African American effigy in a vacant lot across from the school. Gloria Ray was pushed down a flight of stairs, and the Little Rock Nine were barred from participating in extracurricular activities.

Minnijean Brown was expelled from Central High School in February 1958 for retaliating against the attacks. Harassment went beyond the students: Gloria Ray's mother was fired from her job with the State of Arkansas when she refused to remove her daughter from the school. The 101st Airborne and the National Guard remained at Central High School for the duration of the year.

Ernest Green

On May 25, 1958, Ernest Green, the only senior among the Little Rock Nine, became the first African American graduate of Central High.

In September 1958, one year after Central High was integrated, Governor Faubus closed all of Little Rock's high schools for the entire year, pending a public vote, to prevent African American attendance. Little Rock citizens voted 19,470 to 7,561 against integration and the schools remained closed.

Other than Green, the rest of the Little Rock Nine completed their high school careers via correspondence or at other high schools across the country. Eckford joined the Army and later earned her General Education Equivalency diploma. Little Rock's high schools reopened in August 1959.

Did you know? Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. attended graduation ceremonies at Central High School in May 1958 to see Ernest Green, the only senior among the Little Rock Nine, receive his diploma.

Little Rock Nine Aftermath

Several of the Little Rock Nine went on to distinguished careers.

Green served as assistant secretary of the federal Department of Labor under President Jimmy Carter. Brown worked as deputy assistant secretary for workforce diversity in the Department of the Interior under President Bill Clinton. Patillo worked as a reporter for NBC.

The group has been widely recognized for their significant role in the civil rights movement. In 1999, President Clinton awarded each member of the group the Congressional Gold Medal. The nine also all received personal invitations to attend the inauguration of President Barack Obama in 2009.

Jefferson Thomas became the first of the Little Rock Nine to die when he succumbed to pancreatic cancer at the age of 67 on September 5, 2010. After graduating from Central High, Thomas served in the Army in Vietnam, earned a business degree and worked as an accountant for private companies and the Pentagon.

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Little Rock Nine - Definition, Names & Facts | HISTORY

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The Little Rock Nine were a group of nine Black students who enrolled at formerly all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in September 1957. Their attendance at the school was a test of Brown v. Board of Education, a landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling that declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional.

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1955-1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott ends in victory when a federal ruling from the US Supreme Court declares the Alabama and Montgomery laws requiring segregated buses to be unconstitutional.

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1955-1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott ends in victory when a federal ruling from the US Supreme Court declares the Alabama and Montgomery laws requiring segregated buses to be unconstitutional.

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Rosa Parks' Bus

In 1955, African Americans were still required by a Montgomery, Alabama, city ordinance to sit in the back half of city buses and to yield their seats to white riders if the front half of the bus, reserved for whites, was full.

But on December 1, 1955, African American seamstress Rosa Parks was commuting home on Montgomery's Cleveland Avenue bus from her job at a local department store. She was seated in the front row of the "colored section." When the white seats filled, the driver, J. Fred Blake, asked Parks and three others to vacate their seats. The other Black riders complied, but Parks refused.

She was arrested and fined $10, plus $4 in court fees. This was not Parks' first encounter with Blake. In 1943, she had paid her fare at the front of a bus he was driving, then exited so she could re-enter through the back door, as required. Blake pulled away before she could re-board the bus.

Did you know? Nine months before Rosa Parks' arrest for refusing to give up her bus seat, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin was arrested in Montgomery for the same act. The city's Black leaders prepared to protest, until it was discovered Colvin was pregnant and deemed an inappropriate symbol for their cause.

Although Parks has sometimes been depicted as a woman with no history of civil rights activism at the time of her arrest, she and her husband Raymond were, in fact, active in the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP), and Parks served as its secretary.

Upon her arrest, Parks called E.D. Nixon, a prominent Black leader, who bailed her out of jail and determined she would be an upstanding and sympathetic plaintiff in a legal challenge of the segregation ordinance. African American leaders decided to attack the ordinance using other tactics as well.

The Women's Political Council (WPC), a group of Black women working for civil rights, began circulating flyers calling for a boycott of the bus system on December 5, the day Parks would be tried in municipal court. The boycott was organized by WPC President Jo Ann Robinson.

Montgomery's African Americans Mobilize

As news of the boycott spread, African American leaders across Montgomery (Alabama's capital city) began lending their support. Black ministers announced the boycott in church on Sunday, December 4, and the Montgomery Advertiser, a general-interest newspaper, published a front-page article on the planned action.

Approximately 40,000 Black bus riders-the majority of the city's bus riders-boycotted the system the next day, December 5. That afternoon, Black leaders met to form the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). The group elected Martin Luther King Jr., the 26-year-old-pastor of Montgomery's Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, as its president, and decided to continue the boycott until the city met its demands.

Initially, the demands did not include changing the segregation laws; rather, the group demanded courtesy, the hiring of Black drivers, and a first-come, first-seated policy, with whites entering and filling seats from the front and African Americans from the rear.

Ultimately, however, a group of five Montgomery women, represented by attorney Fred D. Gray and the NAACP, sued the city in U.S. District Court, seeking to have the busing segregation laws totally invalidated.

Although African Americans represented at least 75 percent of Montgomery's bus ridership, the city resisted complying with the protester's demands. To ensure the boycott could be sustained, Black leaders organized carpools, and the city's African American taxi drivers charged only 10 cents-the same price as bus fare-for African American riders.

Many Black residents chose simply to walk to work or other destinations. Black leaders organized regular mass meetings to keep African American residents mobilized around the boycott.

Integration at Last

On June 5, 1956, a Montgomery federal court ruled that any law requiring racially segregated seating on buses violated the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That amendment, adopted in 1868 following the U.S. Civil War, guarantees all citizens-regardless of race-equal rights and equal protection under state and federal laws.

The city appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld the lower court's decision on December 20, 1956. Montgomery's buses were integrated on December 21, 1956, and the boycott ended. It had lasted 381 days.

Bus Boycott Meets With Violence

Integration, however, met with significant resistance and even violence. While the buses themselves were integrated, Montgomery maintained segregated bus stops. Snipers began firing into buses, and one shooter shattered both legs of a pregnant African American passenger.

In January 1957, four Black churches and the homes of prominent Black leaders were bombed; a bomb at King's house was defused. On January 30, 1957, the Montgomery police arrested seven bombers; all were members of the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist group. The arrests largely brought an end to the busing-related violence.

Boycott Puts Martin Luther King Jr. in Spotlight

The Montgomery Bus Boycott was significant on several fronts. First, it is widely regarded as the earliest mass protest on behalf of civil rights in the United States, setting the stage for additional large-scale actions outside the court system to bring about fair treatment for African Americans.

Second, in his leadership of the MIA, Martin Luther King Jr. emerged as a prominent national leader of the civil rights movement while also solidifying his commitment to nonviolent resistance. King's approach remained a hallmark of the civil rights movement throughout the 1960s.

Shortly after the boycott's end, he helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a highly influential civil rights organization that worked to end segregation throughout the South. The SCLC was instrumental in the civil rights campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, in the spring of 1963, and the March on Washington in August of that same year, during which King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

The boycott also brought national and international attention to the civil rights struggles occurring in the United States, as more than 100 reporters visited Montgomery during the boycott to profile the effort and its leaders.

Rosa Parks, while shying from the spotlight throughout her life, remained an esteemed figure in the history of American civil rights activism. In 1999, the U.S. Congress awarded her its highest honor, the Congressional Gold Medal.

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Montgomery Bus Boycott - Facts, Significance & Rosa Parks | HISTORY

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For 382 days, almost the entire African American population of Montgomery, Alabama, including leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, refused to ride on segregated buses. The protests marked a turning point in the American civil rights movement.

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1955: Claudette Colvin, 15, refuses to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. 

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1955: Claudette Colvin, 15, refuses to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. 

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1955: Rosa Parks, civil rights activist, is jailed for refusing to  to the back of a Montgomery, Alabama, bus. A boycott follows.

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1955: Rosa Parks, civil rights activist, is jailed for refusing to  to the back of a Montgomery, Alabama, bus. A boycott follows.

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1955: 14 year old African-American Emmett Till is beaten and murdered for speaking to a white woman, Mississippi

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1955: 14 year old African-American Emmett Till is beaten and murdered for speaking to a white woman, Mississippi

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Emmett Till is murdered | August 28, 1955 | HISTORY

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Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till, an African American from Chicago, is brutally murdered for allegedly flirting with a white woman four days earlier.

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1925: The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) marches on Washington D.C. 

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1925: The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) marches on Washington D.C. 

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"The Ku Klux Klan was a white supremacist terrorist group that emerged during Reconstruction."

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The Ku Klux Klan | National Geographic Society

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The Ku Klux Klan is a domestic terrorist organization founded shortly after the United States Civil War ended. It has used intimidation, violence, and murder to maintain white supremacy in Southern government and social life.

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1920: 19th Amendment is ratified that gives American women the right to vote. 

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1920: 19th Amendment is ratified that gives American women the right to vote. 

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1910: NAACP or National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is founded by W.E.B Du Bois, Jane Addams, John Dewey and others.

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1910: NAACP or National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is founded by W.E.B Du Bois, Jane Addams, John Dewey and others.

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1870: 15th Amendment that bans racial discrimination in voting is ratified. 

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1870: 15th Amendment that bans racial discrimination in voting is ratified. 

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1870: Jim Crow Laws are passed in some Southern States including Tennessee. 

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1870: Jim Crow Laws are passed in some Southern States including Tennessee. 

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"Jim Crow laws were a collection of state and local statutes that legalized racial segregation."

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Black Codes

The roots of Jim Crow laws began as early as 1865, immediately following the ratification of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery in the United States.

Black codes were strict local and state laws that detailed when, where and how formerly enslaved people could work, and for how much compensation. The codes appeared throughout the South as a legal way to put Black citizens into indentured servitude, to take voting rights away, to control where they lived and how they traveled and to seize children for labor purposes.

The legal system was stacked against Black citizens, with former Confederate soldiers working as police and judges, making it difficult for African Americans to win court cases and ensuring they were subject to Black codes.

These codes worked in conjunction with labor camps for the incarcerated, where prisoners were treated as enslaved people. Black offenders typically received longer sentences than their white equals, and because of the grueling work, often did not live out their entire sentence.

Ku Klux Klan

During the Reconstruction era, local governments, as well as the national Democratic Party and President Andrew Johnson, thwarted efforts to help Black Americans move forward.

Violence was on the rise, making danger a regular aspect of African American life. Black schools were vandalized and destroyed, and bands of violent white people attacked, tortured and lynched Black citizens in the night. Families were attacked and forced off their land all across the South.

The most ruthless organization of the Jim Crow era, the Ku Klux Klan, was born in 1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee, as a private club for Confederate veterans.

The KKK grew into a secret society terrorizing Black communities and seeping through white Southern culture, with members at the highest levels of government and in the lowest echelons of criminal back alleys.

Jim Crow Laws Expand

At the start of the 1880s, big cities in the South were not wholly beholden to Jim Crow laws and Black Americans found more freedom in them.

This led to substantial Black populations moving to the cities and, as the decade progressed, white city dwellers demanded more laws to limit opportunities for African Americans.

Jim Crow laws soon spread around the country with even more force than previously. Public parks were forbidden for African Americans to enter, and theaters and restaurants were segregated.

Segregated waiting rooms in bus and train stations were required, as well as water fountains, restrooms, building entrances, elevators, cemeteries, even amusement-park cashier windows.

Laws forbade African Americans from living in white neighborhoods. Segregation was enforced for public pools, phone booths, hospitals, asylums, jails and residential homes for the elderly and handicapped.

Some states required separate textbooks for Black and white students. New Orleans mandated the segregation of prostitutes according to race. In Atlanta, African Americans in court were given a different Bible from white people to swear on. Marriage and cohabitation between white and Black people was strictly forbidden in most Southern states.

It was not uncommon to see signs posted at town and city limits warning African Americans that they were not welcome there.

Ida B. Wells

As oppressive as the Jim Crow era was, it was also a time when many African Americans around the country stepped forward into leadership roles to vigorously oppose the laws.

Memphis teacher Ida B. Wells became a prominent activist against Jim Crow laws after refusing to leave a first-class train car designated for white people only. A conductor forcibly removed her and she successfully sued the railroad, though that decision was later reversed by a higher court.

Angry at the injustice, Wells devoted herself to fighting Jim Crow laws. Her vehicle for dissent was newspaper writing: In 1889 she became co-owner of the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight and used her position to take on school segregation and sexual harassment.

Wells traveled throughout the South to publicize her work and advocated for the arming of Black citizens. Wells also investigated lynchings and wrote about her findings.

A mob destroyed her newspaper and threatened her with death, forcing her to move to the North, where she continued her efforts against Jim Crow laws and lynching.

Charlotte Hawkins Brown

Charlotte Hawkins Brown was a North Carolina-born, Massachusetts-raised Black woman who returned to her birthplace at the age of 17, in 1901, to work as a teacher for the American Missionary Association.

After funding was withdrawn for that school, Brown began fundraising to start her own school, named the Palmer Memorial Institute.

Brown became the first Black woman to create a Black school in North Carolina and through her education work became a fierce and vocal opponent of Jim Crow laws.

Isaiah Montgomery

Not everyone battled for equal rights within white society-some chose a separatist approach.

Convinced by Jim Crow laws that Black and white people could not live peaceably together, formerly enslaved Isaiah Montgomery created the African American-only town of Mound Bayou, Mississippi, in 1887.

Montgomery recruited other former enslaved people to settle in the wilderness with him, clearing the land and forging a settlement that included several schools, an Andrew Carnegie-funded library, a hospital, three cotton gins, a bank and a sawmill. Mound Bayou still exists today, and is still almost 100 percent Black.

Jim Crow Laws in the 20th Century

As the 20th century progressed, Jim Crow laws flourished within an oppressive society marked by violence.

Following World War I, the NAACP noted that lynchings had become so prevalent that it sent investigator Walter White to the South. White had lighter skin and could infiltrate white hate groups.

As lynchings increased, so did race riots, with at least 25 across the United States over several months in 1919, a period sometimes referred to as " Red Summer." In retaliation, white authorities charged Black communities with conspiring to conquer white America.

With Jim Crow dominating the landscape, education increasingly under attack and few opportunities for Black college graduates, the Great Migration of the 1920s saw a significant migration of educated Black people out of the South, spurred on by publications like The Chicago Defender, which encouraged Black Americans to move north.

Read by millions of Southern Black people, white people attempted to ban the newspaper and threatened violence against any caught reading or distributing it.

The poverty of the Great Depression only deepened resentment, with a rise in lynchings, and after World War II, even Black veterans returning home met with segregation and violence.

Jim Crow in the North

The North was not immune to Jim Crow-like laws. Some states required Black people to own property before they could vote, schools and neighborhoods were segregated, and businesses displayed "Whites Only" signs.

In Ohio, segregationist Allen Granbery Thurman ran for governor in 1867 promising to bar Black citizens from voting. After he narrowly lost that political race, Thurman was appointed to the U.S. Senate, where he fought to dissolve Reconstruction-era reforms benefiting African Americans.

After World War II, suburban developments in the North and South were created with legal covenants that did not allow Black families, and Black people often found it difficult or impossible to obtain mortgages for homes in certain "red-lined" neighborhoods.

When Did Jim Crow Laws End?

The post-World War II era saw an increase in civil rights activities in the African American community, with a focus on ensuring that Black citizens were able to vote. This ushered in the civil rights movement, resulting in the removal of Jim Crow laws.

In 1948 President Harry Truman ordered integration in the military, and in 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that educational segregation was unconstitutional, bringing to an end the era of "separate-but-equal" education.

In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, which legally ended the segregation that had been institutionalized by Jim Crow laws.

And in 1965, the Voting Rights Act halted efforts to keep minorities from voting. The Fair Housing Act of 1968, which ended discrimination in renting and selling homes, followed.

Jim Crow laws were technically off the books, though that has not always guaranteed full integration or adherence to anti-racism laws throughout the United States. Several recent pieces of legislation-such as House Bill 1020 in Mississippi, which aimed to disenfranchise the majority-Black capital city of Jackson by creating a new judicial district overseen by white leaders-are often compared to Jim Crow laws.

Sources

The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow. Richard Wormser.
Segregated America. Smithsonian Institute.
Jim Crow Laws. National Park Service.
"Exploiting Black Labor After the Abolition of Slavery." The Conversation.
"Hundreds of black Americans were killed during 'Red Summer.' A century later, still ignored." Associated Press/USA Today.
"Here's What's Become Of A Historic All-Black Town In The Mississippi Delta." NPR.

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Jim Crow Laws: Definition, Facts & Timeline | HISTORY

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Jim Crow laws were state and local statutes that legalized racial segregation. Enacted after the Civil War, the laws denied equal opportunity to Black citizens.

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1868 Civil Rights Act grants citizenship and the same rights employed by white citizens to all male persons in the United States. 

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1868 Civil Rights Act grants citizenship and the same rights employed by white citizens to all male persons in the United States. 

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The 13th Amendment abolishing slavery is ratified

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1863 President Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation

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1863 President Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation

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All slaves were deemed free; however, freedom would not happen in all states until two and a half years later with Texas being the last state to free slaves.

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1892-1896

In 1890, Louisiana created separate railroad cars for Black and white passengers. Homer Plessy was 1/8 of Black descent and was arrested in 1892  for riding in a car designated for white passengers. The Supreme Court decided that separate, equal facilities did not violate a person's rights. This brought forth segregation in all areas of society including schools.

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1868

Though slavery had been abolished, many states created laws that denied rights to Black people. The 14th Amendment sought to ensure that all people would enjoy the same rights, regardless of where in the United States they lived.

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The 14th Amendment: The best idea in humanity’s 10,000-year history | Van Jones | Big Think

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1958-1967

In 1958, Mildred and Richard Loving were sentenced to a year in prison for marrying one another. They appealed on the grounds that they 14th Amendment guarantees equal protection under the law and won their case which has been used as precedent for other major cases as recently as 2015.

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We Talk to Interracial Couples 50 Years After Loving v. Virginia (HBO)

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1947-1952

Briggs vs Elliott began with a request for a bus for Black children in South Carolina. Many of the children were walking up to 16 miles to school. The NAACP joined and formed a case suing for equality in education. Thurgood Marshall was the attorney.

Briggs vs Elliott was combined with five other cases into Brown vs Board of Education in 1952.

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Nathaniel Briggs recounts Briggs vs. Elliot, his parents' battle for equal education | Video

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Nathaniel Briggs discusses his parents involvement in Briggs v Elliott and their struggle to fight for civil rights.

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1951-1954

Brown vs Board of Education began when Linda Brown of Topeka, KS and her family claimed that the the 14th Amendment meant that equal protection meant equal education. When Brown and her family lost, they appealed and her case was combined with four other cases (including Briggs vs Elliott). The landmark decision of Brown vs Board of Education meant that not only schools, but many other segments of society would be desegregated.

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Main content

<iframe width="550" height="350" scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" frameborder="0" src="https://www.uscourts.gov/audio/brown-v-board-education-podcast" title=" Brown v. Board of Education Podcast "></iframe>

Decision Date: May 17, 1954

Background:

In the 1950s segregation laws in many states prohibited African American children and white children from attending the same schools. Linda Brown, an African American girl, could not attend a less-crowded white school a few blocks from her home in Topeka, Kan. Instead, she had to ride a bus across town to attend an African American school. In 1951, Linda Brown's father and several parents from her school filed suit against the Board of Education of the City of Topeka, Kansas in the United States District Court for the District of Kansas. He argued that separate schools were unconstitutional because they violated equal protection guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. The district court ruled in favor of the Board of Education citing the "separate but equal" precedent established by the 1896 Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson. The Brown case, along with four other similar segregation cases, was appealed to the United States Supreme Court. Thurgood Marshall, an NAACP attorney, argued the case before the Court.

Decision:

The Supreme Court first heard arguments for the case in December 1952. Because of its controversial nature and anticipated resistance from southern states, no decision was reached. During the Court's recess, Chief Justice Vinson died and Chief Justice Warren was appointed. In December 1953, the Court heard the case again and on May 17, 1954, unanimously ruled segregation unconstitutional. The Court said "separate is not equal," and segregation violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

DISCLAIMER: These resources are created by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts for educational purposes only. They may not reflect the current state of the law, and are not intended to provide legal advice, guidance on litigation, or commentary on any pending case or legislation.

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Main content Decision Date: May 17, 1954 In the 1950s segregation laws in many states prohibited African American children and white children from attending the same schools. Linda Brown, an African American girl, could not attend a less-crowded white school a few blocks from her home in Topeka, Kan.