Plessy v. Ferguson, was decided in May of 1896, by a vote of seven to one. It held that the State of Louisiana could lawfully require railroads to provide what the statute called “equal but separate accommodations” for white and Black people, and that a passenger who refused to sit Read more
In 1830, afraid that white missionaries were aiding the Cherokee in their effort to resist giving up their lands, the Georgia state government made it illegal for white people to live within Cherokee Nation territory without a license from the government. Samuel Austin Worcester – raised in Vermont and trained Read more
In 1942, the U.S. government rounded up citizens and forced them into concentration camps. Between the two countries, over 140,000 people were removed from their home and interned without legal recourse. In many cases, their captors–the U.S. military–sold off their houses, businesses, and belongings for a fraction of their worth, Read more
In August 1895, a ship docks in San Francisco carrying a cook named Wong Kim Ark — born in that very city, armed with an airtight certificate proving it. The customs collector refuses to let him off anyway. What follows is a four-month standoff in the harbor, a Supreme Court Read more
In the spring of 1966, inside a rented office space in New York City that smelled like cigarette smoke and mimeograph ink, a cadre of people worked for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), pronounced “snick.” SNCC was one of many organizations, such as CORE, the SCLC, the NAACP, and Read more
If you look through recordings of country, western, and folk music ranging from the 1920s and 1930s through to present, you’ll notice a theme: songs about crime, murder, and executions are ever-present. From Grayson & Whittier’s recording of the centuries-old ballad “Rose Connelly” in 1927, to Lloyd Wilson’s “Stagger Lee”recorded Read more
Today we’re exploring one of Texas’s most enduring legends – the story of the “Yellow Rose of Texas” and her supposed role in the Battle of San Jacinto. We are going to unravel the myth of “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” We will explore the woman at the heart of Read more
The late 1920s birthed what would become a defining cultural phenomenon—the “pansy craze”—when LGBTQ+ culture burst into mainstream American entertainment from the late 1920s through the early 1930s. The smoky haze of Prohibition-era speakeasies provided the perfect backdrop for drag queens, called “pansy performers,” to be catapulted into underground stardom, Read more
The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was an ethically problematic, to say the least, medical research project conducted in Alabama. Officially titled “The Effects of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male,” this government-sponsored research project was conducted by the United States Public Health Service in Macon County, Alabama, between 1932 and 1972. Read more
In the summer of 1943 the city of Los Angeles erupted into what has become known as the Zoot Suit Riots, where roving bands of white servicemen beat and stripped Mexican American youth of their distinctive zoot suits. The riots took place amidst the Sleepy Lagoon murder trial- a case Read more