In 1860 the last, illegal, shipment of slaves to the US landed in this part of Alabama. Now hundreds of the largely African American residents are suing an industrial plant claiming it released toxic chemicals linked to cancer
View MoreCategory: African American Lives
Floridians will vote this fall on restoring voting rights to 1.5 million felons | Orlando Sentinel
If the amendment becomes law, it could have a huge effect on elections in a state as evenly split politically as Florida.
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Why some African Americans are moving to Africa | Al Jazeera
Moving was an opportunity to fulfil her potential and avoid being targeted by racial violence.
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New Studies Find That Positive Feelings About Blackness Improve Academic Performance for Black Girls | The Root
“We found that feeling positive about being Black, and feeling support and belonging at school, may be especially important for African-American girls’ classroom engagement and curiosity…”
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Why Are American Prisons So Afraid of This Book? | The New York Times
“Some prison officials are determined to keep the people they lock in cages as ignorant as possible about the racial, social and political forces that have made the United States the most punitive nation on earth…”
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Why Are Some Black Women Skipping This Year’s Women’s March? | Essence
“It represented the continued neglect, dismissal and disregard of the issues affecting black women and other women of color.”
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MITCHELL: New Lorraine Hansberry biopic worth every year, every penny it took | Chicago Sun Times
“Negroes must concern themselves with every single means of struggle; legal, illegal, passive, active, violent and non-violent,” Hansberry wrote in 1962.
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Black Student Power in Boston | The Weekly Challenger
The story of the “Boston busing crisis” of the 1970s dominates popular and academic accounts of Boston’s civil rights movement.
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Martin Luther King Jr.’s scorn for ‘white moderates’ in his Birmingham jail letter | The Washington Post
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. began writing the “Letter From a Birmingham Jail” in the margins of newspapers, on scraps of paper, paper towels and slips of yellow legal paper smuggled into his cell, where he was kept in solitary confinement after being arrested April 12, 1963, on charges of violating Alabama’s law against mass public demonstrations.
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Bessie Rogers and Taylor Rogers | StoryCorps
Retired Memphis, Tennessee sanitation worker Taylor Rodgers and his wife, Bessie, were at the Mason Temple on April 3, 1968 when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous speech “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop”.
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