Patty, a young enslaved girl, shares some insight about life on a South Carolina plantation.

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.

Native American activists use civil disobedience and consensus-building to resolve an old dispute over natural resources.