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The National Portrait Gallery describes the singular achievement of Phillis Wheatley: “In 1773, Phillis Wheatley accomplished something that no other woman of her status had done. When her book of poetry, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, appeared, she became the first American slave, the first person of African descent, and only the third colonial American woman to have her work published.”

According to the National Park Service’s biography of Maria Stewart, “Abolitionist and women's rights advocate Maria W. Stewart was one of the first women of any race to speak in public in the United States. She was also the first Black American woman to write and publish a political manifesto. Her calls for Black people to resist slavery, oppression, and exploitation were radical. Stewart's thinking and speaking style influenced Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.”

Ida B. Wells-Barnett was an outspoken activist for many causes. In 1884, she sued a train company for wrongfully removing her from a first-class train for which she had purchased a ticket. Throughout the 1880s and 1890s, she used her work as a journalist to investigate and expose the lynching of Black men and women, including the publication of this document. She also fought for women’s suffrage, even marching with the movement over the objections of some white participants who did not want Black women to participate.

According to the National Women’s History Museum and historian Debra Michals, “Harriet Tubman was enslaved, escaped, and helped others gain their freedom as a ‘conductor’ of the Underground Railroad. Tubman also served as a scout, spy, guerrilla soldier, and nurse for the Union Army during the Civil War. She is considered the first African American woman to serve in the military.” In this document, Tubman petitioned for back pay for her services to the military, ultimately securing a pension of $8 a month as the widow of a Union soldier and $20 for her service. When she died, she was buried with military honors.

The Crisis was the official magazine of the NAACP, and this issue from 1915 was dedicated to the issue of women’s suffrage. Mary Church Terrell’s activism began with her involvement in Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s anti-lynching movement, following the death by lynching of a friend in Memphis. As the founder of the National Association for Colored Women (NACW), she fought for Black women’s suffrage specifically (and for women’s suffrage broadly) as the key to ultimate equality.

Mary McLeod-Bethune was one of seventeen children, raised in part working in the fields of the plantation where her parents had been formerly enslaved. She became a prominent educator. The school for girls, pictured and described here, ultimately merged with the all-male Cookman Institute and in 1929 became Bethune-Cookman College.

Although Rosa Parks is well known as the woman whose actions initiated the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955, her story is misunderstood and mischaracterized. As historian Stephanie Townrow explains, “Rosa Parks had been an activist for civil rights most of her life, and was an active member of the Montgomery NAACP chapter. In her 1992 autobiography, Parks challenged the simplistic narrative that she was just too tired after a long day’s work to give up her seat.” A passage from Parks’ autobiography is cited here, along with the fingerprinting card from the arrest that followed her refusal to move.

Zora Neale Hurston is most famous as an anthropologist and novelist. She wove Black folklore, linguistics, and culture into her writing, including the collection Mules and Men and the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. In this letter, she expresses controversial opposition to the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.

Constance Baker Motley was the first Black woman to argue at the Supreme Court and argued ten landmark civil rights cases, winning nine. She was a law clerk to Thurgood Marshall, aiding him in the case Brown v. Board of Education. Motley was also the first African-American woman appointed to the federal judiciary, serving as a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Fannie Lou Hamer was a field organizer for SNCC. In 1964, she ran for Congress with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. The MFDP brought an alternate slate of delegates to the Democratic Party convention, arguing that the all-white Mississippi Democratic Party was mired in racism and did not represent the rights and needs of all. As described by American Public Media, the Mississippi “incumbent was a white man who had been elected to office twelve times. In an interview with the Nation, Hamer said, ‘I'm showing the people that a Negro can run for office.’”

A musician and music educator, Coretta Scott King married Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1953. They had four children, and she traveled throughout the country and the world as an advocate for social justice with Dr. King.

This speech followed the assassination of Dr. King by just a few weeks. She used notes he had written for the speech, which she found in a jacket pocket of his after his death.

Angela Davis, scholar and member of the Black Panthers, wrote this letter while incarcerated in Marin County, California in 1971. Davis had been captured and arrested following an armed attack at the facility led by 17-year-old Jonathan Jackson, who was fighting for the release of his brother and other prisoners known as the “Soledad Brothers.” As described by journalist Antonio Mejias-Rentas, “Witnesses before a county grand jury testified that several of the weapons used in the courthouse takeover had been purchased by Davis, including a sawed-off shotgun that authorities said was used to kill Judge Haley. Although Davis had not been present, the grand jury returned an indictment charging her with kidnapping, murder and conspiracy. Davis never denied owning the weapons, but said she was not involved and had no knowledge of her weapons being used in the courthouse assault.”

Following the lynching murder of her fifteen-year-old son, Emmett Till,, Mamie TIll Mobley insisted on an open casket at his funeral; according to Time magazine, “When Till’s mother Mamie came to identify her son, she told the funeral director, ‘Let the people see what I’ve seen.’” The graphic images of his beaten body captured the attention of people across the United States, and the photo’s publication in Jet magazine is widely considered a galvanizing moment for the Civil Rights Era.

The March on Washington, 1963 By 1963 the Civil Rights Movement had grown substantially. They had support for both the black and white communities, as well as many celebrities. The purpose of this march was to gain national support for legislation in Congress. One of the most famous moments of the march was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s “I Have a Dream” speech. Originally proposed in 1941 as the “March for Jobs and Freedom” by A. Philip Randolph, photographs of the March became – and remain – some of the most iconic images of the Civil Rights Movement.

Any number of images from the Civil Rights era would benefit a unit on freedom of speech, but this particular image does a few things: (1) it marks the occasion immediately before Martin Luther King’s assassination; (2) it provides an image of a single text used over and over, in contrast to the image above with multiple demands; and (3) it juxtaposes protesters exercising their first amendment rights with National Guard troops wielding weapons.

Aware of the platform provided by international television coverage of the Olympics, medal-winning U.S. track athletes John Carlos and Tommie Smith chose to raise a fist during their medal ceremony to protest racial inequality in the country they were representing, at the very moment the Star Spangled Banner was playing.

The 1970s Women’s Strike was organized by feminist author Betty Friedan, to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which prevented women from being denied the vote “on the basis of sex.” As reported by Time, “Friedan’s original idea for Aug. 26 was a national work stoppage, in which women would cease cooking and cleaning in order to draw attention to the unequal distribution of domestic labor, an issue she discussed in her 1963 bestseller The Feminine Mystique. It isn’t clear how many women truly went on ‘strike’ that day, but the march served as a powerful symbolic gesture. Participants held signs with slogans like ‘Don’t Iron While the Strike is Hot’ and ‘Don’t Cook Dinner – Starve a Rat Today.’”

Vietnam War Protests The Vietnam protest movement represented a growing anti-war movement in the United States in the late 1960s to early 1970s. Protestors spanned the racial spectrum and employed varying methods to end the war in Vietnam, started by the United States.

In many cases, anti-war protests combined with efforts to turn attention to domestic issues. As described in the Mapping American Social Movements Project of the University of Washington, “Chicanos in Los Angeles formed alliances with other oppressed people who identified with the Third World Left and were committed to toppling U.S. imperialism and fighting racism…. The Chicano Moratorium antiwar protests of 1970 and 1971…reflected the vibrant collaboration between African Americans, Japanese Americans, American Indians, and white antiwar activists that had developed in Southern California.”

The Civil Rights Movement for Black equality inspired many other movements, including a national push for disability rights. The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 prohibited discrimination on the basis of disability and protected equal access for people with disabilities in areas including public services, employment, and education.

The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) states: "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex." First proposed as an Amendment to the Constitution in 1923, Congress finally passed the ERA in 1972. The senate vote was overwhelming: 84 to 8. The Amendment then went to state legislatures for approval, requiring 38 for ratification. 22 states ratified in that first year, and 8 more in 1973. But then a grassroots opposition movement made significant inroads. 35 states eventually approved it by 1977, but the passage of the Amendment then stalled and the deadline expired in 1982.

In these photos, women who fought both for and against the Amendment’s passage are pictured protesting. In the top photograph, American attorney and conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, founder of STOP-ERA, leads a protest against the Amendment. In the bottom photograph, women dressed in white – evoking suffragists of the past – protest in favor of the Amendment in Washington, DC on August 26, 1977 – the same date of the Women’s Strike seven years earlier (also included in this Spotlight Kit).

Dolores Huerta Lettuce Boycott Poster: Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez fought together for the rights and protections of the workers who picked fruits and vegetables in the fields and orchards, organizing a workers’ union and boycotts to gain attention and create economic pressure for the cause. Huerta led a successful lettuce and grape boycott, first in California and later on a national scale, that paved the way for migrant labor protection laws.

In the earliest years of the emergency of AIDS as a public health crisis, the American Government’s response was limited in terms of both resources dedicated to fighting the disease and public discussion of the disease, its victims, and public health strategies for prevention. Activists coined the phrase “silence=death” in 1987 to help raise awareness and spur the government to devote greater resources and attention.

After the financial crisis of 2008, a CNBC commentator, Rick Santelli, argued against President Obama’s mortgage relief policies and evoked the Revolutionary War-era Tea Party in calling for a protest against them. The “Tea Party Movement” took hold among some conservative and libertarian circles, leading to rallies and political campaigns arguing against federal taxation and in favor of fiscal conservatism and a free market economy. Several rallies were held specifically on April 15th – Tax Day – 2009.

The planned construction of The Dakota Access Pipeline and resulting protests is a recent example of Native Americans and U.S. industry clashing. One side feared for the quality of their water and lands being abused. Proponents of the pipeline included union members and business, who viewed the pipeline’s development as essential to the growth of the economy.

As reported by the Los Angeles Times, the intersection of disability rights and racial equity can be complicated for deaf members of the Black Lives Matter Movement: “The phrase begins with four fingers cut across the brow, followed by two thumbs drawn up like breath from navel to chest, ending with a fierce tug with two hands down from the chin into fists toward the heart.

Black. Life. Cherish. This is how Harold Foxx and many other black deaf Angelenos sign ‘Black Lives Matter,’ though it is by no means a universal translation. .. It is a reminder of an ongoing struggle for equity, representation and authenticity in ASL, a language deeply scarred by racism and exclusion.”

On June 5, 2020, CNN reported: “Washington, DC is painting a message in giant, yellow letters down a busy DC street ahead of a planned protest this weekend: BLACK LIVES MATTER.

The massive banner-like project spans two blocks of 16th Street, a central axis that leads southward straight to the White House. Each of the 16 bold yellow letters spans the width of the two-lane street, creating an unmistakable visual easily spotted by aerial cameras and virtually anyone within a few blocks. The painters were contacted by Mayor Muriel Bowser and began work early Friday morning, the mayor’s office told CNN. Bowser has officially deemed the section of 16th Street bearing the mural ‘Black Lives Matter Plaza,’ complete with a new street sign.”

During the height of the Coronavirus pandemic, all levels of government – federal, state, and local – were required to respond to information emerging daily about what policies and practices would be safest for the public. In many places, including public spaces and schools, people were required to wear masks. Some people pushed back against these requirements, arguing that mandates were a violation of their individual rights.

While “Critical Race Theory” (CRT) is taught primarily in law schools, protests began in 2021 against the teaching of CRT at local school board meetings in many places across the country. Often, participants in these protests raised a range of concerns about how topics including, but not limited to, race are covered in school curricula. These protests became part of a larger “parents’ rights” movement, arguing that parents should have a greater say in determining what their children learn in school.

As reported by NBC News, “Last winter, as violent attacks against Asian elders began to spike, vividly painted portraits of Asian, Pacific Islander and Black people — flanked by vibrant florals and messages like ‘I am not your scapegoat’ — appeared on the walls of New York City's busiest subway and bus stops. Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya’s I Still Believe In Our City public art series, created in partnership with the New York City Commission on Human Rights, reminded millions of commuters of the humanity, diversity and beauty of Asian Americans at a time when many saw them as mere carriers of a deadly virus.”

As reported by the New York Times in March of 2022, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signed House Bill 1557, “which supporters call the ‘Parental Rights in Education’ bill, but that opponents refer to as the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill.” Among the provisions of the bill, “Instruction on gender and sexuality would be constrained in all grades; schools would be required to notify parents when children receive mental, emotional or physical health services, unless educators believe there is a risk of ‘abuse, abandonment, or neglect’; and parents would have the right to opt their children out of counseling and health services.”

William Edward Burghard (W.E.B) Du Bois was a sociologist, educator, and political activist. Educated at Fisk and Harvard Universities, DuBois wrote histories, sociological studies, informed sketches of African American life, and an autobiography. He believed education could end discrimination. DuBois organized the First International Congress of Colored People and was a founder of the NAACP.

Countee Cullen was adopted by a black pioneer activist minister and his wife.  He was well-educated, earning his Masters in English and French from Harvard. Cullen won more major literary awards than any other black writer of the 1920s.

Though he wrote on universal themes such as love, religion, and death, Cullen believed in the richness and importance of his African American heritage and deftly applied traditional forms of verse, using melodic meter and rhyme, to African American themes.

As the literary editor of the NAACP’s Crisis magazine (1919 - 1926), Jessie Redman Fauset was one of three people Langston Hughes credited with “mid-wif{ing} the so-called New Negro literature into being. Kind and critical…they nursed us along until our books were born.” Redmon, among the first African Americans to be graduated (Phi Beta Kappa) from Cornell University, wrote books of her own as well.

Marcus Garvey, the promoter of Pan-Africanism and black pride, had a vision of economic independence for his people. Those who followed him were called Garveyites. He was the founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, (UNIA) the single largest black organization ever. In the 1920s and 30s, the UNIA had an estimated six million followers around the world.

Langston Hughes was known as the “Poet Laureate of Harlem.” One of the first African Americans to support himself solely as a writer. Hughes blended the sounds of jazz into his poetry. He focused on the need for artistic independence and racial pride.

Zora Neale Hurston was a brilliant, multifaceted chronicler of African American life as she saw it.  Her dominant influence was her hometown of Eatonville, Florida, the first incorporated all-black township in the United States.  Ms. Hurston grew up there independent and self-reliant, her imagination fired by the rich oral traditions of the rural African American South and her sense of self undistorted by prejudice. She later pursued field studies of southern black folklore that would be documented in her book Mules and Men (1935) and would permeate much of her best fiction.

James Weldon Johnson was a poet (God’s Trombones) and an influential anthologist (The Book of American Negro Poetry). The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, his only novel and perhaps his best-known literary work, was first published in 1912, four years before he became field secretary of the NAACP. Over the next sixteen years, Johnson expanded NAACP membership and coordinated its programs, resigning, and finally accepting a professorship at Fisk University. He continued to write poetry, essays, and magazine articles throughout all those years, as well as the historical study of Black Manhattan and his autobiography, Along this Way.

Alain Locke is referred to as the “Father of the Harlem Renaissance.” Locke’s book The New Negro made him the leader and principal spokesman of the “New Negro Movement, “ which he encouraged through numerous essays and art and literary reviews. He also was deeply involved in efforts to help African-American artists and writers- including Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Aaron Douglas, and Richmond Barthe-find financial support.

Claude McKay was born in Jamaica on September 15, 1889. In 1920, he published Spring in New Hampshire in England. Many of the poems from Spring in New Hampshire were used in his Harlem Shadows (published 1922, in New York). Harlem Shadows showcased a new African American voice. It was bold and angry. It discussed the racial prejudices that McKay experienced when he arrived in America.

Aaron Douglas’ work focused on social issues in the United States, like segregation. Douglas often references history in his work. Douglas examines slavery, African heritage, and the future of society. Douglas’ paintings often symbolized the history and struggle of the African American community. Douglas’ paintings included monochromatic color, silhouetted figures, and geometric forms.

Palmer Hayden was an extremely talented painter. Early in his career, he focused mostly on landscapes. In 1927, he moved to Paris and grew greatly as an artist. In 1932, he returned to the U.S. and changed his focus to small-town African Americans. He has been criticized for perpetuating stereotypes of African American physical features.

As a teenager, Jacob Lawrence took art classes at the Uptown Art Laboratory, finding mentors in Harlem Renaissance artists Charles Alston and Augusta Savage. Lawrence explored issues central to African American history and daily life. Lawrence created The Migration Series based on the Great Migration.

Lawrence studied at the Schomburg Library and eventually gained employment as a painter for the Federal Art Project.

Augustus Savage was recognized on the Harlem scene after being commissioned to sculpt the bust of W.E.B. Dubois. She won a scholarship to Academie de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris. Savage opened the largest free art program in Harlem, and students like Jacob Lawerence attended Savage School of Arts.

James VanDerZee became interested in photography as a teenager. He told the history of African Americans with his photographs. He is noted for documenting African American middle-class life in Harlem. He documented the work of Marcus Garvey in 1924, and in 1969, his work was a part of the Harlem on My Mind exhibition at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Louis Daniel Armstrong Is one of the foremost jazz trumpeters in American music. Born in poverty, Armstrong was raised by his grandmother in New Orleans, a city known for its bands and jazz musicians. After 1931, Louis Armstrong became the best-known jazz musician in the world. He toured Europe several times and appeared in a number of movies.

Cab Calloway was an energetic bandleader who took the Cotton Club by storm. He appeared in several movies and radio broadcasts. Mr. Calloway was awarded the Nation Medal of Arts by President Bill Clinton in 1993.

Composer, pianist, and bandleader Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington was one of the great innovators of modern American music, taking big-band jazz into realms of harmony, form, and tonal color. Though ever seeking to grow and expand as a musician, Ellington seldom strayed from the heart of the matter: “If it sounds good,” he said, “it is good.” One of Ellington’s signature songs, “Take the ‘A’ Train” refers to a New York subway line and pays homage to Harlem, its destination.

Born in 1915, Billie Holiday became one of the most influential jazz singers of her time. Holiday was discovered at the age of 18, singing in a nightclub in Harlem. One of her most famous songs, “Strange Fruit,” was banned by many radio stations when it debuted; the song tells the story of the lynching of African Americans. Drug addiction affected both her career and her personal life, and it led to her untimely death in 1959.

“Ma” Rainey was known as the Mother of the Blues; she was the first woman to introduce blues in her performances, and she established her own entertainment company in 1917.

The 1920s in America were a golden age of the powerful blueswoman. At the pinnacle stood Bessie Smith, whose personal and musical power pushed the boundaries of both female and African American expression for a new mass audience.