Things I like: suffragettes, war workers, factory girls, socialites who got stuff done, ladies who ruled countries, and women who changed the world, even if it was just a little bit. Click on photos for sources.
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Google Doodle celebrating the birthday of Miriam Makeba (1932-2008).
The first African artist to win a Grammy Award, Miriam was a vocal critic of South African apartheid. Banned from her home country because of her activism, Miriam lived in exile for 31 years, only returning after Nelson Mandela was released from prison.
Rosa Parks, the “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement,” would have turned 100 today (February 4, 1913 - October 24, 2005):
Fingerprint Card of Rosa Parks
Aurelia S. Browder et al. v. W. A. Gayle et al., No. 1147, from the Civil Cases series of the Records of District Courts of the United States
On December 1, 1955, during a typical evening rush hour in Montgomery, Alabama, a 42 year-old woman took a seat near the front of the bus on her way home from the Montgomery Fair department store where she worked as a seamstress. Before she reached her destination, she quietly set off a social revolution when the bus driver instructed her to move, and she refused. The bus driver called the police and they arrested Rosa Parks, an African American woman of unchallenged character.
The African-American community of Montgomery organized a boycott of the buses in protest of the discriminating treatment they had endured for years. The boycott, under the leadership of 26-year-old minister Martin Luther King, Jr., was a peaceful, coordinated protest that lasted 381 days and captured world attention.Rosa Parks’ legacy is being honored with a special document display and programs at the National Archives during the month of February.
Myrlie Evers-Williams is the widow of Medgar Evers. Myrlie was waiting inside with their three children when Medgar was gunned down in their driveway on June 12, 1963. It took thirty years for his killer to be brought to justice.
Myrlie is a former chair of the NAACP and a former commissioner of the Los Angeles Board of Public Works. She is currently the Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at Alcorn State University in Mississippi.
Today Myrlie gave the invocation at Obama’s second inaugural. She is both the first woman and the first layperson to give the invocation.
March 11, 1965. Twelve protestors stage a sit-in demonstration at the White House in relation to civil rights.
On August 28, 1963, Edith Lee-Payne was celebrating her 12th birthday by attending the March on Washington with her mother. She did not notice the photographer snap her picture. It would be more than 40 years later that her sister saw the photograph in a calendar celebrating African American history. We were honored to speak with Ms. Lee-Payne about that historic day and her discovery of herself in the National Archives.
The March on Washington in Photographs by usnationalarchives
July 1965: Susie Sanders and Shirley Martin seated on a bench on the lawn of Sidney Lanier High School in Montgomery, Alabama.
These young women were two of the first three African American students to attend the school. The school was integrated in September 1964 when Susie was a sophomore and Shirley was a senior.
White female marcher being carried away by Montgomery police, March 1965
The Selma to Montgomery Marches were organized in March of 1965 by the Dallas County (Alabama) Voters League and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to protest discrimination against black voters. At that time, less than 1% of voting age blacks in Dallas County were registered to vote because of intimidation and a literacy test.
It took three tries for the protesters to successfully make their way from Selma to Montgomery. On March 7th (Bloody Sunday) protesters made it only six blocks before they were attacked by police with billy clubs and tear gas. On March 9th, Martin Luther King, Jr. led a symbolic march to Edmund Pettus Bridge where they had been turned back two days early. On March 16th, Federal District Court Judge Frank Johnson ruled in favor of the march and the state of Alabama was forced to allow the protest.
On March 21st, thousands assembled in Selma for the march to Montgomery. Most were black, although white, Asian and Latino protesters also took part. Walking 12 miles a day, they made it to Montgomery on March 25th and an enlarged protest of 25,000 people headed for the State Capitol Building.
On March 15th, President Lyndon B. Johnson submitted the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to Congress saying:
Even if we pass this bill, the battle will not be over. What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and state of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life. Their cause must be our cause, too, because it is not just Negroes but really it is all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.
Today Edmund Pettrus Bridge is part of the National Park Service’s Historic Places of the Civil Rights Movement.
September 23, 1957 was marked by mob riots in Little Rock, Arkansas over efforts to integrate Central High School.
The violence began when a crowd outside of Central High School learned that nine African American students were inside the high school. Little Rock Mayor Woodrow Wilson Mann asked President Eisenhower to intervene and Eisenhower issued a proclamation providing the legal justification for military intervention. Eisenhower ordered the dispatch of troops to uphold the law and addressed the nation. Protected by 1,000 members of the 101st Airborne Division of the U.S. Army and the now federalized National Guard, the nine students attended their first full day of classes on September 25.
This photo shows the Little Rock Nine escorted into Central High School by U.S. soldiers.
Image courtesy of Central High Museum Historical Collections/UALR Archives and Special Collections
Below is a timeline of the integration of Little Rock’s Central High from Our Presidents. The top photo was taken on September 4, 1957, the first day of school. Fifteen year old Elizabeth Eckford (pictured) should have been part of a group of nine students, but at the last minute the NAACP delayed the integration because they believed the governor was going to bring in the Arkansas National Guard to prevent their enrollment. Elizabeth was the only one would didn’t get the message and showed up for school that day.
Elizabeth arrived to find an angry mob and no organized protection. Grace Lorch (pictured), a 50 something white member of the NAACP, dropped her daughter off at junior high that morning and stopped by the high school to see what was going on. Grace found Elizabeth on her own and escorted her to her mother’s workplace via a city bus.
Think for a second about what it must have been like to have been either of those women. Elizabeth was only 15 years old and a historic event rested on her bravery. One of six children, her mother taught in a segregated school for blind and deaf children while her father worked nights for the railroad. Either of them could have lost their jobs over her enrollment at Central High. Their house could have been firebombed, they could have been killed. All for going to school.
Grace was a serious social justice advocate, both she and her husband had lost jobs over their activism. That day she told the crowd they would be ashamed of themselves in six months and if anyone touched her she would punch them in the nose. Grace wasn’t an armed National Guard, but she was one tough lady.
In the summer of 1957, the city of Little Rock, Arkansas, made plans to desegregate its public schools. When the school year was set to begin, Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, formerly an all-white school, became a battle ground in the nation’s ongoing civil rights struggle.
Here, a timeline of those events in 1957:
September 2: Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus orders the state’s National Guard to surround the school and prevent the entry of the African-American students.
September 4: National Guardsmen bar the entry of the nine African-American students to Central High School.
September 20: Federal Judge Davies orders Governor Faubus to cease barring integration.
September 23: A crowd of about 1,000 people gather in front of the school. The nine students go inside through a side door. When the crowd learns the students are inside, mob riots break out and the students are taken out of the school through a side door.
September 24: Mob violence continues. President Eisenhower announces he is sending 1,000 members of the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock to uphold the law. He also federalized the 10,000-man Arkansas National Guard.
September 25: The students, who become known as The Little Rock Nine, are escorted by Army troops and admitted back into Central High.
June 3, 1958: Ernest Greene becomes the first African-American to graduate from Little Rock’s Central High School.
-more at the Presidential Timeline
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