Black History: Facts, People & Month

Jackie Robinson

When Was Jackie Robinson Born? Jackie Robinson was born on January 31, 1919, in Cairo, Georgia, to a family of sharecroppers. He was the youngest of five children. After his father abandoned the family in 1920, they moved to Pasadena, California, where his mother, Mallie, worked a series of odd jobs to support herself and […]

Plessy v. Ferguson

Plessy v. Ferguson: Background and Context After the Compromise of 1877 led to the withdrawal of federal troops from the South, Democrats consolidated control of state legislatures throughout the region, effectively marking the end of Reconstruction. Southern Black people saw the promise of equality under the law embodied by the 13th Amendment, 14th Amendment and […]

NAACP

Founding of the NAACP The NAACP was established in February 1909 in New York City by an interracial group of activists, partially in response to the 1908 Springfield race riot in Illinois. In that event, two Black men being held in a Springfield jail for alleged crimes against white people were surreptitiously transferred to a […]

Thurgood Marshall

Education Thurgood Marshall was born on July 2, 1908, in Baltimore, Maryland. His father, William Marshall, was a railroad porter, and his mother, Norma, was a teacher. After he completed high school in 1925, Marshall attended Lincoln University in Chester County, Pennsylvania. Just before he graduated, he married his first wife, Vivian “Buster” Burey. Marshall decided […]

March on Washington

Lead‑Up to the March on Washington In 1941, A. Philip Randolph, head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and an elder statesman of the civil rights movement, had planned a mass march on Washington to protest Black soldier’s exclusion from World War II defense jobs and New Deal programs. But a day before the […]

Malcolm X

Malcolm X: Early Life Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little in 1925, in Omaha, Nebraska. His father was a Baptist preacher and follower of Marcus Garvey. The family moved to Lansing, Michigan after the Ku Klux Klan made threats against them, though the family continued to face threats in their new home. In 1931, Malcolm’s […]

Freedom Summer

What Was The Cause of the Freedom Summer? By 1964, the civil rights movement was in full swing. The Freedom Riders had spent 1961 riding buses throughout the segregated South, fighting Jim Crow laws that dictated where Black riders could sit, eat, and drink. Martin Luther King, Jr. had given his famous “I Have a […]

Black History Facts

Black History Month honors the contributions of African Americans to U.S. history. Learn about famous firsts in African American history and other little‑known facts.

A. Philip Randolph

Early Life and Move to Harlem Asa Philip Randolph was born on April 15, 1889 in Crescent City, Florida, where his father was a preacher in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. He grew up in an intellectual household, and Randoph and his older brother both studied at the Cookman Institute in Jacksonville, a Methodist school […]

W.E.B. Du Bois

W.E.B. Du Bois’ Childhood Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, on February 23, 1868, Du Bois’ birth certificate has his name as “William E. Duboise.” Two years after his birth his father, Alfred Du Bois, left his mother, Mary Silvina Burghardt. Du Bois became the first person in his extended family to attend high school, and […]

Dred Scott Case

In the Dred Scott case, or Dred Scott v. Sanford, the Supreme Court ruled that no black could claim U.S. citizenship or petition a court for their freedom.

Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass was an escaped slave who became a prominent activist, author and public speaker. He became a leader in the abolitionist movement, which sought to end the practice of slavery, before and during the Civil War.