People, Locations, Episodes

Al Sharpton, Minister and Activist born

*Al Sharpton was born on this date in 1954. He is a Black minister, talk show host, activist, and politician. Alfred Charles Sharpton Jr. was born in New York City to Ada (née Richards) and Alfred Charles Sharpton Sr. The family has some Cherokee roots. At four, he preached his first sermon and toured with […]

The Montgomery Improvement Association Begins

*The Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) was formed on this date in 1955. This organization of Black ministers and community leaders focused national attention on racial segregation in the South. Under the leadership of Ralph Abernathy, Martin Luther King Jr., Rufus Lewis, and Edgar Nixon, the MIA was instrumental in guiding the Montgomery bus boycott.  Jo Ann Robinson of the Women’s Political Council and […]

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is Formed

*On this date in 1957, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference is founded. It was put together at a meeting of clergymen in New Orleans, La.

Martin Luther King Jr. was elected it first president. (SCLC) an American nonsectarian agency with headquarters in Atlanta, Ga., was established to coordinate and assist local organizations working for the full equality of Blacks in all aspects of American life. The organization worked mainly in the South and some border states, conducting leadership-training programs, citizen-education projects, and voter-registration drives.

Martin Luther King Jr. Gives His “Give Us The Ballot” Speech

*On May 17, 1957, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “Give Us the Ballot” speech.  Dr. King addresses 25,000 people in Washington D.C. at the Lincoln Memorial for the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom.  He suggested that all politicians’ “betrayal” of disenfranchised Americans offered the ultimate argument for why the struggle for voting rights is essential to the […]

The Prayer Pilgrimage For Freedom Demonstration, a story

*On this date in 1957, The Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom demonstration occurred. It took place in Washington, D.C., an early event in the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The demonstration marked the third anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education (1954), a landmark Supreme Court ruling that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. […]

The American Society of African Culture, a story

*On this date in 1957, we celebrate the American Society of African Culture (AMSAC), an organization of African American writers, artists, and scholars. The society was founded because of the Congress of Negro Writers and Artists in 1956 based on the idea of the French fr: Société Africaine de culture. In the summer of 1957, five African American […]

The Little Rock Nine, a story

*The Little Rock Nine is celebrated on this date in 1957. The Little Rock Nine were nine African American students who were first denied but eventually enrolled to integrate Arkansas Little Rock Central High School. The U.S. Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education decision occurred on May 17, 1954. Tied to the Fourteenth Amendment, the decision declared […]

The West Indian Gazette is Published

*The first edition of the West Indian Gazette (WIG) newspaper was published on this date in 1958.  It was founded in Brixton, London, England, by Trinidadian communist & Black nationalist activist Claudia Jones.  The title as displayed on its masthead was subsequently expanded to West Indian Gazette and Afro-Asian Caribbean News.  Starting as a monthly, […]

The British Columbia Association for the Advancement of Coloured People is formed

*The British Columbia Association for the Advancement of Coloured People is celebrated on this date in 1958. This was the first racially oriented, non-violence/activist organization in British Columbia. At an “overflowing” mass meeting in Vancouver, A. Phillip Randolph, one of the founders of the Brotherhood, set up the city’s division and established a branch of the […]

María Moyano Delgado, Activist born

*María Moyano Delgado was born on this date in 1958.  She was an Afro Peruvian community organizer and activist. María Elena Moyano was born in the Barranco district of Lima.   Moyano’s mother laundered clothes for a living. She grew up with six siblings: Rodolfo, Raul, Carlos, Narda, Eduardo, and Martha. For many years, Maria Elena […]

Peter Mokaba, Political Activist born

*Peter Mokaba was born on this date in 1959. He was a Black African politician and activist. Peter Ramoshoane Mokaba was born in Mankweng near Polokwane (then Pietersburg), South Africa, where he did his primary and secondary education. His mother is Priscilla Mokaba. In 1982, he was convicted for a number of his underground activities […]

Kimberlé Crenshaw, Educator, and Author born

*The birth of Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw in 1959 is celebrated on this date. She is a Black educator, author, Black women’s civil rights advocate and a scholar of the field known as critical race theory. Crenshaw was born in Canton, Ohio, her parents were Marian and Walter Clarence Crenshaw, Jr. She attended Canton McKinley High School. She […]

The Black Consciousness Movement, a story

*The Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) is affirmed on this date in 1960.  The BCM was a grassroots anti-Apartheid activist movement that emerged in South Africa in the mid-1960s from the political vacuum created by the jailing and banning of the African National Congress and Pan Africanist Congress leadership after the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960. The BCM represented a […]

“Sit-In” Protest in Baton Rouge, Louisiana Occurs

*On this date in 1960, a “Sit in” occurred in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  Nine Black Southern University students were arrested for “disturbing the peace.” This was after sitting at the “white only” segregated lunch counters in downtown Baton Rouge. The locations were a Kress Department store and the local Greyhound bus station. Despite the peaceful […]

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is Formed

*On this date we celebrate the beginning of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

SNCC was a United States political organization formed on February 1, 1960, by Black college students dedicated to overturning segregation in the South and giving young Blacks a stronger voice in the civil rights movement in America. SNCC, as an organization, advanced the “sit-in” movement, protest technique. Later in their first year of operations similar sit-in demonstrations occurred in 54 cities in nine states.