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.”

Dr. M. Moran Weston was a Minister, Educator And Social Justice Activist

Edward H. Jones was an African American businessman and activist. He devoted his life to breaking employment barriers for Blacks in civilian and military life.

There would not have been a SNCC without Ella Baker. While serving as Executive Secretary for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), she organized the founding conference of SNCC, held at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina during the Easter weekend of 1960.

The UNC Black Food Workers Strike was a labor strike at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that began on February 23 and lasted until December 9, 1969.

On Sunday, Feb. 23, 1969 Black food services workers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill went on strike for better wages and working conditions. The Black Student Movement supported the strike, which put a spotlight on labor and racial inequities at the university.

Willie Gertrude Brown was an African American activist for racial justice and the rights of children and women.

James Edward O’Hara was one of four Black congressmen elected from North Carolina’s Second District— called the “Black Second” for its Black-majority population—during the late 19th century,

On January 29, 1901, North Carolina Congressman George H. White delivered his now-famous "Phoenix" Farewell Address.

The protests occurred from May 18-21 but were suspended until the city reached an agreement with the businesses to integrate in July, after which time the protests were officially called off.

NCMAAHC is sad to share the news of the passing of Ms Andrea Harris on May 20, 2020. She was a pure fire trailblazer for Black North Carolinians.

Andrea Harris' legacy of economic development and minority enterprise commands attention. For more than three decades, Harris has been a giant in building North Carolina's black wealth.

What many people don't know is that a portion of that story is always left out. The Bennett Belles from Bennett College For Women were the ones who began protesting long before planning the meetings and gathering up the students to boycott that lunch counter.

On June 23, 1957, Asbury Methodist Minister Moore leads a group of six other Black students (three women, three men) into the segregated Royal Ice Cream Parlor, where they sat down in the white section.

In the 1940s, Rosanell Eaton became one of the first African Americans in North Carolina to successfully register to vote since Reconstruction. In her 90s, she became a vocal opponent of the state's voter ID laws, which disproportionately affected black voters.

Paula Dance Is The First Black Woman Elected Sheriff In North Carolina. Pitt County, NC. She was sworn in December 2018.

Ervin Hester, the first regularly scheduled African American news anchor in the southeast.

Ann Atwater (Born July 1, 1935 – Died June 20, 2016) was an African American civil rights activist in Durham, North Carolina. Throughout her career she helped improve the quality of life for African Americans in Durham through programs like Operation Breakthrough (Durham, North Carolina), a community organization dedicated to fight the War on Poverty.

Environmental Justice --Warren County, NC-The Dumping of Toxic PCP In/near Black Communities Was Fought Against By The Grassroots Organizing Of The African Americans Who Lived In And Near The Areas Where Dumping Occurred.

Warren County, NC Is The Birthplace of The Environmental Justice Movement

Conrad Laurel Raiford was an American athlete, goodwill ambassador and one of Greensboro, North Carolina's first African American police officers

Around 1912. A local Black man named Walter Long, who had been fascinated since childhood by police work, applied for a job as a Winston (Salem, NC) city policeman. He was told that that was impossible.

The poll tax, ordinarily a flat rate of one or two dollars that was to be paid before a voter was allowed to cast his ballot, was just one of several means devised in North Carolina and other states to disfranchise Black voters.

Robert Lee Vann, newspaper publisher, politician, government official and civil rights leader, was born on August 27, 1879 in Ahoskie, North Carolina.

Dr. Cooper received a scholarship to Saint Augustine's Normal School in Raleigh, NC, at the age of 9 years old. She was one of the first students to matriculate from there. She is the 4th African American Women to receive her Ph.D., when she earned it from the Sorbonne in Paris France.

J. Kenneth Lee, a civil rights attorney who represented five black children who sued Greensboro City Schools so they could attend an all-white elementary school — among the first students in the South to successfully do so.

Moranda Smith was a black labor organizer and unionist who served as the first regional director of Winston-Salem, North Carolina's local 22 of the Food, Tobacco, Agricultural and Allied Workers of America (FTA) in the 1930 and 1940s.

In June of 1974, a 21-year-old Black woman was placed in a Beaufort County jail on a breaking and entering charge. By August of that same year, she was on the run after one of her white jailers, Clarence Alligood, was found dead in her cell.

Records related to Emancipation and Juneteenth celebrations in North Carolina. Juneteenth commemorates the emancipation of Texas slaves on June 19, 1865

The Civil Rights Movement was the crucible in which Dorothy Cotton's life dedicated to learning, teaching and inspiring others was forged.

A pioneer of the civil rights movement who shattered color and gender barriers in the military, in transportation, and the African Methodist Episcopal Church

In May 2012, Benjamin Chavis and six surviving members of the group petitioned North Carolina governor Beverly Perdue for a pardon.

"The Story of The Wilmington Ten" - Timeline

October 17, 1972—Chavis and the "Wilmington 9" convicted on charges of conspiracy to assault emergency personnel and burning with an incendiary device.

Greensboro, North Carolina, is best known for the 1960 sit-ins that sparked a massive student movement to desegregate the South.

Before King’s speech at the March on Washington 50 years ago today, the future Nobel Peace Prize winner warmed up with an overflowing audience at the private women’s college.

Born into slavery in what is now Henderson, North Carolina, Henry Cheatham was the child of an enslaved domestic worker about who little is known.

Priest, Activist, Civil Rights Activist, Educator, Legal Professional, Women's Rights Activist

On March 21, 1949, the Freedom Riders surrendered at the Orange County Courthouse in Hillsborough and were sent to segregated chain gangs.

In 1947 the Congress of Racial Equality & local citizens, black & white, protested bus segregation.