From the BackStory website:
"Historian Peter Norton speaks with 20th Century History Guy Brian Balogh about how automobile companies in the 1920s managed to re-define streets as a space for cars, rather than pedestrians. And he explains the little-known history of the term 'jaywalker.'"
From the BackStory website:
"Historian Anne Blue Wills tells the story of Sarah Josepha Hale, a New England magazine editor who campaigned tirelessly to put Thanksgiving on our national calendar."
Rachel Quimby looks at the pop culture icon the Yellow Kid and the connection of this figure with yellow journalism.
In this podcast from the Bowery Boys, Greg Young narrates the history of New York's Puck Building, built to house the offices of the turn-of-the-century periodical Puck Magazine.
When did the Jackson, Mississippi sit-in take place? Was it before or after Woolworth's ended its segregation?
The practice of segregated seating at Woolworth’s lunch counters gained national headlines after the Greensboro (NC) sit-ins of 1960. Woolworth’s declared it would continue to abide by its official policy of following “local custom” (i.e. segregated seating in the South). Even as they reported “progress” from time to time in the number of integrated stores in the Woolworth’s chain, they did not abandon the “local custom” policy.
On May 28, 1963, civil rights activists staged a sit-in at the Jackson, Mississippi Woolworth’s lunch counter to protest its segregated seating. There were, at first, two African American women and one African American man from nearby Tougaloo College who took a seat at the lunch counter. They were later joined five other Tougaloo students and professors, white and black. The protestors were attacked by a white mob that punched, spat, screamed obscenities, poured hot coffee, syrup, salt, pepper, and mustard over the protestors until the police, who had been standing idly by, moved in. The vivid pictures from the event turned a local protest into a mass movement against segregation in Jackson.
The sit-in galvanized Jackson’s black community and caught the attention of the Kennedy Administration. Two weeks later, one of the movement’s leaders, Medgar Evers of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and a World War II veteran, was murdered in Jackson by local Ku Klux Klan member Byron De La Beckwith, putting even greater pressure on local leaders and the Kennedy Justice Department to ease tensions. The Kennedy Administration helped broker an agreement between local African American leaders and the mayor’s office to promote a few black city workers and to hire a small number of black police officers to patrol their own neighborhoods. In return, the local leadership of the black community agreed to call off protests and demonstrations, much to the chagrin of younger African American activists.
Hoping to avoid further disturbances, the owner of the Jackson Woolworth’s closed the lunch counter shortly after the sit-in. Public accommodations in Jackson remained segregated until passage of the Civil Rights Act in July 1964. Woolworth officials at that time announced that the company would “now be able to serve all its customers in all its stores on a desegregated basis.”
Branch, Taylor. Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963-1965. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998.
Moody, Anne. Coming of Age in Mississippi. New York: Bantam Dell, 2004.
International Civil Rights Center and Museum
Pitrone, Jean Maddern. F. W. Woolworth and the American Five and Dime: A Social History. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2007.
Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement *for iconic images of the sit in scroll to the bottom half of the page*
Civil Rights in America: Racial Desegregation of Public Accommodations. The National Historic Landmarks, Cultural Resources, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, Washington, D.C. (accessed December 1, 2010).
Dittmer, John. Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1994.
“Jackson Seizes 19 in Racial Protest.” New York Times, May 30, 1963.
“Woolworth Posts Sales Gain, Defends Exclusion of Negroes.” New York Times, May 19, 1960.
Wright, Gavin. “Southern Business and Public Accommodations: An Economic-Historical Paradox.” Paper presented at Business History Conference, Sacramento, California, April, 2008.
“3 In Sit-In Beaten At Jackson Store.” New York Times, May 29, 1963.
This extensive companion to the PBS documentary of the same name provides interpretive and primary material on the history of African-Americans during slavery and Reconstruction, including essays, personal narratives, original documents, historical readings, and lesson plans. The "Time and Place" chronology of slavery and Reconstruction places the main events of U.S. history relating to African Americans between 1619 and 1881 in their historical context. "Slave Memories" allows visitors to hear the voices of African Americans recorded by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) on their experiences in slavery and Reconstruction. "Resources" includes 17 print resources, 23 books for children, and 30 websites related to slavery. "Slave Experience" allows users to explore slave life through the themes of legal rights and government; family; men, women, and gender; living conditions; education, arts, and culture; religion; responses to enslavement; and freedom and emancipation. Each features essays, historical overviews, original documents, and personal narratives.
A K-12 learning section features historical readings of narratives, slave stories and letters, student plays, links to 19 sites with primary sources, and six lesson plans for middle and high school. This website is a valuable resource for teachers as well as an excellent introduction and overview for those with an interest in the history of slavery and slave life in America.
This website is a companion to the PBS show on Rob Williams and the Black Power movement. Rob Williams was "the first African American civil rights leader to advocate armed resistance to racial oppression and violence." His radio program for blacks in the South "Radio Free Dixie," broadcast from exile in Cuba, "included cutting-edge music by African American artists, news from the front lines of the black freedom movement and fiery editorials by Rob Williams that railed against 'rump-licking Uncle Toms' and 'Ku Klux Klan savages.'"
The site offers a description of the film along with the film trailer. It also includes a short biography of Rob Williams with several images, as well as background information on "Radio Free Dixie" with ten audio clips including four excerpts from the show and six music clips. "Learn more" includes links to 12 related websites and six books on Black Power, Radio Free Dixie, Rob Williams, and black revolutionaries. A good starting point for research on Williams and his role in the Black Power movement.
Transcriptions and images of more than 4,000 newspaper advertisements for runaway slaves and indentured servants between 1736 and 1803 can be browsed or search on this website. The runaways are primarily from Virginia, but also come from states along the Eastern seaboard and locations abroad. Materials include ads placed by owners and overseers as well as those placed by sheriffs and other governmental officials for captured or suspected runaway slaves. Additional advertisements announce runaway servants, sailors, and military deserters.
"Exploring Advertisements" offers browse, search, and full-text search functions, as well as maps and timelines for viewing the geographic locations of slaves. The site also provides documents on runaways—including letters, other newspaper materials, literature and narratives, and several dozen official records, such as laws, county records, and House of Burgess journals. Information on the currency and clothing of the time, a gazetteer with seven maps of the region, and a 13-title bibliography are also available.
Nearly 1,400 documents address aspects of life in the South from the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. The database features 10 major projects.
The First Century of the First State University presents materials on the beginnings of the University of North Carolina. Oral Histories of the American South offers 500 oral history interviews on the civil rights, environmental, industrial, and political history of the South. First-Person Narratives of the American South, 18601920 offers 140 diaries, autobiographies, memoirs, travel accounts, and ex-slave narratives. North American Slave Narratives furnishes about 250 texts.
The Library of Southern Literature makes available 51 titles in Southern literature. The Church in the Southern Black Community, Beginnings to 1920 traces the role of the church as a central institution in African American life in the South. The Southern Homefront, 18611865 documents non-military aspects of Southern life. The North Carolina Experience, Beginnings to 1940 provides close to 600 histories, descriptive accounts, institutional reports, works of fiction, images, oral histories, and songs.
North Carolinians and the Great War offers 170 documents on the effects of World War I and its legacy. Finally, True and Candid Compositions: The Lives and Writings of Antebellum Students at the University of North Carolina analyzes 121 documents written by students. All projects are accompanied by essays from the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture.
These 150 oral history interviews and 16 collections of documents address the civil rights movement in Mississippi. Interviews were conducted with figures on both sides of the movement, including volunteers and activists as well as "race-baiting" Governor Ross Barnett and national White Citizens Council leader William J. Simmons.
Document collections offer hundreds of pages of letters, journals, photographs, pamphlets, newsletters, FBI reports, and arrest records. Approximately 25 interviews also offer audio clips. Users may browse finding aids or search by keyword. Six collections pertain to Freedom Summer, the 1964 volunteer initiative in Mississippi to establish schools, register voters, and organize a biracial Democratic party. One collection is devoted to the freedom riders who challenged segregation in 1961. Four explanatory essays provide historical context. Short biographies are furnished on each interviewee and donor, as well as a list of topics addressed and 30 links to other civil rights websites.