Black History Month is celebrated every February to honor the achievements of African Americans who have shaped American history. Historian Carter G. Woodson hoped to raise awareness of African American's contributions to civilization by establishing Negro History Week. The event was first celebrated during a week in February 1926 that included both Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass' birthdays. The week was later expanded to a month in 1976 during the United States bicentennial.
PHOTO: On March 20, 1969, Black hospital workers at the Medical College of South Carolina in Charleston went on strike to protest the firing of twelve employees and to call for higher wages and union recognition.
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This new voter has very little money or belongings, but he has gained his freedom. After passage of the Reconstruction Acts, thousands of politically energized freedmen, rich and poor, registered to...
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At the beginning of the Civil War, the federal government excluded Blacks from the army, but in 1862-63, as the need for soldiers grew, the government scrapped the prohibition and welcomed Black...
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These men represent white Southerners who fought for the Confederacy and are strongly opposed to the idea of Black men voting. Changes that Radical Reconstruction brought about met with vicious...
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The wife of one of the Black voters has joined her husband for this historic event. Women saw enfranchisement of Black men as a gain for the entire race and encouraged men to adhere to the wishes of...
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At this polling station, U.S. Army soldiers are serving as poll workers, since the state of Virginia is under federal military rule. In 1867, the Radical Republicans, now in control of Congress...
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Elizabeth Evelyn Wright’s dream of establishing a school in South Carolina would come true in 1897. Elizabeth Evelyn Wright, a graduate of Tuskegee Institute, had a deep desire to open a school where...
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The Black man in this jail cell has been locked up for refusing to sign a labor contract. Under the Black Codes he is considered a vagrant. Freedpeople had to sign labor contracts to work for whites...
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There was little or no universal or public education in the Antebellum South. Only wealthy elites went to school, and most poor whites were illiterate. They remained ignorant of politics at the...
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The Freedmen’s Bureau helped create labor contracts that were supposed to be fair to both parties, but in many cases established conditions not much better than slavery. This system became known as...
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Like most former Confederates, this landowner resents the authority of U.S. Army officers and the Freedmen’s Bureau. Fearful that their agricultural economy would collapse without the free labor of...
