Civil Rights
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
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Explore the people, places, events, achievements, struggles and stories that shaped our journey.
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
Innovation, patents, science, technology and world-changing contributions.
Pioneers, champions, Negro Leagues, records, activism and excellence.
Meet the people whose lives, choices and achievements shaped the journey.
Black towns, communities, institutions and places where history happened.
Moments that changed communities, movements, institutions and the nation.
Katherine Johnson’s mathematical calculations helped guide some of America’s most important early space missions while she confronted the racial and gender barriers faced by Black women in twentieth-century America.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
David Patrick Maxwell Fyfe, 1st Earl of Kilmuir (29 May 1900 – 27 January 1967), known as Sir David Maxwell Fyfe from 1942 to 1954 and as Viscount Kilmuir from 1954 to 1962, was a British Conservative politician, lawyer and judge who combined a legal career with political ambitions that took him to the offices of Solicitor General, Attorney General, Home Secretary and Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain. One of the prosecuting counsel at the Nuremberg Trials, Maxwell Fyfe subsequently played a role in drafting the European Convention on Human Rights. As Home Secretary from 1951 to 1954 he greatly increased the number of prosecutions of homosexuals and declined to commute Derek Bentley's death sentence for the murder of a police officer. His political ambitions were ultimately dashed in Harold Macmillan's cabinet reshuffle of July 1962.
Sylvia Margaret Sackville, Countess De La Warr, DBE (née Harrison; 16 July 1903 – 10 June 1992) was a British public servant and a former Vice Chairman of the Conservative Party (1951–54). She was the second daughter of William Reginald Harrison, a cotton broker, and his wife, Edith, of Liverpool. Her younger brother, Reginald, grew up to become actor Sir Rex Harrison. She matched her brother for charm, while dedicating her life to the success of her husband, Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, whom she married in Liverpool in 1925. As well as caring for their three daughters, she provided wholehearted practical support throughout her husband’s political career, acting as his unofficial driver, and taking on his constituency business in Liverpool West Derby for the year he was away at the Nuremberg Trials. Letters between them exchanged during that time, formed the basis of a play by her grandson Tom Blackmore, Making History and later became the foundation of The Humans in the Telling a family project to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Nuremberg Trials and 70th since the signing of the European Convention on Human Rights which charts her role in David Maxwell Fyfe's journey from Nuremberg to Strasbourg. The letters are now held at The Churchill Archive at Churchill College, Cambridge. Her involvement in Liverpool constituency work continued, and in 1950 that work was recognised when she was asked to become one of the first women Vice-chair of the Conservative party, a position she held until 1954. On her husband's ennoblement in October 1954 she became Viscountess Kilmuir, later Countess of Kilmuir (July 1962) In 1957, she was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) She also became President of the Electrical Association for Women in 1957. She was Vice-President of the Girls' Friendly Society and of the King George's Fund for Sailors, President of the Ladies Guild of the Gordon Smith Institute for Seamen, and later Chair of Governors at Rose Bruford Drama College and Patron of Chiddingstone Castle. She was appointed Chairman of the UK Committee of UNICEF.
Derek William Bentley (30 June 1933 – 28 January 1953) was a British man who was hanged for being the accomplice of a murder of a policeman during an attempted burglary. His accomplice, Christopher Craig, then aged 16, was convicted of the murder. Bentley was convicted as a party to the crime under the English law principle of joint enterprise, as the burglary had been committed in mutual understanding and the bringing of deadly weapons. The outcome of the trial, and Home Secretary David Maxwell Fyfe's refusal to grant clemency to Bentley, were highly controversial. The jury at the trial found Bentley guilty based in large part on the prosecution's interpretation of the ambiguous phrase "Let him have it", Bentley's alleged exhortation to Craig, which prosecutors argued was an order to shoot and defence counsel argued was an order to surrender; this after Lord Chief Justice Goddard had described Bentley as "mentally aiding" the murder. Bentley was sentenced to death. He was executed despite a recommendation for mercy by the jury. The Bentley case became a cause célèbre and led to a 40-year-long campaign to win Bentley a posthumous pardon, which was granted in 1993, and then a further campaign for the quashing of his murder conviction, which occurred in 1998. Bentley's case is thus considered a case of miscarriage of justice alongside that of Timothy Evans, and pivotal in the successful campaign to abolish capital punishment in the United Kingdom.
David Maxwell may refer to: David Maxwell (academic) (born 1944), president of Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa David Maxwell (historian) (born 1963), Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Cambridge University David Maxwell (musician) (1943–2015), American blues pianist David Maxwell (American politician) (1943–2024), Iowa state representative David Maxwell (Irish politician) (born 1965) David Maxwell (rower) (1951–2023), British rower David Maxwell (printer), English printer David Farrow Maxwell (1900–1985), president of the American Bar Association
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.