Speech:

Statement on the Civil Rights Act of 1957

Speaker:

Dalip Singh Saund

1941 - 1960 / Civil Rights and Race Equity
When Dalip Singh Saund came to the United States, South Asian residents were ineligible for citizenship. Saund was born in Punjab, India in 1899, and immigrated to the United States at twenty years of age to further his education. Even though Saund planned to return to India once he finished school, his next trip to…  Read more.
Speech:

Women in Public Life

Speaker:

Anna Arnold Hedgeman

1941 - 1960 / Gender Equity and Race Equity
For nearly seventy years, Anna Arnold Hedgeman advocated for equal rights, education, poverty relief, public health, and Christian service in the United States. Her advocacy was central to her work in a variety of roles—including teacher, nonprofit administrator, consultant, civil rights activist, government official, journalist, political candidate, church leader, and author. As a Black woman,…  Read more.
Speech:

What it Means to be Colored in the Capital

Speaker:

Mary Church Terrell

1900 - 1940 / Civil Rights and Race Equity
As more Black people migrated to Washington D.C. following the Civil War, many white citizens perceived the nation’s capital to be a place that granted Black people the leisure of white society. In 1894, one citizen wrote in the Hawaiian Star that the capital was “a negro aristocracy.” This writer claimed that Washington D.C. was…  Read more.
Speech:

Endorsement of Hubert Humphrey followed by Questions and Answers with Reporters

Speaker:

A. Phillip Randolph

1961 - 1980 / Civil Rights and Race Equity
Philip Randolph was born in Jacksonville, Florida on April 15, 1889. Asa Philip was born to working-class parents that exuberated race pride and religious piety. After attending college and finding the working conditions of the Jim Crow South untenable, Randolph moved to New York in 1911.  Read more.
Speech:

Graduating Address of Yan Phou Lee at Yale College: The Other Side of The Chinese Question

Speaker:

Yan Phou Lee

1700 - 1899 / Race Equity and Social Justice
Chinese immigration to the United States was a topic of national discussion during the late 1800s. Specifically, the Restriction Period (1882-1888) and Exclusion Period (1888-1943) were years defined by debates over laws that limited the number of Chinese immigrants allowed to enter the United States. During these periods, Chinese immigrants were targets of xenophobia and…  Read more.
Speech:

Speech to Judiciary Committee re: The Rights of Women

Speaker:

Mary Ann Shadd Cary

1700 - 1899 / Gender Equity and Race Equity
Mary Ann Shadd Cary was born a free African American on October 9th, 1823 in Wilmington, Delaware. At the age of ten, her family moved to West Chester, Pennsylvania so Shadd Cary and her siblings could receive an education, a right denied to them in Delaware on account of their race. Throughout her childhood, Shadd Cary’s…  Read more.
Speech:

Speech at Angela Davis Rally

Speaker:

Paula Crenshaw

1961 - 1980 / Gender Equity and Race Equity
Angela Davis, activist, academic, author, and former political prisoner, gained global attention in the late 1960s and early 1970s. She gained widespread attention when she faced murder charges in a trial that inspired an “unprecedented political campaign waged for her release all over the world.”  Read more.
Speech:

The Southern Exodus

Speaker:

Frederick Douglass

1700 - 1899 / Race Equity and Social Justice
Even before Reconstruction ended, many formerly enslaved people came to a discouraging realization. They faced the dim reality that the promises of emancipation, the impeachment of a southern president, and the passage of the Civil War amendments would not produce the kind of change they envisioned. The Compromise of 1877 instead sealed a different fate.…  Read more.
Dorothy Pitman Hughes
Speech:

Women’s Liberation

Speaker:

Gloria Steinem / Dorothy Pitman Hughes

1961 - 1980 / Gender Equity and Race Equity
In the late 1960s, Gloria Steinem was a contributing columnist for New York magazine and an emerging activist living in New York City. Dorothy Pitman Hughes was a children’s rights advocate who also lived in New York City’s upper west side. Their partnership formed when Steinem interviewed Pitman Hughes for an article on childcare.  Read more.
Paul Robeson
Speech:

Forge Negro-Labor and Unity for Peace

Speaker:

Paul Robeson

1941 - 1960 / Labor Justice and Race Equity
A renowned singer, athlete, actor, and activist, Paul Robeson was perhaps one of the most prominent African American public figures from the 1920s to the 1950s. Born on April 9, 1898 in Princeton, New Jersey, Robeson displayed prodigious academic and athletic talent early in his childhood. Enrolling at Rutgers University at the age of 17,…  Read more.