Photographs and stories that changed the world

A collaboration of and

1960s

American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos raise their fists and give the Black Power Salute at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City. The move was a symbolic protest against racism in the United States. Smith, the gold medal winner, and Carlos, the bronze medal winner, were subsequently suspended from their team for their actions.

The Black Fists Protest

How Black Olympians turned a 1968 Olympics Cold War triumph into a momentous Black protest symbol

Trinidad-born American Black activist Stokely Carmichael (later known as Kwame Ture, 1941 - 1998) (centre, left) with officials at a meeting in honour of an International Day of Solidarity with the American Black Power movement, Hanoi, North Vietnam, 1967.

International Networks of the American Civil Rights Struggle

What do Thurgood Marshall, Malcolm X, and Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) have in common? The internationalism of American civil rights activism.

The Gilligan Case: Police Brutality and Civil Rights in Harlem 1964

A July 1964 protest at the United Nations headquarters in New York City began after the murder of 15-year-old African American James Powell by Thomas Gilligan, a white, off-duty police officer.

Poise and Perseverance

How Autherine Lucy, Charlayne Hunter, and Vivian Malone Desegregated Higher Education in the American South

African Americans, Anti-Racism, and Cuba

Fidel Castro, Joe Louis, Angela Davis, and Jesse Jackson navigate the complicated relationship between Black America and Communist Cuba.

Chinese Prime Minister Zhou En-lai congratulates American Civil Rights leader Robert Franklin Williams following the latter's speech, Peking, China, August 8, 1966.

Panthers and the Premier: Black Internationalism & Cold War China

From Robert F. Williams and Huey Newton to President Richard Nixon, three moments where Black Liberation movements converged, and diverged, with Revolutionary China.