On the Books
An invaluable resource, this book published in 1872, detailed William Still's records concerning routes of travel and the stories of enslaved people who escaped to freedom on the Underground Railroad.
What is The Underground Railroad Records?
Preacher turned political hopeful, this man attempted to run for president in 1984 and 1988 before combining his efforts of Operation PUSH and the National Rainbow Coalition to better promote Black financial, social, and political improvement.
Who is Jesse Jackson?
The origins of hip hop can be categorized on these four pillars: Deejaying, rapping, graffiti painting and this.
What is break dancing?
The Reagan administration coined this dog-whistle stereotype as a harmful caricature of a Black woman who used welfare and child rearing to take money from the government.
What is the 'Welfare Queen'?
This Amendment abolished slavery and reads, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, ... are citizens of the United States." It also says, "No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the [rights] of citizens of the United States ...nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
What is the 14th Amendment?
This artist's most famous work, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” is an autobiography of her childhood which addresses themes of Black girlhood, femininity, racism, and trauma.
Who is Maya Angelou?
As New York state representative, she played a critical role in developing WIC and was the first Black woman to seek the presidential nomination from a major political US party.
Who is Shirley Chrisholm?
Billie Holiday's iconic performances of this song, credited as the first protest song of the Civil Rights Era, brought attention to the terror of Black lynchings.
What is Strange Fruit?
During reconstruction, Union General William T. Sherman intended to redistribute Confederate land to formerly enslaved people in Sherman’s Field Order No. 15, leading to the phrasing of this famous reparation promise.
What is '40 acres and a mule'?
History would judge our founding fathers unfavorably on the issue, so this word is conspicuously missing from the US Constitution.
What is slavery?
While avoiding an explicit political stance, Zora Neale Hurston wrote this story about a Black woman who was searching for love, passion, and a sense of peace in a world that rarely afforded women, especially Black women, this opportunity. It would be published in 1937 and become her most famous work.
What is Their Eyes Were Watching God?
After being freed following his suit based on Missouri law and precedent that if an enslaved person was relocated to a free state or territory, they were then considered free, this man's case lost in the Supreme Court forcing he and his family back into slavery. This decision created a new legal precedent that solidified Black Americans’ status as an underclass.
Who is Dred Scott?
Straightening the crown of women in a hypersexualized industry, this rapper released "U.N.I.T.Y." in '93, a song which focused on sexism, sexual harassment, and the public pressures that women in hip hop were often forced to conform to. She is also a well known actress.
Who is Queen Latifah?
This word has often been used by many people to describe moments when Black people push back against the violence being enacted on them, and it has often been done to imply a certain level of chaos and mayhem and incoherence to what was transpiring. Part of what such language is meant to do, is undermine the very real political dimension of the protests, which emerges from genuine grievance with the circumstances around them.
What is 'riot'?
Northern delegates did not support including enslaved Black people in the population of the Southern states, but the Southern Delegates knew that they wouldn’t be able to compete in the House of Representatives if enslaved people weren’t counted leading to the inclusion of Article 1 Section 2, also known as [this].
What is the three-fifths compromise?
In this book, W.E.B. Du Bois describes the spirit of Black double consciousness.
What is the Souls of Black Folk?
This iconic Black trans woman likely threw a brick at the police in the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion and had an indelible and lasting impact on the formation of more equitable politics for queer people worldwide with her activism, with her bravery, and with her signature “Pay it No Mind” attitude.
Who is Marsha P. Johnson?
This hit single by politically charged Public Enemy was featured in Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing" leans into rhetoric of Black Nationalism while challenging people to fight back against white supremacy.
What is Fight the Power?
Following expansions in the federal death penalty, mandatory minimum sentencing, privatized prison construction, rising police force staffing budgets, and truth-in-sentencing incentives (to financially encourage states to advocate for harsher punishments without parole) communities were faced with the promotion of this provision that meant a defendant might get a life sentence for almost any crime, no matter how minor, if they had two prior convictions that were considered a violent offense.
What is the Three Strikes law?
This Amendment allows slavery in the punishment of a crime to this day, and has resulted in unpaid and underpaid labor being a frequently criticized aspect of mass incarceration today.
What is the 13th Amendment?
Inspired by the true story of Margaret Garner, an African American woman who was living in slavery, Toni Morrison wrote this book which features the main character Sethe, a formerly enslaved woman who is constantly haunted by her dead child after making the gut-wrenching decision to kill her children rather than see them become enslaved.
What is Beloved?
This NAACP Executive Secretary, often passing as White, investigated lynchings in the south in the unsuccessful effort to pass a national anti-lynching bill.
Who is Walter White?
This jazz nobleman helped popularize big band style jazz music in the United States and produced many concerts at Carnegie Hall in New York City.
Who is Duke Ellington?
DAILY DOUBLE!
This then vice-president of the Confederacy, in 1861 stated in his infamous Cornerstone speech that slavery was “the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution” and the Confederacy was founded on “the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man.”
In 1870, the 15th Amendment opened the door for Black men to have this right.
"What is vote/participate in the election process?"