Black History: Facts, People & Month

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Black History: Timeline of the Post-Civil Rights Era

From the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., to the 2008 election of Barack Obama, to widespread global protests declaring Black Lives Matter in 2020, African American history in the United States has been filled with both triumph and strife. Here’s a look at some of the notable milestones that took place from the […]

Loving v. Virginia

What Is Miscegenation? The Loving case was a challenge to centuries of American laws banning miscegenation, i.e., any marriage or interbreeding among different races. Restrictions on miscegenation existed as early as the colonial era, and of the 50 U.S. states, all but nine states had a law against the practice at some point in their […]

TOPSHOT-BIO-MARTIN LUTHER KING-MARCH ON WASHINGTONTOPSHOT - The civil rights leader Martin Luther King (C) waves to supporters 28 August 1963 on the Mall in Washington DC (Washington Monument in background) during the "March on Washington". - King said the march was "the greatest demonstration of freedom in the history of the United States." Martin Luther King was assassinated on 04 April 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee. James Earl Ray confessed to shooting King and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. King's killing sent shock waves through American society at the time, and is still regarded as a landmark event in recent US history. AFP PHOTO (Photo by AFP) (Photo by -/AFP via Getty Images)

Civil Rights Movement Timeline

July 26, 1948: President Harry Truman issues Executive Order 9981 to end segregation in the Armed Services. May 17, 1954: Brown v. Board of Education, a consolidation of five cases into one, is decided by the Supreme Court, effectively ending racial segregation in public schools. Many schools, however, remained segregated. August 28, 1955: Emmett Till, a […]

Langston Hughes

Early Life Hughes was born February 1, 1902 (although some evidence shows it may have been 1901), in Joplin, Missouri, to James and Caroline Hughes. When he was a young boy, his parents divorced, and, after his father moved to Mexico, and his mother, whose maiden name was Langston, sought work elsewhere, he was raised […]

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Map of Tulsa; Greenwood Black Wall Street

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Tulsa’s ‘Black Wall Street’ Flourished as a Self-Contained Hub in Early 1900s

Before the Tulsa Race Massacre where the city’s Black district of Greenwood was attacked by a white mob, resulting in two days of bloodshed and destruction, the area had been considered one of the most affluent African American communities in the United States for the early part of the 20th century. The massacre, which began […]

Engraving shows an agent from the Freedmen's Bureau as he separates two groups of armed men, one comprised of white men and the other of freed slaves, 1868. The Freedmen's Bureau was created to help refugees from the American Civil War.

The Short-Lived Promise of ’40 Acres and a Mule’

“What do you want for your own people?” That’s the question Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton suggested Union General William T. Sherman pose to 20 Black pastors in Savannah, Georgia, as the Civil War neared its end and enslaved African Americans neared freedom. The Black leaders gathered for the January 12, 1865, meeting with […]

Henry Ossawa Tanner and his painting "The Annunciation" (1898)

5 Groundbreaking 19th-Century African American Artists

One was called “the best landscape painter in the West.” Another was given France’s highest civilian honor and saw his work enter into some of Paris’s most prestigious museums. A U.S. president visited yet another in her studio—and sat for a sculpture. Amazingly, in the years before, during and after the Civil War—an era when […]

The 1970 FBI Wanted poster for Angela Davis.

How Angela Davis Ended Up on the FBI Most Wanted List

On August 18, 1970, Angela Yvonne Davis became the third woman ever placed on the FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted Fugitives list, sought for her supposed involvement in kidnappings and murders growing out of an armed seizure of a Marin County Courthouse in California. Until her arrest two months later, photos of the 26-year-old university professor and activist […]

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Coretta Scott King

After her husband became pastor, Coretta Scott King joined the choir at the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church. Hear two of her friends and members of the congregation remember Mrs. King’s legacy and her voice.

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Bree Newsome on Lynda Blackmon Lowery, a Black History Legend

Bree Newsome discusses the impact that everyday citizens like Lynda Blackmon Lowrey had on the civil rights movement in honor of Black History Month.

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How the NAACP Fights Racial Discrimination

How did the NAACP (the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) get its start? What needs and issues does it address, and what has it accomplished since it was founded in 1909?

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