Shelby County Archives

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The Little Rock Nine--Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Thelma Mothershed, Melba Patillo, Gloria Ray, Terrence Roberts, Jefferson Thomas and Carlotta Walls--were a group of black students who enrolled at formerly all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in September 1957 as a test of "Brown v. Board of Education," a landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling that declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional.

During a trip to New York City in the summer of 1958, paid for by the New York Hotel Workers' Union, the Little Rock Nine, met with union leaders, diplomats, and elected officials to honor their courage and achievement. This photograph in front of the Statue of Liberty was taken by Mildred Grossman (1916-1988) a New York City public school teacher, civil rights activist, unionist, and an award-winning photographer. Grossman’s Little Rock Nine photographs illustrate an important chapter in American history, chronicling the experiences of the union leaders, politicians, and Little Rock students who, at such young ages, had a profound effect on the African American Civil Rights Movement.

Grossman's papers are at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and were part of an NHPRC-supported project to execute a workflow for creating EAD-compliant collection records and finding aids for regional and university records. You can read the Finding Aid at https://library.umbc.edu/speccoll/findingaids/coll006.php and check out the Special Collections at https://library.umbc.edu/speccoll/collections.php

This is a really informative article on the Forrest slave market site
Link:

Web Extra: Forrest Slave Market Site Emerges From Past As Part of Heritage Trail The same week as the formal re-opening of the Universal Life Insurance building, Tim Huebner, a Rhodes College history professor, and the students in his “historical methods” class went to Calvary Episcopal Church to unveil a new historical marker that marks the site of a very different business...

Fannie Lou Hamer edited

100 years!

The Arcade celebrates 100 years with party, 100-cents menu - The Daily Memphian The Arcade is throwing a big block party on Saturday and featuring a $1 – or 100-cents – menu.

This is the historical marker for the Memphis Massacre that took place in 1866. A mob attacked and murdered 46 African Americans near Calhoun and G.E. Patterson, while also ra**ng several African American women and comitting acts of arson. However, the dark moment in our city's history did end up becoming one of the factors that led to the adoption of the 14th amendment, showing that light can eventually be produced out of the dark.

This is a photo from the Hampton History Museum's exhibit for the first Africans who arrived in Virginia.

Exactly 400 years ago, the first slaves were brought to Point Comfort, Virginia. Though it was one of the darkest days in our country's history, without it the traffic light (invented by Garrett Morgan), the orbital mechanics calculations to put a man on the moon (Katherine Johnson), and the perfection of carbon filament (Lewis Latimer) would not have happened since these men and women are descendants of slaves.

Never forget that our darkest moments can also produce our brightest moments in history as well.

This video was created by the Southern Poverty Law Center. It shows the names of some of the slaves who were sold here in Memphis by Nathan B Forest
Link:

Honoring African Americans sold into slavery by Nathan Bedford Forrest The following names belong to 74 African Americans sold into slavery by Nathan Bedford Forrest in Memphis between 1854 and 1862. Rhodes College history stude...

This is a really great trailer on Stax Records for the documentary that covers the pre civil rights era that saw both white and black Americans work together to create what we know as the Memphis sound

Stax Trailer - The Early Years Stax: The Early Years Bill Carrier Director/DP http://apicine.com