The Unhidden Minute

Most people see the Statue of Liberty as a beacon for immigrants arriving in New York Harbor. But that wasn’t the monument’s original message. Conceived after the Civil War by French abolitionist Édouard de Laboulaye , Lady Liberty was meant to honor the preservation of the Union and the abolition of slavery. Look closely at her feet. Hidden beneath her flowing robes lie broken chains and shackles...

Before the modern LGBTQ rights movement, there was Pauli Murray. Yet most Americans have never heard the name. Anna Pauline Murray devoted a lifetime to challenging injustice across race, gender, faith, and identity. As an attorney, she helped to establish the Congress of Racial Equality, and later informed the NAACP’s fight to end school segregation. Murray also helped preserve the word “sex” in...

Charles Hamilton Houston was born in Washington, D.C., in 1895 and became one of the nation’s most brilliant attorneys. A graduate of Harvard Law School, where he served at the first Black editor of the Harvard Law Review. Houston believed that legal action could be used to dismantle racial injustice. As vice dean of the Howard University School of Law, he trained a generation of civil rights lawy...

One of the most accomplished military aviators in American history, Daniel “Chappie” James Jr. was the first Black American to earn the rank of four-star general in the United States Armed Forces. Born in Pensacola, Florida, in 1920, James trained at Tuskegee Army Air Field during World War II, joining the first wave of Black fighter pilots who challenged segregation in the military. Though the wa...

Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler (1831–1895) was the first Black American woman to earn a medical degree in the United States and a pioneering figure in Reconstruction-era public health. After graduating from the New England Female Medical College in 1864, she traveled south following the Civil War to care for newly emancipated Black communities struggling with poverty, disease, and limited access to medi...

During World War II, thousands of Japanese Americans served distinction in the United States military. Even while many of their families were imprisoned in internment camps under Executive Order 9066 , Japanese Americans were determined to prove their loyalty in the face of racism and suspicion. These soldiers became some of the most highly decorated troops in American history. The most famous uni...

In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 , authorizing the forced removal and incarceration of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans during the second World War II. Most were American citizens living on the West Coast. Families were given only days to sell their homes, businesses, and belongings before being sent to remote detention centers under armed guard. One of the...

Born in Japan in 1885, artist Chiura Obata transformed the landscapes of the American West into vivid expressions of beauty, spirit, and belonging. After immigrating to the United States in 1903, Obata traveled extensively through Yosemite National Park , where he painted towering granite cliffs, waterfalls, and ancient forests with a unique blend of Japanese sumi-e brushwork and Western en plein...

Wong Kim Ark was born in 1873 in San Francisco to Chinese immigrant parents during an era shaped by exclusion and racial hostility. After traveling to China in 1894, he was denied reentry to the United States under the Chinese Exclusion Act, which restricted Chinese immigration and denied citizenship to Chinese nationals. Wong challenged the decision, and his case reached the Supreme Court as Unit...

Benjamin ‘Pap’ Singleton was a formerly enslaved man who became a leading voice for Black self-determination in the years after the Civil War. Born into slavery in 1809 in Nashville, Tennessee, Singleton escaped to freedom and later returned to help others do the same through the Underground Railroad. After Reconstruction, as violence and oppression spread across the South, he advocated for Black...

The Exoduster Movement began in 1879 as thousands of formerly enslaved Black Americans fled the violence and oppression of the post-Reconstruction South. Drawn primarily to Kansas, these migrants—known as “Exodusters,” evoking the biblical Exodus—sought land, safety, and the full promise of freedom. Their departure was fueled by the collapse of Reconstruction, the rise of Black Codes, and the grow...

On July 9, 1868, member of Congress ratified t he Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution . In the aftermath of the American Civil War, this was a bold redefinition of who could claim their rights under the rule of law. “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, … are citizens of the United States.” This promise of birthright citizenship overturned the Dred Scott v. Sandford deci...

The Fair Housing Act of 1968 was passed in the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., as the nation grappled with unrest and longstanding inequality. Signed into law on April 11, 1968, it prohibited discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, religion, and national origin. It was later expanded to include sex, disability, and family status. The law sou...

On April 3, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood before a crowd in Memphis, Tennessee and delivered what would become his final address—I’ve Been to the Mountaintop. Speaking in support of striking sanitation workers, King’s words carried a weight that felt both urgent and prophetic. He spoke of economic justice, of unity, and of the long struggle for dignity. But it was his closing that endures...

Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin (1842–1924) was a pioneering Black American journalist, suffragist, and civil rights leader who helped organize Black women into a national force for social change. Born in Boston to a prominent abolitionist family, Ruffin was educated in the United States and Europe and became deeply involved in the fight for both racial and gender equality. In 1890, she founded The Wo...

The National Association of Colored Women (NACW) was founded in 1896 to unify Black women’s clubs across the United States in the fight for racial uplift, social reform, and women’s rights. Formed by leaders including Mary Church Terrell , Ida B. Wells , and Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin , the organization adopted the motto “Lifting as We Climb,” reflecting its mission to advance the entire Black co...

Coretta Scott King (1927–2006) was a leading Black American activist, author, and global advocate for civil and human rights. Born in Heiberger, Alabama, she studied music and education at Antioch College and the New England Conservatory before marrying Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1953. Far more than the wife of a movement leader, Coretta Scott King was a strategist and organizer in her own righ...

Mary Church Terrell (1863–1954) was a pioneering Black American educator, suffragist, and civil rights activist who dedicated her life to advancing racial and gender equality. Born in Memphis, Tennessee, to formerly enslaved parents who became successful entrepreneurs, Terrell benefited from educational opportunities rare for Black Americans in the 19th century. She earned both a bachelor’s and ma...

Diane Nash is a central figure in the modern Civil Rights Movement and one of its most disciplined strategists of nonviolent direct action. Born in Chicago in 1938, she became radicalized by the everyday reality of segregation while attending Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1960, Nash emerged as a leader of the Nashville sit-ins, confronting segregation at lunch counters with remarkabl...

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded in 1909 in response to escalating racial violence and the rollback of Reconstruction-era rights. Organized by an interracial coalition that included W.E.B. Du Bois , Ida B. Wells , Mary White Ovington, and others, the NAACP sought to secure political, educational, social, and economic equality for Black Americans. F...

The Children’s Crusade of 1963 was a pivotal moment in the Birmingham Civil Rights Campaign, when hundreds of Black American schoolchildren took to the streets to challenge segregation. Organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, leaders including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rev. James Bevel encouraged young people to mar...

Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth (1922–2011) was one of the most fearless leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. A Baptist minister in Birmingham, Alabama, he co-founded the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights in 1956 after the state outlawed the NAACP. From that moment, he became a relentless force against segregation in one of the most violently racist cities in the South. His home was bombed on C...

Cathay Williams (1844–1893) is remembered as the only documented woman to serve as a Buffalo Soldier , disguising herself as a man under the name William Cathay . Born enslaved in Missouri, Williams gained her freedom during the Civil War and later enlisted in 1866 with the U.S. Army’s 38th Infantry, one of the original Black regiments formed after emancipation. For nearly two years, she endured h...

The Battle of Bunker Hill , fought on June 17, 1775, was one of the first major engagements of the American Revolution, and Black American soldiers played a visible and courageous role. Among the most recognized was Peter Salem , a formerly enslaved man from Massachusetts who fought with colonial forces on Breed’s Hill. He is often credited with firing the shot that killed British Major John Pitca...

Prince Estabrook was a Black American patriot whose life embodies the contradictions of the American Revolution. Enslaved in Lexington, Massachusetts, Estabrook was among the militiamen who faced British regulars on April 19, 1775 , at the Battle of Lexington Green. When the first shots of the Revolution were fired, he stood in the front ranks and was wounded in the arm , becoming one of the earli...