Five Black men were arrested for staging a peaceful sit-in at the Alexandria “public” library that denied access to African Americans, making this the anniversary of one of the earliest instances of this form of non-violent protest that became popular in the mid-20th century.
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Digital collection. A repository for primary sources and collection of essays about the origins, activities, and influence of the 19th-century Colored Conventions Movement that advocated for Black civil and human rights.
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Massachusetts farmers arm themselves and rebel against taxation under the Articles of Confederation.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Howard Zinn. 1964.
In one of his earliest published works, Howard Zinn writes about his experiences teaching and organizing with the Civil Rights Movement in the South.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Howard Zinn. 1968.
A cogent defense of civil disobedience.
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Teachers went on strike for seven months, against community control, after Black and Puerto Rican parents organized for better schools for their children in New York City.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Kate Schatz and illustrated by Miriam Klein Stahl. Ten Speed Press. 2020. 176 pages.
Paired with dynamic paper-cut art, readers explore several centuries of U.S. politics, culture, art, activism, and liberation.
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Film. Directed by David Appleby, Allison Graham, and Steven Ross. 1993. 58 minutes.
Documentary film on the African American sanitation workers' 1968 fight for human dignity and a living wage in Memphis.
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A successful boycott of the Norfolk Tars by Black sports fans leads the team to desegregate both the players and stadium seating.
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Film. Directed by David France. Public Square Films. 2012. 109 minutes.
This documentary is about the early years of the AIDS epidemic, and the grassroots movement of activists, many of them in a life-or-death struggle, who seized upon scientific research to help develop the drugs that turned HIV from a mostly fatal infection to a manageable disease.
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Between April 5 and April 28, 1977, hundreds of disabled and handicapped activists organized, protested, and occupied government buildings around the country to pressure the U.S. Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, Joseph Califano, to enact Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and publish regulations to guide its enforcement.
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Film. Directed by Nicole Newnham and Jim LeBrecht. Netflix. 2020. 107 minutes.
A groundbreaking summer camp galvanizes a group of teens with disabilities to help build a movement, forging a new path toward greater equality.
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Picture book. By Dawn Bohulano Mabalon and Gayle Romasanta. Illustrated by Andre Sibayan. 2018.
The first nonfiction illustrated Filipino-American history book for children tells the story of labor activist Larry Itliong, who organized farmworkers on the West Coast in the mid-20th century.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Barbara Ransby. 2024 (Second Edition). 512 pages.
This biography chronicles Baker's long and rich political career as an organizer, an intellectual, and a teacher, from her early experiences in depression-era Harlem to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
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Hundreds of civil rights demonstrators amassed on Gwynn Oak Amusement Park in Baltimore, Maryland, to protest the park’s segregation policy.
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Gay and lesbian activists on the east coast protested in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia to demand equitable treatment and respect.
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Members of the National Woman Suffrage Association crashed the Centennial Celebration at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to present the “Declaration of the Rights of Women.”
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Film. Directed by Lucy Massie Phenix and Catherine Murphy. 2019. 9 minutes.
Documentary about Citizenship Schools.
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Over three dozen young doctors bucked prestige and embraced justice in the summer of 1970 when they began work at Lincoln Hospital, a run-down, underfunded public hospital in the South Bronx that also the site of an occupation by the Young Lords.
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Book — Non-fiction. Edited by Gabrielle Foreman, Jim Casey, and Sarah Patterson. Introduction by P. Gabrielle Foreman. 2021.
This volume of essays is the first to focus on the Colored Conventions movement, the nineteenth century’s longest campaign for Black civil rights.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Lawrence Goldstone. 2021.
A portrait of the road to the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case.
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Months of organizing work by 16-year-old Pauline Newman culminated in the start of the largest rent strike in New York City’s history.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Alondra Nelson. 2013.
Drawing on extensive historical research as well as interviews with former members of the Black Panther Party, Alondra Nelson documents the Party’s focus on health care.
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Film. Directed and produced by Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar. Working Women Documentary Project LLC. 2021.
While Dolly Parton's "9 to 5" song is well known, this documentary captures the real-life 9-to-5 organizing to address issues of working women in the early 1970s that led to a union.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Michael Long. 2021. 204 pages.
A history of children's activism in the United States, focusing on 20th and 21st-century marches, strikes, and social justice movements.
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