This print commemorates the ratification of the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which granted African-American men the right to vote.

Three prominent Black leaders appear at the top, center: Martin Robinson Delany, abolitionist and the first Black officer in the U.S. Army; Frederick Douglass, abolitionist and famed speaker and writer; and Hiram Rhoades Revels, the first African American to serve in the U.S. Congress. The image at the center depicts a celebratory parade in Baltimore on March 30, 1870. Surrounding this image are various scenes of domestic, work, and political life, including, at the bottom center, a Black man voting.

Martin Delany was active in the Colored Conventions Movement. Please visit the Colored Conventions Project for more information on the movement and Black organizing.

You can view the Fifteenth Amendment at the Library of Congress for more information about the print and access to a downloadable version.

 

 

 

 

Morrow is the first African American in history to have served on a Presidential staff in an executive capacity. From 1955-1961, against the backdrop of the civil rights movement, he was an Administrative Officer for Special Projects and the only African American in the Eisenhower White House. The lynching of Emmett Till, the “Little Rock Nine”, and the jailing of Martin Luther King for a sit-in in Atlanta protesting segregation all occurred during his tenure. Morrow later detailed his intense frustration at Eisenhower and the administration’s lukewarm embrace of civil rights. If you have a Penn State Account, you can access the ebook of Black Man in the White House.

 

 

 

The Negro Heritage Library was a multi-volume encyclopedia recording the achievements and history of African-Americans in a family friendly format. Martin Luther King, Jr. endorsed the project writing, “I can think of no venture in the world of ideas that is going to be more critical to the Negro community.” The page on view shows Charles H. Mahoney, a Detroit lawyer, who became “the first permanent Negro delegate” to the United Nations in 1954. In 1947, W.E.B. DuBois and Walter White spoke on behalf of the NAACP to the UN’s Department of Social Affairs about the lack of “democracy for American Negros” as they were not represented in the US delegation to the UN.  

 

 

 

 

Student Activism Records, 1965-1972, Collection 1391, University Archives, Penn State 

The Douglass Association was a student group, later the Black Student Union, founded in October 1967, that insisted on change for the African American community at Penn State. On March 13, 1968, 100 members of The Douglass Association confronted Charles L. Lewis, VP of Student Affairs, at his Old Main office with a list of 12 demands for changes in the University’s policies regarding Black students. One of the demands was more representation of Black authors and history in the library’s collections. 

 

 

 

 

This memoir is Shirley Chisholm’s account of her remarkable rise from a young girl in Brooklyn to become America’s first African-American Congresswoman. She eventually became the first Black major-party candidate to run for President of the United States. Her slogan was “Unbought and Unbossed.”

Chisholm’s campaign against Senator George McGovern in 1972 was about fighting poverty and discrimination, protecting the environment, and uniting a nation that was divided by the Vietnam War. You can watch the trailer for the documentary Chisholm ’72: Unbought and Unbossed.

You can access an ebook of Unbought and Unbossed with a Penn State Account.

 

 

 

 

This book profiles the 34 Black Americans who served in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives from 1870-1970 including the first African-American senator, Hiram Revels of Mississippi. After the 15th Amendment was ratified, Revels was able to put his name on the ballot. 

You can access an ebook of America’s Black Congressmen with a Penn State Account.

 

 

 

 

Inscribed by Shirley Chisholm with a signed photograph tucked inside, this first edition of The Good Fight tells the story of how she become the first Black major-party candidate to run for President of the United States. Her inscription reads, “Look only to God and conscience for approval!”

You can visit the United States House of Representatives’ page on Shirley Chisholm to read more.

 

 

 

 

 

Fannie Lou Hamer was one of the first Black organizers for voter registration in Mississippi. Young civil rights workers were in need of Black people who could help convince their neighbors to vote and Fannie Lou Hamer answered the call, continuing her activism even after she was violently attacked by police. This biography describes her involvement in voter rights beginning in 1962 at the age of 45 and continuing as a civil rights activist during the remaining 15 years of her life. 

 

 

 

 

The passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is considered by many as the culmination of the civil rights movement. When the law was enacted, Black voter registration in Mississippi soared but few Black candidates won office. Frank Parker describes Black Mississippians’ battle for meaningful voting rights, following the story up to 1986, when Alphonso Michael Espy was elected as Mississippi’s first Black member of Congress.

You can access an ebook of Black Votes Count: Political Empowerment in Mississippi After 1965 with a Penn State Account.

 

 

 

 

In 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “If we crack Chicago, then we crack the world.” Chicago then became a focal point, and Black empowerment would take off like a prairie fire across the land. Fire on the Prairie tells the story of Harold Washington’s election in 1983 as the city’s first Black mayor. Chicago was also central to Barack Obama’s run for the Presidency: he first worked there as a community organizer.

 

 

 

 

In his memoir, William Clay shares his years of experiences with and insight into the political process and the roles Black elected officials played in the process. In 1969, Clay joined African-Americans Shirley Chisholm of New York and Louis Stokes of Ohio as a new member of the 91st Congress.  He was a Democratic congressman from Missouri for 32 years and one of the thirteen founders of the Congressional Black Caucus. This copy of his book is inscribed by him with the note, “Still fighting for our permanent interests, Bill”.

 

 

 

 

 

In his memoir, Barack Obama discusses his childhood in Honolulu and Chicago up until his entry into Harvard Law School in 1988. Born to a Black African father and white American mother, Obama recounts his emotional journey as he travels to Kenya and discovers who his father was as a man.

Obama won the U.S. Senate Democratic primary in Illinois in 2004 and began his presidential campaign in 2007. Obama was the first African American president of the United States, from 2009-2017. During his presidency, Obama diversified the federal bureaucracy, revived the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, and passed health care reform.

If you have a Penn State Account, you can access the ebook of Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance.

 

 

 

 

Barbara Jordan was the first African American to serve in the Texas Senate and the first Black woman elected to Congress in the South since Reconstruction. Her opening statement on the Nixon impeachment hearings in 1974 is considered a masterclass in persuasive political speech. If you have a Penn State Account, you can access the ebook of Barbara Jordan: American Hero.

 

 

 

 

In this history of housing discrimination, Rothstein argues that the policy decisions and laws passed by white administrations promoted segregation and entrenched economic hardship for Black communities. In this short video introduction to his arguments, he begins, “every metropolitan area in this country is racially segregated ” and goes on to argue that the segregation we see today is not an accident or coincidence but an outcome that can be clearly traced back to political decisions in the past.

 

 

 

 

 

Michelle Obama was the first African-American First Lady of the United States, and Becoming follows her journey to the White House and the life and political lessons she learned along the way: “Let’s invite one another in. Maybe then we can begin to fear less, to make fewer wrong assumptions, to let go of the biases and stereotypes that unnecessarily divide us. Maybe we can better embrace the ways we are the same. It’s not about being perfect. It’s not about where you get yourself in the end. There’s power in allowing yourself to be known and heard, in owning your unique story, in using your authentic voice. And there’s grace in being willing to know and hear others. This, for me, is how we become.”

During her time in the White House, Mrs. Obama launched Let’s Move!, a program that brought together community leaders to fight childhood obesity. She also launched Joining Forces with Dr. Jill Biden to support service members and veterans, Reach Higher, an effort to convince young people to pursue higher education, and Let Girls Learn, an initiative to support education for girls around the world.

 

 

 

 

 

Conversations in Black is filled with interviews conducted by Gordon as he discusses crucial topics in the Trump era such as the convergence of race and politics, living with white nationalism, free speech and the far-right, and more.

Gordon brings together some of the most prominent voices in Black America today including Stacey Abrams. Abrams served eleven years in the Georgia House of Representatives, and in 2018 she became the Democratic nominee for Governor of Georgia, winning more votes than any other Democrat in the state’s history. After seeing the mishandling of the 2018 election, Abrams founded Fair Fight, a national voter rights organization, to ensure every voter’s voice will be heard.