The Hard Truths of Ta-Nehisi Coates. After the dreams of Martin Luther King Jr. and the hopes of Barack Obama.
Photographs by Lyle Ashton Harris. The Danger of Telling Poor Kids That College Is the Key to Social Mobility - Andrew Simmons. Higher education should be promoted to all students as an opportunity to experience an intellectual awakening, not just increase their earning power.
A 12th-grader wrote a college admissions essay about wanting to pursue a career in oceanography. Remembering Bill Russell’s role in the March on Washington. Justin Tinsley is a sportswriter who’s written for The Sports Fan Journal and The Smoking Section. 50 years ago this afternoon, perhaps America’s most recognizable speech and march took place in Washington, D.C.
Dr. Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service. MLK: ‘Intelligence plus character — that is the goal of true education’ Sakidra Davis of Alpha Rho Xinos carries an image of Martin Luther King Jr. during a parade on Jan. 18 in Dallas.
(AP Photo/The Dallas Morning News, Sarah Hoffman) I published this last year, and I’m doing it again: Martin Luther King Jr., was prescient on a lot of things, including education. Here are some things he wrote decades ago that sound contemporary. 'A Raisin in the Sun' and 'Discrimination in Housing Against Nonwhites Persists Quietly' Friedman-AbelesA scene from the 1959 Broadway production of “A Raisin in the Sun,” with, from left, Ruby Dee, Claudia McNeil, Glynn Turman, Sidney Poitier and John Fielder.
Updated: April 4 With the much-anticipated April 3 opening of a new Broadway revival starring Denzel Washington, “A Raisin in the Sun” is again in the spotlight — though for teachers the groundbreaking play has been a classroom staple for decades. First performed on Broadway in 1959, “Raisin” last appeared there 10 years ago, then starring Phylicia Rashad, Sean Combs, Audra McDonald and Sanaa Lathan, a production that was later adapted for television. THEATER - A Landmark Lesson in Being Black.
THEY had never seen anything like it.
The theater critics, hurrying down the aisles under the pressure of deadline, paused at the rear of the Ethel Barrymore Theater. The date was March 11, 1959. Eyes On The Prize. Mike Wallace Interview Senator James Eastland. Louisiana Voter Literacy Tests. Louisiana Voter Literacy Test ~ circa 1963Louisiana Voter Literacy Test ~ circa 1964 The circa 1963 Louisiana literacy test is typical of the tests used throughout the South before passage of the Voting Rights Act to deny Blacks — and other non-whites — the right to vote.
(The circa 1964 test is quite atypical and unique to Louisiana in that year.) While state law mandated that the test be given to everyone who could not verify that they had at least a 5th-grade education, in real life almost all Blacks were forced to to take it even if they had a college degree while whites were often excused from taking it no matter how little education they had. THEATER - A Landmark Lesson in Being Black. The Strange Story Of The Man Behind 'Strange Fruit' Abel Meeropol watches as his sons, Robert and Michael, play with a train set.
Courtesy of Robert and Michael Meeropol hide caption itoggle caption Courtesy of Robert and Michael Meeropol Abel Meeropol watches as his sons, Robert and Michael, play with a train set. Courtesy of Robert and Michael Meeropol. America: A Narrative History - Seventh Ed. This document was written by Ida B.
Wells and published in the Atlanta Journal and the Atlanta Constitution. In it, Wells outlined lynch law in Georgia and chronicled a six-week period in the South. Wells also included Detective Louis P. Segregation Now. Supreme Court’s Latest Race Case: Housing Discrimination by Nikole Hannah-Jones ProPublica, Jan. 21, 11:18 a.m.
Many fear Texas case could gut the landmark Fair Housing Act. A National Survey of School Desegregation Orders by Yue Qiu ProPublica, Dec. 23, 2014, 12:11 p.m. Broadway Director Kenny Leon Opens Theater Doors To New Audiences. Hide captionTen years after first directing A Raisin in the Sun on Broadway, Kenny Leon is back with a new rendition of the play, starring Denzel Washington and Sophie Okonedo. (Also pictured, from left: David Cromer, Bryce Clyde Jenkins, LaTanya Richardson Jackson and Anika Noni Rose). Courtesy of Rinaldi PR Stage director Kenny Leon is one of the most sought-after creative talents on Broadway today, even if he isn't a household name. For the Union Dead - Robert Lowell. Revisiting Malcolm X. POOR PEOPLE'S CAMPAIGN - King's Last March. King's Last March Martin Luther King Jr. wanted to shut down Washington in the spring of 1968. Poor People's Campaign: A Dream Unfulfilled. American Experience.Eyes on the Prize.The Story of the Movement.
I n 1967, one in seven Americans lives in poverty. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference embarks on an ambitious Poor People's Campaign to bring attention to the nation's most needy people. Gordon Parks’s Alternative Civil Rights Photographs. Gordon Parks’s portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Albert Thornton Sr., an older black couple in their Mobile, Ala., home in 1956, appears to have little in common with the images we have come to associate with civil rights photography. It is in color, unlike most photographs of the movement. Its subject matter was neither newsworthy nor historic, unlike more widely published journalistic images of the racial murders, police brutality, demonstrations and boycotts that characterized the epic battle for racial justice and equality. Yet, as effectively as any civil rights photograph, the portrait was a forceful “weapon of choice,” as Mr. Lens Blog.
The Soiling of Old Glory. Contemporary Issues. Primary Docs. Legislation. Music. Playing the Violence Card. New Georgia Encyclopedia: Albany Movement. According to traditional accounts the Albany Movement began in fall 1961 and ended in summer 1962. It was the first mass movement in the modern civil rights era to have as its goal the desegregation of an entire community, and it resulted in the jailing of more than 1,000 African Americans in Albany and surrounding rural counties. Martin Luther King Jr. was drawn into the movement in December 1961 when hundreds of black protesters, including himself, were arrested in one week, but eight months later King left Albany admitting that he had failed to accomplish the movement's goals.
When told as a chapter in the history of the national civil rights movement, Albany was important because of King's involvement and because of the lessons he learned that he would soon apply in Birmingham, Alabama. Welcome to the Civil Rights Digital Library.