This order was issued by the War Department in 1863, ending the long-standing federal law that banned African-American men from armed military service.
The freedom riders, black and white, joined together to effect change. Traveling across the South while enduring ridicule and pain, they helped ensure that doors were open to all people, regardless of skin color.
In early September 1957, nine African-American students faced a violent mob when they attempted to enter the newly desegregated Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock, Ark.. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed this executive order on September 23, 1957 to enforce an orderly desegregation.
The Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) is a non-profit organization known for its lineage-based membership. Members of the DAR must be able to trace their genealogy back to an individual connected to American Independence. In this letter, Eleanor Roosevelt responds to the DAR’s refusal in February 1939 to allow the black performer Marian Anderson to sing at their auditorium, Constitution Hall.
Doreen Rappaport tells the story of a young Suzie King Taylor and her brother who attended a secret school for black children in Georgia in the mid-1800s. Later on, Taylor would become the first black woman to teach openly in a freedmen's school.
Maleeka gets made fun of at school about her clothes, her grades, even the color of her skin. In this chapter, one of her teachers, with white blotches on her face, shows how she's been able to accept the skin she's in.