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.
Wilmington, North Carolina once had a thriving Black middle class and an elected interracial government. In 1898 white supremacists used violence to overthrow that government, kill Black residents and drive many others from the city.
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
John Francis Crowley (born April 7, 1967) is the president and CEO of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), the world’s largest biotechnology advocacy organization. He served as the chairman and CEO of Amicus Therapeutics. He co-founded Novazyme Pharmaceuticals with William Canfield, which was later acquired by Genzyme Corporation, and founded Orexigen Therapeutics. In 2006, he was profiled in the book The Cure: How a Father Raised $100 Million – And Bucked the Medical Establishment – In a Quest to Save His Children by Geeta Anand. In 2010, Crowley released his memoir, Chasing Miracles: The Crowley Family Journey of Strength, Hope, and Joy. Crowley and his family were the inspiration for the movie Extraordinary Measures starring Harrison Ford and Brendan Fraser in 2010. Crowley was named CEO of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization in 2023.
John Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is an American attorney, politician, diplomat, and former naval officer who served as the 68th United States secretary of state from 2013 to 2017 in the administration of President Barack Obama. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1985 to 2013 and later served as the first and only U.S. special presidential envoy for climate from 2021 to 2024. Kerry was the Democratic presidential nominee in the 2004 presidential election. Born into the prominent Forbes family in Aurora, Colorado, Kerry grew up in Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. In 1966, after graduating from Yale University, he enlisted in the United States Naval Reserve, ultimately attaining the rank of lieutenant. During the Vietnam War, Kerry served a brief tour in South Vietnam. While commanding a Swift Boat, he sustained three wounds in combat with the Viet Cong, for which he earned three Purple Heart medals. Kerry was also awarded the Silver Star Medal and the Bronze Star Medal for conduct in separate military engagements. After completing his active military service, Kerry returned to the United States and became an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War. He gained national recognition as an anti-war activist, serving as a spokesperson for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War organization. Kerry testified in the Fulbright Hearings before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, where he described the United States government's policy in Vietnam as the cause of war crimes. In 1972, Kerry was an unsuccessful candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in Massachusetts's 5th congressional district, losing to Republican Paul W. Cronin in the general election. He subsequently worked as a radio talk show host, as the executive director of an advocacy organization while attending law school, and later in private legal practice. In 1982, Kerry was elected lieutenant governor of Massachusetts as the running mate of Michael Dukakis's ticket. In 1984, Kerry was elected to the United States Senate representing Massachusetts. During his career in the Senate, Kerry won the Democratic nomination in the 2004 Democratic Party presidential primaries, but lost the general election to incumbent Republican president George W. Bush. In January 2013, Kerry was nominated by President Obama and confirmed by the Senate to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, serving through the rest of Obama's second term. During his tenure, he initiated the 2013–2014 Israeli–Palestinian peace talks and negotiated agreements restricting the nuclear program of Iran, including the 2013 Joint Plan of Action and the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. In 2015, Kerry signed the Paris Agreement on climate change on behalf of the United States. In January 2021, Kerry returned to government, serving as the U.S. special presidential envoy for climate under President Joe Biden. In March 2024, Kerry left this position to work on Biden's 2024 presidential campaign. Kerry was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Biden in May 2024.
Robert Crowley (Robertus Croleus, Roberto Croleo, Robart Crowleye, Robarte Crole or Crule, c. 1517 – 18 June 1588), was a stationer, poet, polemicist and Protestant clergyman among Marian exiles at Frankfurt. He seems to have been a Henrician Evangelical in favour of a more reformed Protestantism than the king and the Church of England sanctioned. Under Edward VI, he joined a London network of evangelical stationers to argue for reforms, sharing a vision of his contemporaries Hugh Latimer, Thomas Lever, Thomas Beccon and others of England as a reformed Christian commonwealth. He attacked as inhibiting reform what he saw as corruption and uncharitable self-interest among the clergy and wealthy. Meanwhile, Crowley took part in making the first printed editions of Piers Plowman, the first translation of the Gospels into Welsh, and the first complete metrical psalter in English, which was also the first to include harmonised music. Towards the end of Edward's reign and later, Crowley criticised the Edwardian Reformation as compromised and saw the dissolution of the monasteries as replacing one form of corruption by another. On his return to England after the reign of Mary I, Crowley revised his chronicle to represent the Edwardian Reformation as a failure, due to figures like Thomas Seymour, 1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley, Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset and John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland. Crowley's account of the Marian martyrs represented them as a cost mostly paid by commoners. The work became a source for John Foxe's account of the period in his Actes and Monuments. Crowley held church positions in the early to mid-1560s and sought change from the pulpit and within the church hierarchy. Against the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, Crowley was a leader in the renewed vestments controversy, which eventually lost him his clerical posts. During the dispute he and other London clergy produced a "first Puritan manifesto". Late in life Crowley was restored to several church posts and appears to have charted a more moderate course in defending it from Roman Catholicism and from nonconformist factions that espoused a Presbyterian church polity.
John Symonds (12 March 1914 – 21 October 2006) was an English writer known for his biographies of Aleister Crowley, as well as novels, plays, and children's books. His literary career spanned several decades, covering a wide range of genres and subjects. Symonds met Crowley in 1946 and became his literary executor, later writing multiple biographies, including The Great Beast (1952) and The Magic of Aleister Crowley (1958). While initially intrigued, he grew critical of Crowley’s practices, particularly regarding sex and drug use. Beyond his Crowley biographies, Symonds wrote fiction and children’s books, such as The Magic Currant Bun (1953).
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.
