On Saturday March 4, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated and began his second term as President. His address to the audience of thousands of spectators was brief, one of the shortest inaugural addresses on record. The Civil War was drawing to a close as … Read More(1865) Abraham Lincoln “Second Inaugural Address”
New Jersey-born John Sweat Rock was one of the first African American dentists in the United States. He was also a medical doctor and in 1861, after studying law, was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1861. On January 23, 1862, Rock addressed the Massachusetts … Read More(1862) John S. Rock, “A Deep and Cruel Prejudice”
Twenty-nine year old John Wesley Cromwell, born into slavery in 1846, was by 1875 an attorney, politician, educator, and newspaper editor, was a rising leader in Virginia’s Reconstruction-era African American community. On August 23, 1875, he addressed the Colored Educational Convention meeting in Richmond. His … Read More(1875) John Wesley Cromwell, “Address on the Difficulties of the Colored Youth in Obtaining an Education in the Virginias”
In a sermon to Barbadian emigrants, at Trinity Church, Monrovia, Liberia, West Africa on May 14, 1863, Alexander Crummell calls on persons of African ancestry around the world to be actively engaged in the religious, economic and social development of the African continent. His sermon … Read More(1863) Alexander Crummell, “Emigration, an Aid to the Evangelization of Africa”
African American intellectual Alexander Crummell lived in Monrovia, Liberia for nineteen years between 1853 and 1872. While there he taught at Liberia College. In a speech delivered in Monrovia on December 1, 1863, Crummell discusses the role educated young Liberian men would play in the … Read More(1863) Alexander Crummell, “The Responsibility of the First Fathers of a Country for its Future Life and Character”
Image Ownership: Public Domain African American intellectual Alexander Crummell was one of the few19th century scholars known and respected widely among European Americans. In an address before the American Geographical Society delivered in Chickering Hall in New York City on May 22, 1877, Crummell demonstrates … Read More(1877) Alexander Crummell, “Address Before the American Geographical Society”
Peter Humphries Clark, principal of the Colored High School in Cincinnati, Ohio, was one of a small number of 19th Century African American Socialists. Grandson of William Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, schoolteacher and later Principal of the Colored High School in Cincinnati … Read More(1877) Peter H. Clark, “Socialism: The Remedy for the Evils of Society“
As African Americans increasingly realized that Reconstruction would not usher in permanent citizenship rights and in fact did not protect them from violence, some black leaders began to call for alternative approaches. Not surprisingly a some again urged African American colonization in Africa. In October, … Read More(1877) John E. Bruce, “Reasons Why the Colored American Should Go to Africa”
Senator Blanche K. Bruce, “Speech Before The Senate to Introduce a Resolution Appointing a Committee to Investigate Election Practices in Mississippi,” 1876 Blanche K. Bruce (1841-1898) was the first African American to serve a full term as a United States Senator. In February 1874, the Mississippi legislature elected … Read More(1876) Senator Blanche K. Bruce, “…Appointing a Committee to Investigate Election Practices in Mississippi”
Born enslaved in Louisiana in 1847, John Roy Lynch eventually served as a U.S. Congressman from Mississippi from 1873 to 1877 and during an abbreviated term of one year in 1882-1883. Prior to his term in Congress he had served as Speaker of the Mississippi … Read More(1875) Congressman John R. Lynch, “Speech on the Civil Rights Bill”
