Civil Rights Movement

Politicians, activists and community leaders in Atlanta are working to restore the long-ignored chapter of U.S. history following the Civil War where thousands of Black men, women and children were pulled off the streets and convicted of petty crimes then sent into camps and factories.

Now 82 and slowed by age, NAACP activist Claudette Colvin is asking a court in Montgomery to wipe away her 1955 conviction for assaulting a police officer during a bus incident that occurred months before Rosa Parks' historic case.

The late Rudy Lombard and his contributions to the Civil Rights Movement are little known, but that’s exactly how the activist and leader wanted it. The New Orleans native made history with a series of sit-ins in New Orleans, immortalizing himself and other activists with their bold actions against racism. Lombard was born in Algiers, […]

Diane Nash is one of the most important icons of the civil rights movement, although her contributions were often overshadowed by more well-known male figures. Though she preferred a low profile and never sought the spotlight, Nash is a living Black heroine who continues to work for equal rights for all. Sign Up For Our […]

The Friendship Nine are a group of young activists who were jailed and charged for trespassing after a non-violent protest because they refused bail.  In a long road to justice, the Friendship Nine’s convictions were finally thrown out of court by a South Carolina judge, cementing the legacy of the brave men. SIGN UP FOR […]

Kathryn Johnson, a trailblazing reporter for The Associated Press whose intrepid coverage of the civil rights movement and other major stories led to a string of legendary scoops, died Wednesday. She was 93. Her niece, Rebecca Winters, said Johnson died Wednesday morning in Atlanta. Johnson was the only journalist allowed inside Martin Luther King Jr.’s […]

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — A new project is highlighting some of the places in Alabama that played a role in the civil rights movement. An online, oral history presentation called “Voices of Alabama” features photos of historic sites and interviews with some of the people who worked with the civil rights movement in the 1950s […]

Jessie Dean Gipson Simmons was full of optimism when she and her family moved from an apartment in a troubled area of Detroit to a new development in Inkster, Michigan in 1955. With three children in tow, Jessie and her husband settled into a home on Colgate Street in a neighborhood known as “Brick City” […]

The Mississippi home of civil rights leaders Medgar and Myrlie Evers became a national monument Tuesday, as part of a bipartisan public lands bill signed by Donald Trump. Medgar Evers, a World War II veteran who became the Mississippi NAACP’s first field secretary in 1954 was a major part of of the Civil Rights Movement. […]

Ella Baker worked for over five decades as a civil rights activist and organizer, emerging as one of the most important female figures of the Civil Rights Movement. Baker was born on December 12, 1903 in Norfolk, Va., but was raised in Littleton, N.C. She attended Shaw University, graduating as its valedictorian in 1927 before […]

We shall overcome, We shall overcome, We shall overcome, some day. Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe We shall overcome, some day. *Those stirring words from the first verse of the iconic song “We Shall Overcome” shaped the Civil Rights Movement and became the battle cry for African-Americans throughout the late 1950s, 1960s, and beyond. […]

Acquisition: ARRAY announces the film distribution collective’s seventeenth feature film acquisition, TEACH US ALL. Marking the directorial debut from Sonia Lowman, the timely documentary examines the U.S. education system from the historic Little Rock Crisis to present day disparities in access that are culminating into a resegregation of schools across the nation. ARRAY has acquired […]