Medical and legal inspections were the first of many tests immigrants would have to pass on their arduous journey to establish lives in the United States.
In this excerpt, the narrator, a young Chinese girl, poses as a boy with forged papers, trying to gain entry into the United States. When she realizes the American immigration agents are checking identity papers at the dock, she fights past them and runs for her life.
Are voter ID laws meant to prevent voter fraud or suppress voter turnout among eligible minority groups? Prior to the 2012 presidential election, a majority of states considered such laws. In this article, Patricia Smith explores the two viewpoints.
The Freedom Riders looked to invoke federal action and gain national attention as they traveled on interstate bus lines across the South seeking service at white-only waiting rooms and lunch counters.
This is the transcript of “On Indian Removal,” a message presented by President Andrew Jackson to Congress on December 6, 1830. In this address, Jackson makes the case for the policy set forth in the Indian Removal Act.
Lyndon B. Johnson delivered this commencement address to Howard University graduating students in 1965. Johnson recognizes the plight of African Americans and describes the kind of civil rights progress he would like to see as president.
William Lloyd Garrison’s "Inaugural Editorial" was published in the first issue of The Liberator, an influential radical abolitionist newspaper, on January 1, 1831.