On March 25, 2018, Linda Brown passed at age 76 (some reports claim 75) in Topeka, Kansas. She was the schoolgirl who was at the center of the 1954 US Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education. At age 9, Brown's father Oliver Brown attempted to enroll her in the all-white Sumner Elementary School … Continue reading A School Girl Makes History: Tribute to Linda Brown
Today’s post is written by Dr. Greg Bradsher, Senior Archivist at the National Archives at College Park Late in 1946, Attorney General Tom Clark, concerned about the direction American life was taking in the wake of World War II, decided something dramatic was needed to increase public awareness of their heritage of freedom and the … Continue reading The Freedom Train and the Contagion of Liberty, 1947-1949
Today’s blog was written by Stacey Chandler, Textual Reference Archivist at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library Part II: Literacy Tests, Poll Taxes, and other 1971(a) Barriers to the Black Vote In 1962, Deputy Attorney General Burke Marshall reported that “racial denials of the right to vote” existed in eight states, with only fourteen percent of … Continue reading Voting Rights in the Early 1960s: “Registering Who They Wanted To”
Today’s blog was written by Stacey Chandler, Textual Reference Archivist at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library Part I: Mapping the Barriers A basic law protecting the right to vote “without distinction of race, color, or previous condition of servitude” has been part of the American story for almost 150 years. The law evolved through the … Continue reading “When It Was So Rough that You Couldn’t Make It”: Voting Rights in the Early 1960s
Today's Blog was written by Dr. Tina L. Ligon, Supervisory Archivist at the National Archives at College Park, Maryland This record of the week was a part of a presentation on the role of the federal government in black education, given at the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) Conference … Continue reading Morgan v. Hennigan: Desegregation of Boston Public Schools
