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Who was Harriet Tubman, and what was her pivotal role in the Underground Railroad? (1849).

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Who was Harriet Tubman, and what was her pivotal role in the Underground Railroad? (1849).

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Tubman successfully escaped to Philadelphia in 1849. Once free, she became an operator of the Underground Railroad — a secret network of people, places and routes that provided shelter and assistance to escaping slaves.

When the Civil War began, Tubman worked for the Union Army, first as a cook and nurse, and then as an armed scout and spy. In 1863, she became the first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war, liberating more than 700 slaves.

On April 20, 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced a plan for Tubman to replace Andrew Jackson as the portrait gracing the $20 bill.

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In its 1857 decision that stunned the nation, the United States Supreme Court upheld slavery in United States territories, denied the legality of black citizenship in America, and declared the Missouri Compromiseto be unconstitutional.

Dred Scott was born to slave parents in Virginia sometime around the turn of the nineteenth century. His parents may have been the property of Peter Blow, or Blow may have purchased Scott at a later date. The mystery of exact ownership is one that would follow Dred Scott, and later his family, throughout their lives as slaves. With few records extant, it is difficult to identify exactly when ownership of the family was transferred to various parties.

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 the Emancipation Proclamation  of (1863).

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 the Emancipation Proclamation  of (1863).

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From the first days of the Civil War, slaves had acted to secure their own liberty. The Emancipation Proclamation confirmed their insistence that the war for the Union must become a war for freedom. It added moral force to the Union cause and strengthened the Union both militarily and politically

The document was bound with other proclamations in a large volume preserved for many years by the Department of State. When it was prepared for binding, it was reinforced with strips along the center folds and then mounted on a still larger sheet of heavy paper. Written in red ink on the upper right-hand corner of this large sheet is the number of the Proclamation, 95, given to it by the Department of State long after it was signed. With other records, the volume containing the Emancipation Proclamation was transferred in 1936 from the Department of State to the National Archives of the United States.

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rom the first days of the Civil War, slaves had acted to secure their own liberty. The Emancipation Proclamation confirmed their insistence that the war for the Union must become a war for freedom. It added moral force to the Union cause and strengthened the Union both militarily and politically.

The document was bound with other proclamations in a large volume preserved for many years by the Department of State. When it was prepared for binding, it was reinforced with strips along the center folds and then mounted on a still larger sheet of heavy paper. Written in red ink on the upper right-hand corner of this large sheet is the number of the Proclamation, 95, given to it by the Department of State long after it was signed. With other records, the volume containing the Emancipation Proclamation was transferred in 1936 from the Department of State to the National Archives of the United States.

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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.

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Although African American writers and politicians used the term “Black Power” for years, the expression first entered the lexicon of the civil rights movement during the Meredith March Against Fear in the summer of 1966. Martin Luther King, Jr., believed that Black Power was “essentially an emotional concept” that meant “different things to different people,” but he worried that the slogan carried “connotations of violence and separatism” and opposed its use (King, 32; King, 14 October 1966). The controversy over Black Power reflected and perpetuated a split in the civil rights movement between organizations that maintained that nonviolent methods were the only way to achieve civil rights goals and those organizations that had become frustrated and were ready to adopt violence and black separatism.

On 16 June 1966, while completing the march begun by James Meredith, Stokely Carmichael of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) rallied a crowd in Greenwood, Mississippi, with the cry, “We want Black Power!” Although SNCC members had used the term during informal conversations, this was the first time Black Power was used as a public slogan. Asked later what he meant by the term, Carmichael said, “When you talk about black power you talk about bringing this country to its knees any time it messes with the black man … any white man in this country knows about power.

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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.

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.

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The Black experience during the Great Migration became an important theme in the artistic movement known first as the New Negro Movement and later as the Harlem Renaissance, which would have an enormous impact on the culture of the era.

The Great Migration also began a new era of increasing political activism among Black Americans, who after being disenfranchised in the South found a new place for themselves in public life in the cities of the North and West. The civil rights movement directly benefited from this activism.

By the 1970s, when the Great Migration ended, its demographic impact was unmistakable: Whereas in 1900, nine out of every 10 Black Americans lived in the South, and three out of every four lived on farms, by 1970 the South was home to only half of the country’s Black population, with only 20 percent living in the region’s rural areas. The Great Migration was famously captured in Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration.

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the significance of the March on Washington in (1963.)

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the significance of the March on Washington in (1963.)

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The March on Washington sought to pressure Congress to pass civil rights legislation. Many public officials feared that the march would result in violence and proposed a bill in Congress to prevent it. Despite predictions of trouble, an interracial crowd of 250,000 gathered and listened to speakers without any violence.

Hopeful progress and moments of tragedy marked the Civil Rights Movement during the course of 1963. Thousands of people across the nation demonstrated their commitment to freedom and equality, sometimes in the face of violence and intimidation. In 1963, more clearly than in any other year, media images offered the nation a definitive picture of the forces supporting segregation and their resolve to maintain it. The inspirational nonviolent commitment of civil rights activists encouraged many Americans, including the president, to support changes in the law.

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Freedom Riders were groups of white and African American civil rights activists who participated in Freedom Rides, bus trips through the American South in 1961 to protest segregated bus terminals. Freedom Riders tried to use “whites-only” restrooms and lunch counters at bus stations in Alabama, South Carolina and other Southern states. The groups were confronted by arresting police officers—as well as horrific violence from white protestors—along their routes, but also drew international attention to the civil rights movement.

On May 14, 1961, the Greyhound bus was the first to arrive in Anniston, Alabama. There, an angry mob of about 200 white people surrounded the bus, causing the driver to continue past the bus station.

The mob followed the bus in automobiles, and when the tires on the bus blew out, someone threw a bomb into the bus. The Freedom Riders escaped the bus as it burst into flames, only to be brutally beaten by members of the surrounding mob.

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the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. (1968)

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the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. (1968)

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King's death energized the Black Power Movement. Black Americans felt even more distrustful of white institutions and America's political system. Membership in the Black Panther Party and other Black Power groups surged. Local organizations grew into national networks.

Black Americans were devastated, pained, and angered. Violence erupted in more than 125 American cities across 29 states. Nearly 50,000 federal troops occupied America’s urban areas. Thirty-nine people were killed and 3,500 injured. These uprisings produced more property damage, arrests, and injuries than any other uprising of the 1960s.

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Provisions of this civil rights act forbade discrimination on the basis of sex, as well as, race in hiring, promoting, and firing. The Act prohibited discrimination in public accommodations and federally funded programs. It also strengthened the enforcement of voting rights and the desegregation of schools.

In the 1960s, Americans who knew only the potential of "equal protection of the laws" expected the president, the Congress, and the courts to fulfill the promise of the 14th Amendment. In response, all three branches of the federal government--as well as the public at large--debated a fundamental constitutional question: Does the Constitution's prohibition of denying equal protection always ban the use of racial, ethnic, or gender criteria in an attempt to bring social justice and social benefits?

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 the Rodney King incident and the subsequent LA Riots (1991)

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 the Rodney King incident and the subsequent LA Riots (1991)

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Rodney King is pulled over by California Highway Patrol officers for speeding on the 210 Freeway. King, who later admitted he tried to elude authorities because he had been drinking and was on probation for a robbery conviction, pulled off the freeway and eventually stopped his car in front of a San Fernando Valley apartment building

As word of the verdict spreads through predominantly black South L.A., residents explode in anger, burning and looting stores by the hundreds and attacking non-black passers-by. Gov. Pete Wilson complies with Bradley's request to send in the National Guard.

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she became the first African American woman to have her screen play turned into a film with the production of Georgia, Georgia. Angelou earned a Tony nomination in 1973 for her supporting role in Jerome Kitty's play Look Away, and portrayed Kunta Kinte's grandmother in the television miniseries Roots.

She was recognized by many organizations both nationally and internationally for her contributions to literature. In 1981, Wake Forest University offered Angelou the Reynolds Professorship of American Studies. President Clinton awarded Angelou the National Medal of Arts in 2000. In 2012, she was a member of the inaugural class inducted into the Wake Forest University Writers Hall of Fame.

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the election of Shirley Chisholm (1968).

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the election of Shirley Chisholm (1968).

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she became the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress and represented New York's 12th congressional district for seven terms from 1969 to 1983. Early on in her Congressional term, Chisholm was first assigned to the House Agriculture Committee.

In the 1972 United States presidential election, she became the first Black candidate to seek a major party's nomination for President of the United States, and the first woman to run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. After the unsuccessful bid for President, Chisholm continued serving in the House of Representatives. In 1977, she was elected as Secretary of the House Democratic Caucus. Chisholm retired from Congress in 1983, where she was succeeded by Major Owens. In 2015, Chisholm was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

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A unanimous Court struck down state laws banning marriage between individuals of different races, holding that these anti-miscegenation statutes violated both the Due Process and the Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.

In June, 1958, two residents of Virginia, Mildred Jeter, a Negro woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, were married in the District of Columbia pursuant to its laws. Shortly after their marriage, the Lovings returned to Virginia and established their marital abode in Caroline County. At the October Term, 1958, of the Circuit Court.

The two statutes under which appellants were convicted and sentenced are part of a comprehensive statutory scheme aimed at prohibiting and punishing interracial marriages.

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founded in October 1966 in Oakland, California by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, who met at Merritt College in Oakland. It was a revolutionary organization with an ideology of Black nationalism, socialism, and armed self-defense, particularly against police brutality.

Because of its practice of armed self-defense against police, as well as its Communistic and revolutionary elements, the BPP was frequently targeted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s COINTELPRO program as well as by state and local law enforcement groups. However, despite its militant stance, the BPP also provided free breakfast for school children, sickle cell anemia screening, legal aid, and adult education.

We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black Community.

We want full employment for our people.

We want an end to the robbery by the Capitalists of our Black Community.

We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.

We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present day society.

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More than 250,000 African Americans embraced freedom by executive decree in what became known as Juneteenth or Freedom Day.

With the end of slavery, searching for family members who had been separated or sold away became the focus of many formerly enslaved individuals. The number of years of separation did not deter people from hoping to reunite with lost loved ones. Newspaper advertisements, letters and word of mouth were all employed as part of the search. The hope was that a positive response might lead to a reunion with family members.

For the nearly four million newly freed, education was a crucial first step to becoming self-sufficient. Between 1861 and 1900, more than 90 institutions of higher education were founded for African Americans.

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the National Museum of African American History and Culture (2016)

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the National Museum of African American History and Culture (2016)

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all Americans see how their stories, their histories, and their cultures are shaped and informed by global influences. It explores what it means to be an American and share how American values like resiliency, optimism, and spirituality are reflected in African American history and culture.

The NMAAHC is a public institution open to all, where anyone is welcome to participate, collaborate, and learn more about African American history and culture. In the words of Lonnie G. Bunch III, founding director of the Museum, “there are few things as powerful and as important as a people, as a nation that is steeped in its history.”

It explores what it means to be an American and share how American values like resiliency, optimism, and spirituality are reflected in African American history and culture.

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Archives.gov

History.com

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On February 26, 2012, George Zimmerman killed Martin. The killing (ruled as self-defense) and the trial galvanized the country and sparked protests and conversations about racism, profiling, and court rulings. In response to the Zimmerman verdict, a Facebook conversation by Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi sparked the slogan—#BlackLivesMatter.

Black Lives Matter shifted public opinion. For example, a 2017 Pew study found that 54% of white people viewed officer-involved shootings involving Black people to be signs of a broader problem. The fact that over 50% of white people think that policing has racial issues is a huge achievement. This attitudinal shift created a policy window for local, state, and federal changes to policing and the criminal justice system.