After the Civil War, representatives from states recently in rebellion were blocked from being sworn-in at the 39th Congress.
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Jesse Hagopian led a conversation with Garrett Felber, Safear Ness, and Stevie Wilson about the prison industrial complex, incarceration, and the history of resistance against that system.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Mia Bay. 2021. 400 pages.
From stagecoaches and trains to buses, cars, and planes, this book explores racial restrictions on transportation and resistance to the injustice.
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Podcast. Written and hosted by Kidada E. Williams. 2021.
A Black history podcast tells stories "drawn from archives of voices from American history that have been muted time and time again."
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Reconstruction era protest of racist discrimination on streetcars in Louisville, Kentucky.
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William Beverly Nash and several others asked the federal government to intervene to ensure equal medical treatment for all.
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President Andrew Johnson was impeached by the House of Representatives.
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Born on this day in Massachusetts, Charles Sumner was outspoken against slavery, for full recognition of Haiti, against the U.S.-Mexico War, for true reconstruction with land distribution, against school segregation, and much more.
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Benjamin Berry Manson and Sarah Ann Benton White, formerly enslaved in Tennessee, receive an official marriage certificate from the Freedmen’s Bureau.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Tera W. Hunter. 2019. 416 pages.
A comprehensive history of African American marriages in the nineteenth century.
Teaching Activity by Tera W. Hunter
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A judge in Norfolk, Virginia, sentenced a white woman, Margaret Douglass, to one month in jail for teaching free Black children to read.
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The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas Corpus Christi found a South Texas school district guilty of discriminating against Mexican-American students in one of the first cases that directly applied the ruling made in Brown v. Board of Education to Mexican-American students.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Victoria Law. 2021. 240 pages
An accessible guide for activists, educators, and all who are interested in understanding how the prison system oppresses communities and harms individuals.
Teaching Activity by Victoria Law
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On Flag Day 1943, the Supreme Court invalidated a compulsory flag salute law in public schools and established that students possess some level of First Amendment rights.
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With escalating escapes of the formerly enslaved, the Virginia General Assembly responded to lobbying from slaveholders and human traffickers by making it harder for enslaved African Americans to escape on ships and by increasing penalties for anyone helping such freedom-seekers.
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Prompted by South Carolina’s all-white political primary system, civil rights advocate Modjeska Monteith Simkins wrote a letter to Governor Olin D. Johnston of South Carolina challenging him to a debate on white supremacy.
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Henry E. Hayne was the first Black student to be accepted to the University of South Carolina’s medical school, a bold act which encouraged other Black students to apply. By 1875, Black men comprised the majority of the student body.
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Future Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Tom P. Brady delivered a racist speech called “Black Monday” in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, inspiring many white leaders to join the White Citizens’ Council.
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Website. NoKidsinPrison uses art to model, imagine and advocate for alternatives to youth incarceration by lifting up the voices of youth most impacted by the criminal justice system through art and culture.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Carol Anderson. 2021. 272 pages.
This book illuminates the history and impact of the Second Amendment, how it was designed, and how it has consistently been constructed to keep African Americans powerless and vulnerable.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. 2018. 236 pages.
A history of guns and gun laws in the United States, from the original colonization of the country to the present.
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The first general convention of African American Ohioans met in Columbus and pledged to continue raising their voices in order to repeal the Black Codes.
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In this speech, Frederick Douglass denounced the Civil Rights Cases of 1883, in which the Supreme Court held that the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments did not empower Congress to outlaw racial discrimination by private individuals.
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