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Gov. Orval E. Faubus of Arkansas delivered this speech on Sept. 18, 1958. In this speech, Faubus justifies his decision to shut down Little Rock’s public high schools for the year rather than complying with the Supreme Court’s order to continue with integration.

This photograph from the Associated Press shows Martin Luther King Jr. in a crowd of people at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on Aug. 28, 1963.

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 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.

Septima Clark was an African-American educator and civil rights activist. The following excerpt is from a 1976 interview with Clark for the Southern Oral History Program Collection.

“He really talked that night.”

“The students wouldn't speak to me...”

President John F. Kennedy made these notes on May 12, 1963, in response to multiple bombings and subsequent rioting in Birmingham, Ala.

In this nonfiction piece, Julianna Fields tells the story of Bailey and his two fathers. After protecting Bailey from onlookers' scorn when he was a child, the family decided to participate in a project showcasing the diversity found in local families.

Undercover, Walter White investigates an African-American woman's lynching in a rural Georgia town. White uses his Southern accent to keep suspicion at bay during a conversation with a general manager, whom he believes to be the lynch-mob leader.