Black History: October 7th 1954

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An NAACP flyer campaigning for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives in 1922, but was filibustered to defeat in the Senate. Dyer, the NAACP, and freedom fighters around the country, like Flossie Baily, struggled for years to get the Dyer and other anti-lynching bills passed, to no avail. Today there is still no U.S. law specifically against lynching. In 2005, eighty of the 100 U.S. Senators voted for a resolution to apologize to victims' families and the country for their failure to outlaw lynching. Courtesy of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Some Exhibits to Come – One Hundred Years of Jim Crow

Bibliography – One Hundred Years Of Jim Crow

Claude, age 23, just months before his 1930 murder. Courtesy of Faith Deeter.

Freedom’s Heroes During Jim Crow: Flossie Bailey and the Deeters

Souvenir Portrait of the Lynching of Abram Smith and Thomas Shipp, August 7, 1930, by studio photographer Lawrence Beitler. Courtesy of the Indiana Hisorical Society.

An Iconic Lynching in the North

Claxton Dekle – Prosperous Farmer, Husband & Father of Two

Ancient manuscripts about mathematics and astronomy from Timbuktu, Mali

Some Exhibits to Come – African Peoples Before Captivity

Shackles for Adults & Children from the Henrietta Marie

Some Exhibits to Come – The Middle Passage

What I Saw Aboard a Slave Ship in 1829

Life After Hate: A Former White Power Leader Redeems Himself

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October 7, 2013

By HuffingtonPost

(October 7th) in 1954, the New York Metropolitan Opera hired Marian Anderson making her the first black singer that the famed opera house signed on. Anderson would make her debut performance with the company three months later, on January 7, 1955.

Before the big hire, Anderson made a name for herself performing at venues like Carnegie Hall. However, she did encounter barriers and discrimination because of her race. In 1939, the manager of Washington, D.C.’s Constitution Hall did not allow her to perform. When the public got word that this was due to Anderson’s race, first lady Eleanor Roosevelt spoke out against it. The Roosevelt’s later invited Anderson to perform at the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday of that year, in front of a crowd of 75,000.

Marian Anderson [was] the first African American soloist ever to perform at the Metropolitan Opera House, sings “Ave Maria” on the stage of Carnegie Hall, in what was billed as her farewell performance, April 18, 1965.

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