Learn about African American history with these old magazine articles. Find information on Black Civil Rights violations in the 1920s.
When it became clear to all that the Black community was not wasting its money or withering under the weight of Syphilis like their White counterparts – it was decided that it was time to erect an interracial hotel in the Nevada casino capital of Las Vegas, and so they did; it was called Moulin Rouge.
An article about Elijah Muhammad and the realization of his dreams.
One of Reverend Martin Luther King’s most poignant observations involved the sad fact one of America’s most segregated institutions was the church. This article is about the New York Episcopal Archdioceses and their efforts to remedy that in the early Thirties:
All Souls Episcopal Church is in Harlem, New York’s ‘black belt’. This once lily white congregation has been engulfed by the spreading colored population. Opposition to negro parishioners reached a point when an element of the white vestry asked the rector, Reverend Rollin W. Dodd, to resign…
Although African-American leaders anticipated a rough time when a Missouri politician named Harry Truman assumed the mightiest office in the land – in the end, he proved to be their champion.
[The NAACP] still regard President Truman as their real hero for pressing anti-poll tax, anti-lynching, FEPC and anti-segregation programs in the face of heavy Southern Democratic Opposition.
Those councilors who advised FDR on all matters African-American were popularly known as the Black Brain Trust…
From the pages of THE DIAMONDBACK, the student newspaper of the University of Maryland, came this surprising article that listed numerous denunciations concerning the various ways that the state of Maryland had failed time and again to educate their African-American youth.
‘Separate but equal’ facilities are a myth in Maryland. No Negro school in the state compares with the University of Maryland, which is for white students only.
Dan Burley (1907 – 1962) was a much admired man of his day; noted editor and columnist who served at a number of respected African-American newspapers and magazines, a Boogie Woogie pianist, sports writer covering the Negro League and he was to Jive what Samuel Johnson was to English – a lexicographer. This PIC MAGAZINE profile centers primarily on his efforts to translate famous English lines into Jive talk and chronicle the slanguage .
More about the African-American press corps can be read HERE.
When President Truman’s Committee on Civil Rights submitted their findings to the White House in December of 1947, the anxious and skeptical editors at COMMONWEAL MAGAZINE eagerly waited their conclusions. Knowing that this Southern president was the only Klansman (1924 membership) to have ever attained such high office, they were doubtful that any good would come of it, and in this column they explain why they felt that way.
Four years later an article was written about the gratitude many African-Americans felt toward President Truman and his stand on civil rights – read it here…
This article is a segment from a longer piece regarding the 1944 presidential election and the widespread disillusionment held by many Black voters regarding the failings of FDR and his administration:
…the Negro vote, about two million strong, is shifting back into the Republican column.
The report is largely based upon the observations of one HARPER’S MAGAZINE correspondent named Earl Brown.
Recognizing that the United States has seldom ever been without civil libertarians, of one form or another, who could always be relied upon to file papers in the courts on behalf of one injured tribe or another – I often wondered why, if this was the case, was so much progress made in the American civil rights struggle of the 50s and 60s as opposed to other periods? This article answered that question.
Radio Moscow noted the warnings of a Klansman in South Carolina, that there will be bloodshed if Negro students attend white schools. But ignored the admittance of 1,000 Negroes to colleges in 15 Southern and Border states, schools formerly for whites only.
