Born on this day in Massachusetts, Charles Sumner was outspoken against slavery, for full recognition of Haiti, against the U.S.-Mexico War, for true reconstruction with land distribution, against school segregation, and much more.
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Benjamin Berry Manson and Sarah Ann Benton White, formerly enslaved in Tennessee, receive an official marriage certificate from the Freedmen’s Bureau.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Tera W. Hunter. 2019. 416 pages.
A comprehensive history of African American marriages in the nineteenth century.
Teaching Activity by Tera W. Hunter
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A judge in Norfolk, Virginia, sentenced a white woman, Margaret Douglass, to one month in jail for teaching free Black children to read.
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The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas Corpus Christi found a South Texas school district guilty of discriminating against Mexican-American students in one of the first cases that directly applied the ruling made in Brown v. Board of Education to Mexican-American students.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Victoria Law. 2021. 240 pages
An accessible guide for activists, educators, and all who are interested in understanding how the prison system oppresses communities and harms individuals.
Teaching Activity by Victoria Law
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On Flag Day 1943, the Supreme Court invalidated a compulsory flag salute law in public schools and established that students possess some level of First Amendment rights.
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With escalating escapes of the formerly enslaved, the Virginia General Assembly responded to lobbying from slaveholders and human traffickers by making it harder for enslaved African Americans to escape on ships and by increasing penalties for anyone helping such freedom-seekers.
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Prompted by South Carolina’s all-white political primary system, civil rights advocate Modjeska Monteith Simkins wrote a letter to Governor Olin D. Johnston of South Carolina challenging him to a debate on white supremacy.
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Henry E. Hayne was the first Black student to be accepted to the University of South Carolina’s medical school, a bold act which encouraged other Black students to apply. By 1875, Black men comprised the majority of the student body.
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Thaddeus Stevens gave a speech in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in defense of the Free Schools Act of 1834, which moved the state House to vote against repeal and the Senate to take another vote in support of free public schools.
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Future Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Tom P. Brady delivered a racist speech called “Black Monday” in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, inspiring many white leaders to join the White Citizens’ Council.
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Website. NoKidsinPrison uses art to model, imagine and advocate for alternatives to youth incarceration by lifting up the voices of youth most impacted by the criminal justice system through art and culture.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Carol Anderson. 2021. 272 pages.
This book illuminates the history and impact of the Second Amendment, how it was designed, and how it has consistently been constructed to keep African Americans powerless and vulnerable.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. 2018. 236 pages.
A history of guns and gun laws in the United States, from the original colonization of the country to the present.
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The first general convention of African American Ohioans met in Columbus and pledged to continue raising their voices in order to repeal the Black Codes.
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In this speech, Frederick Douglass denounced the Civil Rights Cases of 1883, in which the Supreme Court held that the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments did not empower Congress to outlaw racial discrimination by private individuals.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Robert Ovetz. 2022. 240 pages.
This collection of essays exposes the U.S. Constitution for what it really is — a rulebook to protect capitalism for the elites.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Daniel Bullen. 2021. 320 pages.
A history of Shays’ Rebellion, where farmers challenged the state’s authority to seize their farms for flagrantly unjust taxes, told from the protesters’ perspective.
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Two African American brothers — Charles and Alphonso Ferguson — were shot and killed by a white police officer in the segregated Freeport neighborhood of Long Island, New York.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Alice L. Baumgartner. 2020. 384 pages.
The story of why Mexico abolished slavery and how its increasingly radical antislavery policies fueled the sectional crisis in the United States.
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There was an attack on the U.S. Capitol by an armed white supremacist mob, determined to block the democratic process.
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Book — Non-fiction. Edited by déqui kioni-sadiki and Matt Meyer. 2017. 648 pages.
The collective autobiography of the New York Panther 21, an infamous conspiracy case that highlighted government repression of Black liberation activists during the 1960s and 1970s.
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Teaching Activity. By Say Burgin, Jeanne Theoharis, and Ursula Wolfe-Rocca. 7 pages.
In this activity, students investigate Rosa Parks’ activism — and the gender and racial injustice to which it was a response — before and after her famous bus refusal.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Blair L. M. Kelley. 2023. 352 pages.
This book uses personal narratives to highlight the community and networks of resistance that Black laborers built in the face of racism and segregation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
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