Born on January 20, 1903 in Pender, Nebraska to John Miller, a former slave, and Nora Herbaugh, a white Midwesterner, Miller was, at his death in 1967, considered one of the leading civil rights attorneys in the United States, particularly in the field of housing … Read MoreLoren Miller (1903-1967)
William Thaddeus Coleman, Jr., a prominent Republican lawyer and businessman, served as Secretary of Transportation under President Gerald Ford. Born on July 7, 1920 to a middle class Philadelphia, Pennsylvania family, Coleman attended a segregated elementary school. When he moved to Germantown High School he … Read MoreWilliam T. Coleman Jr. (1920-2017)
The Niagara Movement was a civil rights group organized by W.E.B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter in 1905. After being denied admittance to hotels in Buffalo, New York, the group of twenty-nine business owners, teachers, and clergy who comprised the initial meeting gathered at … Read MoreNiagara Movement (1905-1909)
The Scottsboro Boys were nine young black men, falsely accused of raping two white women on board a train near Scottsboro, Alabama in 1931. Convicted and facing execution, the case of Charlie Weems, Ozie Powell, Clarence Norris, Olen Montgomery, Willie Roberson, Haywood Patterson, Eugene Williams, … Read MoreScottsboro Boys Trial and Defense Campaign (1931–1937)
Caroline Snowden (she later changed her first name to Carolynne), known as “California’s Josephine Baker,” was born on January 16th, 1900, in Oakland, California. From an early age, Snowden knew that she wanted to be a performer and, despite the lack of opportunities for African … Read MoreCarolynne Snowden (1900-1985)
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, held on August 28, 1963 in Washington, D.C., was a landmark event for the early civil rights movement and is partly credited with winning the passage of the Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964. Over 250,000 demonstrators … Read MoreMarch on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (August 28, 1963)
In 1917, realizing the hunger for social justice among the one thousand African American residents of San Diego, W. E. B. DuBois traveled from Los Angeles to San Diego as part of his western states tour on behalf of the National Association for the Advancement … Read MoreA Brief History of the San Diego NAACP, 1917-2007
Robert Franklin Williams was a militant civil rights leader whose open advocacy of armed self-defense anticipated the movement for “black power” in the late 1960s and helped inspire groups like the Student National Coordinating Committee, the Revolutionary Action Movement, and the Black Panther Party. Williams … Read MoreRobert F. Williams (1925-1996)
Postal worker, real estate broker and civil rights activist, Mary Ann Spencer was the 10th child of twelve. She was born in Patrick County, Virginia on January 7, 1917. Spencer completed high school at Christiansburg’s Industrial High School in 1937, Virginia and went on to … Read MoreMary Ann Spencer Smith (1917-2001)
The March on Washington Movement (MOWM) was the most militant and important force in African American politics in the early 1940s, formed in order to protest segregation in the armed forces. The hypocrisy behind calls to “defending democracy” from Hitler was clear to African Americans … Read MoreMarch on Washington Movement (1941-1947)
