Americans are likely to think of New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day as a time to celebrate the fresh start that a new year represents, but there is also a troubling side to the holiday’s history. In the years before the Civil War, the first day of the new year was often a heartbreaking […]
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The Norfolk 17 face a hostile reception as schools reopen | The Virginian-Pilot
Three weeks later than originally scheduled, Norfolk schools were finally ready to open. Well, most of them. [mc4wp_form id=”6042″] On Sept. 29, 1958, 48 of Norfolk’s schools welcomed students – but the doors of six were padlocked and under police guard. Maury, Norview and Granby high schools and Northside, Norview and Blair junior highs remained […]
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She was on stage during MLK’s ‘I’ve a Dream Speech’ but little is said of the first black woman federal judge | Face2Face Africa
At a time when segregation against Blacks was highly prevalent, Constance Baker Motley, a civil rights lawyer and trailblazer, made history as the first Black woman to become a federal judge in the US. [mc4wp_form id=”6042″] In 1966, Motley was nominated by President Lyndon B. Johnson to become the first black woman to hold the […]
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Unita Blackwell Risked It All So Black Mississippians Could Vote | The New York Times Magazine
She was arrested dozens of times, and Klan members threw Molotov cocktails into her yard — but that didn’t stop her fight for civil rights. [mc4wp_form id=”6042″] On an afternoon thick with Mississippi heat, Unita Blackwell sat on the front porch of her shotgun house with her friend Coreen, drinking homemade beer, waiting for something […]
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When Oakland Was a ‘Chocolate City’: A Brief History of Festival at the Lake | KQED
Lake Merritt, the man-made lake at the center of Oakland, has been called the city’s beating heart. It is more than a body of water — it is where people gather to celebrate and protest, to party and to mourn. [mc4wp_form id=”6042″] After the election of President Trump, the lake is where liberal Oaklanders showed […]
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Forever Feline, Forever Fierce (2008) | The New York Times
“Je cherche un billionaire,” Eartha Kitt purred last year from the stage of the Café Carlyle, the chic, intimate club in the Café Carlyle that had been her regular stomping ground for more than a decade. [mc4wp_form id=”6042″] It was an ideal setting for Ms. Kitt to strut her archetypal show business persona: a glamorous, […]
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A Massive New Database Will Connect Billions of Historic Records to Tell the Full Story of American Slavery | Smithsonian Magazine
The online resource will offer vital details about the toll wrought on the enslaved. [mc4wp_form id=”6042″] In 1834, a 22-year-old Yoruba man who would come to be known as Manuel Vidau was captured as a prisoner of war and sold to slave traders in Lagos, today the largest city in Nigeria. A Spanish ship transported […]
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What Louis Armstrong Really Thinks | The New Yorker
On October 31, 1965, Louis (Satchmo) Armstrong gave his first performance in New Orleans, his home town, in nine years. [mc4wp_form id=”6042″] At twelve, he marched in parades for the Colored Waif’s Home for Boys, where he was given his first cornet. But he had publicly boycotted the city since its banning of integrated bands, […]
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Don’t Try This at Home | The New York Times
How the Nicholas Brothers became America’s foremost tap-dancers. [mc4wp_form id=”6042″] Most jazz tap-dancers stand up and dance. The Nicholas Brothers did that — and then they flew, catapulting themselves over each other’s heads, step by step down a staircase, or running up a wall and uncoiling backward into thin air. Perhaps you’ve seen them on […]
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Possible mass grave from 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre found by researchers | NBC News
Experts in Oklahoma believe they found a mass grave site from the deadly race riots, recently recreated in HBO’s “Watchmen.” [mc4wp_form id=”6042″] Experts at the University of Oklahoma believe they have found a possible mass grave site from the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre at a city cemetery, although they are unsure how many bodies are […]
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