So Much History
The Clinton Twelve made history in January 1956. The Supreme Court had ruled on the matter in Brown v. Board of Education two years before. This was a year before the more famous "Little Rock Nine".
Harlem Renaissance was time for a cultural celebration for African Americans that began in Harlem, New York after World War I and ended around 1939 during the Great Depression.
This decision established the rule of a “separate but equal” accommodations for White Americans and Blacks on interstate railroads. It became the accepted way of living in all walks of life for Americans for the next 50 years.
This was a major step in the Civil Rights Movement and signaled that the government was unwilling to support segregationist policies. It overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision 50 years earlier.
During Reconstruction, three amendments to the Constitution were made in an effort to establish equality for Black Americans. The thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth known as the Civil war amendments.
The Dred Scott Decision held that no Black person -free or slave- had ever been, nor could be, a citizen of the United States. It widened gap between North and South. Eventually it was overturned by the 13th and 14th Amendments.
As a handful of self-emancipated Africans steered their own course to freedom, they opened a way for millions to follow. Their stance against their captors eventually won their freedom.
A Black World War II army sergeant, was pulled from a bus in 1946 for arguing with the driver. He was then savagely beaten by a South Carolina police chief, and was left permanently blind. The White officer was never convicted.
Black Cowboys played an instrumental role in the old west. They were a common part of American life as their White counterparts, and their contribution to this country has been mislead by television and movies.
The Red Summer of 1919 refers to a series of race riots and other racially based incidents that took place between May and early fall of that year. It was aptly coined by James Weldon Johnson. Post World War I saw many racial violence toward Blacks.
The Story of the Scottsboro Boys was about nine young Black men, falsely accused of raping two White women near Scottsboro, AL in 1931. It is a story of the unjust racial Judicial system that plagued the American South during that time.
The Freedom Riders were a group of civil rights activists who planned to challenge local laws on segregation by riding interstate buses in the South in mixed racial groups. They were modeled after the organization’s 1947 Journey of Reconciliation.