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Bayard Rustin (1912 – 1987) “shaped virtually every aspect of the modern civil rights movement as a theorist, strategist, and spokesman,” said his biographer Jerald Podair. He was “America’s signature radical voice during the 20th century [including] that of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., whom Rustin trained and mentored. ... he was a civil rights activist, a labor unionist, a socialist, a pacifist and, later in life, a gay rights advocate.” Rustin was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania and raised by his maternal grandparents. He grew up in a large house believing that his mother was his older sister. His early influences included his grandmother’s religious association with Quakers and her membership in the NAACP—National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois and James Weldon Johnson were frequent guests in their home—all of which inspired a young Rustin to campaign against Jim Crow laws—discriminatory laws, rules, regulations, and customs meant to assert white supremacy. His college education included Wilberforce College, Cheyney State Teachers College, and City College of New York. During these times, Rustin joined the American Friends Service Committee, worked to free the Scottsboro Boys—nine young black men in Alabama accused of raping two white women, and joined the Young Communist League—but quickly became disillusioned and resigned. As an accomplished tenor, he sang in a Broadway play and with Blues singer Josh White, performed in Greenwich Village nightclubs, and recorded spirituals from the 1950s through the 1970s. Bayard Rustin’s evolving affiliations included the Socialist Party of Norman Thomas, work with pacifist A.J. Muste of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (who later named Rustin their college secretary for the FOR), and work to protect Japanese- Americans’ property during WWII. He also pioneered a movement to desegregate interstate bus travel. Rustin embraced the pacifist teachings of Mohandas Gandi and refused induction into the military by declaring his status as a conscientious objector, for which he was imprisoned from 1944 to 1946 for violating the Selective Service Act. In 1947, he was arrested for participation in a protest against segregated public transit; and in 1953, he was arrested on a morals charge for publicly engaging in homosexual activity. His work as a civil rights organizer included the Freedom Rides, travel to India to learn more about non-violent resistance, secretary of the War Resisters League, and member of American Friends Service Committee. He is probably best remembered for his five-year special assistant and closer advisory position to Martin Luther King, Jr., which included Rustin’s 1956 advice to Dr. King on Gandhian tactics—convincing Dr. King to forego armed protection for the effective techniques of Gandhi’s non- violent approach. Rustin was also a key organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom where Dr. King delivered his “I Have A Dream Speech.” His work as a civil rights organizer included the Freedom Rides, travel to India to learn more about non-violent resistance, secretary of the War Resisters League, and member of American Friends Service Committee. He is probably best remembered for his five-year special assistant and closer advisory position to Martin Luther King, Jr., which included Rustin’s 1956 advice to Dr. King on Gandhian tactics—convincing Dr. King to forego armed protection for the effective techniques of Gandhi’s non- violent approach. Rustin was also a key organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom where Dr. King delivered his “I Have A Dream Speech.” Rustin’s work changed the course of history, for which he received numerous awards and honorary degrees during his career. He also authored four books: Time On Two Crosses, I Must Resist: Bayard Rustin’s Life, Down The Line, and Rustin: Strategies for Freedom: The Changing Patterns of Black Protest.

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  • Bayard Rustin (1912 – 1987) “shaped virtually every aspect of the modern civil rights movement as a theorist, strategist, and spokesman,” said his biographer Jerald Podair. He was “America’s signature radical voice during the 20th century [including] that of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., whom Rustin trained and mentored. ... he was a civil rights activist, a labor unionist, a socialist, a pacifist and, later in life, a gay rights advocate.” Rustin was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania and raised by his maternal grandparents. He grew up in a large house believing that his mother was his older sister. His early influences included his grandmother’s religious association with Quakers and her membership in the NAACP—National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois and James Weldon Johnson were frequent guests in their home—all of which inspired a young Rustin to campaign against Jim Crow laws—discriminatory laws, rules, regulations, and customs meant to assert white supremacy. His college education included Wilberforce College, Cheyney State Teachers College, and City College of New York. During these times, Rustin joined the American Friends Service Committee, worked to free the Scottsboro Boys—nine young black men in Alabama accused of raping two white women, and joined the Young Communist League—but quickly became disillusioned and resigned. As an accomplished tenor, he sang in a Broadway play and with Blues singer Josh White, performed in Greenwich Village nightclubs, and recorded spirituals from the 1950s through the 1970s. Bayard Rustin’s evolving affiliations included the Socialist Party of Norman Thomas, work with pacifist A.J. Muste of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (who later named Rustin their college secretary for the FOR), and work to protect Japanese- Americans’ property during WWII. He also pioneered a movement to desegregate interstate bus travel. Rustin embraced the pacifist teachings of Mohandas Gandi and refused induction into the military by declaring his status as a conscientious objector, for which he was imprisoned from 1944 to 1946 for violating the Selective Service Act. In 1947, he was arrested for participation in a protest against segregated public transit; and in 1953, he was arrested on a morals charge for publicly engaging in homosexual activity. His work as a civil rights organizer included the Freedom Rides, travel to India to learn more about non-violent resistance, secretary of the War Resisters League, and member of American Friends Service Committee. He is probably best remembered for his five-year special assistant and closer advisory position to Martin Luther King, Jr., which included Rustin’s 1956 advice to Dr. King on Gandhian tactics—convincing Dr. King to forego armed protection for the effective techniques of Gandhi’s non- violent approach. Rustin was also a key organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom where Dr. King delivered his “I Have A Dream Speech.” His work as a civil rights organizer included the Freedom Rides, travel to India to learn more about non-violent resistance, secretary of the War Resisters League, and member of American Friends Service Committee. He is probably best remembered for his five-year special assistant and closer advisory position to Martin Luther King, Jr., which included Rustin’s 1956 advice to Dr. King on Gandhian tactics—convincing Dr. King to forego armed protection for the effective techniques of Gandhi’s non- violent approach. Rustin was also a key organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom where Dr. King delivered his “I Have A Dream Speech.” Rustin’s work changed the course of history, for which he received numerous awards and honorary degrees during his career. He also authored four books: Time On Two Crosses, I Must Resist: Bayard Rustin’s Life, Down The Line, and Rustin: Strategies for Freedom: The Changing Patterns of Black Protest.
  • Thurgood Marshall (1908 – 1993) was a civil rights attorney and Supreme Court Justice. As the lead lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, he was dedicated to bringing about the end of racial segregation in American public schools. He won 29 of the 32 civil rights cases he argued before the Supreme Court, most notably the landmark 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education which ruled that segregation in public education was unconstitutional, thereby reversing the 1896 Supreme Court ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson that established the Separate But Equal doctrine. He was also the first Black justice to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. Marshall was born in Baltimore Maryland, lived briefly in New York—where his parent sought better work opportunities, and moved back to Baltimore when he was six years old. His father enjoyed following legal cases and often took Thurgood with him to observe court proceedings. Along the way, Thurgood fell in love with the law saying of those times with his father,” [he] never told me to become a lawyer, but he turned me into one ... He taught me how to argue and challenged my logic on every point, by making me prove every statement I made, even if we were discussing the weather.” In 1930, Thurgood Marshall graduated with honors from Lincoln University in Chester County, Pennsylvania, the oldest college for Black Americans in the United States. He attended Howard University School of Law in Washington, D.C. where he was mentored by Charles Hamilton Houston who championed the idea that his students could be “social engineers” by using the law as a means to fight for civil rights. President John F. Kennedy appointed Thurgood Marshall to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 1961. President Lyndon B. Johnson nominated Marshall as Solicitor General, to which Marshall was confirmed in 1965. In 1967 President Johnson nominated Marshall to become a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. He was sworn in on October 7, 1967. During his time on the high court, Justice Marshall ruled for equal protection and civil rights, often being the dissenting voice on cases regarding racial discrimination. He was strong on First Amendment rights, opposed capital punishment, and believed the Constitution guaranteed the right to privacy to all citizens. Thurgood Marshall was a pivotal character in American history, challenging America to be a better place for all.
  • F rederick Douglass (1818-1895) was born into slavery in Maryland, escaped to freedom in 1838, and thereafter worked his way to become the 19th century’s best-known and most prominent Black leader for the abolition of slavery, social reforms, and racial equality. He was a brilliant orator, writer, and statesman. Douglass’s beginnings as a formidable New England abolitionist started in 1841 when he joined the Massachusetts Antislavery Society. In 1845, Douglass published his autobiography The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave. This led to his fear of re-enslavement, so he departed America to live in Great Britain for two years. During that time, he gave speeches in support of the American anti-slavery movement, raised enough money to buy his freedom (with the help of English Quakers), and returned to America to further his work. Once settled in his adopted home of Rochester, New York, Douglass published The North Star, an abolitionist newspaper, from 1847 to 1860. In 1848, he attended the first convention for women’s rights, hosted by suffrage pioneer Elizabeth Cady Stanton in Seneca Falls, NY. He signed the convention’s “Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions,” which “demand[ed] the equal station [for women] to which they are entitled.” In further support of equal rights, Douglass joined the American Equal Rights Association (AERA). The organization’s purpose was “to secure Equal Rights to all American citizens, especially the right of suffrage, irrespective of race, color or sex.” Frederick Douglass also published other periodicals. Douglass Monthly (1859–1863) expanded his abolitionist articles to include issues on social reform. There was also the Frederick Douglass Paper (1851–1860) and National Era (1870–1874). Of his many eloquent speeches, Frederick Douglass’s July 4, 1852 speech—marking the United States’ 76th anniversary—is one of his most famous. He used the opportunity to protest the injustice of slavery saying, "Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future."
  • M edgar Evers—born July 2, 1925 in Decatur, Mississippi—was a prominent and pioneering civil rights leader during a time of deep racial segregation and discrimination in the United States. His dedication to the fight for equality and justice led him to become the NAACP’s first field secretary in Mississippi where he organized voter registration drives and challenged racial segregation. He also recruited new civil rights activists, organized protests, and participated in the investigation of the murder of Emmett Till—a case that drew national attention to the injustices suffered by Black Americans. By living through America’s racial tensions in the South, Medgar Evers learned that change would only come through the hard work of confronting societal inequities. His distinguished service in the United States Army during World War II and his love for his family—wife Myrlie, and children Darrell, Reena, and James—laid the groundwork for his drive to fight for a better America. Prior to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Black Americans and other minorities faced discriminatory practices that made exercising their right to vote almost impossible—these included poll taxes, literacy tests, and intimidation by white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan. Medgar Evers worked tirelessly to expand awareness of these disenfranchisement efforts with the goal of opening avenues of empowerment to enable everyone to cast their vote. In 1955, the abduction, torture, and lynching of Emmett Till in Mississippi horrified America. Medgar Evers played a key role in Till’s murder investigation, working closely with the Till family and gathering evidence and witnesses to bring the murderers to justice. Despite all that work, the all-white jury acquitted the defendants. The case highlighted the South’s prevailing racial divide and served as a catalyst for the civil rights movement. Medgar Evers’ status as an important civil rights leader for racial equality also made him a target of numerous intimidation tactics meant to silence his work. This included the firebombing of his family’s home in Jackson, Mississippi. Evers remained resolute in his fight for equal rights until his tragic assassination on June 12, 1963 as he was getting out of his car upon arriving home. Medgar Evers’ legacy lives on today through the thousands of civil rights activists who have been inspired by his passion for human rights. “Freedom has never been free,” he said. We each must claim our courage to work against injustice however we can to honor Medgar Evers’ sacrifice as well as our own convictions that equality matters.
  • Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931) was a journalist, feminist, and civil rights activist best known for her anti-lynching campaign in the 1890s. Many said she was “the loudest and most persistent voice for truth.” T. Thomas Fortune, publisher of The New York Age, wrote that Wells “has plenty of nerve; she is smart as a steel trap, and she has no sympathy with humbug.” In 1892, Wells published Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases and A Red Record: Lynchings in the United States—pamphlets detailing the brutality of lynchings in the South. She co-owned and wrote for Memphis Free Speech and Headlight newspaper, which she used as her platform to launch her anti-lynching crusade. Frederick Douglass described her as a “Brave woman!” At twenty two, while Wells was traveling on a train, the Conductor asked her to move to the Colored Section. She refused and was forcibly removed. Wells successfully sued the railroad, but her case was overturned on appeal. This bold move by Wells took place several decades before Rosa Parks’ famous refusal to give up her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955. In 1894, Wells married Ferdinand L Barnett—also a strong voice against the lynching of black Americans—in Chicago, Illinois and their wedding made the front page of The New York Times—a testament to the significance of their work. The house in this artwork was the couple‘s home from 1919-1930. It is now a designated Chicago landmark. Wells-Barnett marched in the first national women’s suffrage parade held in Washington, D.C. on March 3, 1913. Though black suffragists were relegated to the back of the parade in an effort to appease southern white suffragists whose votes were needed to pass the 19th Amendment, Wells-Barnett joined the white Illinois delegation from her home state at the last minute in protest of this decision. Ida B. Wells-Barnett also organized The Women’s Club, was involved in the formation of the National Association of Colored Women’s Club, and helped stop the proposed segregation of Chicago Public Schools among many other extraordinary accomplishments. She made it her life‘s mission to seek racial and gender equality and justice.
  • Rosa Parks (1913-2005) was a civil rights activist known for her refusal to surrender her city bus seat to a white passenger on December 1, 1955. That bold act led to the 1955-1956 Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama and helped ignite the civil rights movement in the United States. “I was 42 [and] tired of giving in,” Parks said about her decision to defy the common practice of acquiescing Black American rights in deference to White American privilege. She was subsequently arrested and fined fourteen dollars, which she never paid. Parks wasn’t the first to protest segregated public transit in Alabama—15-year-old Claudette Colvin was arrested nine months earlier for the same offense along with dozens of other Black women before her. Rosa Parks’ defiance, however, made the biggest impact because she was the secretary for the local NAACP and accepted the chapter president’s offer to appeal the conviction and thus challenge legal segregation in Alabama. Rosa Louise McCauley was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, but moved to her maternal grandparents’ farm in Pine Level, Alabama, outside Montgomery, with her mother and brother when she was two years old, following her parent’s divorce. For much of her childhood, Rosa was educated at home by her mother—a local schoolteacher—because Rosa suffered from chronic tonsillitis. She worked on the farm and learned to cook and sew. Racism was a constant presence for Rosa and her family. Public transportation, drinking fountains, restaurants, and schools were all segregated under Jim Crow laws. Night raids by the Ku Klux Klan forced her family to be ever vigilant and ready to leave their home at a moment’s notice on nights deemed particularly dangerous. Rosa attended school from age eleven to sixteen. She left due to a family illness and started cleaning houses for white people. At age nineteen, she married Raymond Parks—a barber and civil rights activist. With his encouragement, Rosa earned her high school diploma and made a living as a seamstress. She joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1943 and served as its secretary until 1956. Rosa Parks’ actions inspired the young pastor Martin Luther King, Jr. to lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott starting on December 5, 1955. It lasted 381 days. With Black American ridership constituting 70% of the bus system’s revenues, the boycott made a large statement as it deeply cut into the bus company’s revenues. Other boycotts subsequently took place across the country, protesting segregated restaurants and other public facilities. In November 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s decision declaring Montgomery’s segregated bus seating unconstitutional. Rosa Parks penned several books about her life, and became known as the “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement.”
  • It was a day to remember! August 28, 1963. 250,000 supporters gathered at the Lincoln Memorial for a march on Washington for Jobs & Freedom. The weather was typical of late summer D.C. with a high of 82 degrees, low of 63, and no precipitation. Even so, the crowd sweltered in sun and humidity. Several speakers addressed the throng, but it was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 17-minute speech that carried the day. He effectively defined the Civil Rights movement and the struggle for justice in the United States. Dr. King was the last speaker. He came prepared with words of homage to Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and timed it to correspond with the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. His charismatic, powerful words aimed to incite peaceful change. “It may well be that the Negro is God’s instrument to save the soul of America.” Toward the end of his delivery, Mahalia Jackson (a noted African American gospel singer) shouted to King from the crowd, “Tell them about the dream, Martin.” Dr. King then improvised the conclusion of his speech with his now famous “I have a dream” list of needed changes. Most famous among them was, “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed; ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal’.” In this artwork, Dr. King wears an Earth lapel pin. The artist likes to believe that if Dr. King was still with us, he would preach about his dreams to save our planet.
  • Malcolm Little (1925–1965) was born in Nebraska and raised in Michigan from the age of six. His father, Rev. Earl Little, was a Baptist minister and supporter of Marcus Garvey—an early Black Nationalist leader. When Malcolm’s father died in 1931 after being run over by a streetcar, many thought him the victim of murder by whites. The family he left behind was poor; and his wife, Malcolm’s mother, was committed to an insane asylum in 1939. "Education is the passport to the future,” Malcolm said years later, “for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today." He excelled in school, but ended his formal education after the eighth grade when he lost interest in the system. The ensuing years found Malcolm a rebellious young man who went from the Michigan State Detention Home to living in the Roxbury section of Boston. There, he was involved in petty crimes as a teen, eventually becoming the leader of a gang of thieves. Nicknamed “Detroit Red” due to the reddish tinge in his hair, Malcolm ended up in prison for robbery from 1946 to 1952. During his incarceration, Malcolm converted to the Nation of Islam—a Black movement that combined elements of Islam with Black Nationalism. He quit smoking and gambling and eschewed pork in keeping with the Nation’s dietary restrictions. "After becoming a Muslim in prison, I read almost everything I could put my hands on in the prison library.” He also substituted an “X” for his surname, in keeping with the Nation of Islam’s belief that family names originated with white slaveholders. His Muslim name was el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz. After his release from prison, Malcolm X became a persuasive public speaker, magnetic personality, and tenacious organizer to boldly lead Black Americans into expressing their frustration and anger at their unequal status in American society. “If it doesn't take senators and congressmen and presidential proclamations to give freedom to the white man, it is not necessary for legislation or proclamation or Supreme Court decisions to give freedom to the Black man. You let that white man know, if this is a country of freedom, let it be a country of freedom; and if it's not a country of freedom, change it.” Following his assassination in 1965, the book The Autobiography of Malcolm X made him an ideological hero, particularly among Black youth. "A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything," he cautioned. This artwork was inspired by the 1961 photographic profiling of Malcolm X by Magnum Photo’s © Eve Arnold.
  • Booker Taliaferro Washington (1856–1915) was a prominent Black leader of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was born into slavery and, following his emancipation, became a key voice for former slaves and their descendents through his roles as an educator, author, orator, and advisor to several Presidents of the United States. By age 25, Washington became the leader of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (teachers’ college), now Tuskegee University, in Tuskegee, Alabama. In addition to academics, all students—male and female—had to learn a trade. Washington led the school for over 30 years. Booker T. Washington came to national attention with his Atlanta Compromise speech, delivered to the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia on September 18, 1895. At the time, Reconstruction—following the end of the Civil War in 1865—continued to struggle. Washington was a realists and felt that vocational education and free basic education were the paths to improving Black lives and thereby their communities’ commercial interests. “The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremist folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of ... struggle rather than of artificial forcing ... It is important and right that all privileges of the law be ours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercises of these privileges. The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera house.” His Compromise also included the ideas that blacks should refrain from retaliation against racist behavior and tolerate segregation and discrimination, at least for the time being, while they honed their marketable skills. Come the turn of the 20th century, other black leaders disagreed with Washington‘s theories, most notably W.E.B. du Bois. Following Washington’s death, Atlanta Compromise supporters began turning to civil rights activism, leading up to the Civil Rights Movement that commenced in the 1950s.
  • Land was plentiful in America’s southern colonies, and land owners could become wealthy by farming it in cash crops (such as rice, depicted in this artwork) on plantations, but they needed workers - a lot of them. Most landowners turned to slavery, which gave them laborers and expedient wealth. No one chooses to be a slave, and in the 17th - 19th centuries, extreme measures were often employed to deter slave defection. Whipping, branding, maiming, forced donning of heavy iron collars (some with bells), and manacles were just a few of the techniques used. Laws prohibiting education and even swimming also kept slaves dependent on their servitude situation for survival. Harriet Tubman (née Araminta “Minty” Ross) was born into slavery in eastern Maryland around 1821. Hers was a life of countless hardships and cruelty. At 5 or 6 years old, Minty was hired out to watch over a white woman’s baby as it slept. Whenever the baby cried, Minty would be severely whipped. As a teen, she was hit in the head with a 2-pound weight thrown by an overseer at another slave standing nearby. The blow cracked Minty’s skull, injuring her brain and causing lifelong narcolepsy and temporal lobe epilepsy. As an adult, she changed her name to her mother’s, Harriet. In 1844, she married John Tubman, a free black man. Later that year, she escaped to freedom for fear of being sold to raise money to pay off debts following her owner’s death. Her husband did not join her. The neighboring county had a sizable Quaker community who provided refuge to runaway slaves and helped them navigate the Underground Railroad to freedom in Philadelphia. In 1850 and for the next ten years, Tubman returned to Maryland to bring at least 70 slaves, including family members, to freedom, earning her the nickname “Moses”. Her husband had remarried and chose to stay in Maryland. Since the Fugitive Slave Act was passed that year, Tubman led her escapees by night to Canada, where she moved in 1851. In 1859, she moved to Auburn, NY. Harriet Tubman worked for the Union Army as a scout, spy, leader, and nurse. During the Civil War, she helped free hundreds more slaves. In 1869, she married Union Army veteran Nelson Davis. Tubman never let her illiteracy keep her from making speeches for women’s suffrage rights and abolition. When asked about how many slaves she helped to freedom, she said, “I freed thousands of slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.”
  • Fannie Lou Hamer, born Fannie Lou Townsend on October 6, 1917 in Montgomery County, Mississippi, was the last of 20 children to sharecroppers Ella and James Lee Townsend. From age six to twelve, Hamer picked cotton in the summer and attended a one-room schoolhouse for sharecropper children. By age 13, Hamer dropped out of school to help support her parents by working in the field to pick 200-300 pounds of cotton a day, in spite of living with polio. Hamer continued to hone her reading skills through Bible studies at church. In 1944, she married Perry “Pap” Hamer. In 1961, Fannie Lou underwent surgery to remove a uterine tumor. At the same time, the white doctor performed an unauthorized hysterectomy. This outrageous practice of forced sterilization, Hamer dubbed “Mississippi appendectomy,” was commonly perpetuated on poor, black Americans as a form of population control. She and Pap subsequently adopted two children. n 1962, Fannie Lou Hamer learned of her constitutional right to the ballot box when she attended the annual Regional Council of Negro Leadership conference in Mound Bayou, Mississippi. Though she tried to register to vote, an unreasonable voter registration test quelled her quest. Upon her return to the plantation where she and her husband lived and worked, the boss told her to withdraw her registration because “we’re not ready for that in Mississippi.” Hamer replied, “I didn’t try to register you. I tried to register myself.” Hamer was fired and forced to leave the plantation. She was subsequently shot at and moved to a neighboring county to avoid Ku Klux Klan retaliation for her attempts to vote. Hamer passed the voter registration test on her third try, only to learn that she then needed two poll tax receipts to complete her registration. She later acquired the necessary receipts by paying a fee. Fannie Lou Hamer went on to become a civil rights activist and practiced civil disobedience to protest segregation. She was arrested, jailed, and severely beaten for her demonstrations, which left her with permanent kidney damage. Hamer co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to insure black people’s voices were heard in the all-white Democratic party. As part of her state’s 1964 delegation to the Democratic National Convention, Hamer testified, “all of this is on account we want to register, to become first-class citizens.” Though Hamer suffered ridicule by both whites and blacks for her thick Southern accent, lack of formal education, and common appearance, she had many supporters, including Malcolm X. Her efforts lead to the Democratic Party’s inclusion of a clause that demanded states’ delegations practice equality of representation. In 1972, Hamer was elected as a Democratic Party delegate from Mississippi. She also worked with the National Council of Negro Women and helped convene the National Women’s Political Caucus in the 1970s. She died in 1977 from complications of hypertension and breast cancer.
  • William Edward Burghardt du Bois (1868–1963) was a leading Black intellectual of his time. Well-known for his belief in full civil rights, he inspired generations of freedom fighters through his work as a sociologist, socialist, historian, Pan-Africanist, civil rights activist, author, writer, editor, and scholar at the historically black Atlanta University. He authored numerous books including The Souls of Black Folk, Black Reconstruction in America, John Brown, and The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study. He co-founded the NAACP—the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and created the organization’s official publication The Crisis magazine, for which he was its editor and writer of countless articles for Black rights and women’s rights, including women’s right to vote. Du Bois also co-found the Niagara Movement and the Pan African Congresses—both dedicated to obtaining civil rights for Black Americans with the latter dedicated to creating a sense of brotherhood and collaboration among all people of African descent, irrespective of where they currently live. From The Souls of Black Folk, du Bois wrote, “It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. “The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He does not wish to Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He wouldn't bleach his Negro blood in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of opportunity closed roughly in his face.”
  • The struggle for equal rights in America is as old as our country and beyond. Throughout our history, fear in the guise of “tradition” has prompted our state and federal legislatures to hold tight to old views of privilege and power by passing laws to inhibit the rights of select groups and enhance the benefits of others. This practice of legislative favoritism has prompted a variety of protests by the disenfranchised, while the perceived-disaffected-majority too often perpetuated violence on their minority “oppressors.” These biased laws sought—and some continue to seek—to limit our people’s rights to: citizenship, emancipation, education, marriage, healthcare, freedom of movement, and/or liberty from gender, race, social, economic, and voting rights discrimination. In spite of all of that, our country has made progress, though not enough to rise to the level of a protective guarantee of equal rights that can be achieved through an Amendment to the United States Constitution. Many have tried and more continue to work for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment—first introduced in Congress in 1923 by U.S. Representative Daniel Read Anthony, Jr. (nephew of Susan B. Anthony) and written by suffrage pioneer Alice Paul. This artwork captures the essence of one type of peaceful protest during the 1960s and 1970s.
  • Maya Angelou, best known for her first book I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, was a renowned writer and poet beginning in the second half of the 20th century till her death in 2014. Following the publication of her first book—a best-selling autobiography that launched her career at age 41—Angelou went on to write six more autobiographies along with countless other books of essays and poetry. Her numerous public appearances—notably the reading of her poem On The Pulse Of Morning at the first inauguration of President Clinton in 1993—led many to think Angelou was the nation’s Poet Laureate even though she never officially held the position. Angelou wrote about her life, her family, racism, identity, and travel. Her sagacity and compassion are often quoted, with such wisdom as: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel.” Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Annie Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1928, was no stranger to difficult times. At age three, her parents divorced. She and her older brother went to live with their grandmother for the next four years, during which time their parents did not visit. Following this long separation, the children returned to live with their mother in 1935. A few months later, their mother’s boyfriend raped Angelou. She confided in her brother, who informed the entire family. The rapist was found guilty and sentenced to one day in jail. Four days after his release, he was found murdered. Angelou’s uncle was suspected in the killing. The children returned to live with their grandmother and Angelou did not speak for the next five years. “I thought, my voice killed him; I killed that man, because I told his name ... I would never speak again, because my voice would kill anyone ... .” During her silent years, Angelou read numerous authors’ works that shaped her life forever, including William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, and Georgia Douglas Johnson, as well as civil rights activists James Weldon Johnson, Frances Harper, and Anne Spencer. Maya Angelou went on to be the first Black female cable car conductor in San Francisco, a Calypso music singer and dancer, and a civil rights activist—raising funds in support of Martin Luther King Jr.’s civil rights movement. She traveled the world as a writer and radio broadcaster. King’s assassination devastated Angelou. She fell into a deep depression and turned her attention again to books. This time though, she wrote about her pain. Angelou produced plays, composed music, and wrote screenplays for TV and film, becoming the first black woman to have a screenplay produced. Among her many awards are: Women in Film Crystal Award, Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album, NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work, Glamour Award for The Poet, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
  • What we know as history is not always historical. Such is the case with the quote in this artwork, “Ain’t I a Woman,” attributed to Sojourner Truth from an extemporaneous speech she gave to a women’s rights convention in Akron, Ohio in 1851. Since Sojourner was illiterate, her speech was not written down until it was published a week later in The Anti-Slavery Bugle, with no mention of this line. Twelve years later, in 1863, another version of her speech was published, in the New York Independent, this time giving Sojourner a Southern communication style. Sojourner Truth was a six-foot tall New Yorker, whose first language was Dutch. She started to learn English at the age of nine. So it’s unlikely she spoke like a Southern slave - highlighting the power of folklore and need to pen history to suit Southern needs. Sojourner was born Isabelle Baumfree (Belle), a slave, in Ulster County, New York around 1797; the exact year is unknown. By the age of thirteen, she’d been bought and sold three times. Of her five children, four by her husband Thomas (a slave) and one by a slave owner, only her infant Sophia remained with her when she escaped to freedom in 1826. Once free, Belle asked the Lord to give her a new name symbolic of her new mission - to travel about and proclaim the truth, ergo Sojourner Truth. She spent the rest of her life as an abolitionist and suffrage activist, meeting and speaking with some of the most influential leaders in those movements. She even met with Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant at the White House. Behind Sojourner, in this artwork, is a quilt inspired by Harriet Powers’ appliqué work, whose “naiveté of expression ... is delicious,” so described a local artist of the time. Born into slavery in Georgia in 1837, Powers’ folk art quilts chronicled local legends, astronomical events, and Bible stories.
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Gift card with historical civil right icons

Each card has facts written about the icon on them. 

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