In this series of letters, James Forten, a prominent Black resident of Philadelphia, argued that the legislature of Pennsylvania must not pass a law requiring free African Americans to register with local officials. Such laws had already been adopted in the slave states as well as in Ohio and elsewhere in the Old Northwest.

In 1833, the ship steward Joseph Thompson, a free Black man from Massachusetts, gave a sworn affidavit about his experiences with arrest and incarceration in New Orleans. He described the many free Black men he encountered in the "calaboose," or jail, in that southern city.

A small group of Black Ohioans met in Columbus in August of 1837 to build a campaign for repeal of the state’s racist “black laws.” They created this petition, which was published in an antislavery newspaper. Readers were invited to cut out the petition from the newspaper and paste it on a piece of paper. Then they could gather signatures on the page and send the petition to the Ohio legislature (known as the General Assembly). This is the entire petition.

In spring 1850, the Boston parent, printer, and school activist Benjamin Roberts announced that he was collecting signatures for a petition asking the state legislature to require that the state's public schools "make no distinction on account of color" when deciding whom to admit.

Roberts and other Black activists were frustrated by their recent loss in the state supreme court. In Roberts vs. City of Boston, the court had upheld racial segregation in the Boston public schools. Roberts and others viewed that decision as a "great injustice against the colored people." Five years later, the legislature passed the kind of law Roberts and other had long fought for.

At the beginning of August 1865, a group of Black men convened Alexandria, Virginia, to discuss where they stood now that Civil War had ended and the 13th Amendment would soon be ratified. The delegates received an explicit death threat but carried on with their meeting. An "Address" issued by the convention is excerpted here.

In May 1866, Rep. Thaddeus Stevens introduced the 14th Amendment in the US House of Representatives. The amendment was not all that he had hoped for, but he believed it was the best the Republicans could get at that time. Stevens emphasized the importance of curbing the states' power to act unjustly.

I joined high school teacher Jessica Rucker to speak about my book, Until Justice Be Done, and what it might offer to classroom teachers. This event was sponsored by the Zinn Education Project, which is doing a ton of great work.

Reconstruction 101: Progress and Backlash

Just months after the Civil War ended, former Confederates had regained political footholds in Washington, D.C. In this overview of Reconstruction, I discussed how—in the face of evolving, post-slavery white supremacy—Black people claimed their citizenship and began building institutions of their own. Ahmad Ward then takes us to 1860s Mitchelville, South Carolina, where Black policing power, land ownership and more self-governance were the norm.

I spoke with Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, about the clauses of the 14th Amendment and the battle over their meaning from Reconstruction to the Supreme Court’s recent decisions. We touched on America’s first and second civil rights movements, the Constitution and women, and modern interpretations of the 14th Amendment.

I joined the National Constitution Center to talk about one of the most famous speeches in U.S. history and got to trade perspectives with Sean Wilentz, too.

The African American population of Illinois grew dramatically in the pre-Civil War years, as Black people migrated into the state and began the work of establishing families and communities. Men and women pooled resources to establish Black churches and schools for Black children. Yet Black residents of Illinois faced repressive laws designed to marginalize and exclude them. In some locales, white residents violently attacked African Americans, seeking to expel them from towns and the countryside. Black people fought back. They insisted on their right to remain where they were. In the 1850s, drawing on community-based networks, they organized their first statewide conventions. Their main objective was to draw attention to racist state policies and demand their repeal.

I worked with three teachers at Evanston Township High School to develop these resources for teaching the exhibit, Creating Community, Demanding Justice. Let us know what you think!