Lucy Craft Laney was born in Macon, Georgia, in 1854, into a family of ten children. Taught to read and write by her mother, a domestic worker, she graduated from Macon’s Lewis High School and entered Atlanta University at the age of fifteen and graduated … Read More(1899) Lucy Craft Laney, “The Burden of the Educated Colored Woman”
In 1894 Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin founded the Women’s New Era Club, a charitable organization of sixty prominent black women in Boston. Soon afterwards she began editing its monthly publication, the Women’s Era. Encouraged by the success of the New Era Club and heartened by … Read More(1895) Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, “Address to the First National Conference of Colored Women”
Born in Memphis in 1863 and an activist until her death in 1954, Mary Eliza Church Terrell has been called a living link between the era of the Emancipation Proclamation and the modern civil rights movement. Terrell was particularly active in the Washington, D.C. area. … Read More(1897) Mary Church Terrell, “In Union There is Strength”
On November 20, 1898, Reverend Francis J. Grimke, pastor of the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church of Washington, D.C., delivered a sermon in which he denounced those African Americans who called for conservatism and accommodation. Grimke vowed that as long as African Americans were deprived of … Read More(1898) Rev. Francis J. Grimke, “The Negro Will Never Acquiesce As Long As He Lives”
Little is known about Reverend D. A. Graham, the A.M.E. minister who delivered the speech that appears below. However the minister’s words were recorded as part of a nationwide protest in 1899 against lynchings of African Americans across the nation. In May of 1899 the … Read More(1899) Rev. D. A. Graham, “Some Facts About Southern Lynchings”
Image Ownership: Public Domain Alexander Crummell’s remarkable career spanned much of the 19th Century. Before the Civil War Crummell had established his credentials as an abolitionist, educator and lecturer in England as well as the United States. In the 1850s he was a member of … Read More(1898) Alexander Crummell, “The Attitude of the American Mind Toward the Negro Intellect”
William Saunders Scarborough, born in 1852 in Macon, Georgia, the son of a free black father and an enslaved mother eventually became the first graduate of Atlanta University and at 23 a professor of Latin and Greek at Wilberforce University in Ohio. In 1908 he … Read More(1894) William Saunders Scarborough, “The Ethics of the Hawaiian Question”
Long termed a “race riot,” the turmoil that enveloped Wilmington, North Carolina on November 10, 1898 is now called an armed insurrection. White supremacists drove from power all of the black and white elected officials of this predominately African American city in what was believed … Read More(1898) Rev. Charles S. Morris Describes The Wilmington Massacre of 1898
On September 18, 1895 Booker T. Washington gave an address to the Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition which became known as the “Atlanta Compromise Speech.” The address appears below. Mr. President, Gentlemen of the Board of Directors, and Citizens: One-third of the population of … Read More(1895) Booker T. Washington, “The Atlanta Compromise Speech”
On May 18, 1893, Anna Julia Cooper delivered an address at the World’s Congress of Representative Women then meeting in Chicago. Cooper’s speech to this predominately white audience described the progress of African American women since slavery. Cooper in many ways epitomized that progress. Born … Read More(1893) Anna Julia Cooper, “Women’s Cause is One and Universal”
