Black Panther Party
In October of 1966, in Oakland California, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. The Panthers practiced militant self-defense of minority communities against the U.S. government, and fought to establish revolutionary socialism through mass organizing and community based programs. The party was one of the first organizations in U.S. history to militantly struggle for ethnic minority and working class emancipation — a party whose agenda was the revolutionary establishment of real economic, social, and political equality across gender and color lines.
In October of 1967, the police arrest the Defense Minister of the Panthers, Huey Newton, for killing an Oakland cop. Panther Eldridge Cleaver begins the movement to "Free Huey", a struggle the Panthers would devote a great deal of their attention to in the coming years, while the party spreads its roots further into the political spectrum, forming coalitions with various revolutionary parties. Stokely Carmichael,
the former chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and a nationally known proponent of Black Power, is recruited into the party through this struggle, and soon becomes the party's Prime Minister in February, 1968. Carmichael is adamantly against allowing whites into the black liberation movement, explaining whites cannot relate to the black experience and have an intimidating effect on blacks; a position that stirs opposition within the Panthers. Carmichael explains: "Whites who come into the black community with ideas of change seem to want to absolve the power structure of its responsibility for what it is doing, and say that change can only come through black unity, which is the worst kind of paternalism..... If we are to proceed toward true liberation, we must cut ourselves off from white people..... [otherwise] we will find ourselves entwined in the tentacles of the white power complex that controls this country.”
is shot ten times dead, after his house is set ablaze and he is forced to run out into a fire of bullets. Just two days earlier, Martin Luther King is assasinated, after he had begun rethinking his own doctrines of non-violence, and started to build ties with radical unions. Two months later on the day of Bobby's death, Robert Kennedy, widely recognised in the minority commmunity as one of the only politicians in the US "sympathetic" to the civil rights movement, is also assasinated.
A few months later, J. Edgar Hoover publicly states that the Panthers are the "greatest threat to the internal security of the country."
In Chicago, the outstanding leader of the Panthers local, Fred Hampton, leads five different breakfast programs on the West Side, helps create a free medical center, and initiates a door to door program of health services which test for sickle cell anemia, and encourage blood drives for the Cook County Hospital. The Chicago party also begins reaching out to local gangs to clean up their acts, get them away from crime and bring them into the class war. The Parties efforts meet wide success, and Hampton's audiences and organised contingent grow by the day.
On December 4th, at 4:00 a.m. in the morning, thanks to information from an FBI informant , Chicago police raid the Panthers' Chicago apartment, murdering Fred Hampton while he sleeps in bed. He is shot twice in the head, once in the arm and shoulder; while three other people sleeping in the same bed escape unharmed. Mark Clark, sleeping in the living room chair, is also murdered while asleep. Hampton's wife, carrying child for 8 months, is also shot, but survives. Four panthers sleeping in the apartment are wounded, while one other escapes injury . Fred Hampton was 21 years old when he was executed, Mark was 17 years old. According to the findings of the federal grand jury, Ninety bullets were fired inside the apartment. 1 came from a Panther — Mark — who slept with a shotgun in his hand. All surviving Panther members were arrested for "attempted murder of the police and aggravated assault". Not a single cop spent a moment in jail for the executions.
In 1969 Seale is indicted in Chicago for protesting during the Democratic national convention of last year. The court refuses to allow Seale to choose a lawyer. As Seale repeatedly stands up during the show trial insisting that he is being denied his constitutional right to counsel, the judge orders him bound and gagged. He is convicted on 16 counts of contempt and sentenced to four years in prison. While in jail he would be charged again for killing a cop in years past, a trial that would end in 1971 with a hung jury.
In March, 1970, Bobby Seale publishes Seize The Time while still being held in prison, the story of the Panthers and Huey Newton. On April 2, 1970, in New York, 21 Panthers are charged with plotting to assassinate police officers and blow up buildings. On May 22nd, Eight members, including Ericka Huggins, are arrested on a variety of conspiracy and murder charges in New Haven, Connecticut. Meanwhile, Chief of staff David Hilliard is on trial for threatening President Richard Nixon. The party does little to separate its legal and illegal aspects, and is thus always and everywhere under attack by the government. In 1971, the Panther's newspaper circulation reaches 250,000.
On Huey Newton's release from prison, he devotes more effort to further develop the Panther's socialist survival programs in black communities; programs that provided free breakfasts for children, established free medical clinics, helped the homeless find housing, and gave away free clothing and food.
Bobby Seale resigns from the party; while Elaine Brown takes the lead in continuing the Panther community programs. In the fall of 1975, Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver return from exile as born-again Christians. In 1979, all charges against Cleaver are dropped after he bargains with the state and pleads guilty to assault in a 1968 shoot out with the cops. He is put on five years probation. In the dimming years of his life, Cleaver assimilates a political outlook similar to Martin Luther King, engages in various business ventures, and becomes heavily addicted to cocaine.
By the beginning of the 1980s, attacks on the party and internal degradation and divisions, cause the party to fall apart. The leadership of the party had been absolutely smashed; its rank and file constantly terrorized by the police. Many remaining Panthers were hunted down and killed in the following years, imprisoned on trumped charges (Mumia Abu-Jamal, Sundiata Acoli, among many others), or forced to flee the United States (Assata Shakur, and others).
As Cleaver would later explain in an interview a year before his death: "As it was [the U.S. government] chopped off the head [of the Black liberation movement] and left the body there armed. That's why all these young bloods are out there now, they've got the rhetoric but are without the political direction... and they've got the guns."
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| Original six Black Panthers (November, 1966) Top left to right: Elbert "Big Man" Howard; Huey P. Newton (Defense Minister), Sherman Forte, Bobby Seale (Chairman). Bottom: Reggie Forte and Little Bobby Hutton (Treasurer). |
Black Panther Theory: The practices of the late Malcolm X were deeply rooted in the theoretical foundations of the Black Panther Party. Malcolm had represented both a militant revolutionary, with the dignity and self-respect to stand up and fight to win equality for all oppressed minorities; while also being an outstanding role model, someone who sought to bring about positive social services; something the Black Panthers would take to new heights. The Panthers followed Malcolm's belief of international working class unity across the spectrum of color and gender, and thus united with various minority and white revolutionary groups. From the tenets of Maoism they set the role of their Party as the vanguard of the revolution and worked to establish a united front, while from Marxism they addressed the capitalist economic system, embraced the theory of dialectical materialism, and represented the need for all workers to forcefully take over the means of production.
Black Panther History: On April 25th, 1967, the first issue of The Black Panther, the party's official news organ, goes into distribution. In the following month, the party marches on the California state capital fully armed, in protest of the state's attempt to outlaw carrying loaded weapons in public. Bobby Seale reads a statement of protest; while the police respond by immediately arresting him and all 30 armed Panthers. This early act of political repression kindles the fires to the burning resistance movement in the United States; soon initiating minority workers to take up arms and form new Panther chapters outside the state.
The Black Panther: [off-site link] Articles from 1968-69 In October of 1967, the police arrest the Defense Minister of the Panthers, Huey Newton, for killing an Oakland cop. Panther Eldridge Cleaver begins the movement to "Free Huey", a struggle the Panthers would devote a great deal of their attention to in the coming years, while the party spreads its roots further into the political spectrum, forming coalitions with various revolutionary parties. Stokely Carmichael,
the former chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and a nationally known proponent of Black Power, is recruited into the party through this struggle, and soon becomes the party's Prime Minister in February, 1968. Carmichael is adamantly against allowing whites into the black liberation movement, explaining whites cannot relate to the black experience and have an intimidating effect on blacks; a position that stirs opposition within the Panthers. Carmichael explains: "Whites who come into the black community with ideas of change seem to want to absolve the power structure of its responsibility for what it is doing, and say that change can only come through black unity, which is the worst kind of paternalism..... If we are to proceed toward true liberation, we must cut ourselves off from white people..... [otherwise] we will find ourselves entwined in the tentacles of the white power complex that controls this country.” Stokely Carmichael: The Basis of Black Power
In the beginning of 1968, after selling Mao's Red Book to university students in order to buy shotguns, the Party makes the book required reading. Meanwhile, the FBI, under J. Edgar Hoover, begins a program called COINTELPRO (counterintelligence program) to break up the spreading unity of revolutionary groups that had begun solidifying through the work and examaple of the Panthers — the Peace and Freedom Party, Brown Berets, Students for a Democratic Society, the SNCC, SCLC, Poor People's March, Cesar Chavez and others in the farm labor movement, the American Indian Movement, Young Puerto Rican Brothers, the Young Lords and many others. To destroy the party, the FBI begins with a program of surgical assassinations — killing leading members of the party who they know cannot be otherwise subverted. Following these mass killings would be a series of arrests, followed by a program of psychological warfare, designed to split the party both politically and morally through the use of espionage, provocatures, and chemical warfare. Warning to So-Called “Paper Panthers”, The Black Panther, September 28, 1968
Watered down examples of FBI investigations, provided by the FBI: [off-site links]
The Winston Salem (N.C.) Black Panthers (2,895 pages)
Communist infiltration of the SNCC in 1964 (2,887 pages)
Cesar Chavez and United Farm Workers Communist Affiliations in 1965 (2,021 pages)
Communist infiltration of the SNCC in 1964 (2,887 pages)
Cesar Chavez and United Farm Workers Communist Affiliations in 1965 (2,021 pages)
U.S. Police Terror and Repression
On April 6, 1968, in West Oakland, Bobby Hutton, 17 years old, is shot dead by Oakland police. In a 90 minute gun battle, an unarmed Bobby Hutton is shot ten times dead, after his house is set ablaze and he is forced to run out into a fire of bullets. Just two days earlier, Martin Luther King is assasinated, after he had begun rethinking his own doctrines of non-violence, and started to build ties with radical unions. Two months later on the day of Bobby's death, Robert Kennedy, widely recognised in the minority commmunity as one of the only politicians in the US "sympathetic" to the civil rights movement, is also assasinated.  | In January, 1969, The first Panther's Free Breakfast for School Children Program is initiated at St. Augustine's Church in Oakland. By the end of the year, the Panthers set up kitchens in cities across the nation, feeding over 10,000 children every day before they went to school. The Black Panther: To Feed Our Children |
In Chicago, the outstanding leader of the Panthers local, Fred Hampton, leads five different breakfast programs on the West Side, helps create a free medical center, and initiates a door to door program of health services which test for sickle cell anemia, and encourage blood drives for the Cook County Hospital. The Chicago party also begins reaching out to local gangs to clean up their acts, get them away from crime and bring them into the class war. The Parties efforts meet wide success, and Hampton's audiences and organised contingent grow by the day.
On December 4th, at 4:00 a.m. in the morning, thanks to information from an FBI informant , Chicago police raid the Panthers' Chicago apartment, murdering Fred Hampton while he sleeps in bed. He is shot twice in the head, once in the arm and shoulder; while three other people sleeping in the same bed escape unharmed. Mark Clark, sleeping in the living room chair, is also murdered while asleep. Hampton's wife, carrying child for 8 months, is also shot, but survives. Four panthers sleeping in the apartment are wounded, while one other escapes injury . Fred Hampton was 21 years old when he was executed, Mark was 17 years old. According to the findings of the federal grand jury, Ninety bullets were fired inside the apartment. 1 came from a Panther — Mark — who slept with a shotgun in his hand. All surviving Panther members were arrested for "attempted murder of the police and aggravated assault". Not a single cop spent a moment in jail for the executions. Fred Hampton: I am ... a Revolutionary
In the summer of 1969, the alliance between the Panthers and SNCC begins ripping apart. One of the main points of dispute is the inclusion of whites in the struggle for minority liberation, a dispute which is pushed into an open gun fight at the University of California in Los Angeles against the group US, led by Maulana Karenga, which leaves two Panthers dead. In September, in the government's court house, Huey Newton is convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to 2 to 15 years in prison; by 1970 the conviction is appealed and overturned on procedural errors. On November 24, 1968, Kathleen and Eldridge Cleaver flee the US, visit Cuba and Paris, and eventually settle in Algeria. Earlier in the year Cleaver published his famous book Soul on Ice. By the end of the year, the party has swelled from 400 members to over 5,000 members in 45 chapters and branches, with a newspaper circulation of 100,000 copies. In 1969 Seale is indicted in Chicago for protesting during the Democratic national convention of last year. The court refuses to allow Seale to choose a lawyer. As Seale repeatedly stands up during the show trial insisting that he is being denied his constitutional right to counsel, the judge orders him bound and gagged. He is convicted on 16 counts of contempt and sentenced to four years in prison. While in jail he would be charged again for killing a cop in years past, a trial that would end in 1971 with a hung jury.
In March, 1970, Bobby Seale publishes Seize The Time while still being held in prison, the story of the Panthers and Huey Newton. On April 2, 1970, in New York, 21 Panthers are charged with plotting to assassinate police officers and blow up buildings. On May 22nd, Eight members, including Ericka Huggins, are arrested on a variety of conspiracy and murder charges in New Haven, Connecticut. Meanwhile, Chief of staff David Hilliard is on trial for threatening President Richard Nixon. The party does little to separate its legal and illegal aspects, and is thus always and everywhere under attack by the government. In 1971, the Panther's newspaper circulation reaches 250,000.
On Huey Newton's release from prison, he devotes more effort to further develop the Panther's socialist survival programs in black communities; programs that provided free breakfasts for children, established free medical clinics, helped the homeless find housing, and gave away free clothing and food.
FBI forgery, provacation, & chemical war
In March, 1970, the FBI begins to soe seeds of factionalism in the Black Panthers, in part by forging letters to members. Eldridge Cleaver is one of their main targets — living in exile in Algiers — they gradually convince him with a steady stream of misinformation that the BPP leadership is trying to remove him from power. Cleaver recieved stacks of forgered FBI letters from supposed party members, criticising Netwon's leadership, and asking for Cleaver to take control. An example of such a forged letter, written using the name of Connie Matthews, Newton's personal secretary: I know you have not been told what has been happening lately.... Things around headquarters are dreadfully disorganized with the comrade commander not making proper decisions. The newspaper is in a shambles. No one knows who is in charge. The foreign department gets no support. Brothers and sisters are accused of all sorts of things...
I am disturbed because I, myself, do not know which way to turn.... If only you were here to inject some strength into the movement, or to give some advice. One of two steps must be taken soon and both are drastic. We must either get rid of the supreme commander or get rid of the disloyal members... Huey is really all we have right now and we can't let him down, reglardless of how poorly he is acting, unless you feel otherwise.
Cleaver receives similarly forged letters across the spectrum, from groups outside the Panthers, to Panthers themselves, from rank and file members to Elbert "Big Man" Howard, editor of the Black Panther. The split comes when Newton goes onto a T.V. talk show for an interview, with Cleaver on the phone in Algiers. Cleaver expresses his absolute disdain for what has happened to the party, demands that David Hilliard (Chief of Staff) be removed, and even attacks the breakfast program as reformist. Cleaver is expelled from the Central Committee, and starts up his own Black Liberation Army. In 1973, Seale runs for mayor of Oakland. Though he receives 40 percent of the vote, he is defeated. The destroyed remnants of the party leadership
With such great struggles, seeing the party being ripped apart by factions and internal hatred, Huey, like many members, becomes disillusioned. He no longer wants to lead the party, though so many expect and demand otherwise, while he spins into a spiral of self-doubt. He becomes heavily dependent on cocaine, heroin, and others. It is not clear this was his own doing, and very probable the work of the FBI. Huey remarked in one of his public speeches in the 1980s, where he would often have spurts of his brilliant clarity but then become entirely incoherent and rambling, that he was killing himself by reactionary suicide, through the vices of drug addiction. On August 22, 1989, Newton is shot dead on the streets of Oakland in a drug dispute.Bobby Seale resigns from the party; while Elaine Brown takes the lead in continuing the Panther community programs. In the fall of 1975, Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver return from exile as born-again Christians. In 1979, all charges against Cleaver are dropped after he bargains with the state and pleads guilty to assault in a 1968 shoot out with the cops. He is put on five years probation. In the dimming years of his life, Cleaver assimilates a political outlook similar to Martin Luther King, engages in various business ventures, and becomes heavily addicted to cocaine.
By the beginning of the 1980s, attacks on the party and internal degradation and divisions, cause the party to fall apart. The leadership of the party had been absolutely smashed; its rank and file constantly terrorized by the police. Many remaining Panthers were hunted down and killed in the following years, imprisoned on trumped charges (Mumia Abu-Jamal, Sundiata Acoli, among many others), or forced to flee the United States (Assata Shakur, and others).
As Cleaver would later explain in an interview a year before his death: "As it was [the U.S. government] chopped off the head [of the Black liberation movement] and left the body there armed. That's why all these young bloods are out there now, they've got the rhetoric but are without the political direction... and they've got the guns."
Black Child's Pledge
I pledge allegiance to my Black People.
I pledge to develop my mind and body to the greatest extent possible.
I will learn all that I can in order to give my best to my People in their struggle for liberation.
I will keep myself physically fit, building a strong body free from drugs and other substances which weaken me and make me less capable of protecting myself, my family and my Black brothers and sisters.
I will unselfishly share my knowledge and understanding with them in order to bring about change more quickly.
I will discipline myself to direct my energies thoughtfully and constructively rather than wasting them in idle hatred.
I will train myself never to hurt or allow others to harm my Black brothers and sisters for I recognize that we need every Black Man, Woman, and Child to be physically, mentally and psychologically strong.
These principles I pledge to practice daily and to teach them to others in order to unite my People.
I pledge to develop my mind and body to the greatest extent possible.
I will learn all that I can in order to give my best to my People in their struggle for liberation.
I will keep myself physically fit, building a strong body free from drugs and other substances which weaken me and make me less capable of protecting myself, my family and my Black brothers and sisters.
I will unselfishly share my knowledge and understanding with them in order to bring about change more quickly.
I will discipline myself to direct my energies thoughtfully and constructively rather than wasting them in idle hatred.
I will train myself never to hurt or allow others to harm my Black brothers and sisters for I recognize that we need every Black Man, Woman, and Child to be physically, mentally and psychologically strong.
These principles I pledge to practice daily and to teach them to others in order to unite my People.
The Black Panther, October 26, 1968
by Shirley Williams
by Shirley Williams
Links:
Angela Davis: PBS Interview in 1998: "We can't think narrowly about movements for black liberation and we can't necessarily see this class division as simply a product or a certain strategy that black movements have developed for liberation.... We have to look at for example the increasing globalization of capital, the whole system of transitional capitalism now which has had an impact on black populations — that has for example eradicated large numbers of jobs that black people traditionally have been able to count upon and created communities where the tax base is lost now as a result of corporations moving to the third world in order to discover cheap labor."
War Against The Panthers: A Study Of Repression In America by Huey Netwon, June 1980.
Interview of Bobby Seale in 1996: "They came down on us because we had a grass-roots, real people's revolution, complete with the programs, complete with the unity, complete with the working coalitions, we were crossing racial lines. That synergetic statement of "All power to all the people," "Down with the racist pig power structure" -- we were not talking about the average white person: we were talking about the corporate money rich and the racist jive politicians and the lackeys, as we used to call them, for the government who perpetuates all this exploitation and racism."
Interview of Eldrige Cleaver, a year before his death, now using the words of Martin Luther King, in 1997: "I think that it is possible for the capitalist system to have a program of full employment, but we have a spiritual and moral problem in America. Our problem is not economic or political, it is that we do not care about each other.....
History of Jim Crow
Jim Crow History Resources
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History Essays: (Many more essays and lesson plans are in development, if you would like to contribute for pay, Join Us.)
All essays and lesson plans are available to print as Adobe PDF files. If you don't have the FREE Adobe Acrobat Reader, click here. From Terror to Triumph: Historical Overview
This historical overview is actually a group of five themed essays focusing on creating, surviving, resisting, escaping, and transcending Jim Crow oppression and discrimination. These themes divide the history of the Jim Crow era, and offer teachers an organizational framework for understanding and teaching the subject. Each of these themes is explored further in the In Depth link. These essays, and others in the Teacher Resources section, provide a wealth of information about the changes and continuity in the tortured history of African Americans as they experienced segregation and discrimination from the Reconstruction Era to the 1950s.
- Creating Jim Crow
Beginning with an explanation of the origin of the term Jim Crow, this essay focuses on the time period beginning with the post Reconstruction period through the late 1890s and the legalization of segregation.
• In-Depth Essay - Surviving Jim Crow
This essay focuses on the ways in which African Americans made accommodations, both personal and on a nationwide scale, within a system that discounted them.
• In-Depth Essay - Resisting Jim Crow
This section offers a multi-perspective look at the ways in which African Americans resisted the confines of the system.
• In-Depth Essay
- Escaping Jim Crow
The Kansas Exodus and Great Migration offered the hope of equality to thousands of African Americans fleeing the South. The themed content of this essay encompasses that migration through to the desegregation of the military in the 1940s as the beginning of the end of legal segregation. - Transition from Segregation to Civil Rights
This essay creates the link from Jim Crow, through the Civil Rights Movement, to our race relations today.
For use with: PBS series, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow Passing For White in Jim Crow America
Students learn about the nuances of racism in this essay that explains the term "passing."
Target grade levels: Middle and High School Levels
For use with: PBS series, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, Program Four: Terror and Triumph (1940-1954)
- Passing For White: First Account Narratives
People who have passed and some who are still passing as white talk about their lives.
Target grade levels: Middle and High School Levels
For use with: PBS series, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, Program Four: Terror and Triumph (1940-1954)
Among the scores of people lynched, the name Emmett Till rings familiar to those who know the Bob Dylan lyrics. Read an account of what happened to this young man in Mississippi in 1955.
Target grade levels: Middle and High School Levels
For use with: PBS series, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, Program Four: Terror and Triumph (1940-1954)
African Americans in 'The White City:' The World's Columbian Exposition of 1893
This essay discusses African Americans' lack of participation in the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893 in Chicago. Several lesson plans accompany this essay and its companion essay, "African Americans in 'The World of Tomorrow': 1939."
Target grade levels: Middle and High School
For use with:
- Essay:
- Lesson Plans:
The essay focuses on the continued struggles and triumphs of African Americans at the New York City World Fair of 1939. Several lesson plans accompany this essay and its companion essay, "African Americans in 'The White City:' The World's Columbian Exposition of 1893."
Target grade levels: Middle and High School
For use with:
- Essay:
- Lesson Plans:
This student-researched and written essay on the first school in the South to desegregate following Brown v. Board of Ed. serves as an insightful example of what students can learn about Jim Crow from their own school and community's history. An accompanying lesson plan and first account narratives are also included.
Target grade levels: High School Levels
For use with: PBS series, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, Program Four: Terror and Triumph (1940-1954)
Childhood Experiences Color Routes to Civil Rights Activism--
Booker Taliaferro Washington and William Edward Burghardt Du Bois: Different Beginnings/Different Ways
This essay explores the two philosophically opposed men by looking back at their very different upbringings. Teachers will find this valuable before examining the Black Colleges map in the geography section because so many of the colleges aligned themselves with the philosophies of one of these two great men.
Target grade levels: Middle and High School Levels
For use with: PBS series, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, Program One: Promises Betrayed (1865-1896) and Program Two: Fighting Back (1896-1917)
The Unconquerable Doing the Impossible: Jackie Robinson's 1946 Spring Training in Jim Crow Florida
Intended for use with the Jackie Robinson Lesson Plan below, this essay looks at Jackie Robinson's rude awakening to the Jim Crow South upon his arrival in Daytona Beach, Florida. Focusing on the part of Robinson's life before he made the big leagues, this essay also focuses on the qualities and making of a hero.
Target grade levels: Middle and High School Levels
For use with: Sports and Jim Crow America Map, Jackie Robinson Lesson Plan
Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson: Interview Essay
A companion essay to the Jackie Robinson lesson plan, this essay focuses on the discussion between Dodger owner-manager Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson prior to Robinson's signing with the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball club.
Target grade levels: Middle and High School Levels
For use with: PBS series, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow
Urban Race Riots in the Jim Crow Era
A companion essay to the Jim Crow Violence map addressing the race riots of America's past ... from the root causes to the outcomes and their effect on the nation. Lesson activity suggestions are included.
Target grade levels: Middle and High School Levels
For use with: Jim Crow Violence map
Jim Crow and Sports
Supplements the Jim Crow Sports Map, which documents many "firsts" made by African-American athletes in a variety of sports. Students can use this essay as a starting point for their own research into local sports heroes.
Target grade levels: Middle and High School Levels
For use with: Sports and Jim Crow America map; Jackie Robinson essay and lesson plan
Popular Art and Racism: Embedding Racial Stereotypes in the American Mindset -- Jim Crow and Popular Culture
Virtually every type of popular art medium in the past embraced the negative stereotype associated with African Americans. This essay looks at Jim Crow through an examination of popular culture's various ways of portraying African Americans from the earliest minstrel shows to motion pictures. For a sampling of Jim Crow images in pop culture, go to the Distorted Mirror Collection in the Image Gallery.
Target grade levels: Middle and High School Levels
For use with: Image Gallery Distorted Mirror Collection
Jim Crow Legislation Overview
This essay summarizes the more than 400 state laws, constitutional amendments, and city ordinances that legalized segregation and discrimination in the United States between 1865 and 1967.
Target grade levels: Middle and High School Levels
For use with: Jim Crow and the Supreme Court Map
The Black Press and Jim Crow, 1875-1955
This overview essay covers the beginnings of the Black press in America, its struggles to survive, and its evolution over time.
Target grade levels: Middle and High School Levels
For use with: Historical Overview: Resisting Jim Crow and Jim Crow Press Map
The Paris Exposition of 1900 and W.E.B. Du Bois
An essay on W.E.B. Du Bois's trip from New York City to Paris in 1900 for the Paris Exposition Universalle. Du Bois traveled with several boxes of photographs, captions, maps, and educational materials to display in the "Negro Section" of the American exhibit. So impressive were the images, that the Exhibition judges awarded Du Bois a gold medal as the Exhibit's principal compiler.
Target grade levels: Middle and High School Levels
For use with: PBS series, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, Program Two: Fighting Back (1896-1917) and the Paris Exposition Collection in the Image Gallery
Racial Etiquette: The Racial Customs and Rules of Racial Behavior in Jim Crow America
This overview essay gives students insight into the social customs and interactions between the races under Jim Crow.
Target grade levels: Middle and High School Levels
For use with: PBS series, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow.
Using Images for Historical Purposes
For use with the growing Image Gallery, teachers can use this essay to introduce students to the factors for consideration when viewing a photograph to glean historical information.
Target grade levels: Middle and High School Levels
For use with: PBS series, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow and the Image Gallery.
History Lesson Plans: Teachers contribute their best lessons on the events that they think are the most important in the Jim Crow years. The lessons also link themselves to one or more of the four episodes of The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow.
The Brown v. Board of Education Cases: An Education Unit on the Cases Comprising the Landmark 1954 School Desegregation Decision
Students analyze the legal history of segregation in this 7-section unit, focusing on documents from five early court cases that comprised the landmark Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation decision in 1954.
Target grade levels: High School or College Undergraduate Levels
For use with: PBS series, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, Program Four: Terror and Triumph (1940-1954)
Where did it All Begin?
This lesson should be used with the Jim Crow and the Supreme Court map. Students select from the cases on the map as a starting point for researching these major decisions in regard to segregation and civil rights.
Target grade levels: Middle School or High School Levels
For use with:
- Jim Crow and the Supreme Court Map
- Brown v. Board of Ed. Teaching unit
- Signs of Segregation Collection in the Image Gallery
- PBS series, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow
This lesson is a template you can use to have students research the background of their own high schools and communities in the Jim Crow era. Students from Clinton High School, the first southern school to desegregate following Brown v. Board of Ed., provide an example of finished products of their research.
Target grade levels: High School Levels and the jimcrowhistory.org Web site
For use with: PBS series, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, Program Four:Terror and Triumph (1940-1954)
Exhibiting at a World's Fair
In this complementary lesson to the essays on the 1893 Columbian Exposition and the 1939 New York World's Fair, students research the difficulties faced by African Americans in these World Fairs. They then design their own exhibit. This lesson serves as a link to the beginnings of the Jim Crow era.
Target grade levels: Upper Elementary through High School
For use with:
- PBS series, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow:
- Program One: Promises Betrayed (1865-1896)
- Program Three: Don't Shout Too Soon (1918-1940)
- Essays:
Students research the difficulties African Americans faced when protesting their exclusion from the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
Target grade levels: Upper Elementary through High School
For use with:
- PBS series, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow:
- Program One: Promises Betrayed (1865-1896)
- Essays:
This lesson examines the stereotypes of African Americans during the Jim Crow era and today. This is a companion lesson to the essays, "African Americans in 'The White City'" and "African Americans in 'The World of Tomorrow.'"
Target grade levels: Upper Elementary through High School
For use with:
- PBS series, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow:
- Program One: Promises Betrayed (1865-1896)
- Program Three: Don't Shout Too Soon (1918-1940)
- Essays:
Students study primary and secondary sources to discover the role African Americans played in the arts at the 1939 New York World's Fair and the historic context of those art forms. A companion lesson to the essay, "African Americans in the 'World of Tomorrow,'" this lesson focuses on the music of William Grant Still and the sculpture of Augusta Savage.
Target grade levels: Upper Elementary through High School
For use with: PBS series, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow: Program Three: Don't Shout Too Soon (1918-1940), and the Essay "African Americans in 'The World of Tomorrow'"
Jim Crow on the National Level: The Right to Flight
In this student-centered lesson, students learn through Internet and library research about the difficult path carved by the African-American military men during World War II.
Target grade levels: High School and College Undergraduate Programs
For use with: PBS series, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, Program Four: Terror and Triumph (1940-1954)
W.E.B. Du Bois and the Paris Exposition
Students will study primary and secondary sources to discover how W.E.B. Du Bois portrayed African Americans at the 1900 Paris Exposition. They then will create a similar exhibit using their classroom as the example.
Target grade levels: High School Levels
For use with: PBS series, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, Program Two: Fighting Back (1896-1917)
Jim Crow Image Gallery: Paris Exposition Universelle Collection
Women and Jim Crow
Using the Women and Jim Crow map as a starting point for research, students learn about the social climate in which these women lived, and how it affected their outlooks on life.
Target grade levels: High School Levels
For use with: Jim Crow and Women Map
Oral History
Learning About History Through First Account Narratives: Students interview and document the stories of people who lived through and remember the Jim Crow and Civil Rights eras.
Target grade levels: Middle and High School Levels
For use with:
- Jimcrowhistory.org Narratives
- PBS series, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow
Students extract the information in the Historical Overview to create a play for peers. Ideal for African-American History Month, this lesson makes the information in the overview accessible to middle and high school students alike.
Target grade levels: Middle and High School Levels
For use with:
- "From Terror to Triumph: Historical Overview"
- Jimcrowhistory.org Sources
- PBS series, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow
Students first examine, then create their own Jim Crow related cartoons to help them understand the power of political satire in shaping popular opinion.
Target grade levels: Middle School or High School Levels
For use with: PBS series, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow.
The Unconquerable Doing the Impossible: Jackie Robinson's 1946 Spring Training in Jim Crow Florida
This lesson, complete with an overview essay of baseball great Jackie Robinson's Jim Crow experience as a rookie on the Dodger Farm team in Florida, focuses on his struggles and his victories, as well as his relationship with Dodger owner-manager Branch Rickey.
Target grade levels: Middle and High School Levels
For use with: PBS series, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow
Image Gallery Lesson
Introduce your students to Jim Crow through the use of the unique images in the Jim Crow image gallery. An introductory essay on "Using Images for Historical Purposes" is included.
Target grade levels: Middle School or High School Levels
For use with: The Jim Crow Image Gallery
Historical Overview Gallery Walk Lesson
Using the Historical Overview themed essay, students learn about the Jim Crow era. The culminating project is a synthesis of the information learned into a visual presentation.
Target grade levels: Middle School or High School Levels
For use with: From Terror to Triumph: Historical Overview essay and PBS series, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow
Issues of Post Civil War America Talk Show
Students research, then become the African-American leaders of post-Civil War America. In a talk show format, students will address the different reactions and recommendations of these leaders living under Jim Crow.
Target grade levels: 8-12
For use with: PBS series, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, Program One: Promises Betrayed (1865-1896)
Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit: Using Music to Send a Message
Students examine the lyrics in this song about the lynchings of African Americans, using it as a springboard to research the Jim Crow period. Students also explore how this and other politically charged songs impact public understanding of social issues.
Target grade levels: 8-12
For use with: PBS series, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, Program Two: Fighting Back (1896-1917)
Reconstruction to Plessy v. Ferguson Newscast
Students use the first film in the Jim Crow series, Promises Betrayed (1865-1896) as a springboard for a research assignment into the period. In this collaborative unit, the culminating activity is a newscast in which the students report on what they learned about the freedoms and injustices of the beginning of the Jim Crow era.
Target grade levels: Advanced Middle School or High School Levels
For use with: PBS series, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, Program One: Promises Betrayed (1865-1896)
Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education: Looking At Primary Source Documents
Students examine the majority and minority opinions of both Supreme Court decisions. Using their research on Washington and Du Bois, students will also correlate the philosophies with of those men with the decisions.
Target grade levels: 9-12
For use with: PBS series, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, Program One: Promises Betrayed (1865-1896)
Presidential Advisory Committee to Andrew Johnson
Students take on roles and serve as advisors to President Johnson during the tumultuous times following the Civil War. This lesson is a pre-viewing activity for The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow.
Target grade levels: 9-12
For use with: PBS series, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, Program One: Promises Betrayed (1865-1896)
History Resources Jim Crow Teacher Resources
The teacher resources section contains a wide range of materials to help you teach Jim Crow. You'll find a growing Image Gallery, our Gateway to some of the best Jim Crow source material on the internet, first account narratives of people who lived through the Jim Crow years, the Jim Crow encyclopedia, and the newly added National Park Services Gateway.
Marcus Garvey Timeline
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Marcus Garvey Timeline  1887 - 1919 | 1920 - 1964
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Garvey begins an apprenticeship at his godfather's printing business in St. Ann's Bay.
mid-January: Garvey returns to London via Scotland, and attends more classes at Birkbeck College.
August 4: Great Britain declares war on Germany.
June: Garvey's father, Marcus Garvey Sr., is committed to St. Ann's Poor House.
April 6: The U.S. declares war against Germany.
August 17: The first issue of 
September 17: The Black Star Line signs a contract to purchase its first ship, the "S. S. Yarmouth," later renamed the "Frederick Douglass," for $165,000.
November 5: Plans to float a second Black Star Line ship, the "S. S. Phyllis Wheatley," are announced.
August 1-31: The Universal Negro Improvement Association holds its first International Convention of the Negro Peoples of the World at Madison Square Garden and schedules a massive parade in Harlem. During this convention, the UNIA adopts and signs a 
January 2: Garvey delivers an address at Liberty Hall on "Du Bois and his Escapades."
May 11: J. Edgar Hoover submits a brief to the Department of State about Garvey's activities in the U.S.
January 1: Eason is shot in New Orleans; he dies January 4. William Shakespeare and Fred Dryer, two Garveyites, are later arrested for his murder.
June 8: Malcolm X's father, 
August 16: A second son, Julius Winston Garvey, is born in Jamaica to Garvey and Amy Jacques Garvey.Maps of Africa
Historic and contemporary maps of Africa, including political and physical maps, pre-colonial and colonial maps, climate maps, relief maps, population density and distribution maps, vegetation maps, and economic/resource maps.
 | Portuguese Discoveries in Africa, 1340–1498 A map of Africa from 1906 showing Portuguese discoveries along the coast from 1340 to 1498. The map shows Cape Sagres and Lagos, Portugal, point of embarkation for voyages of exploration under Prince Henry "the Navigator" (1394-1460). This ... |
 | Pre-Colonial Africa, 17th and 18th Centuries Map of Africa in the 17th & 18th centuries. This map is color–coded to show the possessions of European powers established in Africa, circa 1790, including Portuguese, English, Spanish, French, Dutch and Danish claims, and the Turkish Ottoman c... |
 | Pre-Colonial Africa, 1858 Map of Africa in 1858, prior to the extensive European colonization of the continent established at the Berlin Conference of 1885. This map shows the European possessions of the Cape Colony, Natal, and Orange River Free State, and the native African ... |
 | Pre-Colonial Africa, 1870 A physical and political map of Africa prior to the Berlin Conference of 1885, which established the European colonial territory claims on the continent. This map shows the African states of Morocco, Algiers (Algeria), Tripoli, Egypt, Nubia, Abyssini... |
 | The Colonization of Africa, 1870–1910 A map showing the European colonization of the African continent before and after the Berlin Conference of 1885, when the most powerful countries in Europe at the time convened to make their territorial claims on Africa and establish their colonial b... |
 | Pre-Colonial Africa, 1872 A map of Africa showing the continent prior to the Berlin Conference of 1885, when the most powerful countries in Europe at the time convened to make their territorial claims on Africa and establish their colonial borders at the start of the New Impe... |
 | Relief Map of Africa, 1872 A relief map from 1872 of Africa showing the major river, lake, desert and mountain systems on the continent. ... |
 | Native Territories and European Possessions in Africa, 1876 A map of Africa in 1876 showing native African States and European possessions of Britain, France, Spain and Portugal prior to the Berlin Conference of 1885. On this map, European possessions include Algeria, Cape Colony, Griquala Land West, Orange R... |
 | Physical and Political Map of Africa, 1879 Map of pre-colonial Africa, showing the predominately native countries and territories of the African continent in 1879. The counties include the Barbary States of Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, Tripoli and Fezzan, the Egyptian territories of Egypt Proper,... |
| Africa before the Berlin Conference, 1882 A map of Africa as it was known in 1882 before the Berlin Conference of 1885, when the most powerful countries in Europe at the time convened to make their territorial claims on Africa and establish their colonial borders at the start of the New Impe... |
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