Black History

Long before the modern fight over safeguarding immigrants from deportation, the Shadrach Minkins case challenged Massachusetts’ status as a sanctuary state. The situation heated up after a new law required law enforcement officers to ignore the sanctuary status, and Boston’s mayor formally announced his intention to comply with the feds.

In 2018, the tomb holding Martin Luther King Jr. was covered in plastic while workers spruced up the reflecting pool that surrounds it. Written in the tiles is King’s promise that he will never be satisfied “until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

William Monroe Trotter considered his newspaper, the Guardian, to be in the abolitionist tradition. His idol was William Lloyd Garrison, editor of the Liberator, and leader of the abolitionist movement in the United States. Trotter kept a bust of Garrison on his desk. In 1908 when office space became available, Trotter opened the downtown offices of the Guardian in the same building on Cornhill which had once housed the Liberator.

On the night of Sept. 2, 1903, national black leader Booker Taliaferro Washington delivered a short but uplifting address to young black Cantabrigians on the importance of saving, purchasing property and going into business. Invited by then-third Assistant U.S. District Attorney William Henry Lewis, Washington spoke at Mt. Olive Baptist Church (now known as the Massachusetts Avenue Baptist Church).

The creator of what’s now known as Black History Month hoped for a day when it would no longer be required.

On Tremont Street in Lower Roxbury there is a building with a mural on it. It features the likeness of Frederick Douglass. Who was Frederick Douglass?

On Dec. 1, 1955, Rosa Louise Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, city bus. By staying seated, she stood up to racial injustice in America and helped spark a wave of protest for civil rights in the United States.

Civil rights is a complicated issue for even grown-ups to work out and Martin Luther King Jr. Day is more than just a day off school. Here are some activities you and your family can do together to help children understand King and the civil rights movement.

Ralph Abernathy was a fellow pastor and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s chief aide during the American civil rights movement. Keep reading to out more about the extraordinary life of this man.

Civil rights is a complicated issue for even grown-ups to work out and Martin Luther King Jr. Day is more than just a day off school. Here are some activities you and your family can do together to help children understand King and the civil rights movement.

Rising 30 feet above the Tidal Basin in Washington D.C. is a granite statue of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. that memorializes the man and his role in the American civil rights movement. Dedicated in 2011, the park sits at 1964 Independence Ave., S.W., with the address memorializing the passage of Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., leading light of the American Civil Rights movement, was an advocate for nonviolent resistance to injustice and is recognized as a worldwide leader in civil rights, poverty and other injustice.