What many people may not know is that twenty-five years before he launched his historic 1988 presidential campaign and delivered the “Keep Hope Alive” speech, he was elected as president of the student government association at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State
By Matthew Allen It’s been 39 years since the first holiday marking the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. A whole generation has now come of age since the yearslong push to honor the Civil Rights icon came to fruition. Although Dr. King’s legacy has endured since the 1950s, his nuanced rhetoric that took
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The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. He chose that location in part to honor President Abraham Lincoln as “a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today.” Now, millions of people honor King in the same way.
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The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin has recently acquired a collection of materials on Ethel Waters, a pioneering twentieth-century Black singer and actress. Born in 1896 as a result of the rape of her teenage Black mother Louise Anderson, Waters was raised in poverty by her grandmother in Philadelphia. Speaking
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Courtesy of North Carolina A&T State University The National Park Service has designated the F.W. Woolworth Co. Building, where the four teenage HBCU freshmen from the North Carolina A&T State University staged a sit-in that buoyed the Civil Rights Movement, a National Historic Landmark. On Feb. 1, 1960, Jibreel Khazan (formerly Ezell Blair Jr.), Joseph McNeil,
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By Shannon Dawson Kwanzaa, an annual celebration of African culture spanning from Dec. 26 to Jan.1, originated in 1966 amid the Black Freedom Movement. The celebration was created by Dr. Maulana Karenga, an activist and esteemed professor of Africana studies at California State University, Long Beach. Rooted in the early harvest festivities of Africa, this
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By Ronda Racha Penrice The job was considered impossible: Clear 17 million pieces of backlogged mail. In a war zone. Maj. Charity Adams knew it was a mission that could not fail, not just for the sake of morale of World War II troops, but also for the reputation of Black people in the eyes of the country’s
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By Cedric Mobley For decades, Black Americans fought in the U.S. military to bring liberty to people around the world, even though those rights were often denied to them at home. Nevertheless, these heroes have sacrificed their safety and devoted their lives to protecting the promise of America— that the country will one day truly facilitate “liberty
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Tuskegee University will honor all 95 past and present Miss Tuskegee campus queens during the university’s 100th anniversary homecoming this week. In honor of Tuskegee’s centennial homecoming celebration, Andscape spoke with several women who have worn the Miss Tuskegee crown. Interviews have been edited for length and clarity. Born and raised in Tuskegee, Alabama, Faye Hall
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By Cedric Mobley For 157 years, Howard University has served as the nexus of intellectual engagement and social advocacy to ensure that all Americans can fully exercise all the rights of citizenship. Even before the end of slavery, the work of Frederick Douglass, who would become a Howard trustee, served as the foundation for universal
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Simon Bouie told his mother and grandmother he wasn’t going to get in trouble back in 1960. Then the Black Benedict College student sat at a whites-only lunch counter in South Carolina and got himself arrested. Finally on Friday, that arrest and the records of six of his friends were erased as a judge signed an order
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