This story is the retelling of Robert Smalls' escape from slavery with his entire family in tow. With a plan "as dangerous as it was brilliant," Smalls commandeers a Confederate ship and successfully navigates it out of Charleston's blockaded port and into the hands of the Union army.
Two memorials have been built in commemoration of Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation-one in 1896 and 1998. And while they both pay tribute to the same event, they depict the African Americans within them in very different lights.
Regarded as one of the most important speeches in American history, it was delivered by Booker T. Washington as a plea for racial cooperation in the South during a time of deep racial prejudice.
One of the earliest assaults on segregated transit in the South occurred in Louisville, Ky., in 1870-71. There, the city’s black community organized a successful protest that relied on nonviolent direct action, a tactic that would give shape to the modern civil rights movement nearly a century later.
Rigoberta Menchú has dedicated her life to fighting the injustices faced by the people of Guatemala and educating the world on the concept of indigenous people and fighting for their interests.
Two friends who attend different schools in the same community learn that one of their schools has no instruments for their music program, while the other has multiple different kinds. They use their friendship and musical abilities to confront this inequity and try to bring about change.
In this interview, Luis Rodriguez describes how the systemic demoralization he faced in school and society at a young age drove him to join a street gang and how writing his book, Always Running, was an attempt to call his son and other young people in similar situations to change their lives.
Elizabeth MacQueen is the sculptor of Four Spirits, a monument built to memorialize the four girls killed in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church. In her memoir, she discusses how the project revealed to her how sheltered she had been as a child growing up in Birmingham.