Democracy & Citizenship Archives

March 25, 1931: Scottsboro Nine

Nine young African Americans were falsely charged with rape and collectively served more than 100 years in prison.

March 25, 1965: Last Selma March

The Selma marches were three protest marches about voting rights, held in 1965.

March 26, 1964: Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X

Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X met briefly by chance as they were waiting for a press conference.

March 27, 1867: Staged Ride-ins in South Carolina Streetcars

Staged ride-ins during Reconstruction in South Carolina were among the first (recorded) organized protests of segregation on a streetcar.

Thomas Mundy Peterson wearing the medallion he was awarded by the citizens of Perth Amboy.

March 30, 1870: Fifteenth Amendment

The 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution was formally adopted.

March 31, 1944: Frank S. Emi Interrogated

Frank S. Emi protested the draft during Japanese American incarceration and was interrogated.

Jeanette Rankin. Portrait by Robert Shetterly of Americans Who Tell the Truth.

April 2, 1917: Jeannette Rankin Takes Seat as First Woman Elected to Congress

Jeannette Rankin took her seat in the U.S. House of Representatives as the first woman ever elected to the U.S. Congress.

April 23, 1968: Columbia Student Occupation

Students for a Democratic Society, Student Afro-American Society and others began a nonviolent occupation of campus buildings at Columbia University.

April 24, 1867: Richmond Streetcar Protest

African Americans in Richmond, Virginia organized protests against segregated streetcars.

April 21, 1937: Congressman Ordered to Jim Crow Section of Train

Illinois congressman Arthur W. Mitchell was ordered to move to the Jim Crow car of the train once it entered Arkansas.

April 18, 1959: Students Petition and March for Integrated Schools

26,000 high school and college students came to Washington, D.C. to demand the end of segregated schools.

Freedom’s Shore

Book — Non-fiction. By Russell Duncan. 1986. 192 pages.
Freedom’s Shore tells the incredible story of Tunis Campbell, a Northern abolitionist minister who heads South after the Civil War to help freedpeople in Georgia.

Revolution

Book — Fiction. By Deborah Wiles 2014. 544 pages.
Historical fiction for young adults set in Greenwood, Mississippi during the 1964 Freedom Summer.

The Return of Gabriel

Book — Fiction. By John Armistead. 2002. 218 pages.
Confronted with decisions well beyond their years, three friends grapple with eternal issues of shifting loyalties and the nature of heroism

Faces of Freedom Summer

Book — Non-fiction. Photographs by Herbert Randall. 2001. 132 pages.
A key collection of photographs for teaching about Freedom Summer in 1964 Mississippi.

Reconstruction: The Second Civil War

Film. By Elizabeth Deane and Dion Graham. 2004. 174 minutes.
Through the voices of several historians and dramatic re-enactments by actors, PBS’s Reconstruction: The Second Civil War uses the stories of ordinary citizens to paint a picture of the Reconstruction era.