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School for black civil rights activists; young girl being trained to not react to smoke blown in her face, 1960
photo by Eve Arnold
"They cripple the bird’s wing, and then condemn it for not flying as fast as they."
Malcolm X 

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Freedom Riders. 50th anniversary. May 4, 1961.

“Memphis sanitation workers strike in 1968 with “I Am A Man” posters, which emerged as a unifying civil rights theme.”
photo by Richard L. Copley


He was 14 yrs. 6mos. and 5 days old —- and the youngest person executed in the United States in the 20th Century.
George Junius Stinney, Jr.,
[b. 1929 - d. 1944]
In a South Carolina prison sixty-six years ago, guards walked a 14-year-old boy, bible tucked under his arm, to the electric chair. At 5’ 1” and 95 pounds, the straps didn’t fit, and an electrode was too big for his leg.
The switch was pulled and the adult sized death mask fell from George Stinney’s face. Tears streamed from his eyes. Witnesses recoiled in horror as they watched the youngest person executed in the United States in the past century die.
Now, a community activist is fighting to clear Stinney’s name, saying the young boy couldn’t have killed two girls. George Frierson, a school board member and textile inspector, believes Stinney’s confession was coerced, and that his execution was just another injustice blacks suffered in Southern courtrooms in the first half of the 1900s.
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“I would like the whole world to know — America especially — that the independence of Haiti, when the slave rose up against the French and defeated the French army — powerful army — the U.S. was able to gain the Louisiana territory for $15 million. That’s 3 cents an acre. That’s 13 states west of the Mississippi that the Haitian slave revolt in Haiti provided,” explained Joseph.

“Also the revolt of the rebels in Haiti allowed Latin America to be free,” Joseph continued.

“So, what pact the Haitian made with the devil has helped the United States become what it is,”

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Raymond Joseph, the Haitian ambassador to the United States on Rachel Maddow last night responding to Pat Robertson’s “deal with the devil” remarks. (via brooklynmutt)

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This is a photo of the first Black girl to attend an all white school in the United States—Dorothy Counts—being jeered and taunted by her white, male peers. This photo encompasses a lot of things that I really hate: prejudice, ignorance, racism, sexism, inequality…
afro-art-chick:

Man Holding American Flag During Selma Civil Rights March 
A young man holds the American flag during the Selma to Montgomery Civil Rights March.
IMAGE:© Steve Schapiro/Corbis

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967
MLK, Tavis Coburn (HAPPY BIRTHDAY)