May 31, 1955, Opinion and judgments announced OPINION: MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WARREN delivered the opinion of the Court. [1] [2] These cases were decided on May 17, 1954. The opinions of that date, n1 declaring the fundamental principle that racial discrimination in public education is … Read More(1955) Brown v. Board of Education II
Born on the Grest Farm in Liberty County, Georgia, on August 6, 1848, Susie Baker King Taylor was raised as an enslaved person. Her mother was a domestic servant for the Grest family. At the age of 7, Baker and her brother were sent to … Read MoreSusan Taylor (Susie) Baker King (1848-1912)
December 9, 1952, Argued May 17, 1954, Decided MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WARREN delivered the opinion of the Court. [1] These cases come to us from the States of Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware. They are premised on different facts and different local conditions, but … Read More(1954) Brown v. Board of Education
Dubbed “The Moses of Her People,” escaped slave Harriet Tubman assisted hundreds of slaves on the Underground Railroad, leading them from Maryland to safety in Pennsylvania. Born enslaved in 1821 and raised in Dorchester County, Maryland to Benjamin and Harriett Greene Ross, she was both … Read MoreHarriet Ross Tubman (ca. 1821-1913)
Charlotta Bass was a feminist, a crusading journalist, and a major African American activist on the West Coast through the first half of the twentieth century. Born Charlotta Amanda Spears in Sumter, South Carolina in 1879 or 1880, she migrated first to Rhode Island, and … Read MoreCharlotta Bass (1879-1969)
Jonathan Jasper Wright, the first African American to serve on a state Supreme Court, was born in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania and grew up in nearby Susquehanna County in the northeastern corner of the state. In 1858, Wright traveled to Ithaca, New York where he enrolled … Read MoreJonathan J. Wright (1840-1885)
Margaret Murray Washington, the third wife of Booker T. Washington was a well-known educator and women’s activist in her own right before she married the founder of Tuskegee. She continued that activism during their marriage. The Washingtons gave twin lectures at Old Bethel A.M.E. Church … Read More(1898) Margaret Murray Washington, “We Must Have a Cleaner Social Morality,”
Francis Louis Cardozo, the freeborn son of an African American woman and a Jewish economist, was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1837. Through his personal savings and a thousand dollar scholarship, Cardozo attended the University of Glasgow and later a theological school in London. … Read More(1868) Francis Cardozo Urges The Dissolution Of The Plantation System
On March 2, 1867, Congress overrode President Andrew Johnson’s vetoes and passed a series of Reconstruction acts which would, among other things, establish new governments in the ex-Confederate states based for the first time on universal male suffrage. The first step in this process involved … Read More(1867) Rev. E. J. Adams, “These are Revolutionary Times”
