Jim Crow’s separate but equal not only impacted restaurants and schools, but it also led to the segregation of travel on buses. Black patrons in Winston Salem, North Carolina, frustrated with limited routes, took matters into their own hands.

In 2019, researchers were able to properly authenticate the last known slave ship to enter the United States illegally. That ship, The Clotida, was found in the Mobile River in Southern Alabama.

The lynching of Emmett Till in 1955 became a pivotal point for race relations in the United States. Instead of sitting by silently, his mother, Mamie Till Mobley, opted to utilize the media in a way it had not been used before.

Well before formal legislation was passed, promising freed slaves certain land rights, Black farmers traveled west, exploring, and developing heavily forested land. With tons of experience in their pockets, migrating west made sense and allowed Black farmers and their families a safe place to live and grow.

The 15th Amendment was a monumental piece of legislation that gave Black men the right to vote. As a result of it, over 2,000 African-American men would be elected to office at various levels of government.

Black soldiers have been an instrumental part of the armed forces since the Civil War. They put their lives on their line for their country and entered war to protect the very land that didn’t promise to protect them.

Transitioning from job to job as a teenager, Oscar Micheaux was able to write a story that was inspired by his experience on a farm. The novel, entitled The Homesteader, was published and later adapted into a silent motion picture.

At the turn of the twentieth century, W. E. B. Du Bois curated an exhibit at the Paris Exposition in France entitled “The Exhibit of American Negroes.” The exhibition used photographs to disrupt the negative imagery that was used to depict black Americans at the time.

The landmark case Brown v. Board of Education declared that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. However, for most black and white families, the decision was met with resistance and a court mandate didn’t mean things were going to change.

With the formal ending of slavery in place, many freed black people saw this as an opportunity to start anew. But, for those in the south, things didn’t seem much different. The southern black experience saw more aggression, lynchings and segregation. As a result, the time to move was imminent.