Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald, ca. 1950
Photographer unknown
Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History
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
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.
"Perhaps the most extraordinary characteristic of current America is the attempt to reduce life to buying and selling. Life is not love unless love is sex and bought and sold. Life is not knowledge save knowledge of technique, of science for destruction. Life is not beauty except beauty for sale. Life is not art unless its price is high and it is sold for profit. All life is production for profit, and for what is profit but for buying and selling again?"
— W.E.B. Du Bois, The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century, Published June 1st 1968 by International Publishers
![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](http://25.media.tumblr.com/aa01de2195ba667f7cff847bfa3bde41/tumblr_mnuncnDe911qd382lo1_500.jpg)
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](http://24.media.tumblr.com/8a2e3ed4f7ed9962b2118302bc70b6d3/tumblr_mo1ze0aKyU1qd382lo1_500.jpg)
“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)
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
Gilbert Memorial Cemetery. Atlanta, May 27.
“Plunkett Town was a neighborhood in the southern part of the city of Atlanta, Georgia. It was located south of Hapeville, Georgia city limits, adjacent to the Atlanta airport and across the railroad tracks from industrial plants. Also referred to as “Plunkytown,” it housed low-income black Atlantans and was described as a slum. Its close proximity to Atlanta’s airport at a time of dramatic expansion meant that this residential community was virtually wiped off the map by the late ’70s.
“The community was described in 1969 as “1,800 black persons living in primitive rural conditions,” “incredibly dilapidated frame hovels,” with no sewers, paved streets, mail service, school buses, or running water, “alongside a modest but well-maintained white residential area.” Mayor Ray King of Mountain View, Georgia, the neighboring white community, earned political favor with Plunkett Town residents for extending city services like garbage collection, police and fire protection to this previously underserved area. As was the case in Mountain View, by the early 1980s, the dense residential grid of Plunkett Town had been replaced by warehouses and industrial facilities related to air logistics. Today, the Atlanta Tradeport complex covers most of the former site of Plunkett Town.
“The Gilbert Cemetery, set aside for slaves in 1841, eventually became the final resting place for many residents of Plunkett Town. Up to 1700 people were buried there. The Old South Motel and Dining Room (or Old South Motel and Liquor Store) later occupied the property and the owners allegedly removed many of the headstones. During the construction of the I-75 interchange at Cleveland Avenue, GDOT discovered the damaged burial ground and attempted to make amends by erecting a 7-foot statue of Jesus Christ (depicted as a white man). This led to a federal lawsuit for violation of separation of church and state, as well as public outcry over the insensitivity of placing a “white Jesus” over a black cemetery. The compromise solution was a roadside memorial featuring a marble obelisk and a number of uniform, concrete headstones marking the approximate site of the cemetery.” Wikipedia.
I’ve passed this place a million times, a static cascade of concrete markers in the bowl of the I-75 Cleveland Avenue exit. This morning, while the dew was still wet, I broke through the fug of homelessness at the lip and plunged into dishallowed ground. Some years ago, a neighbor took on the thankless job of clearing an overgrown, but active, cemetery in the Southside town in which I live. He expressed some frustration that he got little support from African-Americans who lived in nearby neighborhoods. But their people were buried under a highway interchange, not under the oaks at Hillcrest.
