African Americans tested their right to vote and when denied, cast their own “freedom ballots,” on election day in Norfolk, Virginia.
Continue reading
Philando Castile, an African American, was shot to death by a police officer at a traffic stop in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. Castile had worked as a nutritional supervisor at an elementary school.
Continue reading
Film. Directed by Edward Zwick. 1989. 122 minutes.
The all-Black 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment is brought to the screen in this star-studded Civil War film.
Continue reading
Drum and Spear was founded by SNCC organizers in Washington, D.C. The bookstore quickly became a central hub of knowledge to “disseminate information by and about Black people in the African Diaspora.”
Continue reading
After posting a racist manifesto online before targeting a majority-Black neighborhood, a white supremacist killed ten people at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York.
Continue reading
In his 1860 speech commemorating radical abolitionist John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, Frederick Douglass argued that slavery would only end if the slave owner feared the violent retribution of the enslaved.
Continue reading
Nine Tougaloo College students and members of the Jackson Youth Council of the NAACP staged a sit-in to protest segregation at the Jackson Public Library in 1961 and were subsequently arrested.
Continue reading
Four Black teenagers tried to enter the whites-only St. Helena branch of the Audubon Regional Library in Greensburg, Louisiana. Instead, the library closed. Undeterred, the St. Helena Four continued to try to desegregate the local library and other segregated facilities.
Continue reading
Book — Non-fiction. By Jesse Hagopian. 2025. 302 pages.
A call to defend honest education for our students, showing how we can reclaim suppressed history by creating beloved classroom communities and healthy social movements.
Continue reading
With the help of the NAACP, local African American parents in South Carolina fought back against school segregation in a case that eventually helped to end segregation of public facilities across the nation.
Continue reading
Following months of protests to end segregation, Black residents of Tuscaloosa, Alabama were brutally attacked by police and the Klan inside the First African Baptist Church.
Continue reading
Book — Non-fiction. By Joshua Clark Davis. 2025. 424 pages.
An examination of the civil rights struggle through its work against police violence — and a prehistory of both the Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter movements that emerged half a century later.
Continue reading
Podcast. Hosted by Chenjerai Kumanyika. 2024.
Uncovers the hidden history of the largest police force in the world — from its roots in slavery, to rival police gangs battling across the city, to everyday people who resisted every step of the way.
Continue reading
Teaching Activity. By Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 3 pages.
Text of speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the Vietnam War, followed by three teaching ideas.
Continue reading
Juneteenth — June 19th, also known as Emancipation Day — Juneteenth — is one of the many commemorations of people seizing their freedom in the United States.
Continue reading
Rather than desegregate, the Prince Edward County, Virginia Board of Supervisors refused to appropriate money from the County School Board to the public schools.
Continue reading
Twenty-one teachers at the Elloree Training School were fired when they refused to sign an oath denying membership in the NAACP.
Continue reading
Book — Non-fiction. By Ashley D. Farmer. 2025. 496 pages.
A biography of Queen Mother Audley Moore — mother of modern Black Nationalism and trailblazer in the fight for reparations.
Continue reading
Article. By Jefferson Morley. 2012.
"Star-Spangled Banner" songwriter Francis Scott Key opposed abolitionists and free speech in his role as district attorney of the city of Washington.
Continue reading
A battle between Black soldiers and the local white law enforcement who targeted them in Bisbee, Arizona during Red Summer.
Continue reading
The U.S. Civil War ended when the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia surrendered to U.S. General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in south-central Virginia.
Continue reading
Africans on the Cuban schooner Amistad rose up against their captors, seizing control of the ship, which had been transporting them to chattel slavery.
Continue reading
When WWII veteran Edna Griffin was denied service at a Des Moines drug store, she took the company to court and the lawsuit became a test case.
Continue reading
At a rally sponsored by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, angry and determined abolitionists burned copies of the Fugitive Slave Act and the U.S. Constitution.
Continue reading
Book — Non-fiction. By Emily L. Thuma. 2024. 256 pages.
A vital history of organizing within and beyond the walls of women’s prisons in the 1970s, illuminating a crucial chapter in today’s abolition feminist struggles.
Continue reading
