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A document declaring the principles of the Niagara Movement conference

The press release from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on behalf of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) details the organization’s plans to end slums in Chicago.

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.

A chapter from the autobiography of Henry Bibb, a well-known black activist who had escaped from slavery. This text contains descriptions of the life of enslaved persons as well as illustrations.

A Democratic laborer comments on the problem of abolitionism in the North as well as the South, claiming that the emancipation of enslaved people will result in the damaging of white labor rights and opportunities.

In his cartoon, Thomas W. Strong turns southern arguments in favor of slavery against the South. He creates an anti-secessionist message by depicting South Carolina as an enslaved woman (likely a reference to Topsey from Uncle Tom’s Cabin) incapable of making her own decisions.

The newspaper article relays the secondhand story of enslaved people fleeing from a plantation and joining up with Irish laborers in pursuit of “their freedom.” The escaping party was found, and the Irish “abolitionists” were denounced.