Hey to Your Mama N'em

Woman taking a photograph at the 1970 Monterey Jazz Festival.

Los Angeles Public Library

The Monterey Jazz Festival debuted in 1958 and is one of the longest running jazz festivals in the world. 

The 1970 lineup included Duke Ellington, Modern Jazz Quartet, Cannonball Adderley Quintet, Joe Williams, Johnny Otis Show w/Little Esther Phillips and Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, Woody Herman Orchestra, Buddy Rich Orchestra, Ivory Joe Hunter, Sonny Stitt & Gene Ammons.

Clint Eastwood filmed part of his movie Play Misty for Me at the 1970 festival.

South Greenville School, September 1, 1965

The Daily Reflector Image Collection, Joyner Library, East Carolina University

Father and child, Detroit, Michigan, February 1942

Arthur S. Siegel, photographer

Library of Congress

Shacks occupied by black migrant workers in Bell Glade, Florida.

Marion Post Wolcott, photographer

February 1941

Library of Congress

Backyard of a dwelling in a slum area near the House Office Building, Washington, D.C.

September 1935

Carl Mydans, photographer

Library of Congress, Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Photograph Collection

Poor People’s March at Lafayette Park and on Connecticut Avenue

Washington, D.C., June 18, 1968

Warren K. Leffler, photographer

Library of Congress

“We ought to come in mule carts, in old trucks, any kind of transportation people can get their hands on. People ought to come to Washington, sit down if necessary in the middle of the street and say, ‘We are here; we are poor; we don’t have any money; you have made us this way…and we’ve come to stay until you do something about it.’” — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

U.S. Army nurses, newly arrived, line the rail of their vessel as it pulls into port of Greenock, Scotland, in European Theater of Operations.

August 15, 1944

US Department of Defense. Department of the Army. Office of the Chief Signal Officer.

The U.S. National Archives

Midwife holding twins. Note accompanying photograph: “Emaciated 3 weeks old colored twins - no wage earner in family, insufficient food for mother. This case was referred to local nurse, Mrs. Julia Kline, through S.B.H. [State Board of Health] nurse.”

Date unknown

State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory, http://floridamemory.com/items/show/44540

Americans in German prison camp. A group of American prisoners in a German prison camp listening attentively while a jovial [African American] fighter relates an episode of war life to a German officer.

Taken between 1914 and 1918

Underwood & Underwood, photographers

The U.S. National Archives

A senior citizens’ march to protest inflation, unemployment and high taxes stopped along Lake Shore Drive in Chicago to hear speeches from various officials. The rally was organized by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Operation PUSH. October 1973

The U.S. National Archives

thesmithian:

Slavery in America often conjures images of antebellum plantations with sprawling fields worked by weary black folks picking cotton or tobacco under the hot sun and the watchful eye of a whip-yielding white overseer. This…is the picture of slavery most often presented to us in books, on television and in the movies. But the history of slavery in Florida challenges that cliche and reveals that black people were a diverse lot.

more.

fascinating

“Although it is now possible for most African Americans to eat at a lunch counter in most parts of the United States, the extension of these civilities has been accompanied by subtle, yet barbarous forms of discrimination. These forms extend from redlining in the sale of real estate to discrimination in employment to the maladministration of justice. In issuing the Emancipation Proclamation and wording it as he did, Lincoln went as far as he felt the law permitted him to go …The law itself is no longer an obstruction to justice and equality, but it is the people who live under the law who are themselves an obvious obstruction to justice. One can only hope that sooner rather than later we can all find the courage to live under the spirit of the Emancipation Proclamation and under the laws that flowed from its inspiration.”

(John Hope Franklin at the National Archives, January 4, 1993, on the occasion of the 130th anniversary of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation)

Source: Duke University Libraries

Protestors arrested and dispersed protestors during one of the of civil rights demonstrations held in Danville, Virginia in the summer of 1963. led by local and national black leaders.

Danville (Virginia) Corporation Court, 1963 Civil Rights Case Files, Accession  38099, Local Government Records Collection, Library of Virginia, Richmond, VA