Category: Government

United States – South Carolina African American Heritage Council

The movement toward recognizing the importance of preserving cultural richness led to the passage of a joint resolution of the General Assembly in 1993 that established the South Carolina African American Heritage Council, and to its establishment as a commission in 2001 by executive order of Governor Jim Hodges. Since.. Read More…

Rosa Parks and Congressman Walter Fauntroy holding a framed picture of President Lyndon Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Photo Credit: © Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

United States – Civil Rights Act Of 1964

In 1964, Congress passed Public Law 88-352 (78 Stat. 241). The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Provisions of this civil rights act forbade discrimination on the basis of sex, as well as race, in hiring, promoting, and.. Read More…

United States – Freedom Riders

Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated Southern United States in 1961 and subsequent years to challenge the non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court decisions, Morgan v. Virginia (1946) and Boynton v. Virginia (1960), which ruled that segregated public buses, waiting rooms, and.. Read More…

Thurgood Marshall and other members of the N.A.A.C.P. legal defense team who worked on the Brown v. Board of Education case. Photo Credit: © New York Public Library Digital Collections.

United States – Brown v. Board of Education

The Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case was initially heard by a three-judge panel from the U.S. District Court in Kansas, which agreed that public school segregation had a “detrimental effect upon the colored children” and contributed to “a sense of inferiority,” but still upheld the “separate but.. Read More…

Members of the Civilian Conservation Corps. Photo Credit: © Barbara Wright via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

United States – Civilian Conservation Corps

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was founded by U.S. President Roosevelt as part of the Emergency Conservation Act. The CCC was a voluntary public work relief program that operated from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men ages 18–25 and eventually expanded to ages 17–28. The.. Read More…

Black man drinking at Colored water cooler in streetcar terminal, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Photo Credit: © Russell Lee via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

United States – Plessy v. Ferguson

Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation laws for public facilities as long as the segregated facilities were equal in quality; a doctrine that came to be known as “separate but equal.” The decision.. Read More…

Lei Áurea aka Golden Act. Photo Credit: © Arquivo Nacional via Wikimedia Commons.

Brazil – Lei Áurea (“Golden Act”)

The Lei Áurea was preceded by the Rio Branco Law of September 28, 1871 (“the Law of Free Birth”), which freed all children born to enslaved parents, and by the Saraiva-Cotegipe Law (also known as “the Law of Sexagenarians”), of September 28, 1885, that freed enslaved people when they reached.. Read More…

An early celebration of Emancipation Day (Juneteenth) in 1900. Photo Credit: © The Portal to Texas History Austin History Center, Austin Public Library.

United States – Juneteenth aka Freedom Day, Jubilee Day

On June 19, 1865, Union soldiers reach Texas and share the news of President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. This becomes known as Juneteenth with annual celebrations initially just in Texas but now in many other cities and states across the United States. It is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of.. Read More…

Reading the Emancipation Proclamation. Photo Credit: © New York Public Library Digital Collections.

United States – Emancipation Proclamation

United States President, Abraham Lincoln, issued the Emancipation Proclamation or Proclamation 95 which (legally) freed the enslaved. The proclamation declared “that all persons held as slaves” within the rebellious states “are, and henceforward shall be free.” From the first days of the Civil War, enslaved Africans had acted to secure.. Read More…