1920s to 1948 - Racially Restrictive Covenants
Used nationwide to prevent people of color from purchasing homes in white communities. Although it is unclear how widespread the practice...
1933 to 1945 - What happened to black Germans under the Nazis
The fact that we officially commemorate the Holocaust on January 27, the date of the liberation of Auschwitz, means that remembrance of...
1940s to 1950s - Ethel Waters became one of the first black actresses on TV.
Show business loved Ethel Waters, who could sing, dance, and act. But racism throttled her career in the way that still affects black...
1940s - After fleeing the Nazis, many Jewish refugee professors found homes at historically black co
When Jewish refugee Ernst Borinski fled Nazi Germany, he found a new home in very strange place: Jackson, Mississippi. The South was...
1940s to 1970s - Asa Philip Randolph
Asa Philip Randolph (April 15, 1889 – May 16, 1979) was a leader in the Civil Rights Movement, the American labor movement, and socialist...
1942 - Great Black North
In the early days of World War II, thousands of black U.S. Army soldiers built the Alaska-Canada Highway, defeated mosquitoes, mud, and...
1943 - Lena Horne (watch)
"I don't have to be an imitation of a white woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I'd become. I'm me, and I'm like nobody else." —Lena Horne...
1943 - Even Nazi prisoners of war in Texas were shocked at how black people were treated in the Sout
One morning in the spring of 1943, years before the end of World War II, Huntsville, Texas woke up to a startling sound: the...
1944 - Port Chicago disaster
An ammunition ship explodes while being loaded in Port Chicago, California, killing 332 people on this day in 1944. The United States’...
1944 - Jackie Robinson was once humiliated and court-martialed for sitting next to a black woman peo
Three years before he became the first black man to play in major league baseball, and more than a decade before Rosa Parks refused to...