In this poem, a black woman carefully analyzes her interaction with a white waitress, whose actions, although civil, are smoldering with superiority.

Solomon Northup was kidnapped and sold into slavery for 12 years before he was freed. This excerpt from his memoir of those years, Twelve Years A Slave, details a New Orleans slave auction.

Langston Hughes, a voice of the Harlem Renaissance, writes of a black man banished to the kitchen when company arrives. This same man looks to the future, for a day when he will sit at the table to eat with company, because he, too, is an American.

John Lewis was 23 years old and the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) when he gave a censored version of this speech on August 28, 1963 at the March on Washington.

Richard and Mildred Loving were plaintiffs in the historic Supreme Court ruling Loving v. Virginia, which struck down race restrictions on the freedom to marry. What follows is Mildred Loving’s public statement delivered on June 12, 2007, the 40th Anniversary of the decision.