CIVIL RIGHTS
SOCIAL JUSTICE
& ACTIVISM

All the way through Dixie, the freedom riders sat together, ate together, drank from the same fountains and waited in the same waiting rooms

William Hooper Councill was a teacher, social justice activist, college president, and editor

On an autumn afternoon in 1972, the people of Rogers-Eubanks, a historically Black community just outside Chapel Hill, North Carolina, gathered beneath a tree to witness the end of a dispute.

Black women fought for the right to vote, along with White women. The suffrage groups were also filled with racist White American women which divided Black and Native American women into their own groups.

On that hot afternoon a group of six young men, four black men and two white men, decided to take a swim at Pullen Park Pool, a racially segregated Raleigh city pool. For 40 minutes the youths swam and while 45 persons got out in response to their presence, 65 (mainly children) remained in the pool.

On June 25, 1948, Parmele, NC native William Claudius Chance (23 Nov. 1880–7 May 1970), was made to get off an Atlantic Coast Line Railroad passenger train car in Emporia, Virginia, for refusing to move to a car for black passengers.

In the 1940s, the CIO launched a wide-ranging attempt to unionize workers in the South. This movement was known as Operation Dixie, and some of its key battles were fought in Forsyth County.

One afternoon in 1955, six Black men played golf on a whites-only course. What happened next pushed Greensboro toward integration and turned a local dentist into a civil rights icon

On Sunday, 04.13.1947 The Journey of Reconciliation is celebrated. This was the first civil rights freedom ride through the American South

The Freedom Riders surrendered at the Orange County Courthouse in Hillsborough, NC, and were sent to segregated chain gangs.

After passing the North Carolina bar exam, Elreta Melton Alexander became the first Black woman to practice law in North Carolina. However, it is important to note that Ruth Whitehead Whaley was the first Black woman admitted to the North Carolina bar, but she never practiced in the state

Bree Newsome is an artist, filmmaker, social justice activist, who drew national attention in 2015 when she climbed the flagpole in front of the South Carolina Capitol building and removed the confederate battle flag that they used as their State flag.

Dr. Willa Johnson Cofield, during the years of segregation, she was a very courageous teacher activist of Halifax County, NC. After her major teacher rights victory in the high Federal courts, Willa Johnson eventually moved to New Jersey and got her PhD in Urban Planning at Rutgers.

The civil rights movement mobilized Eva Clayton to become active in civic and political affairs.

Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander, a pioneer for Black women in the law. Sadie Alexander, an African American lawyer and activist was born 1.2.1898

February 3, 1983, Henry Frye became the first African American to serve on the North Carolina Supreme Court

Sylvia Elizabeth Mathis was the first Black woman to be recruited as a special agent for the FBI of the United States, and she was the first Black woman agent recruited in the state of North Carolina.

On July 24, 1972, Sandra Hughes Was Hired And Began Working At WFMY in Greensboro, NC. Helping Pave the Way For Black Women in Journalism

Labor activism was brewing in the South in the 1970s, and North Carolina was the scene of several strikes. The continuation of that civil rights movement was felt in Rocky Mount with a sanitation workers’ strike that started in July 1978.

Golden Asro Frinks was an American civil rights activist and a Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) field secretary who represented the New Bern, North Carolina SCLC chapter.

September 1, 1953: In Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company, Keys challenged the “separate but equal” in bus segregation before the Interstate Commerce Commission. Thirteen months earlier, Keys, a private in the Women’s Air Corps, had refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Carolina Trailways bus.

Freedom Fighters Remember Williamston, NC Civil Rights Movement -- The Williamston Freedom Movement, Began On June 30, 1963, a month of protests known as “Freedom Rallies” began in Williamston, North Carolina.

Kellis Earl Parker was an accomplished lawyer, activist, scholar, and musician. He was one of the first Black students to enroll at UNC-Chapel Hill, the first Black student to run for a campus-wide office at Carolina, and the first Black professor of law at Columbia University.

June 4, 2019 marks the 100th anniversary of Congress passing the 19th Amendment, granting American women the right to vote, a freedom they had long deserved. This Amendment did not allow for Black American women to use their right to vote, it only gave White American women the ability to use their right to vote.

Two days before Thanksgiving in 1951, John Dudley, vice president of the Adkin High School senior class, went to the secretary’s office with a message for the morning announcements: “Carolyn Coefield has lost her little red pocketbook.”