Civil Rights Movement

Leslie Odom Jr., who won a Tony playing Aaron Burr in Hamilton, is now back on Broadway as Purlie.

Arts

A Jim Crow satire returns to Broadway after 62 years — and it's a romp, not a relic

4:38pm September 27, 2023

by Jeff Lunden

In 1961, actor and Civil Rights activist Ossie Davis wrote the blistering play Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch. Now, Leslie Odom Jr. stars in the revival.

The AG Gaston Motel is part of the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument, a collection of landmarks associated with 1963 Birmingham Campaign events, like The Children's Crusade.

National

Birmingham honors the Black businessman who quietly backed the Civil Rights Movement

10:48am June 22, 2023

The National Park Service and the city are teaming up to restore the AG Gaston Motel built by Black entrepreneur AG Gaston. It served as a secure space for civil rights leaders to strategize in 1963.

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A studio portrait of slain civil rights activist Medgar Evers taken in the early 1960s.

60 years ago, Medgar Evers became a martyr of the Civil Rights Movement

4:18pm June 12, 2023

by Julian Ring

On June 12, 1963, Evers was assassinated at his home in Jackson, Miss., by a Ku Klux Klan member. While other leaders pushed for equality across the U.S., Evers focused on his native Mississippi.

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A show at Red's, a juke joint in Clarksdale, Miss., where it's advertised that you can see live blues seven nights a week.

Mississippi is home of the blues and key to civil rights past. Locals tell the story

1:10pm March 13, 2023

With pandemic restrictions lifted, tourists are returning to Mississippi's famous Blues Trail. Civil rights leaders are noticing some are now hungry for more context about the music's origins.

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Education

'Sesame Street' co-creator Lloyd Morrisett dies at 93

10:58am January 25, 2023

by Kaitlyn Radde

Sparked in part by the civil rights movement, the show aimed to teach children basic skills. His hope was to "help those children who would otherwise not succeed in school, do better," he said.

This undated portrait shows Emmett Till, who was killed in Mississippi in 1955.

Emmett Till and his mother honored with the Congressional Gold Medal

11:54am December 24, 2022

by Giulia Heyward

The 14-year-old was killed by two white men in 1955 after a white woman accused him of flirting with her. The medal will be on display at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Jalyn Hall plays Emmett Till and Danielle Deadwyler is his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, in Till.

Arts

Emmett Till is known for his death. A new film about his mother also honors his life

5:05pm October 14, 2022

by Justin Chang

In 1955, a 14-year-old Black boy was lynched in Mississippi. Till tells the story of Mamie Till-Mobley, whose insistence on an open-casket funeral helped ignite the civil rights movement.

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Civil rights leader Clara Luper poses with a photograph from her scrapbooks at a community center in Oklahoma City, Okla., in August 1983.

National

How a history teacher and 13 Black students shaped the civil rights movement

3:15pm August 19, 2022

by Destinee Adams

One of the first lunch counter sit-ins of the civil rights movement took place in Oklahoma City in 1958. This weekend, the city remembers the protest and its organizer, Clara Luper.

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Winston-Salem collecting oral histories, items to preserve Black heritage

2:14pm June 17, 2022

by Keri Brown

An initiative is underway in Winston-Salem to create a digital archive about African American heritage in the community. Oral histories are being collected to capture these stories.

Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., speaks about the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act, which was named after a 14-year-old boy who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955.

Senate passes anti-lynching bill and sends federal hate crime legislation to Biden

7:22am March 08, 2022

by Peter Granitz

The Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act, which sets prison terms of up to 30 years, has been more than a century in the making.