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https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript
written by thomas jefferson. -
https://www.commonlit.org/en/texts/why-sit-here-and-die-speech-1
written by Maria W. Stewart -
Anna Murray used her money to buy him a train ticket, risking her own safety to help him seize his freedom. On September 3, 1838, with the ticket in hand, he boarded a northbound train dressed as a sailor. In less than 24 hours, Frederick arrived in New York City. His lifelong search for freedom was well underway. -
https://loveman.sdsu.edu/docs/1852FrederickDouglass.pdf
produced by Fredrick Douglass. -
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Soon after the war ended, Lincoln gave a speech that argued for Black men and veterans to have the right to vote. John Wilkes Booth was in the audience. Enraged that Lincoln supported Black citizenship, Booth vowed, “That is the last speech he will ever make.” Booth shot Lincoln three days later. -
Ovington became involved in the campaign for civil rights in 1890 after hearing Frederick Douglass speak in a Brooklyn church. In 1895, she helped found the Greenpoint Settlement in Brooklyn, the housing project for the working class. -
Johnson left the diplomatic world to join the civil rights movement in 1916 as a field secretary for the NAACP. This is where he helped open new branches and expand membership. He also campaigned for a federal anti-lynching bill and spoke at the 1919 National Conference on Lynching. -
For the hundreds of predominantly Mexican-American victims of what became known as the Zoot Suit Riots. A jacket and a pair of pants marked them as criminals for white servicemembers and civilians searching for someone to blame for the city’s inability to keep up with its growing population. The violence that beset Los Angeles was the product of rising racial tensions brought on by a variety of wartime factors across the United States in 1943. -
As NAACP's first field officer in Mississippi, Evers established new local chapters. He organized voter registration drives and helped lead protests to desegregate public primary schools, parks, and Mississippi Gold Coast beaches. He was murdered by Byron De La Beckwith. -
The alleged teasing of white store clerk Carolyn Bryant by the 14-year-old African American. Emmett Till led to his brutal murder at the hands of Bryant's husband Roy and his half-brother, J.W. Milam. Forcing the American public to grapple with the menace of violence in the Jim Crow South. -
Julian Bond was one of the original leaders of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960. The activist group made significant contributions to the 1960s civil rights movement. Leading seat-ins and taking part in Freedom Rides to desegregate buses. -
https://progressive.org/magazine/letter-nephew/
written by james baldwin. -
On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr., delivered a speech to a massive group of civil rights marchers. They gathered around the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. But this later ended in his assassination. -
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This act was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on July 2, 1964. It prohibited discrimination in public places, provided for the integration of schools and other public facilities, and made employment discrimination illegal. It was the most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. -
Wilkins helped organize the historic March on Washington in August 1963. He also participated in the Selma-to-Montgomery marches in 1965 and the March Against Fear in Mississippi in 1966. Under Wilkins's direction, the NAACP played a major role in many civil rights victories of the 1950s and 1960s, including Brown v. -
4 April 1968, Martin Luther King was shot dead while standing on a balcony outside his second-floor room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. News of King’s assassination prompted racial violence, resulting in more than 40 deaths nationwide. During King’s funeral, a tape recording was played in which King spoke of how he wanted to be remembered after his death: “I’d like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others.”
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