Although raised in a prosperous and prestigious African-American home in Tuskegee, Ala., Sammy Younge found himself drawn most to the civil rights movement. While the cause cost him his life, his actions and determination helped to transform this Southern city.
This story follows a girl who befriends the first African American to attend High Point Central High School, as a result of desegregation. What begins as an unintended and awkward experience in the cafeteria, becomes a strong and admirable friendship.
Bayard Rustin was an African American leader who worked for the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) in the 1940s and 1950s for equal rights for all Americans using nonviolence. In this story, he writes about the struggle for an African American man to order a simple hamburger at a restaurant in the Midwest.
In the graphic novel March, Congressman John Lewis documents his experiences as a young civil rights activist. Hear him describe his first arrest employing a nonviolent resistance strategy, as captured in the book.
This essay places side by side the historical oppression of African Americans in the South and the recent surge of African Americans moving back to the South of their own free will. In her discussion, Maya Angelou questions why such choices are considered remarkable.