Civil rights leader and two-time Democratic presidential candidate Jesse Jackson (1941–) became one of the most influential African-Americans of the late 20th century. He rose to prominence working within Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and was at the Memphis hotel with King when he was assassinated. Through PUSH, the organization he…
Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize- and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist. Among her best known novels are ‘The Bluest Eye,’ ‘Song of Solomon,’ ‘Beloved’ and ‘A Mercy.’ Who Is Toni Morrison? Born on February 18, 1931, in Lorain, Ohio, Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize- and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, editor and professor. Her novels are…
The Past in Color features the work of colorist Marina Amaral, bringing to life black and white photos with color applied digitally. LAPD officer. Bit-part Hollywood star. Nixon supporter. Trailblazer for racial integration. Kenny Washington had an eventful–and in some ways contradictory–life ahead of him. But in 1939 he was a star, plain and simple. “The Kingfish” was…
Educator and activist Angela Davis (1944-) became known for her involvement in a politically charged murder case in the early 1970s. Influenced by her segregated upbringing in Birmingham, Alabama, Davis joined the Black Panthers and an all-black branch of the Communist Party as a young woman. She became a professor at UCLA, but fell out…
Malcolm X, the activist and outspoken public voice of the Black Muslim faith, challenged the mainstream civil rights movement and the nonviolent pursuit of integration championed by Martin Luther King Jr.He urged followers to defend themselves against white aggression “by any means necessary.” Born Malcolm Little, he changed his last name to X to signify…
The son of a sharecropper, Joe Louis (1914-1981) rose up through the ranks of amateur and professional boxing to become the world heavyweight champion, a title he held from 1937 to 1949. Louis is perhaps best known for his legendary matchups against German boxer Max Schmeling. Schmeling defeated Louis when they first fought in 1936,…
Sharecropping is a type of farming in which families rent small plots of land from a landowner in return for a portion of their crop, to be given to the landowner at the end of each year. Different types of sharecropping have been practiced worldwide for centuries, but in the rural South, it was typically…
The Harlem Renaissance was the development of the Harlem neighborhood in New York City as a black cultural mecca in the early 20th Century and the subsequent social and artistic explosion that resulted. Lasting roughly from the 1910s through the mid-1930s, the period is considered a golden age in African American culture, manifesting in literature,…
