Before beginning his Hall of Fame baseball career, Jackie Robinson served as a second lieutenant in the United States Army, enduring a court martial in pursuit of equal rights for Black soldiers.
Preaching peace, yet struck down by violence, the killing of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. reshaped America’s urban spaces and fundamentally changed how the country remembers this civil rights leader.
African Americans were closely involved in the fight against South African apartheid, with cultural icons, legislators, civil rights activists, and athletes all playing their part to call attention to the issue and to ultimately pass sanctions against South Africa.
In one of the most iconic and celebrated heavyweight fights, Muhammad Ali and George Foreman clashed in Zaire in 1974.
The everyday lives and struggles of Black women in Atlanta reveal the roots of their activism.
From Phillis Wheatley Peters to Ida B. Wells-Barnett, leading Black women activists defined their public images through their portraits to advance their ideas.
Author of Soul on Ice and one of the most recognized activists for Black internationalism, Eldridge Cleaver went from militance to obscurity.
A photograph of Mahalia Jackson in 1964 offers a window on the role of music in the civil rights movement.
Slavery ended in 1865. But many Black Southerners remained unfree laborers under the convict leasing system.
Hoping to court Black voters in the 1948 Presidential election, President Harry Truman issued Executive Order 9981, an act that significantly changed the armed forces and the Black experience in America.
© 2021–2025 This project is a collaboration of Getty Images and Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective.
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