Black History Month

Every high school student in America knows about Rosa Parks’ fateful ride on a Montgomery bus, but most don’t know that this ride was a publicity stunt based on the experience of a 15-year-old girl named Claudette Colvin. Colvin was an enthusiastic and intelligent student, aspiring to become president. On March 2, 1955, she boarded a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama, to go home after school. Wh...

Malcolm X represents a side of Civil Rights that is shadowed by the peaceful resistance lead by the illustrious Dr. King, but is a side of history that every American should understand. Born Malcolm Little, he led a fairly stereotypical life in his younger years: he lost his father to white supremacists; his mother was sent to a mental institution; he went into the foster care system; he was push...

Harriet Tubman, the woman replacing Andrew Jackson on the front of the $20 bill, was of small stature, great courage, and is the subject of this week’s showcase. Tubman escaped slavery around the age of 29 and soon became known as the “conductor” of the Underground Railroad. She left her husband, parents, and siblings in her flight from slavery, but returned to the South upwards of 19 ti...

To kick off this series, we will begin with a man who has become a point of political contention this last week: Frederick Douglass. Frederick Douglass was born sometime around 1818 and was one of millions to be born into slavery. However, Douglass accomplished the near impossible, being an African American slave who taught himself to read, escaped slavery, married a white woman, became a figur...