Korean War veteran Clifton Walker was murdered by the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan while on his way home from his late work shift at the International Paper plant in Mississippi.
Continue reading
A group of Confederate veterans in Louisiana formed the White League with the goal of using terrorism to undermine Reconstruction.
Continue reading
Mr. Willie Edwards Jr., a 24-year-old African American man, was murdered by members of the Alabama KKK.
Continue reading
White supremacists destroyed the Black town of Rosewood, Florida, and murdered many of its residents. Descendants have fought for reparations and recognition of the history.
Continue reading
Miners in Coeur d’Alene held a strike and took on the Pinkertons.
Continue reading
African American heavyweight champion Jack Johnson successfully defended his title by knocking out James J. Jeffries, who had come out of retirement “to win back the title for the White race” in Reno, Nevada.
Continue reading
The Trail of Tears removed Cherokee Indians from their ancestral home in the Smoky Mountains to the Oklahoma Territory.
Continue reading
John Hope Franklin, born this day in Rentiesville and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was one of most important historians of the 20th century.
Continue reading
Book — Non-fiction. By Russell Duncan. 1986. 192 pages.
Freedom’s Shore tells the incredible story of Tunis Campbell, a Northern abolitionist minister who heads South after the Civil War to help freedpeople in Georgia.
Continue reading
Book — Non-fiction. By Tonya Bolden. 2014. 138 pages.
One of the few non-fiction texts on Reconstruction aimed at young readers, Cause is a strong alternative to the textbook treatment of the era.
Continue reading
Book — Non-fiction. By Manisha Sinha. 2017. 784 pages.
A groundbreaking history of abolition that recovers the largely forgotten role of African Americans in the long march toward emancipation from the American Revolution through the Civil War.
Continue reading
“The primary cause of the Houston riot was the habitual brutality of the white police officers of Houston in their treatment of colored people.” —The Crisis magazine.
Continue reading
Book — Historical fiction. By Tonya Bolden. 2017. 240 pages.
A moving account of the Civil War massacre at Ebenezer Creek in Georgia.
Continue reading
Book — Non-fiction. Edited by Stewart Burns 1997. 392 pages.
A documentary history of the Montgomery bus boycott that reverberates with the voices of those closest to the boycott.
Continue reading
Film. By Elizabeth Deane and Dion Graham. 2004. 174 minutes.
Through the voices of several historians and dramatic re-enactments by actors, PBS’s Reconstruction: The Second Civil War uses the stories of ordinary citizens to paint a picture of the Reconstruction era.
Continue reading
Teaching Activity. By Rosemarie Frascella. Rethinking Schools.
Our extractive fossil fuel-based economy has always demanded that some people’s homes and health be sacrificed for the benefit of more privileged and powerful others. This article explores how one teacher engages her students in thinking about how “sacrifice zones” play out in their lives.
Continue reading
Lorraine Hansberry was an author and activist who wrote “A Raisin in the Sun.”
Continue reading
Medgar Evers made a 17-minute speech on WLBT in a rare and historic exception to the white supremacist only voice on Mississippi radio and television.
Continue reading
Air Force veteran James Meredith began the March Against Fear from Memphis, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi.
Continue reading
Homer Plessy was arrested for violating Louisiana’s Separate Car Act.
Continue reading
Black and white protesters attempted to desegregate a pool in St. Augustine, Florida. The owner dumped acid into the protester-filled pool in an attempt to force them to leave. Police officers eventually dragged protesters out of the pool and took them to jail.
Continue reading
Killed by the police only twelve years later, today Tamir Rice was born.
Continue reading
Teaching Activity. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca. Rethinking Schools. 29 pages.
Through examining FBI documents, students learn the scope of the FBI’s COINTELPRO campaign to spy on, infiltrate, discredit, and disrupt all corners of the Black Freedom Movement.
Continue reading
Jonathan Ferrell was killed by police in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Continue reading
