Perspectives on African American History features accounts and descriptions of important but little known events in African American history recalled often by those who were witnesses or participants or viewpoints about historical developments shaping the contemporary black world. Many of these accounts will be instant primary sources available to current visitors to BlackPast and to future historians. Each article is accompanied by a brief biography and photo of its author.
In 1931 twelve year old Thomas J. Pressly witnessed the lynching of George Smith in Union City, the county seat of Obion County, Tennessee. Now a University of Washington historian and Professor Emeritus, Dr. Pressley describes that lynching in the article below. When I was … Read MoreEyewitness to Terror: The Lynching of a Black Man in Obion County, Tennessee in 1931
In the following article, James A. Banks, the Kerry and Linda Killinger Professor and Director of the Center for Multicultural Education at the University of Washington, Seattle, describes his Arkansas community’s reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision when it … Read MoreRemembering Brown: Silence, Loss, Rage, and Hope, 1954
