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Every February, the U.S. honors the contributions and sacrifices of African Americans who have helped shape the nation. Black History Month celebrates the rich cultural heritage, triumphs and adversities that are an indelible part of our country's history.

This year's theme, Black Health and Wellness, pays homage to medical scholars and health care providers. The theme is especially timely as we enter the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has disproportionately affected minority communities and placed unique burdens on Black health care professionals.

"There is no American history without African American history," said Sara Clarke Kaplan, executive director of the Antiracist Research & Policy Center at American University in Washington, D.C. The Black experience, she said, is embedded in "everything we think of as 'American history.' "

First, there was Negro History Week

Critics have long argued that Black history should be taught and celebrated year-round, not just during one month each year.

It was Carter G. Woodson, the "father of Black history," who first set out in 1926 to designate a time to promote and educate people about Black history and culture, according to W. Marvin Dulaney. He is a historian and the president of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History ( ASALH).

Woodson envisioned a weeklong celebration to encourage the coordinated teaching of Black history in public schools. He designated the second week of February as Negro History Week and galvanized fellow historians through the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, which he founded in 1915. (ASNLH later became ASALH.)

The idea wasn't to place limitations but really to focus and broaden the nation's consciousness.

"Woodson's goal from the very beginning was to make the celebration of Black history in the field of history a 'serious area of study,' " said Albert Broussard, a professor of Afro-American history at Texas A&M University.

The idea eventually grew in acceptance, and by the late 1960s, Negro History Week had evolved into what is now known as Black History Month. Protests around racial injustice, inequality and anti-imperialism that were occurring in many parts of the U.S. were pivotal to the change.

Colleges and universities also began to hold commemorations, with Kent State University being one of the first, according to Kaplan.

Fifty years after the first celebrations, President Gerald R. Ford officially recognized Black History Month during the country's 1976 bicentennial. Ford called upon Americans to "seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history," History.com reports.

Why February was chosen as Black History Month

February was chosen primarily because the second week of the month coincides with the birthdays of both Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Lincoln was influential in the emancipation of slaves, and Douglass, a former slave, was a prominent leader in the abolitionist movement, which fought to end slavery.

Lincoln and Douglass were each born in the second week of February, so it was traditionally a time when African Americans would hold celebrations in honor of emancipation, Kaplan said. (Douglass' exact date of birth wasn't recorded, but he came to celebrate it on Feb. 14.)

Thus, Woodson created Negro History Week around the two birthdays as a way of "commemorating the black past," according to ASALH.

Forty years after Ford formally recognized Black History Month, it was Barack Obama, the nation's first Black president, who delivered a message of his own from the White House, a place built by slaves.

"Black History Month shouldn't be treated as though it is somehow separate from our collective American history or somehow just boiled down to a compilation of greatest hits from the March on Washington or from some of our sports heroes," Obama said.

"It's about the lived, shared experience of all African Americans, high and low, famous and obscure, and how those experiences have shaped and challenged and ultimately strengthened America," he continued.

(Canada also commemorates Black History Month in February, while the U.K. and Ireland celebrate it in October.)

There's a new theme every year

ASALH designates a new theme for Black History Month each year, in keeping with the practice Woodson established for Negro History Week.

This year's Black Health and Wellness theme is particularly appropriate, Dulaney said, as the U.S. continues to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

"As [Black people], we have terrible health outcomes, and even the coronavirus has been affecting us disproportionately in terms of those of us who are catching it," Dulaney said.

"There's never been a time where Black people and others should not celebrate Black history," Broussard said. "Given the current racial climate, the racial reckoning that began in wake of George Floyd's murder ... this is an opportunity to learn."

NPR has compiled a list of stories, performances and other content that chronicles the Black American experience for Black History Month. See the whole collection here.

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Here's the story behind Black History Month - and why it's celebrated in February

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Black History Month grew from a weeklong celebration that started nearly 100 years ago - and it's not random that it's in February.

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National Museum of African American History and Culture

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The Black Panther Party: Challenging Police and Promoting Social Change

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Founded in 1966 in Oakland, California, the Black Panther Party for Self Defense was the era’s most influential militant black power organization. Its members confronted politicians, challenged the police, and protected black citizens.

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Civil Rights Act of 1964 - Definition, Summary & Significance | HISTORY

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The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, is considered one of the crowning legislative achievements of the civil rights movement.

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Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X are frequently seen as opposing forces in the struggle for civil rights and against white supremacy; King is often portrayed as a nonviolent insider, while Malcolm X is characterized as a by-any-means-necessary political renegade. But author and Black Power scholar Peniel Joseph says the truth is more nuanced.

"I've always been fascinated by Malcolm X and Dr. King ... and dissatisfied in how they're usually portrayed - both in books and in popular culture," Joseph says.

In his book, The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., Joseph braids together the lives of the two civil rights leaders. He says that King and Malcolm X had "convergent visions" for Black America - but their strategies for how to reach the goal was informed by their different upbringings.

"Malcolm X is really scarred by racial trauma at a very early age," Joseph says. "King, in contrast, has a very gilded childhood, and he's the son of an upper-middle-class, African-American family, prosperous family that runs one of the most important churches in Black Atlanta."

What's really extraordinary is that the Black Lives Matter protesters really are protesting for radical Black dignity and citizenship and see that you need both. So Malcolm and Martin are the revolutionary sides of the same coin, and really the BLM movement has amplified that.

Joseph says that, over time, each man became the other's "alter ego." Malcolm X, he says, "injects a political radicalism on the national scene that absolutely makes Dr. King and his movement much more palatable to mainstream Americans."

Now, with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, Joseph says that King and Malcolm X's visions have converged: "What's really extraordinary is that the Black Lives Matter protesters really are protesting for radical Black dignity and citizenship and see that you need both. So Malcolm and Martin are the revolutionary sides of the same coin, and really the BLM movement has amplified that."

Interview highlights
On what Malcolm X meant by racial separatism
This idea of separatism is really interesting. The deeper I investigated Malcolm X, the more I understood what he meant and what the Nation of Islam meant by racial separatism. It wasn't segregation. It was separatism, they argued, and Malcolm does this in a series of debates against Bayard Rustin, against Jim Farmer, against James Baldwin, Louis Lomax. He says that racial separatism is required because white people do not want Black people to be citizens and have dignity. And if they did, you wouldn't have to protest and experience police violence and police brutality: small children trying to integrate Little Rock High School, young people trying to integrate lunch counters, and they're arrested and brutalized, sometimes people were killed, of course. So what's interesting about this idea of separatism, Malcolm argues separatism is Black people having enough self-love and enough confidence in themselves to organize and build parallel institutions. Because America was so infected with the disease of racism, they could never racially integrate into American democracy.
On Malcolm X's vision of "by any means necessary" protest
Malcolm is making the argument that, one, Black people have the right to self-defense and to defend themselves against police brutality. It's really striking when you follow Malcolm X in the 1950s and '60s, the number of court appearances he's making, whether it's in Buffalo, N.Y., or Los Angeles or Rochester, N.Y., where members of the Nation of Islam have been brutalized [and], at times, killed by police violence. So Malcolm is arguing that, one, Black people have a right to defend themselves. Second part of Malcolm's argument - because he travels to the Middle East by 1959, travels for 25 weeks overseas in 1964 - is that because there [are] anti-colonial revolutions raging across Africa and the Third World in the context of the 1950s and '60s, he makes the argument that the Black revolution in the United States is only going to be a true revolution once Black people start utilizing self-defense to end the racial terror they're experiencing both in the 1950s and '60s, but historically. And one of the reasons Malcolm makes that argument, obviously, is because his father and his family had experienced that racial terror.
On King's policy of non-violent protest v. self defense
One thing that's important to know is that when we think about nonviolence versus self-defense, it's very, very complex, because even though Martin Luther King Jr.is America's apostle and a follower of Gandhi and believes in nonviolence, there are always people around King who are trying to protect him and in demonstrations, who actually are armed, they're not armed in the same way that, say, the Black Panthers would arm themselves later, but they're armed to actually protect and defend peaceful civil rights activists from racial terror. And of course, King famously had had armed guards around him in Montgomery, Ala., after his home was firebombed during the bus boycott of 1955 to '56. And it's Bayard Rustin who famously told him he couldn't have those armed guards if he wanted to live out the practice of nonviolence.

So King usually does not have his own people being armed. But when he's in the Deep South, there are civil rights activists who actually are armed and at times protecting him. They're not necessarily connected to his Southern Christian Leadership Conference, but the movement always had people who were trying to protect peaceful demonstrators against racial terror.
On King's response to Malcolm X's argument against non-violent civil disobedience

King has several responses: One is that nonviolence is both a moral and political strategy. So the morality and the religious argument is that Black people could not succumb to enemy politics. And this idea that when we think about white racism, we would become as bad as the people who are oppressing us. So he pushes back against that. Politically, he says, well, then there aren't enough Black people, even if they arm themselves to win some kind of armed conflict and struggle. And then finally, he says and there's a great speech in 1963 in Los Angeles where he doesn't mention Malcolm X, but he's speaking out against Malcolm X in terms of what's happening in Birmingham. And Malcolm has called him an Uncle Tom and all kinds of names. He says that non-violence is the weapon of strength. It's the weapon of people who are powerful and courageous and brave and heroic and disciplined. It's not the weapon of the weak, because we're going to use this non-violent strategy to actually transform the United States of America against its own will. ...

I say Malcolm is Black America's prosecuting attorney. He's prosecuting white America for a series of crimes against Black humanity that date back to racial slavery. Dr. King is Black America's defense attorney - but he's very interesting: He defends both sides of the color line. He defends Black people to white people and tells white people that Black people don't want Black supremacy. They don't want reverse racism. They don't want revenge for racial slavery and Jim Crow segregation. They just want to be included in the body politic and have citizenship. But he also defends white people to Black people. He's constantly telling - especially as the movement gets further radicalized - Black people that white people are good people, that white people, we can redeem the souls of the nation. And we have white allies who have fought and struggled and died with us to achieve Black citizenship. So it's very interesting, the roles they both play. But over time, after Malcolm's assassination, one of the biggest ironies and transformations is that King becomes Black America's prosecuting attorney.
On how Malcolm X and King's visions merged
They start to merge, especially in the aftermath of Malcolm's assassination on Feb. 21, 1965. And in a way, when we think about King, right after Malcolm's assassination, King has what he later calls one of those "mountaintop moments." And he always says there are these mountaintop moments, but then you have to go back to the valley. And that mountaintop moment is going to be the Selma to Montgomery march, even though initially, when we think about March 7, 1965 - Bloody Sunday - demonstrators, including the late Congressman John Lewis, are battered by Alabama state troopers, non-violent demonstrators, peaceful demonstrators on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

But by March 15, LBJ, the president, is going to say these protesters are right and they are part of a long pantheon of American heroes dating back to the revolution. And then March 21 to the 25, the Selma to Montgomery demonstration is going to attract 30,000 Americans - including white allies, Jewish allies like Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel - to King and the movement. So King is going to make his last, fully nationally televised speech on March 25, 1965, where he talks about American democracy, racial justice, but the long road ahead. By that August, Aug. 6, 1965, the Voting Rights Act has passed. So these are real high points.

But then five days after the Voting Rights Act is passed, Watts, Los Angeles explodesin really the largest civil disturbance in American history up until that point. And when we think about after Watts, that's where King and Malcolm start to converge, because Malcolm had criticized the March on Washington as the "farce on Washington," because he said that King and the movement should have paralyzed Washington, D.C., and forced a reckoning about race in America. And they didn't do that. By 1965, King says that in this essay, "Beyond the Los Angeles Riots," that what he's going to start doing is use non-violent civil disobedience as a peaceful sword that paralyzes cities to produce justice that goes beyond civil rights and voting rights acts.
Sam Briger and Thea Chaloner produced and edited the audio of this interview. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Meghan Sullivan adapted it for the Web.

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Black Power Scholar Illustrates How MLK And Malcolm X Influenced Each Other

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Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X are frequently seen as opposing forces in the struggle for civil rights but Peniel Joseph, author of The Sword and the Shield, says the truth is more nuanced.

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Image: Courtsey of Rolling Stone

Racial tensions, inequalities police brutality, and violence are a major concern in the United States. People of color in America suffer from disparities across areas such as education, employment, housing, and incarceration rates. African Americans now constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million people in jail and are incarcerated nearly six times as often as white people. The Black Lives Matter movement has shone a spotlight on issues of racial injustice and disparities within the criminal justice system in America and abroad. It has reawakened the need for a new movement asking people to examine issues of race, discrimination, and disenfranchisement.

The Black Lives Matter movement first began in 2013 following outrage in the wake of the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of an unarmed African American teenager named Trayvon Martin in Florida in February 2012. The movement further gained momentum following the shooting death of eighteen-year-old Michael Brown by a police officer resulting from protests in Ferguson, Missouri and the chokehold death of Eric Garner in New York City. Since then, there have been numerous other examples of violence, racism, and discrimination against people of color, which have spurred the movement's growth.

The Black Lives Matter movement has often been compared to the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s in the United States. While there are certainly similarities, there are also a number of differences between the two movements. Both movements call for social change and racial equality, while using non-violent protests to call for change. This begs the questions: is the Black Lives Matter movement the new civil rights movement? Unlike the original civil rights movement, the Black Lives Matter movement has no singular voice demanding change, such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. or Malcolm X. Instead, this 21 stCentury civil rights movement is a collection of social activists and organizers taking a stand against police violence, disenfranchisement, and pervasive injustice and demanding change. While, some argue that the collection of organizers is powerful, others see it as a flaw. For example, Oprah Winfrey criticized the Black Lives Matter movement for lacking clearly defined leadership at the top that lays out a plan of action. In response, the movement released the Black Lives Matter Policy Agenda in 2016 to bring more clarity to the movement's vision and goals.

Over the past few years, the movement has grown from a hashtag to a network that now encompasses over 30 chapters in the United States and other countries. The movement, built on strategies used by the civil rights movement, engages in nonviolent direct action to bring attention to police killings and abuse of African Americans. Critics of the Black Lives Matter movement argue that it is too confrontational and divisive, and that it is anti-police. However, it is important to recognize that the movement and its activists are not against police, but against bad police policies, such as shooting unarmed black men now and asking questions later.

We will be discussing the important topic of race and inequality with a special focus on the Black Lives Matter movement next Wednesday, October 17 that the O'Neill Institute Colloquium at Georgetown University Law Center. The purpose of the Colloquium is to engage leading experts, Georgetown Law students and faculty, and interested members of the public in an enriching dialogue surrounding current and pressing issues in global health law, policy and governance. Colloquia intentionally blur the lines between students, faculty and policymakers, as a wide variety of perspectives enhances the learning experience of all participants. The inclusion of multiple academic disciplines also promises to deepen the quality of the learning experience. Each week, the Colloquium focuses on a different topic related to health, policy and the law. This year, we have organized the sessions into four modules and this particular module is focused on populism and policy change. The Colloquium is open to all Georgetown students, faculty, staff, and interested members of the public.

Categories: Health and Human Rights Human Rights

Tags: BLM equity health equity social justice movements

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Black Lives Matter: The 21st Century Civil Rights Movement? | O'Neill Institute

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Image: Courtsey of Rolling Stone Racial tensions, inequalities police brutality, and violence are a major concern in the United States. People of color in America suffer from disparities across areas such as education, employment, housing, and incarceration rates. African Americans now c ...

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On May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren issued the Supreme Court's unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education, ruling that racial segregation in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The upshot: Students of color in America would no longer be forced by law to attend traditionally under-resourced Black-only schools.

The decision marked a legal turning point for the American civil-rights movement. But it would take much more than a decree from the nation's highest court to change hearts, minds and two centuries of entrenched racism. Brown was initially met with inertia and, in most southern states, active resistance. More than half a century later, progress has been made, but the vision of Warren's court has not been fully realized.

The Supreme Court Rules 'Separate' Means Unequal

The landmark case began as five separate class-action lawsuits brought by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) on behalf of Black schoolchildren and their families in Kansas, South Carolina, Delaware, Virginia and Washington, D.C. The lead plaintiff, Oliver Brown, had filed suit against the Board of Education in Topeka, Kansas in 1951, after his daughter Linda was denied admission to a white elementary school.

Her all-Black school, Monroe Elementary, was fortunate-and unique-to be endowed with well-kept facilities, well-trained teachers and adequate materials. But the other four lawsuits embedded in the Brown case pointed to more common fundamental challenges. The case in Clarendon, South Carolina described school buildings as no more than dilapidated wooden shacks. In Prince Edward County, Virginia, the high school had no cafeteria, gym, nurse's office or teachers' restrooms, and overcrowding led to students being housed in an old school bus and tar-paper shacks.

Brown v. Board First to Rule Against Segregation Since Reconstruction Era

The Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board marked a shining moment in the NAACP's decades-long campaign to combat school segregation. In declaring school segregation as unconstitutional, the Court overturned the longstanding "separate but equal" doctrine established nearly 60 years earlier in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). In his opinion, Chief Justice Warren asserted public education was an essential right that deserved equal protection, stating unequivocally that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."

Still, Thurgood Marshall, head of the NAACP's Legal Defense and Educational Fund and lead lawyer from the plaintiffs, knew the fight was far from over-and that the high court's decision was only a first step in the long, complicated process of dismantling institutionalized racism. He warned his colleagues soon after the verdict came down: "The fight has just begun."

In 1954, the Supreme Court unanimously strikes down segregation in public schools, sparking the Civil Rights movement.

Brown v. Board Does Not Instantly Desegregate Schools

In its landmark ruling, the Supreme Court didn't specify exactly how to end school segregation, but rather asked to hear further arguments on the issue. The Court's timidity, combined with steadfast local resistance, meant that the bold Brown v. Board of Education ruling did little on the community level to achieve the goal of desegregation. Black students, to a large degree, still attended schools with substandard facilities, out-of-date textbooks and often no basic school supplies.

In a 1955 case known as Brown v. Board II, the Court gave much of the responsibility for the implementation of desegregation to local school authorities and lower courts, urging that the process proceed "with all deliberate speed." But many lower court judges in the South, who had been appointed by segregationist politicians, were emboldened to resist desegregation by the Court's lackluster enforcement of the Brown decision.

In Prince Edward County, where one of the five class-action suits behind Brown was filed, the Board of Supervisors refused to appropriate funds for the County School Board, choosing to shut down the public schools for five years rather than integrate them.

This backlash against the Court's verdict reached the highest levels of government: In 1956, 82 representatives and 19 senators endorsed a so-called "Southern Manifesto" in Congress, urging Southerners to use all "lawful means" at their disposal to resist the "chaos and confusion" that school desegregation would cause.

In 1964, a full decade after the decision, more than 98 percent of Black children in the South still attended segregated schools.

The Brown Ruling Becomes a Catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement

For the first time since the Reconstruction Era, the Court's ruling focused national attention on the subjugation of Black Americans. The result? The growth of the nascent civil-rights movement, which would doggedly challenge segregation and demand legal equality for Black families through boycotts, sit-ins, freedom rides and voter-registration drives.

The Brown verdict inspired Southern Blacks to defy restrictive and punitive Jim Crow laws, however, the ruling also galvanized Southern whites in defense of segregation-including the infamous standoff at a high school in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957. Violence against civil-rights activists escalated, outraging many in the North and abroad, helping to speed up the passage of major civil-rights and voting-rights legislation by the mid-1960s.

Finally, in 1964, two provisions within the Civil Rights Act effectively gave the federal government the power to enforce school desegregation for the first time: The Justice Department could sue schools that refused to integrate, and the government could withhold funding from segregated schools. Within five years after the act took effect, nearly a third of Black children in the South attended integrated schools, and that figure reached as high as 90 percent by 1973.

Legacy and Impact of Brown v. Board

More than 60 years after the landmark ruling, assessing its impact remains a complicated endeavor. The Court's verdict fell short of initial hopes that it would end school segregation in America for good, and some argued that larger social and political forces within the nation played a far greater role in ending segregation.

As the Supreme Court has grown increasingly polarized along political lines, both conservative and liberal justices have claimed the legacy of Brown v. Board to argue different sides in the constitutional debate. In 2007, the Court ruled 5-4 against allowing public schools to take race into account in their admission policies in order to achieve or maintain integration.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, asserted: "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." And in a dissenting opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the ruling "rewrites the history of one of this court's most important decisions."

Are Schools 'Separate But Equal' in the 21st Century?

School segregation remains in force all over America today, largely because many of the neighborhoods in which schools are still located are themselves segregated. Despite the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968 and later judicial decisions making racial discrimination illegal, exclusionary economic-zoning laws still bar low-income and working-class Americans from many neighborhoods, which in many cases reduces their access to higher quality schools.

According to a 2014 report by Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute report, as of the 60th anniversary of the Brown v. Board verdict the typical Black student attended a school where only 29 percent of his or her fellow students were white, down from some 36 percent in 1980.

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Brown v. Board of Education: The First Step in the Desegregation of America's Schools | HISTORY

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The Supreme Court ruling was initially met with inertia and, in many states, active resistance.

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The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights is named after a brilliant, Black hero of the civil rights Freedom Movement who inspired and guided emerging leaders. We build on her legacy by building the power of black, brown, and poor people to create solutions for one of the biggest drivers of injustice today: mass incarceration.
Solutions like Housing, Demanding Accountability, and creating spaces for Restorative Justice and Restorative Economics.

Ms. Baker played a key role in some of the most influential organizations of the time, including the NAACP, Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

Like her, we spark change by unlocking the power of every person to strengthen their communities and shape their future.

Listen in as we look at the life and legacy of the activist, mentor, and revolutionary the Ella Baker Center is named for. In this episode of our podcast, we speak with Dr. Barabara Ransby, author of "Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement" about Ella Baker's history and vision. Also, legendary activists who organized with Miss Baker share their stories.

Ella Baker's Early Life

Ella Jo Baker was born on December 13, 1903, in Norfolk, Virginia. Growing up in North Carolina, she developed a sense for social justice early on, due in part to her grandmother's stories about life under slavery.

As a slave, her grandmother had been whipped for refusing to marry a man chosen for her by the slave owner. Her grandmother's pride and resilience in the face of racism and injustice continued to inspire Ms. Baker throughout her life.

Ella Baker's maternal grandparents bought, lived on, and cultivated land that was formerly a part of the plantation on which they were enslaved. They bought the land for $250, which they paid off in installments. This purchase was the source of great pride for their family, and they went on to become successful farmers.

Baker studied at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. As a student she challenged school policies that she thought were unfair. After graduating in 1927 as class valedictorian, she moved to New York City and began joining social activist organizations.

In 1930, she joined the Young Negroes Cooperative League, whose purpose was to develop black economic power through collective planning. She also involved herself with several women's organizations. She was committed to economic justice for all people and once said, " People cannot be free until there is enough work in this land to give everybody a job."

At the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights today, we continue in her legacy when we say books not bars, jobs not jails and healthcare not handcuffs. We know the prison system is the largest provider of mental health care and substance abuse rehabilitation in our country today. Prisons cannot continue to be the answer to these public health crises. Care based and community based solutions are the answer like healthcare for all, free public education, and housing as a recognized human right.

Joining the Struggle Against Jim Crow

Ella Baker began her involvement with the NAACP in 1940. She worked as a field secretary and then served as director of branches from 1943 until 1946.

Inspired by the historic bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, Baker co-founded the organization In Friendship to raise money to fight against Jim Crow Laws in the deep South.

In 1957, Baker moved to Atlanta to help organize Martin Luther King's new organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). She also ran a voter registration campaign called the Crusade for Citizenship.

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

On February 1, 1960, a group of black college students from North Carolina A&T University refused to leave a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina where they had been denied service.

Baker left the SCLC after the Greensboro sit-ins. She wanted to assist the new student activists because she viewed young, emerging activists as a resource and an asset to the movement. Miss Baker organized a meeting at Shaw University for the student leaders of the sit-ins in April 1960. From that meeting, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee - SNCC - was born.

Adopting the Gandhian theory of nonviolent direct action, SNCC members joined with activists from the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) to organize the 1961 Freedom Rides.

In 1964 SNCC helped create Freedom Summer, an effort to focus national attention on Mississippi's racism and to register black voters.

Miss Baker, and many of her contemporaries, believed that voting was one key to freedom. Today, that is still the case: if we do not exercise our collective voice, we are unable to influence the policies and laws that impact our lives. To be counted, we must be heard.

The Audacity to Dream Big

With Ella Baker's guidance and encouragement, SNCC became one of the foremost advocates for human rights in the country. Ella Baker once said, "This may only be a dream of mine, but I think it can be made real."

This dream of Baker's can continue to be made real. You can join her legacy and be a part of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights today. In fact, you are the key to making Baker's dream reality.

Ella Baker's influence was reflected in the nickname she acquired: "Fundi," a Swahili word meaning a person who teaches a craft to the next generation. Baker continued to be a respected and influential leader in the fight for human and civil rights until her death on December 13, 1986, her 83rd birthday.

Wanting to celebrate Ella Jo Baker as an unsung hero of racial and economic justice, the civil rights movement, and seeking to honor her legacy of leadership and movement building, our founders chose to name our Center for Ella Baker. Her audacity to dream big is a cornerstone of our philosophy.

We believe the best way to honor Ms. Baker's legacy is to inspire people to imagine new possibilities, lead with solutions, and engage communities to drive positive change. Join us and keep her story going.
Join us and build on Ms. Baker's legacy.

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The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights is named after a brilliant, Black hero of the civil rights Freedom Movement who inspired and guided emerging leaders. We build on her legacy by building the power of black, brown, and poor people to create solutions for one of the biggest drivers of injustice today: mass incarceration.

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8 Black Pioneers Who Were Somehow Overlooked in the History Books

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8 Black Pioneers Who Were Somehow Overlooked in the History Books

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8 Black Pioneers Who Were Somehow Overlooked in the History Books

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In honor of Black History Month, we’re highlighting some changemakers throughout history who might not be getting the credit they deserve.

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While jazz music has its roots in the African American communities of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, specifically in New Orleans, over a century later the genre has grown to a much more diverse and extensive, never-ending set of subgenres encompassing from ragtime to big band, bebop, cool j

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The civil rights movement was an organized effort by Black Americans to end racial discrimination and gain equal rights under the law. It began in the late 1940s and ended in the late 1960s. Although tumultuous at times, the movement was mostly nonviolent and resulted in laws to protect every American's constitutional rights, regardless of color, race, sex or national origin.

July 26, 1948: President Harry Truman issues Executive Order 9981 to end segregation in the Armed Services.

May 17, 1954: Brown v. Board of Education, a consolidation of five cases into one, is decided by the Supreme Court, effectively ending racial segregation in public schools. Many schools, however, remained segregated.

August 28, 1955: Emmett Till, a 14-year-old from Chicago is brutally murdered in Mississippi for allegedly flirting with a white woman. His murderers are acquitted, and the case bring international attention to the civil rights movement after Jet magazine publishes a photo of Till's beaten body at his open-casket funeral.

December 1, 1955: Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. Her defiant stance prompts a year-long Montgomery bus boycott.

January 10-11, 1957: Sixty Black pastors and civil rights leaders from several southern states-including Martin Luther King Jr.-meet in Atlanta, Georgia to coordinate nonviolent protests against racial discrimination and segregation.

September 4, 1957: Nine Black students known as the " Little Rock Nine" are blocked from integrating into Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. President Dwight D. Eisenhower eventually sends federal troops to escort the students, however, they continue to be harassed.

September 9, 1957: Eisenhower signs the Civil Rights Act of 1957 into law to help protect voter rights. The law allows federal prosecution of those who suppress another's right to vote.

February 1, 1960: Four African American college students in Greensboro, North Carolina refuse to leave a Woolworth's "whites only" lunch counter without being served. The Greensboro Four-Ezell Blair Jr., David Richmond, Franklin McCain and Joseph McNeil-were inspired by the nonviolent protest of Gandhi. The Greensboro Sit-In, as it came to be called, sparks similar "sit-ins" throughout the city and in other states.

November 14, 1960: Six-year-oldRuby Bridges is escorted by four armed federal marshals as she becomes the first student to integrate William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans. Her actions inspired Norman Rockwell's painting The Problem We All Live With (1964).

1961: Throughout 1961, Black and white activists, known as freedom riders, took bus trips through the American South to protest segregated bus terminals and attempted to use "whites-only" restrooms and lunch counters. The Freedom Rides were marked by horrific violence from white protestors, they drew international attention to their cause.

June 11, 1963: Governor George C. Wallace stands in a doorway at the University of Alabama to block two Black students from registering. The standoff continues until President John F. Kennedy sends the National Guard to the campus.

August 28, 1963: Approximately 250,000 people take part in The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Martin Luther King gives his "I Have A Dream" speech as the closing address in front of the Lincoln Memorial, stating, "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.'"

September 15, 1963: A bomb at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama kills four young girls and injures several other people prior to Sunday services. The bombing fuels angry protests.

July 2, 1964: President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law, preventing employment discrimination due to race, color, sex, religion or national origin. Title VII of the Act establishes the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to help prevent workplace discrimination.

February 21, 1965: Black religious leader Malcolm X is assassinated during a rally by members of the Nation of Islam.

March 7, 1965: Bloody Sunday. In the Selma to Montgomery March, around 600 civil rights marchers walk to Selma, Alabama to Montgomery-the state's capital-in protest of Black voter suppression. Local police block and brutally attack them. After successfully fighting in court for their right to march, Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders lead two more marches and finally reach Montgomery on March 25.

August 6, 1965: President Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to prevent the use of literacy tests as a voting requirement. It also allowed federal examiners to review voter qualifications and federal observers to monitor polling places.

April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated on the balcony of his hotel room in Memphis, Tennessee. James Earl Ray is convicted of the murder in 1969.

April 11, 1968: President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968, also known as the Fair Housing Act, providing equal housing opportunity regardless of race, religion or national origin.

Sources

Executive Order 9981. Harry S. Truman Presidential Library & Museum.
Civil Rights Act of 1957. Civil Rights Digital Library.
Governor George C. Wallace's School House Door Speech. Alabama Department of Archives and History.
Greensboro, NC, Students Sit-In for US Civil Rights, 1960. Swarthmore College Global Nonviolent Action Database.
Historical Highlights. The 24th Amendment. History, Art & Archives United States House of Representatives.
History-Brown v. Board of Education Re-enactment. United States Courts.
History of Federal Voting Rights Laws. The United States Department of Justice.
"I Have a Dream," Address Delivered at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute Stanford.
Oldest and Boldest. NAACP.
SCLC History. Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Selma to Montgomery March: National Historic Trail and All-American Road. National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. National Archives.

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Civil Rights Movement Timeline - Timeline & Events | HISTORY

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The civil rights movement was an organized effort by black Americans to end racial discrimination and gain equal rights under the law. It began in the late 1940s and ended in the late 1960s.

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Executive Order 9981, Desegregating the Military (U.S. National Park Service)