Songs
Figures
Events
Quotes
Pictures
100
This Stevie Wonder song highlights how people often “work their life away” just to survive in the city.
What is “Living for the City”?
100
This formerly enslaved abolitionist created and led routes of the Underground Railroad, helping many others escape to freedom.
Who is Harriet Tubman?
100
Issued in 1863 by President Lincoln, this order declared enslaved people in Confederate states to be free.
What is the Emancipation Proclamation?
100
This statement reframes history by emphasizing that Africans were people first and only later forced into slavery.
What is “People say slaves were taken from Africa… People were taken from Africa and made into slaves.”?
100
What is the “Migration Series”?
200
This Rufus and Chaka Khan song encourages listeners to keep pursuing their dreams, even when fame feels isolating and hope feels out of reach.
What is “Hollywood”?
200
This white abolitionist is known for leading the 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry in an effort to spark a slave uprising.
Who is John Brown?
200
Spanning roughly from 1863 to 1877, this period focused on rebuilding the South and integrating formerly enslaved people into American society.
What is Reconstruction?
200
These lyrics from a Gladys Knight & the Pips hit describe a man returning to the life he left behind in the South.
What is “He’s going back to find… He’s leaving” from “Midnight Train to Georgia”?
200
In this 1867 painting by Theodor Kaufmann, Black women and children walk barefoot out of a forest toward a U.S. flag, representing their journey toward freedom from slavery.
What is “On to Liberty”?
300
This Earth, Wind & Fire song celebrates inner strength and determination, urging listeners to rise above doubt and negativity by trusting in themselves.
What is “Mighty Mighty”?
300
This influential abolitionist, writer, and orator escaped slavery and became one of the most powerful voices against the institution.
Who is Frederick Douglass?
300
These state and local laws enforced racial segregation in the South after Reconstruction and severely restricted Black Americans’ rights.
What are Jim Crow laws?
300
This Ghanaian proverb teaches that change takes time, noting that something shaped over decades cannot be transformed instantly.
What is “A tree that has twisted for thirty years cannot be straightened in a single day.”?
300
Featuring sun and rain imagery, this album cover by Maze and Frankie Beverly highlights the duality of African American life—resilience alongside struggle.
What is the “Joy and Pain” album cover?
400
In this Gladys Knight & the Pips classic, a man leaves Los Angeles to return to his simpler life in Georgia, and the singer follows out of love, highlighting the tension between big dreams and devotion.
What is “Midnight Train to Georgia”?
400
An investigative journalist, educator, and co-founder of the NAACP, she was renowned for her groundbreaking anti-lynching activism.
Who is Ida B. Wells-Barnett?
400
This mass movement saw millions of Black Americans relocate from the rural South to Northern and Western cities in search of better opportunities.
What is the Great Migration?