When History Failed to Turn
Carol Anderson reflects on why once vibrant neighborhoods and why they became places of poverty and crime. Lack of equal educational opportunities despite the Brown v. Board decision left people poorly prepared to face a changing economy.
Speech by Frances Watkins Harper: “We Are All Bound Up Together”
Read an excerpt from an 1866 speech by Black activist and suffragist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. This reading is available in Spanish.
Speech by Frances Watkins Harper: “We Are All Bound Up Together” (en español)
In Spanish, read an excerpt from an 1866 speech by Black activist and suffragist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.
They Fence Their Neighbors Away
Sioux chief Sitting Bull responds to different visions of land ownership in this speech excerpt.
They Fence Their Neighbors Away (en español)
In Spanish, Sioux chief Sitting Bull responds to different visions of land ownership in this speech excerpt.
Platform of the Workingmen’s Party of California
The political platform of the Workingmen's Party of California, a third party organized around eliminating competition for white laborers in the West and advocating for a ban on Chinese immigration.
White Nationalism
This Explainer is intended to describe key characteristics of the white nationalist ideology and clarify some of the terms surrounding it. It is important to note that many of the beliefs described here are based on false and dangerous assumptions.
What is Migration?
Use this Explainer to help differentiate between terms like refugee, migrant, and asylum.
Glenn Ligon, Untitled - Four Etchings [A]
In this white on black etching, Glenn Ligon repeats "I do not always feel colored," a phrase from Zora Neale Hurston's essay "How It Feels to Be Colored Me."
Why MLK Encouraged 225,000 Chicago Kids to Cut Class in 1963
Learn about the 1963 Chicago Public School Boycott, when students demanded better schools for black neighborhoods and equal opportunity for all.
Glenn Ligon, Untitled - Four Etchings [B]
This black-on-white etching quotes Zora Neale Hurston's essay "How It Feels to be Colored Me."
Glenn Ligon, Untitled - Four Etchings [C]
In this black-on-black etching, Glenn Ligon uses Ralph Ellison's quote from the prologue of his novel, Invisible Man (1952): "I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus side-shows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only themselves, or figments of their imagina-"