People, Locations, Episodes

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 and Black nationalist activist Claudia Jones. As displayed on its masthead, the title 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

*On this date in 1958, the British Columbia Association for the Advancement of Coloured People was celebrated. 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, established the city’s division and a branch of the Canadian League […]

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 […]

The First All African People’s Conference Convenes

*On this date in 1958, the first All African Peoples’ Conference (AAPC) was held. This gathering was partly a result and a different perspective to the modern African states represented by the Conference of Heads of Independent African States. The All Africa Peoples Conference was conceived to include social groups, ethnic communities, anti-colonial political parties, […]

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 […]

North Carolina A&T Students Stage Sit-In Protest

*On this date in 1960, the sit-in movement rose to new heights in the Civil rights era.

The North Carolina A&T Four turned up participation in the Black equal rights movement that day. The late David Richmond, Franklin McCain, Jibreel Khazan (formerly Ezell Blair) and Joseph McNeil were all freshman at NCA&T at the time. They entered a segregated North Carolina F.W. Woolworth’s lunch counter and demanded to be served. This protest ignited sit-in campaigns throughout the South.

The Nashville ‘Sit-In’s’ Begin

*On this date in 1960, the Nashville sit-ins occurred. This was part of a nonviolent direct action campaign to end racial segregation at lunch counters in downtown Nashville, Tennessee.

“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.