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The rights of a country's citizens are called civil rights. Many Black Americans were denied full civil rights for about 100 years after the end of slavery. The struggle for...

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At its height in the 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement drew children, teenagers, and young adults into a maelstrom of meetings, marches, violence, and in some cases, imprisonment. Why did so many young people decide to become activists for social justice? Joyce Ladner answers this question in her interview with the Civil Rights History Project, pointing to the strong support of her elders in shaping her future path: "The Movement was the most exciting thing that one could engage in. I often say that, in fact, I coined the term, the 'Emmett Till generation.' I said that there was no more exciting time to have been born at the time and the place and to the parents that movement, young movement, people were born to... I remember so clearly Uncle Archie who was in World War I, went to France, and he always told us, 'Your generation is going to change things.'"

Several activists interviewed for the Civil Rights History Project were in elementary school when they joined the movement. Freeman Hrabowski was 12 years old when he was inspired to march in the Birmingham Children's Crusade of 1963. While sitting in the back of church one Sunday, his ears perked up when he heard a man speak about a march for integrated schools. A math geek, Hrabowski was excited about the possibility of competing academically with white children. While spending many days in prison after he was arrested at the march, photographs of police and dogs attacking the children drew nationwide attention. Hrabowski remembers that at the prison, Dr. King told him and the other children, "What you do this day will have an impact on children yet unborn." He continues, "I'll never forget that. I didn't even understand it, but I knew it was powerful, powerful, very powerful." Hrabowski went on to become president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where he has made extraordinary strides to support African American students who pursue math and science degrees.

As a child, Marilyn Luper Hildreth attended many meetings of the NAACP Youth Council in Oklahoma City because her mother, the veteran activist Clara Luper, was the leader of this group. She remembers, "We were having an NAACP Youth Council meeting, and I was eight years old at that time. That's how I can remember that I was not ten years old. And I - we were talking about our experiences and our negotiation - and I suggested, made a motion that we would go down to Katz Drug Store and just sit, just sit and sit until they served us." This protest led to the desegregation of the drug store's lunch counter in Oklahoma City. Mrs. Hildreth relates more stores about what it was like to grow up in a family that was constantly involved in the movement.

While some young people came into the movement by way of their parents' activism and their explicit encouragement, others had to make an abrupt and hard break in order to do so, with some even severing familial ties. Joan Trumpauer Mulholland was a young white girl from Arlington, Virginia, when she came to realize the hypocrisy of her segregated church in which she learned songs such as "Jesus loves the little children, red and yellow, black and white." When she left Duke University to join the movement, her mother, who had been raised in Georgia, "thought I had been sort of sucked up into a cult... it went against everything she had grown up and believed in. I can say that a little more generously now than I could have then." Phil Hutchings' father was a lifetime member of the NAACP, but couldn't support his son when he moved toward radicalism and Black Power in the late 1960s. Hutchings reflects on the way their different approaches to the struggle divided the two men, a common generational divide for many families who lived through those times: "He just couldn't go beyond a certain point. And we had gone beyond that... and the fact that his son was doing it... the first person in the family who had a chance to complete a college education. I dropped out of school for eleven years... He thought I was wasting my life. He said, 'Are you ... happy working for Mr. Castro?'"

Many college student activists sacrificed or postponed their formal education, but they were also picking up practical skills that would shape their later careers. Michael Thelwell remembers his time as a student activist with the Nonviolent Action Group, an organization never officially recognized by Howard University and a precursor to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC): "I don't think any of us got to Howard with any extensive training in radical political activism. By that I mean, how do you write a press conference [release]? How you get the attention of the press? How do you conduct a nonviolent protest? How do you deal with the police? How do you negotiate or maneuver around the administration? We didn't come with that experience." Thelwell's first job after he graduated from college was to work for SNCC in Washington, D.C., as a lobbyist.

Similar reflections about young people in the freedom struggle are available in other collections in the Library. One such compelling narrative can be found in the webcast of the 2009 Library of Congress lecture by journalist and movement activist, Tracy Sugarman, entitled, "We Had Sneakers, They Had Guns: The Kids Who Fought for Civil Rights in Mississippi." As is readily apparent from that lecture and the previous examples, drawn from the Civil Rights History Project collection, the movement completely transformed the lives of young activists. Many of them went on to great success as lawyers, professors, politicians, and leaders of their own communities and other social justice movements. They joined the struggle to not only shape their own futures, but to also open the possibilities of a more just world for the generations that came behind them.

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Youth in the Civil Rights Movement | Articles and Essays | Civil Rights History Project | Digital Collections | Library of Congress

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At its height in the 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement drew children, teenagers, and young adults into a maelstrom of meetings, marches, violence, and in some cases, imprisonment. Why did so many young people decide to become activists for social justice?

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Sports, like every element of society, have always been political. In particular, sports in America have been inseparable from race relations and the push for equality, first acting as preludes for the Jim Crow era and then the Civil Rights Movement. As sports once again have become the battleground for racial justice, it is crucial to remind ourselves of the Jackie Robinson era and the limitations of the Black athlete when constrained by white power structures.

It is well-known that Black people were largely banned from sports until the late 1940s, but the extent of this ban is rarely discussed. In the early days of professional sports, the bans were unofficial, resting on the idea that Black athletes would understand these leagues were not for them. Whenever Black athletes showed promise, demonstrating they possessed skills beyond those of white people, they were barred from these activities. In the early years of horse racing, Black jockeys dominated, but they were slowly weaned out of the sport, with the final Black jockey appearing in a race in 1920. Likewise, Black football players demonstrated great skill in the early days, but only a handful managed to play in the American Professional Football Association, and all were dismissed from the league by 1934. The story of baseball's segregation is much the same, as is that of basketball and most other sports.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, as the dust from the Civil War slowly settled, white Americans, realizing that Black people were not content with no longer being in physical chains, set out to clamp them with invisible ones, and all too frequently individual Black people were charged with the burden of this oppression. In 1910, Black boxing champion Jack Johnson defeated white boxer James Jeffries, who wanted to face Johnson to demonstrate the superiority of the white race. sparking riots across the country and leading to the eventual sentencing of Johnson for illegally carrying a white woman-his wife-across state lines, violating the Mann Act. Ministers in the South called for Johnson's lynching, and a number of states who did not already have miscegenation bans introduced legislation to adopt them.[1] Black people across America suffered because Johnson beat a white man.

In 1936, Jesse Owens won four Olympic gold medals, becoming a symbol of America's strength over Nazi Germany. But Jesse Owens, the Black man in America, benefitted from none of this success and descended into poverty. Nobody followed through on their promise to offer him a job, and he was forced to race against horses prior to Negro Leagues games as a marketing ploy. When white people remembered his existence it was only to discuss him as one of the "good" Black people, who, though frequently endorsing politicians, refused to freely discuss the politics of race. Owens was useful to them when they could use him to criticize other Black people and invisible to them when they could not. As race relations became more dire in the 1940s and there emerged plenty of white people who represented American strength in the face of fascism, Owens sank farther into the background.[2]

White Americans have been accepting of Black people into the realm of sports until they feel threatened by the notion of equality. Banning Black people from sports was meant to directly reinforce systemic white supremacy, and making Black athletes like Jack Johnson the cause of Black suffering was aimed toward limiting the participation of Black people in these sports in the future. But as white athletes faced the calls of war, Black athletes began to sniff around professional white leagues.

Integration
Several sports integrated in the mid 1940s, as the country was recovering from World War II and these sports required players. As a whole, Black players gained numerous rights during the war, having been admitted into the American Labor Federation, and having created the NAACP and the Congress of Racial Equality. At the time, the pinnacle of integration occurred in baseball, and much of the Black community sought solace and strength in these Black ballplayers' achievements.

The National Football League opened up integration in 1946, when the now-Los Angeles Rams signed UCLA players Kenny Washington and Woody Strode. The NBA followed suit four years later when the Boston Celtics drafted Chuck Cooper in the second round. Also in 1950, Althea Gibson became the first Black tennis player to compete in the U.S. Championships. While each of these integrations was momentous in its own right and meant much to the Black community, the sports and leagues were all new compared to professional baseball. Integration was largely waved off as a promotional tool, and so the contributions of each of these athletes to society was limited.

The more overwhelming change occurred with baseball's integration a year later, when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, a moment that is commonly understood as a spark that lit the Civil Rights Movement. Now trying to assume title as the leader of the free world, in opposition to the USSR, America struggled internally with racial divisions that threatened to subvert this position, and baseball, which had become intertwined with every aspect of American identity and had long been heralded as a bastion of democratic thought, housed this fight. Black people, eager to capitalize on the success of the Negro Leagues and the freedom acquired by them during the war, viewed baseball's integration as a means of establishing themselves as legitimate members of American democracy.

White liberals fighting for racial justice latched onto baseball as a vehicle through which they could obtain equality. An editorial published in the Sporting News declared that "baseball in the south, no less than the north - should recognize no limitations of race, creed or color," and many noted that the introduction of Black players increased the overall level of the game.[3]

Robinson also quickly became a rallying point for Black Americans and particularly other Black athletes. Unlike white writers who either railed against it or largely ignored it, Black sportswriters wrote continuously of Robinson's success, using baseball's integration to argue for total integration in all areas of society.[4] Future baseball players and other athletes looked to Robinson as an example of the dignity and power of Black people.

Unsurprisingly, though, Jackie Robinson and his Black contemporaries faced swift, violent backlash. Robinson's teammate, Dixie Walker, was an early opponent of Robinson's, requesting to be traded rather than play with a Black man. Phillies manager, Ben Chapman, repeatedly referred to Robinson as "gorilla-like," and both the Pirates and Cardinals considered striking rather than being forced to play against the Dodgers.[5] Other teams instructed their players to throw at his head or spike him on the bases. Early in his career, white players made known their displeasure at his existence.

Nonetheless, Robinson succeeded, capturing Sporting News's Rookie of the Year award and opening the door for the slow integration of other black players. The following year, President Truman integrated the military, and Robinson cemented himself as a true star of the game. America was beginning to integrate in many areas, and Robinson's name would be at the forefront for decades to come.

The Aftermath
It took twelve years for baseball to fully integrate, by which point Jackie Robinson had retired. Though he remained a figurehead of the Civil Rights Movement, appearing alongside Martin Luther King Jr. on occasion, the sporting world plodded along without him, mired by the same racism he had spent his career fighting. States began reasserting discrimination through legal means, and though Black athletes continued to bolster the Civil Rights Movement, they received few allies and were ultimately unable to achieve full equality.

As they had with Robinson and Owens, white people begrudgingly accepted a small number of black athletes in sports, so long as they remained model athletes who rarely discussed racism. Many white people viewed the signing of Jackie Robinson as the end of racism in sports and became enraged by Black athletes re-politicizing sports and continuing to advocate for further changes. These athletes also had to depend on white owners, coaches, and benefactors, many of whom were also unwilling to put up with political athletes, and so activism among athletes dwindled.

Jim Brown, one of the greatest running backs of all-time, constantly had his talents diminished because of his dedication to the Civil Rights Movement. Tommy Smith and John Carlos were suspended from the US Olympic team in 1968 after doing Black Power salutes on the podium. Dick Allen was traded from the Phillies to the Cardinals in 1970 because of his divisive politics. This trend of curbing Black athletes' participation in the Civil Rights Movement continued for decades and remains a component of professional sports to this day.

As the Civil Rights Movement waned in the 1970s, the white-run sports leagues made a concerted effort to "depoliticize" their sports, and Black athletes rarely found allies in their white teammates. As a result, while athletes in individual sports, like Muhammed Ali, more freely spoke about politics, team sport athletes were largely curbed from doing so. In the '70s and '80s, MLB and the NFL turned into thriving businesses whose owners not only skewed conservative, but were wary of doing anything to lose money. Politically-minded athletes thus risked not only their careers (which were already relatively short) but the owners' franchises if they took a political stand. As a result, Black athletes no longer rallied around their peers in different sports, because they were far too concerned with maintaining a position in their own league.

The NBA, meanwhile, recruited more Black players during these decades, many of whom followed in Bill Russell's footsteps as a civil rights activist. Protected by the sheer number of Black players as well as the existence of teams in more liberal areas of the country, NBA players more freely voiced their political opinions than did athletes of other sports. Though Bill Russell, like Jackie Robinson, was the figurehead of the NBA's civil rights discourse, he was not alone, as all the game's Black stars-of which there were many-joined him. Because the NBA's success depended on these early giants, it could not and was unwilling to curb the political actions of its players. The legacy of these early activists carried on through the decades, and though stars like Michael Jordan and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar were not as vocal, the league itself remained the most liberal of the major sports.[6]

However, in America as a whole, many willfully ignorant white people mistakenly believed the passing of the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the Fair Housing Act in the 1960s moved the country into a post-racial society. But in the ensuing decades, the war on Black people merely assumed less overt appearances, moving from outright segregation to economic and social fronts, such as the war on drugs. With racism now hidden from white people who did not want to find it, sports became again a form of strict entertainment, a refuge from politics.

The Civil Rights Movement largely began due to integration movements in sports, and when the Movement petered out, so did much of the civil rights discourse among athletes. Though Black athletes made great strides, first in integration and then in slowly raising their salaries, they continue to find themselves at a disadvantage. They have much to gain from political activism, but the white-run leagues and organizations believe they have nothing to gain and everything to lose in allowing their athletes to discuss politics.

In September of last year, Colin Kaepernick refused to stand for the National Anthem, using this display as a means of protesting the continued oppression of people of color. People across sports spoke out against this action, charging Kaepernick with showing disrespect to the country, the flag, and the military. His actions undoubtedly cost him a job for this current NFL season, and launched the sporting world into a political fervor not seen since the integration movements of the 1940s. On Saturday, a day after blasting the NFL and Kaepernick at a rally in Alabama, President Trump again stoked the flames, tweeting: "If a player wants the privilege of making millions of dollars in the NFL,or other leagues, he or she should not be allowed to disrespect our Great American Flag (or Country) and should stand for the National Anthem. If not, YOU'RE FIRED. Find something else to do!" Throughout the day, athletes from various sports responded to Donald Trump, making clear the connection between sports and politics, and placing sports at the forefront of another civil rights movement.

NBA players and coaches over the past year and a half have not been shy about criticizing Donald Trump's sexist, racist rhetoric. Following the election, coaches Stan Van Gundy, Steve Kerr, and Greg Popovich, among many others, voiced their displeasure in Trump's victory, and players and coaches alike have continued to do so for the duration of the administration. Kaepernick received support from a number of players following his protest, including Martellus Bennett and Brandon Marshall. And this past weekend, MLB joined in when Oakland A's rookie catcher Bruce Maxwell knelt for the National Anthem and the organization itself tweeted support of this action.

Not since the time of Jackie Robinson have athletes from a wide array of sports rallied around one figure's civil rights activism, but as evidenced from the '70s and '80s, it takes more than a diverse array of Black athletes to achieve sustained and impactful success in civil rights matters. These athletes need white allies. And so far, several have stepped to the plate. In the NFL, Chris Long, Justin Britt, Derek Carr, and Seth DeValve have all expressed support, and US Women's Soccer star Megan Rapinoe knelt in solidarity last September.

In this day, athletes are able to communicate directly to fans, making their messages more effective and immediate, and many athletes across many prominent sports are using social media to convey political messages. Both LeBron James and Steph Curry frequently tweet their displeasure with the current administration and their support of civil rights organizations, while Chris Long and Martellus Bennett do the same, bridging the divide between the two sports. And Major League Baseball also has its representatives, namely Washington Nationals' pitcher Sean Doolittle, who today tweeted in response to Trump's attack on the NFL and Kaepernick that "i don't think anyone can tell athletes to 'stick to sports' for a while."

Indeed, this administration is making it more apparent than ever that all sports are political, and athletes have increasingly begun to use their platforms to voice support for civil rights. It is now up to fans to follow in these athletes' footsteps and pressure more white athletes and more organizations to do the same. It is imperative to provide Black athletes with white allies and to force white-run organizations to view these players as human beings worthy of protection. Without a faithful watchdog, Black Americans will continue to have their rights violated and society will continue to regress to a point where Black people were seen by all as secondary.

For over a century Black athletes have existed in accordance with the whims of white owners and fans, but the actions of Kaepernick and his supporters are poised to give back Black people's autonomy, and for those who have exploited them for decades, it is a moral imperative to ensure this movement is far more successful than the last. Unlike with the shortcomings of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, today there are no excuses. These athletes have been shouting their concerns and it is up to us to listen and to act. There is no more denying that sports are political, and if the kneeling of a group of players during the anthem disturbs you not on behalf of them but on behalf of a cheap piece of foreign fabric, you do not get to call yourself a fan of theirs. You do not get to exploit them for your own delight without sharing in their hardships. You do not get to exert a moral or intellectual superiority over those whose oppression you have aided.

Notes:

[1] Carrie Teresa, "'We Needed a Booker T. Washington  ...  and Certainly a Jack Johnson': The Black Press, Johnson, and Issues of Representation, 1909-1915," American Journalism 32, no. 1 ( 2015): 23-40.

[2] Jacqueline Edmondson, Jesse Owens: A Biography, (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007).

[3] Patrick J. Harrigan, "Baseball in Postwar American Society," in The Detroit Tigers: Club and Community, 1945-1995, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 9-39.

[4] Chris Lamb and Glen L. Blesky, "Democracy on the Field: The Black Press Take on White Baseball," in From Jack Johnson to LeBron James: Sports, Media, and the Color Line (Omaha: University of Nebraska Press, 2016), 148-169.

[5] Harrigan, 26.

[6] Aram Goudsouzian, "Bill Russell and the Basketball Revolution." American Studies 47, no. 3/4 (2006): 61-85.
Mary Craig is a baseball history enthusiast who writes about the sport's relation to America's political history. You can follow her on Twitter at .

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Baseball's integration and the contemporary civil rights movement

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Perhaps the greatest intersection of sports and politics in American history, the integration of baseball and its aftermath can shed light on the current politicization of sports.

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Martin Luther King, Jr. (born January 15, 1929, Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.-died April 4, 1968, Memphis, Tennessee) Baptist minister and social activist who led the civil rights movement in the United States from the mid-1950s until his death by assassination in 1968. His leadership was fundamental to that movement's success in ending the legal segregation of African Americans in the South and other parts of the United States. King rose to national prominence as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which promoted nonviolent tactics, such as the massive March on Washington (1963), to achieve civil rights. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

Early years

King came from a comfortable middle-class family steeped in the tradition of the Southern Black ministry: both his father and maternal grandfather were Baptist preachers. His parents were college-educated, and King's father had succeeded his father-in-law as pastor of the prestigious Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. The family lived on Auburn Avenue, otherwise known as "Sweet Auburn," the bustling "Black Wall Street," home to some of the country's largest and most prosperous Black businesses and Black churches in the years before the civil rights movement. Young Martin received a solid education and grew up in a loving extended family.

This secure upbringing, however, did not prevent King from experiencing the prejudices then common in the South. He never forgot the time when, at about age six, one of his white playmates announced that his parents would no longer allow him to play with King, because the children were now attending segregated schools. Dearest to King in these early years was his maternal grandmother, whose death in 1941 left him shaken and unstable. Upset because he had learned of her fatal heart attack while attending a parade without his parents' permission, the 12-year-old King attempted suicide by jumping from a second-story window.

In 1944, at age 15, King entered Morehouse College in Atlanta under a special wartime program intended to boost enrollment by admitting promising high-school students like King. Before beginning college, however, King spent the summer on a tobacco farm in Connecticut; it was his first extended stay away from home and his first substantial experience of race relations outside the segregated South. He was shocked by how peacefully the races mixed in the North. "Negroes and whites go [to] the same church," he noted in a letter to his parents. "I never [thought] that a person of my race could eat anywhere." This summer experience in the North only deepened King's growing hatred of racial segregation.

At Morehouse, King favoured studies in medicine and law, but these were eclipsed in his senior year by a decision to enter the ministry, as his father had urged. King's mentor at Morehouse was the college president, Benjamin Mays, a social gospel activist whose rich oratory and progressive ideas had left an indelible imprint on King's father. Committed to fighting racial inequality, Mays accused the African American community of complacency in the face of oppression, and he prodded the Black church into social action by criticizing its emphasis on the hereafter instead of the here and now; it was a call to service that was not lost on the teenage King. He graduated from Morehouse in 1948.

King spent the next three years at Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, where he became acquainted with Mohandas Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolence as well as with the thought of contemporary Protestant theologians. He earned a bachelor of divinity degree in 1951. Renowned for his oratorical skills, King was elected president of Crozer's student body, which was composed almost exclusively of white students. As a professor at Crozer wrote in a letter of recommendation for King, "The fact that with our student body largely Southern in constitution a colored man should be elected to and be popular [in] such a position is in itself no mean recommendation." From Crozer, King went to Boston University, where, in seeking a firm foundation for his own theological and ethical inclinations, he studied man's relationship to God and received a doctorate (1955) for a dissertation titled "A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman."

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Martin Luther King, Jr. | Biography, Speeches, Facts, & Assassination

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Martin Luther King, Jr., a visionary leader and advocate for equality, spearheaded the civil rights movement in America through nonviolent protests, inspiring lasting change and leaving an enduring legacy.

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Random Fun Facts

Clothes dried outside smell better because of a process called photolysis (sunlight breaks down compounds that cause odor).

A lions feed once every 3 to 4 days.

Cows can walk up stairs but not down them..

It is illegal in the United Kingdom to handle salmon in suspicious circumstances..

The Grand Canyon can hold around 900 trillion footballs.

A dragonfly can fly at 40kph (25mph).

Glaciers and ice sheets hold about 69 percent of the worlds freshwater..

The Eiffel Tower is repainted every 7 years.

Kangaroos can not walk backwards..

Shakespeare invented the words 'assassination' and 'bump'.

view more cool facts

Keep Safe Online by Taking The "KidzSearch Safety Pledge"

1.) I will never give out any personal information that can identify me online unless my parents say it is okay. Things like passwords, links to social media sites, cell phone or home number, current location, full name, credit card number, social security number, school name, and home address must never be given out. Other things, like your birthday or age are okay in certain cases, but it is best to keep that private.

2.) I will never post any personal information about another person unless my parents approve it. This includes giving passwords to your friend.

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KidzSearch - Family-friendly safe search engine for kids. We are the leading search engine used by schools around the world since 2005. Results are always Strict Filtered. Nothing to install. Free public service.

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Maya Angelou (originally Marguerite Annie Johnson) was born on April 4, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri. Due to a tumultuous and difficult childhood, Angelou stopped speaking for five years. When she began to speak again, she was in high school and excelled in her studies of dance and drama. During her senior year, she got pregnant and became a single mother.

In 1952, she married Anastasios Angelopulos. Around the same time, she became a nightclub singer and took on the professional name of Maya Angelou. Her marriage did not last, but her career soared. She composed song lyrics and poems for several years and eventually moved to New York joining the Harlem Writers Guild. It was here that she took her place amongst numerous young black writers associated with the Civil Rights Movement. For many years, she travelled abroad honing her writing skills and strengthening her propensity for political activism.

In 1964, Angelou returned to America and began her work with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Upon his assassination in 1968, she turned to writing to deal with her grief. And so began what would become a critically acclaimed success, her book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, chronicling her childhood.

Angelou became a national figure. Her increasing popularity and notoriety, led her to teach and lecture. She also wrote the screenplay and composed the score for the film Georgia, Georgia (1972), which was the first by an African American woman to ever be filmed and went on to subsequently be nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Angelou received several invitations from successive Presidents of the United States, such as Presidents Ford, Carter and Clinton, to serve in various roles.

In 2000, Angelou received the Presidential Medal of the Arts. In 2008, she received the Ford's Theatre Lincoln Medal. In 2011, President Barack Obama awarded her the highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Angelou published over 30 titles and received over 50 honorary degrees during her career. Angelou died on May 28, 2014.

Source used:

Maya Angelou biography. (May 2014). Retrieved from http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/ang0bio-1

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Maya Angelou | Social Activist | Hilbert College

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Maya Angelou (originally Marguerite Annie Johnson) was born on April 4, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri. Due to a tumultuous and difficult childhood, Angelou stopped speaking for five years. When she began to speak again, she was in high school and excelled in her studies of dance and drama.

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Rosa Parks | Social Activist | Hilbert College

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One of the most highly famed civil rights activists, Rosa Parks, was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, on February 4, 1913. She attended local segregated schools, and after the age of 11, the Industrial School for Girls in Montgomery. As a child, Rosa became fully aware of the racism which was deeply embedded in Alabama.

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Thurgood Marshall founded LDF in 1940 and served as its first Director-Counsel. He was the architect of the legal strategy that ended the country’s official policy of segregation and was the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court.

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A master of the art of practical politics, Lyndon Johnson came into the White House after the tragedy of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. He was energetic, shrewd, an...

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Quick Facts
"My father pondered, 'Why? Why should my child walk four miles when there is a school only four blocks away?'""Sometimes I wonder if we really did the children and the nation a favor by taking this case to the Supreme Court. I know it was the right thing for my father and mother to do then, but after nearly 40 years we find the Court's ruling unfulfilled.""I was a very young child when I started walking to school. I remember the walk as being very long at that time. In fact, it was several blocks up through railroad yards, and crossing a busy avenue, and standing on the corner, and waiting for the school bus to carry me two miles across town to an all-black school."

Name

Linda Brown

Occupation

Civil Rights Activist

Birth Date

February 20, 1942

Death Date

March 25, 2018

Education

Washburn University, Kansas State University

Place of Birth

Topeka, Kansas

Place of Death

Topeka, Kansas

AKA

Linda Brown Smith

Linda Brown Thompson

Linda Brown

Linda Brown was the child associated with the lead name in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education, which led to the outlawing of U.S. school segregation in 1954.

Who Was Linda Brown?

Linda Brown was born on February 20, 1942, in Topeka, Kansas. Because she was forced to travel a significant distance to elementary school due to racial segregation, her father was one of the plaintiffs in the case of Brown v. Board of Education, with the Supreme Court ruling in 1954 that school segregation was unlawful. Brown continued living in Topeka as an adult, raising a family and continuing her desegregation efforts with the area's school system. She passed away on March 25, 2018, at age 76.

Early Life and Historic Case

Linda Brown was born on February 20, 1942, in Topeka, Kansas, to Leola and Oliver Brown. Though she and her two younger sisters grew up in an ethnically diverse neighborhood, Linda was forced to walk across railroad tracks and take a bus to grade school despite there being a school four blocks away from her home. This was due to the elementary schools in Topeka being racially segregated, with separate facilities for black and white children.

In 1950, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People asked a group of African-American parents that included Oliver Brown to attempt to enroll their children in all-white schools, with the expectation that they would be turned away. Oliver attempted to do so with Linda, who was in third grade at the time and barred from enrollment at Sumner Elementary. The strategy was for the civil rights group to file a lawsuit on behalf of the 13 families, who represented different states.

With Brown's name happening to alphabetically top the list of plaintiffs, the case would come to be known as Brown v. Board of Education and be taken to the Supreme Court. The lead attorney working on behalf of the plaintiffs was future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

Winning 'Brown v. Board of Education'

An aim of the case was to bring down the precedent set up by the 1896 decision of Plessy v. Ferguson, which sanctioned the idea of "separate but equal" facilities for racial divisions. In 1954, this aim was achieved when the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of the plaintiffs in Brown v. Board of Education, disavowing the notion of "separate but equal" and concluding that segregated facilities deprived African-American children of a richer, fairer educational experience.

Life After Historic Case

By the time of the ruling, Linda Brown was in junior high, a grade level that had been integrated before the 1954 court ruling. The family moved to Springfield, Missouri, in 1959. Oliver Brown died two years later, and his widow moved the girls back to Topeka. Linda Brown went on to attend Washburn and Kansas State universities and had a family. She went through a divorce and later became a widow after her second husband's death, before her marriage to William Thompson in the mid-1990s. She also worked on the speaker circuit and as an educational consultant.

By the late 1970s, Brown spoke of feeling exploited by the amount of media attention given to the case, with there being limited awareness that she was a human being as opposed to a lofty historical figure. Nonetheless, she continued to speak out on segregation and reopened the Topeka case with the American Civil Liberties Union in 1979, arguing that the district's schools still weren't desegregated. It was eventually ruled by the Court of Appeals in 1993 that the school system was indeed still racially divided, and three new schools were built as part of integration efforts.

Death

Brown passed away in her longtime hometown of Topeka on March 25, 2018. Although her family wouldn't comment, Kansas Governor Jeff Colyer paid tribute to the woman who sparked one of the landmark cases in American history:

"Sixty-four years ago a young girl from Topeka brought a case that ended segregation in public schools in America," he tweeted. "Linda Brown's life reminds us that sometimes the most unlikely people can have an incredible impact and that by serving our community we can truly change the world."

Fact Check

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Linda Brown, the child at the center of the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court case, has died. The case dismantled federal education laws that allowed segregated schools for black and white students, although Brown never got the chance to attend unsegregated school.

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Daisy Bates - Little Rock Nine, Accomplishments & Facts

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Daisy Bates was an African American civil rights activist and newspaper publisher who documented the battle to end segregation in Arkansas.

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W.E.B. Du Bois' Childhood

Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, on February 23, 1868, Du Bois' birth certificate has his name as "William E. Duboise." Two years after his birth his father, Alfred Du Bois, left his mother, Mary Silvina Burghardt.

Du Bois became the first person in his extended family to attend high school, and did so at his mother's insistence. In 1883, Du Bois began to write articles for papers like the New York Globe and the Freeman.

Education of W.E.B. Dubois

Du Bois initially attended Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, a school for Black students. His tuition was paid by several churches in Great Barrington. Du Bois became an editor for the Herald, the student magazine.

After graduation, Du Bois attended Harvard University, starting in 1888 and eventually receiving advanced degrees in history. In 1892, Du Bois worked towards a Ph.D. at the University of Berlin until his funding ran out.

He returned to the United States without his doctorate but later received one from Harvard while teaching classics at Wilberforce University in Ohio. There, he married Nina Gomer, one of his students, in 1896.

His doctoral thesis, "The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870," became his first book and a standard in American education covering slavery.

The Philadelphia Negro

Du Bois took a position at the University of Pennsylvania in 1896 conducting a study of the city's Seventh Ward, published in 1899 as The Philadelphia Negro. The work took up so much of his time that he missed the birth of his first son in Great Barrington.

The study is considered one of the earliest examples of statistical work being used for sociological purposes, with extensive fieldwork resulting in hundreds of interviews conducted door-to-door by Du Bois.

Mapping out the Seventh Ward and carefully documenting familial and work structures, Du Bois concluded that the Black community's greatest challenges were poverty, crime, lack of education and distrust of those outside the community.

W.E.B. Du Bois' Sociological Studies

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics offered Du Bois a job in 1897, leading to several groundbreaking studies on Black Southern households in Farmville, Virginia, that uncovered how slavery still affected the personal lives of African Americans. Du Bois would do four more studies for the bureau, two in Alabama and two in Georgia.

These studies were considered radical at the time when sociology existed in pure theoretical forms. Du Bois was pivotal in making investigation and data analysis crucial to sociological study.

During the same period, Du Bois wrote "The Strivings of the Negro People" for the Atlantic Monthly, a groundbreaking essay that explained to white readers how it feels to be a victim of racism. It is considered the general public's introduction to Du Bois.

'The Souls of Black Folk'

Du Bois and family moved to Atlanta University, where he taught sociology and worked on his additional Bureau of Labor Statistics studies.

Among the books written during this period was The Souls of Black Folk, a collection of sociological essays examining the Black experience in America. Partially derived from his Atlantic article, it embraced Du Bois' personal history in his arguments.

The book also introduced the idea of "double consciousness," in which African Americans are required to consider not only their view of themselves but also the view that the world, particularly whites, has on them during all parts of life. It also expressly differentiated Du Bois from more conservative Black voices like Booker T. Washington.

In 1899, Du Bois' son Burghardt contracted diphtheria and died after Du Bois spent the night looking for one of three Black doctors in Atlanta, since no white doctor would treat the child. A resulting essay, "The Passing of the First Born," appeared in The Souls of Black Folk.

The Niagara Movement And Booker T. Washington

In 1903, Du Bois taught summer school at Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee University, but friction between the two men led to Du Bois joining Washington's rivals in the Niagara Movement, charged with seeking justice and equality for African Americans.

That group failed, partly due to opposition from Washington, but during its existence Du Bois published The Moon Illustrated Weekly, the first weekly magazine for African Americans, producing a total of 34 issues before folding in 1906. He followed this up briefly with the journal Horizon.
READ MORE: The Niagara Movement
NAACP

In 1910, Du Bois accepted the directorship of the recently-formed NAACP. He moved to New York City and served as the editor of the organization's monthly magazine The Crisis.

The magazine was a huge success and became very influential, covering race relations and black culture with Du Bois' forthright style. The magazine stood out for its continual endorsement and coverage of women's suffrage. Du Bois worked for the NAACP for 24 years, during which time he published his first novel, The Quest of the Silver Fleece.

After a brief second stint at Atlanta University, Du Bois returned to the NAACP as director of special research in 1944 and represented the organization at the first meeting of the United Nations.

Du Bois also became more interested in communism and international issues, and became an open supporter of progressive and left-wing groups, which created problems with NAACP leadership. He left the organization again in 1948.

W.E.B. Du Bois and Communism

Du Bois' radicalism continued in the public sphere, running as the Progressive Party's candidate for Senate in 1950 and losing. He and other members of the Peace Information Center were charged as agents of a foreign principal, inspired by the organization's Soviet leanings, but were acquitted in a trial in 1951.

Following the death of his wife in 1950, Du Bois married Shirley Graham the following year. Graham's interest led Du Bois further into exploring communism, delving into the American Communist community and becoming known for his apologetic view of Joseph Stalin.

In 1961 Du Bois officially joined the American Communist Party before leaving the country to live in Ghana at the invitation of its president and becoming a citizen there.

Encyclopedia Africana

Du Bois first conceived of the Encyclopedia Africana in 1908 as a compendium of history and achievement of people of African descent designed to bring a sense of unity to the African diaspora. Unable to raise the needed funds, Du Bois wasn't able to revisit the project until 1935, but it was disrupted by professional battles.

Du Bois published some entries from the proposed encyclopedia and even editions of research material, but it wasn't until 1962 that a further promise was made to complete the encyclopedia.

After Du Bois was invited to move to Ghana, he pledged to finally publish the work, but it was never realized before his death. Du Bois died on August 27, 1963 in Ghana and was given a state funeral.
READ MORE: Black History Milestones: A Timeline
Sources

W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute. Harvard University.

DuBoisopedia. University of Massachusetts.

Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience. Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Kwame Anthony Appiah, eds.

W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race 1868 - 1919. David Levering Lewis.

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W. E. B. Du Bois - Beliefs, Niagara Movement & NAACP | HISTORY

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W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963) was a civil rights activist who led the Niagara Movement and later helped form the NAACP.

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​

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"I wanted to read the books. I wanted to explore new ideas, but the walls separated us and we were caught behind the walls."

​

There were other walls Clara Luper and African Americans had to endure during this era. They couldn't try on clothes in some stores, shoes were purchased at the back of the store, and there were times they weren't even allowed to try them on. African Americans couldn't enter theaters, restaurants, and libraries. The orchards were even divided when people wanted to pick pecans. Then, of course, there was the riding at the back of the bus.

​

Clara Luper repeatedly ran into walls of segregation. After she received her bachelor's degree from Langston University, she went on to the University of Oklahoma where she hit other walls - separate restrooms, separate sections in the cafeteria, and separation in classes.

​

"In one class a professor told me he had never taught an (n-word)and had never wanted to. I moved that wall by staying in his class and working so hard that at the end of the school term, he confessed his sins."

​

These are just some of the walls Clara Luper discovered before she even finished her educational career.

2012.201.B0366B.0551 Oklahoma Publishing Co. Collection, Oklahoma Historical Society. June 22, 1963.

Clara Mae Shepard Luper fought for equality in the state she loved.

​

In her book, Beyond the Walls, she writes about a time when she was in elementary school in Hoffman, Oklahoma. From a young age, she had a love for books and a love for learning.

​

One day, she and her friends, Sister Baby Easley, Carrie Watkins, and Oneita Shepard, snuck over to the all-white elementary school and peeked through the window. To their amazement, there were more books than they had ever seen before.

BROTHER PRESIDENT AND the spark of the movement

Clara Luper wrote a play in 1957 titled Brother President, the story of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the non-violent techniques that he used to eliminate segregation in Montgomery, Alabama.

The play was seen by Herbert Wright, the National Youth Director of the NAACP. He was so impressed that he invited Clara and the main cast of the play to New York City. They presented it at a "Salute to Young Freedom Fighters" rally.

​

The trip to New York was a memorable one. The group took the northern route on the way there. They were able to experience desegregated restaurants for the first time. The trip back home was travelled by the southern route, stopping in Washington, D.C. along the way. Taking this route, they found that they were unable to eat in restaurants. It was the return trip that sparked the Youth Council to begin the sit-in movement.

The movie adaptation by Clara Luper of a play Luper wrote entitled "Brother President: The Story of Martin Luther King Jr." According to an article in the Oklahoman, the play was written and performed by Luper's social studies students at John Marshall High school in January of 1984. Marshall's History Department head urged her to make a movie script out of it because the play was selling out every night. The film is divided up into 4 reels.

​

Click here to view part 2. Click here to view part 3. Click here to view part 4.

​

(F2009.100.2.001) Ned Hockman Collection. Oklahoma Historical Society.

CHALLENGING THE WALLS

August 19, 1958: Clara Luper with thirteen children from the Youth Council went down to Katz Drug Store in Oklahoma City. This particular drug store would not serve Blacks at the lunch counter. Clara and the children walked in, sat down at the counter, and ordered thirteen Cokes.

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They were refused service.

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The white customers called them derogatory names. Some customers coughed in Clara's face and the faces of the children as they passed. The white customers would purposefully bump into Clara and the children. One of the children was knocked off of a seat.

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Through all of the taunts and jeering, Clara and the children remained quiet and non-violent.

Presented by the Oklahoma Historical Society, this documentary shares the history of sit-ins in Oklahoma City during the Civil Rights Movement. Through historic images and new interviews with sit-in participants, producers Joyce Jackson and Bruce Fisher tell the powerful story of this movement. Interviews include Marilyn Luper Hildreth, Joyce Henderson, Richard Brown, Betty Germany, Ayanna Najuma, Sharon Fisher, Reverend John Reed Jr., Claudette Goss, Samuel Craig, Joyce Jackson, Bill Clifford, James Woods Jr., Booker T. Roberts Jr., Lois Mosley, and Eugene Jones III.

breaking down the walls

After just a few days, the walls had fallen at Katz in Oklahoma City as well as its 38 other locations in Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Iowa. They would serve all people regardless of race, creed, or color.

​

The success of Katz gave Clara and the Youth Council momentum. Some restaurants chose to integrate easily while others chose to keep Blacks out. The difficult locations were Anna Maude's Cafeteria, The Skirvin Hotel, The Pink Kitchen, and The Split T. The one location that took nearly three years to desegregate was John A. Brown's Luncheonette. It took Clara Luper meeting with Mrs. John A. Brown and her lawyers to break down the walls of segregation.

marching to lawton, ok

In 1966, Lawton was referred to as a twentieth-century town with seventeenth-century ideas.

​

"It seemed inconsistent with Democracy that Fort Sill's soldiers had a long history of defending Democracy all over the world and could not defend Democracy beyond Fort Sill's gates. Black and white soldiers that had fought together could not swim together at Doe Doe Amusement Park."

Over one hundred Black people made their way down to Doe Doe Amusement Park. Ben Hutchins, Sr., the owner, shouted for the officers. He demanded the trespassers be arrested. The group actually was arrested a few times.

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Seeing as how protesting was not going to sway Ben Hutchins, Sr., the group decided to march to Lawton, Oklahoma from Oklahoma City on July 4, 1966, as a testament to Thomas Jefferson who wrote the immortal words,

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"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all
men are created equal and are endowed by their
creator with certain inalienable rights such as
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Willie J. Cole was killed in Vietnam in the first week of June 1966. The march to Lawton was dedicated to the memory of the former NAACP Youth Council worker. He was a 23-year-old from Oklahoma City and had graduated from Douglass High School.

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Everyone met at Oklahoma's state capitol grounds, began singing "From Clouds to Rainbows," and 88 people began the march to Lawton. Even though it began raining that evening, the group (even the young children) stayed strong and made it to a Mobil Service Station. This is where they spent the night on the ground.

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The next morning, they woke and at breakfast. They marched down Highway 62 and west on Highway 37. During their long, hard march they had seen cars passing by and people staring at them along the way. Cars with license plates from various states. By the time they had finally made it to the halfway point of Chickasha, Oklahoma, they were seeing the unbelievable.

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Black people had gathered and were singing Freedom songs as the group of marchers entered. Clara Luper was so overcome with emotions that she hid behind a truck and cried.

Oklahoma Publishing Company Collection,

Oklahoma Historical Society.

The group of people that gathered there had set up tables of food and drinks to replenish the marchers. People had come from all over Oklahoma to wish them luck. Clara had even received a swimsuit to use to swim in Doe Doe Amusement Park. Eventually, they had to leave Chickasha but they left with lifted spirits. They spent one more night outdoors during their march to Lawton.

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When they reached the suburbs of Lawton, some of the residents had food and drinks prepared for them upon arrival. But once they reached the Park, they were received by the police. Although 88 people marched from Oklahoma City, the longer they stood there, hundreds more accompanied them from the far corners of the state.

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Owner Ben Hutchins approached Clara, ready to negotiate. The mayor also arrived at the park and stated that a recently created human relations commission will make an ordinance to eliminate discrimination in all public places within the week.

​

Their goal had been achieved.

The sanitation workers of Oklahoma City had contacted Clara Luper and brought complaints of discrimination to the NAACP Youth Council's office at the Freedom Center. Over 200 sanitation workers wanted Clara to be their spokesperson with their grievances to the city manager.

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Clara met with Robert Oldland, the city manager, on numerous occasions and the only thing he would give her is misinformation, the runaround, and the same answer every time: "You cannot speak for the sanitation strikers." He consistently reminded her that she has "assumed a role that cannot be; she is not a spokesman or representative of any portion of the city's workforce."

Clara Luper will speak up for anyone who needs a voice.

​

The sanitation workers went on strike. The city tried bringing in outside workers but those on strike, along with Clara, would put up human barricades in front of the sanitation trucks. The mayor called an emergency meeting of the city council and issued an emergency proclamation prohibiting the congregation of three or more persons in certain areas of the city, especially sanitation truck garages. Clara reminded the people of the freedoms of the U.S. Constitution's freedom of speech, press, religion, and assembly.

​

BLACK FRIDAY - August 19, 1969: People from all across the city, all ages and colors marched on city hall. The first official count was two thousand. By the time they arrived downtown, 10,000 people were participating in one way or another. The marchers had reached Main and Walker and were now face to face with a mob of police officers. This area was restricted under the mayor's orders. The police chief asked the group to turn around and go back to the East Side. The group began singing "We Shall Overcome." They marched through the police officers to city hall. then walked back to St. John's Baptist Church. No arrests were made and there was no violence. Black Friday had ended.

​

The state and city had tried to show their power and it backfired. American citizens have the right to assemble peacefully and to protest and the mayor tried to put a stop to it. The leaders of the city yielded to the demands of the Sanitation Workers. The Sanitation Strike was over.

2012.201.OVZ001.5768 Oklahoma Publishing Company Photography Collection, Oklahoma Historical Society. August 20, 1969.

THE U.S. SENATE RACE - 1972:

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Clara Luper campaigned from Sulphur, OK to Kansas, OK. Her son Calvin was her Public Relations Director. She traveled all over the state. People referred to her as "one of us." People even came from Los Angeles to help her campaign.

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Although she was accepted by a large group of people, most thought that she had two strikes against her: she was black and a woman. Her response, "I'm not convinced that I can't win. I'm Black and Proud. I'm a woman and I'm proud to be a woman. So I enjoy being me. If someone votes against me for those reasons, I don't need his vote."

​

​

She was asked, "You realize that you will be representing white people, do you feel that you, a Black Woman, can represent white people?"

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Clara answered, "Of course. I can represent White People, Black People, Red People, Yellow People, Brown People, and Polka Dot People. You see, I have lived long enough to know that people are people, and that's more than I can say for some white people."

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Unfortunately, she did lose the election like the other Democratic candidates. Dewey Bartlett won the election that year.

2012.201.B0366B.0555 Oklahoma Publishing Co. Collection, Oklahoma Historical Society. November 16, 1971.

These are just a handful of the many experiences in the life of one of Oklahoma's most influential figures. Along with fighting for civil rights, she educated many. She educated children in the classroom and adults who needed re-educating on what equality really meant.

​

She taught history for 41 years starting at Dunjee High School and ending at John Marshall High School in Oklahoma City in 1991. Her teachings of the minds of the youth were so influential that one student became the first African American chief of police in Oklahoma City and another was the reason he became a U.S. Army Colonel.

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She continued to demonstrate and march non-violently for years to come. She marched in Selma, Alabama.

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Clara wrote the book Behold the Walls (1979), an autobiography about her fighting for civil rights in the late 1950s and 1960s in Oklahoma.

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Clara Luper was inducted in the Oklahoma Women's Hall of Fame, the Oklahoma Afro-American Hall of Fame, and the Oklahoma Hall of Fame. She has also received an honorary doctorate from Oklahoma City University. This university also gives the Clara Luper Scholarship which is awarded to students of diverse backgrounds with financial needs.

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Mrs. Clara Luper passed away of natural causes on June 8, 2011. She is survived by her three children, Calvin, Marilyn Luper Hildreth, and Chelle Luper Wilson.

​

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Clara's Story - Clara Luper Legacy Committee

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​ ​ "I wanted to read the books. I wanted to explore new ideas, but the walls separated us and we were caught behind the walls." ​ There were other walls Clara Luper and African Americans had to endure during this era.

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The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute

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Early African American Aviator Willa Brown

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Willa Brown’s work in the air and on land promoted awareness of African American pilots, made the way for them to join the military, and set an example for others.. Discover her story.

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Claudette Colvin: Biography, Quotes, Facts & Civil Rights

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Claudette Colvin is an activist who was a pioneer in the civil rights movement in Alabama during the 1950s. She refused to give up her seat on a bus months before Rosa Parks’ more famous protest.

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Coretta Scott King was one of the most influential women leaders in our world. Prepared by her family, education, and personality for a life committed to social justice and peace, she entered the world stage in 1955 as wife of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and as a leading participant in the American Civil Rights Movement. Her remarkable partnership with Dr. King resulted not only in four children, who became dedicated to carrying forward their parent's work, but also in a life devoted to the highest values of human dignity in service to social change. Mrs. King traveled throughout the world speaking out on behalf of racial and economic justice, women's and children's rights, gay and lesbian dignity, religious freedom, the needs of the poor and homeless, full-employment, health care, educational opportunities, nuclear disarmament and environmental justice. She lent her support to pro-democracy movements world-wide and consulted with many world leaders, including Corazon Aquino, Kenneth Kaunda, and Nelson Mandela.

Born and raised in Marion, Alabama, Coretta Scott graduated valedictorian from Lincoln High School. She received a B.A. in music and education from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and then went on to study concert singing at Boston's New England Conservatory of Music, where she earned a degree in voice and violin. While in Boston she met Martin Luther King, Jr. who was then studying for his doctorate in systematic theology at Boston University. They were married on June 18, 1953, and in September 1954 took up residence in Montgomery, Alabama, with Coretta Scott King assuming the many responsibilities of pastor's wife at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

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Coretta Scott King was one of the most influential women leaders in our world. Prepared by her family, education, and personality for a life committed to social justice and peace, she entered the world stage in 1955 as wife of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Medgar Evers, (born July 2, 1925, Decatur, Miss., U.S.-died June 12, 1963, Jackson, Miss.), American black civil-rights activist, whose murder received national attention and made him a martyr to the cause of the civil rights movement.

Evers served in the U.S. Army in Europe during World War II. Afterward he and his elder brother, Charles Evers, both graduated from Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College (now Alcorn State University, Lorman, Miss.) in 1950. They settled in Philadelphia, Miss., and engaged in various business pursuits-Medgar was an insurance salesman, and Charles operated a restaurant, a gas station, and other enterprises-and at the same time began organizing local affiliates of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). They worked quietly at first, slowly building a base of support; in 1954 Medgar moved to Jackson to become the NAACP's first field secretary in Mississippi. He traveled throughout the state recruiting members and organizing voter-registration drives and economic boycotts.

During the early 1960s the increased tempo of civil-rights activities in the South created high and constant tensions, and in Mississippi conditions were often at the breaking point. On June 12, 1963, a few hours after President John F. Kennedy had made an extraordinary broadcast to the nation on the subject of civil rights, Medgar Evers was shot and killed in an ambush in front of his home. The murder made Evers, until then a hardworking and effective but relatively obscure figure outside Mississippi, a nationally known figure. He was buried with full military honours in Arlington National Cemetery and awarded the 1963 Spingarn Medal of the NAACP.

Charles Evers immediately requested and was granted appointment by the NAACP to his brother's position in Mississippi, and afterward he became a major political figure in the state. Evers's widow, Myrlie Evers-Williams, was the first woman to head the NAACP (1995-98).

Byron de La Beckwith, a white segregationist, was charged with the murder. He was set free in 1964 after two trials resulted in hung juries but was convicted in a third trial held in 1994. Beckwith was given a life sentence, and in 2001 he died in prison.

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Medgar Evers | Mississippi NAACP, Civil Rights Leader, Activist

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Medgar Evers, American black civil-rights activist, whose murder received national attention and made him a martyr to the cause of the civil rights movement. Evers served in the U.S. Army in Europe during World War II. Afterward he and his elder brother, Charles Evers, both graduated from Alcorn

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Joan Trumpauer Mulholland “An Ordinary Hero” - College of Education | University of South Carolina

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The 2019 Witten Lecture & Documentary Award went to Joan Trumpauer Mulholland: “An Ordinary Hero.” the film screening and discussion took place on March 28, 2019.

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In August 1962, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a public letter congratulating Jackie Robinson on his recent induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. More than just a celebration of Robinson's career, King's letter lauded the star athlete for his contributions and ongoing activism in the Civil Rights movement. Noting that Robinson "has stood as a stalwart against segregation and discrimination North and South," the Civil Rights leader championed Robinson for fighting for integrated education, housing justice, and voting rights. "Jackie Robinson," King wrote, "incessantly raises questions to sear America's conscience." Indeed, Robinson had just as much impact in the Civil Rights movement as he did in sports. ¹

Fighting for Civil Rights

For those who followed Robinson's career before he became a Brooklyn Dodger, they would not be shocked that the star athlete became an activist. In short, Robinson had a strong sense of justice and would not budge if he felt wronged. In 1944, for example, while serving in the military, Robinson was court-martialed for getting into a verbal confrontation with a white officer, which sparked when Robinson refused to heed a bus driver's segregationist order that he move to the back of the bus. Fortunately, Robinson beat that case. But when Branch Rickey signed Robinson to the Dodgers a year later - he signed in 1945 but debuted in 1947 - Rickey asked Robinson to bottle up that passion and turn the other cheek when faced with injustice. Rickey worried that if Robinson always fought back, the "great experiment" of integration would be ruined. Internally, Robinson burned with anger at the injustice he saw all around him but waited patiently for the day he could speak up.

"Jackie Robinson incessantly raises questions to sear America's conscience." - Martin Luther King, Jr., 1962

Robinson took his first public stand for justice in 1949. That summer, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) - a congressional committee created in 1938 to stamp put disloyalty in America, especially among suspected communists after World War II - asked Robinson to come to their committee and publicly denounce actor/activist Paul Robeson for his recent statement that Black Americans would refuse to fight for America in what many believed was an impending World War III.

In the hearing, Robinson did what was asked of him and denounced Robeson as an out-of-touch communist who didn't have his finger on the pulse of Black America. But he also threw the committee a curve ball. He let them know that just because a communist criticized America, "injustice in the courts, police brutality and lynching, when it happens, doesn't change the truth of his charges." ² Robinson insisted that Black Americans would not follow Robeson; however, they would continue to fight until they beat Jim Crow. From that moment on, Jackie Robinson, the baseball barrier-breaker, was relentless in his attack on American injustice.

Robinson used his powerful platform to fight for civil rights in a myriad of ways. He had political friends in high places, including at the White House, and often wrote men like President Dwight Eisenhower, and especially Vice President Richard Nixon, imploring them to fight against lynching or to pass civil rights legislation. Moreover, after his retirement from baseball Robinson began to write a syndicated column - titled "Jackie Robinson Says" - in which he spent a considerable amount of time discussing social justice issues like police brutality.

He also used his star power to participate in marches, as he did in 1958 when he was front and center for the "Youth March for Integrated Schools" in the nation's capital. The following year he made headlines in Greenville, South Carolina, when he refused to move to a "colored only" section of their airport, and instead took a sip of water from a "white's only" fountain in radical defiance.

As a Black athlete, he believed that it was imperative that he and his fellow Black athletes join the movement. He not only led, but he made sure others followed. In 1962, for example, he brought baseball star Curt Flood and boxers Archie Moore and Floyd Patterson with him to Jackson, Mississippi, to give support to those risking their lives in the Deep South. The following year, he encouraged every Black baseball player to join him in a "Freedom Day Demonstration" to protest for civil rights. After hearing Robinson's plans, one sportswriter, Charles J. Livingston remarked, "If the current colored major league players fail Robinson, they'll also be failing their race as well." ³ Livingston, like Robinson, strongly believed that Black athletes had a necessary role to play in the Civil Rights movement. For Robinson, this often meant using his notoriety to get involved in politics.

While he often identified with Republicans politically, Jackie Robinson remained neutral and reserved his right to attack both parties, claiming "I do not vote for a party but for men who, to me, exemplify high principle." ⁴ More than often, "high principle" meant civil rights. In 1960, Robinson campaigned for Nixon's presidential bid because he believed the vice president would be a better advocate of civil rights than Democrat John F. Kennedy. Four years later, however, he would disavow Sen. Barry Goldwater and the entire GOP because of their lack of support for the Civil Rights Act.

In the meantime, while Kennedy was president, Robinson called him out for his lack of legislation protecting civil rights. In a 1962 article called "Mr. Kennedy Is Doing Nothing for Civil Rights," Robinson wrote, "He has achieved nothing - and has fought for nothing - in the area of civil rights legislation." ⁵

Robinson argued that Black people "should do everything short of violence to achieve what is rightfully ours under the Constitution," and believed that the vote was the strongest weapon Black Americans could use to fight injustice. Just as he blazed the baseball paths during his playing career, as a citizen he fearlessly bound from city to city giving speeches and imploring Black Americans to vote. With strength in numbers, he urged, Black voters could shift the winds of justice in their favor.

A Shifting View of America

However, by the end of the 1960s, Robinson became disillusioned and disappointed with American democracy. Even after significant Civil Rights legislation had passed, he felt that America's racism still smothered the dream of equality. The long hot summers of racial unrest, the increasing sense that the GOP had abandoned Black Americans, and the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., had left him disillusioned. For him, the symbol of that disconnect was represented in displays of patriotism that he believed masked prejudice. As he told one reporter, "When I see a car with a flag pasted on it, I figure the guy behind the wheel isn't my friend." Robinson, in fact, stopped standing for the National Anthem during sporting events, stating, "I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a black man in a white world. In 1972, in 1947, at my birth in 1919, I know that I never had it made." ⁶

While Jackie Robinson was undoubtedly a controversial figure for his stance on civil rights, through it all, he also served as an example for others to follow. The baseball legend understood that his celebrity gave him special status, but that he could never be truly free until all Black people shared the privileges he had. As he often said, "No Negro has it made, regardless of his fame, position or money - until the most underprivileged Negro enjoys his rights as a free man." ⁷

Notes

1. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., "Hall of Famer," New York Amsterdam News, August 4, 1962.

2. "Text of Jackie Robinson's Statement to the House Unit," New York Times, July 19, 1949.

3. Charles Livingston, "Will Ball Players Let Jackie Down?" Los Angeles Sentinel, May 23, 1963.

4. Jackie Robinson, "The G.O.P.: For White Men Only?" Saturday Evening Post, August 10-August 17, 1963.

5. Jackie Robinson, "Kennedy Insults Negro Community," Michigan Chronicle, August 18, 1962.

6. "Sale, Display of American Flag Booming," Global-Gazette, July 4, 1967; Jackie Robinson, I Never Had it Made.

7. "Jesse Owens Hits Alabama Trip," Chicago Defender, May 16, 1963.

Related
PBS Learning Media: Jackie Robinson, Athlete and Activist

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In August 1962, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a public letter congratulating Jackie Robinson on his recent induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. More than just a celebration of Robinson's career, King's letter lauded the star athlete for his contributions and ongoing activism in the Civil Rights movement.

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An Oklahoma City woman remembers being a child activist

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StoryCorps brings us memories of one of the first sit-ins of the Civil Rights Era, a protest at a drug store in Oklahoma City that was organized by children.

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MLA - Michals, Debra. "Fannie Lou Hamer." National Women's History Museum, 2017. Date accessed.

Chicago - Michals, Debra "Fannie Lou Hamer." National Women's History Museum. 2017. www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/fannie-lou-hamer.

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Activist Fannie Lou Hamer was one of the most powerful voices of the civil and voting rights movements. Read more at womenshistory.org.

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Maya Angelou (originally Marguerite Annie Johnson) was born on April 4, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri. Due to a tumultuous and difficult childhood, Angelou stopped speaking for five years. When she began to speak again, she was in high school and excelled in her studies of dance and drama. During her senior year, she got pregnant and became a single mother.

In 1952, she married Anastasios Angelopulos. Around the same time, she became a nightclub singer and took on the professional name of Maya Angelou. Her marriage did not last, but her career soared. She composed song lyrics and poems for several years and eventually moved to New York joining the Harlem Writers Guild. It was here that she took her place amongst numerous young black writers associated with the Civil Rights Movement. For many years, she travelled abroad honing her writing skills and strengthening her propensity for political activism.

In 1964, Angelou returned to America and began her work with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Upon his assassination in 1968, she turned to writing to deal with her grief. And so began what would become a critically acclaimed success, her book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, chronicling her childhood.

Angelou became a national figure. Her increasing popularity and notoriety, led her to teach and lecture. She also wrote the screenplay and composed the score for the film Georgia, Georgia (1972), which was the first by an African American woman to ever be filmed and went on to subsequently be nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Angelou received several invitations from successive Presidents of the United States, such as Presidents Ford, Carter and Clinton, to serve in various roles.

In 2000, Angelou received the Presidential Medal of the Arts. In 2008, she received the Ford's Theatre Lincoln Medal. In 2011, President Barack Obama awarded her the highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Angelou published over 30 titles and received over 50 honorary degrees during her career. Angelou died on May 28, 2014.

Source used:

Maya Angelou biography. (May 2014). Retrieved from http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/ang0bio-1

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Maya Angelou | Social Activist | Hilbert College

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Maya Angelou (originally Marguerite Annie Johnson) was born on April 4, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri. Due to a tumultuous and difficult childhood, Angelou stopped speaking for five years. When she began to speak again, she was in high school and excelled in her studies of dance and drama.

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Growing Up in the Kennedy Family

Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, who was a very disciplined and organized woman, made the following entry on a notecard, when her second child was born:
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Born Brookline, Mass. (83 Beals Street) May 29, 1917
In all, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy would have nine children, four boys and five girls. She kept notecards for each of them in a small wooden file box and made a point of writing down everything from a doctor's visit to the shoe size they had at a particular age. John Fitzgerald Kennedy was named in honor of Rose's father, John Francis Fitzgerald, the Boston Mayor popularly known as Honey Fitz. Before long, family and friends called this small blue-eyed baby, Jack. Jack was not a very healthy baby, and Rose recorded on his notecard the childhood diseases from which he suffered, such as: "whooping cough, measles, chicken pox."

On February 20, 1920 when Jack was not yet three years old, he became sick with scarlet fever, a highly contagious and then potentially life-threatening disease. His father, Joseph Patrick Kennedy, was terrified that little Jack would die. Mr. Kennedy went to the hospital every day to be by his son's side, and about a month later Jack took a turn for the better and recovered. But Jack was never very healthy, and because he was always suffering from one ailment or another his family used to joke about the great risk a mosquito took in biting him - with some of his blood the mosquito was almost sure to die!

When Jack was three, the Kennedys moved to a new home a few blocks away from their old house in Brookline, a neighborhood just outside of Boston. It was a lovely house with twelve rooms, turreted windows, and a big porch. Full of energy and ambition, Jack's father worked very hard at becoming a successful businessman. When he was a student at Harvard College and having a difficult time fitting in as an Irish Catholic, he swore to himself he would make a million dollars by the age of 35. There was a lot of prejudice against Irish Catholics in Boston at that time, but Joseph Kennedy was determined to succeed. Jack's great-grandparents had come from Ireland and managed to provide for their families, despite many hardships. Jack's grandfathers did even better for themselves, both becoming prominent Boston politicians. Jack, because of all his family had done, could enjoy a very comfortable life. The Kennedys had everything they needed and more.

By the time Jack was eight there were seven children altogether. Jack had an older brother, Joe; four sisters, Rosemary, Kathleen, Eunice, and Patricia; and a younger brother, Robert. Jean and Teddy hadn't been born yet. Nannies and housekeepers helped Rose run the household.

At the end of the school year, the Kennedy children would go to their summer home in Hyannis Port on Cape Cod where they enjoyed swimming, sailing, and playing touch football. The Kennedy children played hard, and they enjoyed competing with one another. Joseph Sr. encouraged this competition, especially among the boys.

He was a father with very high expectations and wanted the boys to win at sports and everything they tried. As he often said, "When the going gets tough, the tough get going." But sometimes these competitions went too far. One time when Joe suggested that he and Jack race on their bicycles, they collided head-on. Joe emerged unscathed while Jack had to have twenty-eight stitches. Because Joe was two years older and stronger than Jack, whenever they fought, Jack would usually get the worst of it. Jack was the only sibling who posed any real threat to Joe's dominant position as the oldest child.

Jack was very popular and had many friends at Choate, a boarding school for adolescent boys in Connecticut. He played tennis, basketball, football, and golf and also enjoyed reading. His friend Lem Billings remembers how unusual it was that Jack had a daily subscription to the New York Times. Jack had a "clever, individualist mind," his Head Master once noted, though he was not the best student. He did not always work as hard as he could, except in history and English, which were his favorite subjects.

"Now Jack," his father wrote in a letter one day, "I don't want to give the impression that I am a nagger, for goodness knows I think that is the worse thing any parent can be, and I also feel that you know if I didn't really feel you had the goods I would be most charitable in my attitude toward your failings. After long experience in sizing up people I definitely know you have the goods and you can go a long way...It is very difficult to make up fundamentals that you have neglected when you were very young, and that is why I am urging you to do the best you can. I am not expecting too much, and I will not be disappointed if you don't turn out to be a real genius, but I think you can be a really worthwhile citizen with good judgment and understanding."

Jack graduated from Choate and entered Harvard in 1936, where Joe was already a student. Like his brother Joe, Jack played football. He was not as good an athlete as Joe but he had a lot of determination and perseverance. Unfortunately, one day while playing he ruptured a disk in his spine. Jack never really recovered from this accident and his back continued to bother him for the rest of his life.

The two eldest boys were attractive, agreeable, and intelligent young men and Mr. Kennedy had high hopes for them both. However, it was Joe who had announced to everyone when he was a young boy that he would be the first Catholic to become President. No one doubted him for a moment. Jack, on the other hand, seemed somewhat less ambitious. He was active in student groups and sports and he worked hard in his history and government classes, though his grades remained only average.

Late in 1937, Mr. Kennedy was appointed United States Ambassador to England and moved there with his whole family, with the exception of Joe and Jack who were at Harvard. Because of his father's job, Jack became very interested in European politics and world affairs. After a summer visit to England and other countries in Europe, Jack returned to Harvard more eager to learn about history and government and to keep up with current events.

Joe and Jack frequently received letters from their father in England, who informed them of the latest news regarding the conflicts and tensions that everyone feared would soon blow up into a full-scale war. Adolph Hitler ruled Germany and Benito Mussolini ruled Italy. They both had strong armies and wanted to take land from other countries. On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland and World War II began.

By this time, Jack was a senior at Harvard and decided to write his thesis on why Great Britain was unprepared for war with Germany. It was later published as a book called Why England Slept. In June 1940, Jack graduated from Harvard. His father sent him a cablegram from London: "TWO THINGS I ALWAYS KNEW ABOUT YOU ONE THAT YOU ARE SMART TWO THAT YOU ARE A SWELL GUY LOVE DAD."

World War II and a Future in Politics

Soon after graduating, both Joe and Jack joined the Navy. Joe was a flyer and sent to Europe, while Jack was made Lieutenant (Lt.) and assigned to the South Pacific as commander of a patrol torpedo boat, the PT-109.

Lt. Kennedy had a crew of twelve men whose mission was to stop Japanese ships from delivering supplies to their soldiers. On the night of August 2, 1943, Lt. Kennedy's crew patrolled the waters looking for enemy ships to sink. A Japanese destroyer suddenly became visible. But it was traveling at full speed and headed straight at them. Holding the wheel, Lt. Kennedy tried to swerve out of the way, but to no avail. The much larger Japanese warship rammed the PT-109, splitting it in half and killing two of Lt. Kennedy's men. The others managed to jump off as their boat went up in flames. Lt. Kennedy was slammed hard against the cockpit, once again injuring his weak back. Patrick McMahon, one of his crew members, had horrible burns on his face and hands and was ready to give up. In the darkness, Lt. Kennedy managed to find McMahon and haul him back to where the other survivors were clinging to a piece of the boat that was still afloat. At sunrise, Lt. Kennedy led his men toward a small island several miles away. Despite his own injuries, Lt. Kennedy was able to tow Patrick McMahon ashore, a strap from McMahon's life jacket clenched between his teeth. Six days later two native islanders found them and went for help, delivering a message Jack had carved into a piece of coconut shell. The next day, the PT-109 crew was rescued. Jack's brother Joe was not so lucky. He died a year later when his plane blew up during a dangerous mission in Europe.

When he returned home, Jack was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for his leadership and courage. With the war finally coming to an end, it was time to choose the kind of work he wanted to do. Jack had considered becoming a teacher or a writer, but with Joe's tragic death suddenly everything changed. After serious discussions with Jack about his future, Joseph Kennedy convinced him that he should run for Congress in Massachusetts' eleventh congressional district, where he won in 1946. This was the beginning of Jack's political career. As the years went on, John F. Kennedy, a Democrat, served three terms (six years) in the House of Representatives, and in 1952 he was elected to the US Senate.

Soon after being elected senator, John F. Kennedy, at 36 years of age, married 24 year-old Jacqueline Bouvier, a writer with the Washington Times-Herald. Unfortunately, early on in their marriage, Senator Kennedy's back started to hurt again and he had two serious operations. While recovering from surgery, he wrote a book about several US Senators who had risked their careers to fight for the things in which they believed. The book, called Profiles in Courage, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1957. That same year, the Kennedys' first child, Caroline, was born.

John F. Kennedy was becoming a popular politician. In 1956 he was almost picked to run for vice president. Kennedy nonetheless decided that he would run for president in the next election.

He began working very long hours and traveling all around the United States on weekends. On July 13, 1960 the Democratic party nominated him as its candidate for president. Kennedy asked Lyndon B. Johnson, a senator from Texas, to run with him as vice president. In the general election on November 8, 1960, Kennedy defeated the Republican Vice President Richard M. Nixon in a very close race. At the age of 43, Kennedy was the youngest man elected president and the first Catholic. Before his inauguration, his second child, John Jr., was born. His father liked to call him John-John.

John F. Kennedy Becomes The 35th President of the United States

John F. Kennedy was sworn in as the 35th president on January 20, 1961. In his inaugural speech he spoke of the need for all Americans to be active citizens. "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country," he said. He also asked the nations of the world to join together to fight what he called the "common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself." President Kennedy, together with his wife and two children, brought a new, youthful spirit to the White House. The Kennedys believed that the White House should be a place to celebrate American history, culture, and achievement. They invited artists, writers, scientists, poets, musicians, actors, and athletes to visit them. Jacqueline Kennedy also shared her husband's interest in American history. Gathering some of the finest art and furniture the United States had produced, she restored all the rooms in the White House to make it a place that truly reflected America's history and artistic creativity. Everyone was impressed and appreciated her hard work.

The White House also seemed like a fun place because of the Kennedys' two young children, Caroline and John-John. There was a pre-school, a swimming pool, and a tree-house outside on the White House lawn. President Kennedy was probably the busiest man in the country, but he still found time to laugh and play with his children.

However, the president also had many worries. One of the things he worried about most was the possibility of nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. He knew that if there was a war, millions of people would die. Since World War II, there had been a lot of anger and suspicion between the two countries but never any shooting between Soviet and American troops. This 'Cold War', which was unlike any other war the world had seen, was really a struggle between the Soviet Union's communist system of government and the United States' democratic system. Because they distrusted each other, both countries spent enormous amounts of money building nuclear weapons. There were many times when the struggle between the Soviet Union and the United States could have ended in nuclear war, such as in Cuba during the 1962 missile crisis or over the divided city of Berlin.

President Kennedy worked long hours, getting up at seven and not going to bed until eleven or twelve at night, or later. He read six newspapers while he ate breakfast, had meetings with important people throughout the day, and read reports from his advisers. He wanted to make sure that he made the best decisions for his country. "I am asking each of you to be new pioneers in that New Frontier," he said. The New Frontier was not a place but a way of thinking and acting. President Kennedy wanted the United States to move forward into the future with new discoveries in science and improvements in education, employment and other fields. He wanted democracy and freedom for the whole world.

One of the first things President Kennedy did was to create the Peace Corps. Through this program, which still exists today, Americans can volunteer to work anywhere in the world where assistance is needed. They can help in areas such as education, farming, health care, and construction. Many young men and women have served as Peace Corps volunteers and have won the respect of people throughout the world.

President Kennedy was also eager for the United States to lead the way in exploring space. The Soviet Union was ahead of the United States in its space program and President Kennedy was determined to catch up. He said, "No nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this race for space." Kennedy was the first president to ask Congress to approve more than 22 billion dollars for Project Apollo, which had the goal of landing an American man on the moon before the end of the decade.

President Kennedy had to deal with many serious problems here in the United States. The biggest problem of all was racial discrimination. The US Supreme Court had ruled in 1954 that segregation in public schools would no longer be permitted. Black and white children, the decision mandated, should go to school together. This was now the law of the land. However, there were many schools, especially in southern states, that did not obey this law. There was also racial segregation on buses, in restaurants, movie theaters, and other public places.

Thousands of Americans joined together, people of all races and backgrounds, to protest peacefully this injustice.

Martin Luther King Jr. was one of the famous leaders of the movement for civil rights. Many civil rights leaders didn't think President Kennedy was supportive enough of their efforts. The President believed that holding public protests would only anger many white people and make it even more difficult to convince the members of Congress who didn't agree with him to pass civil rights laws. By June 11, 1963, however, President Kennedy decided that the time had come to take stronger action to help the civil rights struggle. He proposed a new Civil Rights bill to the Congress, and he went on television asking Americans to end racism. "One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free," he said. "This Nation was founded by men of many nations and backgrounds...[and] on the principle that all men are created equal." President Kennedy made it clear that all Americans, regardless of their skin color, should enjoy a good and happy life in the United States.

The President is Shot

On November 21, 1963, President Kennedy flew to Texas to give several political speeches. The next day, on November 22, as his car drove slowly past cheering crowds in Dallas, shots rang out. Kennedy was seriously wounded and died a short time later. Within a few hours of the shooting, police arrested Lee Harvey Oswald and charged him with the murder. On November 24, another man, Jack Ruby, shot and killed Oswald, thus silencing the only person who could have offered more information about this tragic event. The Warren Commission was organized to investigate the assassination and to clarify the many questions which remained.

The Legacy of John F. Kennedy

President Kennedy's death caused enormous sadness and grief among all Americans. Most people still remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news. Hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Washington for the President's funeral, and millions throughout the world watched it on television.

As the years have gone by and other presidents have written their chapters in history, John Kennedy's brief time in office stands out in people's memories for his leadership, personality, and accomplishments. Many respect his coolness when faced with difficult decisions--like what to do about Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1962. Others admire his ability to inspire people with his eloquent speeches. Still others think his compassion and his willingness to fight for new government programs to help the poor, the elderly and the ill were most important. Like all leaders, John Kennedy made mistakes, but he was always optimistic about the future. He believed that people could solve their common problems if they put their country's interests first and worked together.

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Growing Up in the Kennedy Family Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, who was a very disciplined and organized woman, made the following entry on a notecard, when her second child was born: John Fitzgerald Kennedy Born Brookline, Mass. (83 Beals Street) May 29, 1917