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Putting in people head that the "pretty" features for black people. Proved that the black children wanted the white doll because of how its skin presented them.

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slavery should have been banned long before

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everyone one should have rights

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Everybody should be able to travel safely and the people of color should not have to have a booklet that tells what to do or where to do it.

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people should not treat someone diffrent because of there skin color

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their should have been anti racist laws long before the one we know got made

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they shoulnt have forced her t give up her seat

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women shouldn't be treated differently because they are a woman. They should not be treated differently then men, whenever they can do the same things. 

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they should have had better security considering what happened to his brother

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She should of let her sit on the bus but they didnt just because of her race.

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They shouldn't seperate by race

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treating different races differently is injustice. People shouldn't be treated differently because of their skin color.  

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they should've let them have the same voting rights as everyone else

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there are only normal waiting rooms, this is very poor taste. they should have only normal waiting rooms

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there are only normal waiting rooms, this is very poor taste. they should have only normal waiting rooms

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the government should not have pushed the native americans out of their lands but went around and incorporating them when they were ready

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She should not have been arrested for refusing to move and there should not have been laws that stopped them from sitting where they want.

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we should never have gone in they didn't have any weapons of mass destruction

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She should of been able to stay in here seat because she is a human and everyone should get to sit down regardless of there skin color

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They should have stopped these groups from hurting the photographers.

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Everyone should have they same rights and justices regardless of skin color.

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they should have let her pick any seat she wanted. They shouldn't have forced her to get up and move

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trump should have been impeached for this

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Harriet Tubman did a lot for the american people as a whole and i feel the government didn't do justice when acting a if such people weren't humans and chasing them like dogs is t the human thought on why were put on this earth.

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Everyone should feel like they are who they are and skin color shouldnt change that.

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this woman should be able to sit anywhere she pleases

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this woman should be able to sit anywhere she pleases

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no person should be considered of committing crimes just because the color of their skin

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Rosa parks was an example of injustice. She was forced to give up her seat on the bus. Just for someone else to sit there. That was her seat. That was injustice

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they shouldn't have let the boys harass the family that moved in just because of their skin color

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They spoke up about the racial discrimination in a non violent way. Should've left them alone, it wouldn't have gotten hectic 

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they should have not arrested her for not giving up her seat

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The right to an education and rights as any race

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People should all have equal rights and everyone is entilted to what everyone else gets. POC should not be denied of their rights and should have basic human rights like everyone should have

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To the colored men of voting age in the southern states.

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Caption title. Also available in digital form on the Library of Congress Web site. LC copy has ink stamp on p. [1]: Committee of Twelve for the Advancement of the Interests of the Negro Race, Cheyney, Pa. LC copy formerly part of YA Collection: YA 10390. Source: Source unknown.

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i think there shouldn't have been such a sign that is discriminating and segregating toward any kind of human and the government shouldn't acted more human in the bus stop.

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The women should be able to have the same rights as a man should

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Let him live out his dream, and inspire other African Americans

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the right to be just as successful no matter what race 

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After the Civil War, Congress championed the cause of newly freed African Americans by enacting the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery. The Fourteenth Amendment provided citizenship and equal protection under the law. The Fifteenth Amendment guaranteed black men the right to vote. Other legislation to enforce these amendments followed.

However, between 1873 and 1883 the U.S. Supreme Court issued a series of decisions that set back federal efforts to protect the civil rights of African Americans until 1957, when the first civil rights law since Reconstruction was passed. In the South, where ninety percent of African Americans lived, state constitutions were amended to legalize disenfranchisement. The Ku Klux Klan resorted to beating, lynching, and burning homes to reinforce white supremacy. Black labor was bound to the land as peonage and sharecropping replaced the antebellum plantation system of slavery. In both the North and the South, African Americans were segregated by law and by custom in schools, public accommodations, housing, transportation, armed forces, recreational facilities, hospitals, prisons, and cemeteries.

In 1896 the Supreme Court sanctioned legal separation of the races in its ruling in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, which stated that separate but equal facilities did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. Science, history, and popular culture bolstered racial policy by promoting the myth of Negro inferiority. By the turn of the twentieth century, African Americans found themselves reduced to a color-caste system almost as oppressive and destructive as the chattel slavery they had endured. A new wave of racial violence swept the U.S., erupting in a torrent of lynchings and race riots. The worst of these riots occurred in Springfield, Illinois, in 1908.

Du Bois Congratulates Washington on Atlanta Speech

Although W.E.B. Du Bois would later publish a pointed challenge to Booker T. Washington's philosophy in his seminal work, The Souls of Black Folk (1903), at the time of Washington's Atlanta speech, Du Bois wrote this letter to express his congratulations. Dubois advocated uplifting African Americans through the higher education of a "Talented Tenth" of the population who could guide the masses to higher civilization. He believed it was important to press for immediate civil rights without compromise. Washington advocated economic strength as the key to advancement. He believed that through vocational training, African Americans would become productive workers in a segregated society. They would win the respect of whites by acquiring wealth and property and thus earn full citizenship in due time.

Plessy v. Ferguson Supports Segregation

By the time Homer A. Plessy, a New Orleans octoroon (a person with one-eighth Negro blood) challenged that city's right to segregate public transportation by riding in a "Whites Only" railcar, the constitutional amendments passed after the Civil War to provide protections and rights for Negro citizens had eroded. The Louisiana state courts ruled against Plessy, and his subsequent appeal, against the ruling by Judge John Howard Ferguson, to the U.S. Supreme Court was denied in 1896. The impact of Plessy was to relegate blacks to second-class citizenship. They were separated from whites by law and by private action in transportation, public accommodations, recreational facilities, churches, cemeteries, and school in both Northern and Southern states.

Lynch Law in Georgia

Georgia led most other states in incidents of lynching, second only to Mississippi. Between 1880 and 1900, mob violence in Georgia steadily escalated, peaking in 1899, when twenty-seven lynchings occurred. Among the most savage was the April 23, 1899, lynching of Sam Hose, a black farmer accused of killing his white employer. Hose was summarily abducted from jail, tortured, and burned at the stake. His charred knuckles were displayed in an Atlanta grocer's store window as a trophy. Ida B. Wells-Barnett and her friends hired Louis P. Le Vin, a white private detective, to investigate Hose's lynching and those of ten other black men. Wells-Barnett reprinted Le Vin's report along with excerpts from the Atlanta Journal and the Atlanta Constitution in this pamphlet.

A 1900 Satirical Cartoon from Puck Magazine

Georgia's notoriety for lynching inspired Puck, a British satirical magazine, to feature this cartoon on the cover of the April 11, 1900, issue. It shows an African American family cowering in fear as men with guns and ropes pass in the background. In addition to satire, newspapers, periodicals, fiction, and advertisements commonly depicted African Americans with derogatory caricatures and stereotypes to justify segregation and discrimination.

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NAACP: A Century in the Fight for Freedom Prelude

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After the Civil War, Congress championed the cause of newly freed African Americans by enacting the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery. The Fourteenth Amendment provided citizenship and equal protection under the law. The Fifteenth Amendment guaranteed black men the right to vote.

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rosa parks shouldnt be dscrimated against just because shes a person of color. Being arrested was not fair.

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Rosa Parks | Classroom Materials at the Library of Congress | Library of Congress

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Selected items from the Rosa Parks collection, documenting the life, work, and legacy of civil rights legend Rosa Parks.

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i think they should have should have asked her name then let her continue on the bus because she should of had the right to sit on that bus.

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They shouldn't have arrested her for refusing to give up her seat when there was plenty it was a petty move only cause she's an AA

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Given women the same equal opportunities as the men.

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they should have let her pick any seat she wanted. They shouldn't have forced her to get up and move

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People who help fight for our country should get more recongition. They deserve to be treated with respect

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The resources in this primary source set are intended for classroom use. If your use will be beyond a single classroom, please review the copyright and fair use guidelines.

Teacher's Guide

To help your students analyze these primary sources, get a graphic organizer and guides: Analysis Tool and Guides

This resource was created by Devon Burger, the 2016 Liljenquist Family Fellow at the Library of Congress. Soldiers, sailors, nurses, artisans, laborers, officers, scouts, and spies: African Americans were at the center of the Civil War from the moment it began, and took on a wide variety of roles in the war's conduct and resolution.

Historical Background

The visual depictions that were created during the war provide an opportunity to explore the many different ways in which African Americans-free and enslaved, in Union and Confederate states- advanced the war effort. However, these images also encourage us to examine the many ways in which artists, photographers, and publishers chose to depict African Americans in the war effort, and to consider their reasons for doing so. At the same time, the relative scarcity of such images serves as a reminder of the many participants, and the many stories, that are excluded from this crucial moment in the nation's history.

Only a few weeks into the war, a dash to freedom brought African Americans into the conflict in a new role. In May 1861, three enslaved African American men escaped Confederate territory and sought refuge at the Union's Fort Monroe. When the Confederate officer who legally owned the men asked that they be returned, the fort's commander, General Benjamin Butler, refused, declaring that the men were "contraband of war." In August of the same year, Congress codified Butler's policy by passing the First Confiscation Act, which invalidated the claims of slave owners to escaped slaves who had been used on behalf of the Confederacy.

Thousands of fugitives escaped slavery at great risk by fleeing to Union lines, and many became involved in the Union war effort. This development sparked heated controversy in both the Union and the Confederacy, and images of people identified as "contrabands"-sometimes portrayed in a positive light, other times rendered as insulting caricatures- began appearing in political cartoons, on envelopes, and on pieces of music.

Although thousands of free African American men were eager to join the Union army, for the first several months of the war they were forbidden to do so. However, African Americans found many other ways to support the Union's war efforts during this period. Anticipating future involvement, some African American men formed military training companies or other military units, while others volunteered as servants for Union army officers or worked for the army in other support roles. Meanwhile, African American enlistment in the U.S. Navy, which had never formally excluded African American sailors, skyrocketed. By 1864, more than twenty percent of the enlisted men in the Union navy were African American.

African American men were officially allowed to enlist in the Union army after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued on January 1, 1863. Many served in regiments designated U.S.C.T., for "United States Colored Troops," including the 54th Massachusetts regiment, which gained renown for its role in the assault on Fort Wagner in South Carolina. By the end of the war, approximately 180,000 African American soldiers had served in the Union army, making up about ten percent of its soldiers.

African American soldiers were photographed in training camp, on the field of battle, and in portrait studios, and some illustrations in northern newspapers and magazines depicted soldiers of the U.S.C.T. as heroes of the cause of liberty. However, African American soldiers regularly faced discrimination in the Union army, were paid less, and given fewer opportunities for advancement than white soldiers were. In many ways, African American soldiers fought two wars: one against Confederate troops, and one within their own army for equal treatment.

Although African American women could not join the military, many served as nurses or participated in less formal roles. Sojourner Truth recruited troops for the Union army and Harriet Tubman worked as a spy, becoming the first woman in U.S. history to lead a military expedition. Free African Americans in both Union and Confederate territory took paying work that supported the war effort. At the same time, African Americans living in slavery were often hired out by their owners to work in the Confederate war effort, often as laborers and servants, and some slaveholders who joined the Confederate army brought enslaved servants with them to war.

After the war, African American veterans remained in the public eye, participating in the debates over voting rights and eventually serving among the first African Americans elected to Congress. They also participated in events to honor the war dead and joined veterans' organizations, although many such groups remained segregated for decades.

Suggestions for Teachers

Ask students to select an image of African Americans during the Civil War and to explore what the war might have meant to the individuals depicted in the image. What was each individual's personal stake in it? What led to their involvement? Ask students to identify specific evidence in the image for their claim. Finally, ask students to speculate about how the individuals in the image might have depicted themselves differently if they had created the image.

Support students as they observe and analyze several images of African Americans who participated in the Civil War, and then speculate about whether these images represent Union or Confederate perspectives. Ask them to consider: What are African Americans shown doing in each? What surprises you about the depictions? How do these images change or strengthen your understanding of attitudes toward African Americans in the Union and the Confederacy?

Direct students to find the origins of the term "contraband of war," later shortened to "contraband." Give each student one or more depictions of people described as contraband during the Civil War. Ask them to observe and record their thinking on the Library's Primary Source Analysis Tool. Ask students: What's happening in this image? Who do you think was the audience for this image? What can you learn about people who were designated contraband from examining this image? What questions do you have about contraband status? Facilitate a conversation exploring the significance of the term "contraband" in this usage.

In the early days of photography, people often carefully selected the items that they would be photographed with. Invite students to look at one or more posed portraits from the set, such as the portrait of Sojourner Truth, and focus on any objects with the person. What might these objects tell a viewer about what was important to the person?

Additional Resources

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Civil War Images: Depictions of African Americans in the War Effort | Classroom Materials at the Library of Congress | Library of Congress

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Jump to: Background Suggestions for Teachers Additional Resources This resource was created by Devon Burger, the 2016 Liljenquist Family Fellow at the Library of Congress. Soldiers, sailors, nurses, artisans, laborers, officers, scouts, and spies: African Americans were at the center of the Civil War from the moment it began, and took on a wide variety of roles in the war's conduct and resolution.

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the ways in which African Americans were depicted in the Civil War effort. This set also includes a Teachers Guide with historical context

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Police shouldn't assume every black person is a criminal.

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They should have let her have her right to sit in a seat.

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They should have taken her into and asked why she refused instead of just sending her to jail just because she's black 