The Civil Rights Act is considered by many historians as one of the most important measures enacted by the U.S. Congress in the 20th Century. President Lyndon B. Johnson led the national effort to pass the Act. On July 2, 1964 he gave a televised … Read More(1964) Lyndon B. Johnson, “Radio and Television Address at the Signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act”
The Little Rock Crisis erupted in September 1957 when Arkansas Governor Orval M. Faubus used state National Guard troops to prevent nine African American students from attending the then all-white Central High School. On September 20, Federal Judge Ronald Davis ordered Governor Faubus to remove … Read More(1957) Dwight Eisenhower, “Address on Little Rock”
Image Ownership: Larry Downing, Sygma (Fair Use) In 1995 Minister Louis Farrakhan was the leader of the Nation of Islam. That year his organization became the driving force in the Million Man March, a call for African American men to come to Washington D.C. on … Read More(1995) Louis Farrakhan, “A Million Men Marching On”
In 1993 Sister Souljah (born Lisa Williamson), a Bronx-born rapper, earned national notoriety thanks ironically to then Presidential candidate Bill Clinton who denounced her comments about the 1992 Los Angeles Riots as “hate driven and racist.” Sister Souljah responded with her own criticism of the … Read More(1994) Sister Souljah, “We Are At War”
Image Ownership: John Matthew Smith (CC BY-SA 2.0) By 1993 Lani Guinier, a Yale Law School graduate, had crafted an impressive career as an NAACP attorney who specialized in voting rights cases, member of the law faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, and special assistant … Read More(1993) Lani Guinier, “Seeking a Conversation on Race”
Image Ownership: Public Domain On November 13, 1993, President Bill Clinton traveled to Memphis to address 5,000 African American ministers at the national headquarters of the Church of God in Christ. Speaking from the pulpit where in 1968 Dr. Martin Luther King delivered his last … Read More(1993) William J. Clinton, “The Freedom to Die”
The Montgomery Bus Boycott speech reprinted below is one of the first major addresses of Dr. Martin Luther King. Dr. King spoke to nearly 5,000 people at the Holt Street Baptist Church in Montgomery on December 5, 1955, just four days after Mrs. Rosa Parks … Read More(1955) Martin Luther King Jr., “The Montgomery Bus Boycott”
Many historians and legal scholars consider the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education to be one of the most important and far reaching pronouncements in the history of the Court. On December 8, 1953 Thurgood Marshall, the chief legal counsel … Read More(1953) Thurgood Marshall, “Argument Before the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education”
John Lewis, then the 23-year-old Chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was asked to speak at the March on Washington on August 28, 1963. When A. Philip Randolph, Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders saw the draft of his speech which … Read More(1963) John Lewis, “We Must Free Ourselves”
Josephine Baker is remembered by most people as the flamboyant African American entertainer who earned fame and fortune in Paris in the 1920s. Yet through much of her later life, Baker became a vocal opponent of segregation and discrimination, often initiating one-woman protests against racial … Read More(1963) Josephine Baker, “Speech at the March on Washington”
