This image group features portraits of Frederick Douglass, Phillis Wheatley and Olaudah Equiano, who all learned to read and write while they were enslaved. Each used their gifts to help end slavery.
Cleveland Sellers provides a testimonial of his experience with the draft for the Vietnam War, the racism of Selective Service and his antiwar orientation.
This Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) report from 1963 details voter registration work and police harassment in South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia and Arkansas.
This 1964 report was issued by the Council of Federated Organizations in the midst of Freedom Summer to describe their Freedom Schools project. It demonstrates the breadth of the project and the enthusiasm about its potential.
A literacy test from Alabama (c. 1965) asks complex questions about civics to suppress voter registration and demonstrates the range of questions available to officials.
In this letter to the editor, James G. Thompson, a 26-year-old African American, writes about his desire to defend his country and to continue the fight for civil rights as the United States enters World War II.