African American Sites in the Digital Collections

1945-1968: Post War United States

[Marian Anderson receives the Spingarn Medal from Eleanor Roosevelt]. Silver gelatin print. Prints and Photographs Division. (8-12) Courtesy of the NAACP.

Highlights

The black struggle for civil rights also inspired other liberation and rights movements, including those of Native Americans, Latinos, and women, and African Americans have lent their support to liberation struggles in Africa.
In addition to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the National Urban League (NUL) papers, the Library also holds papers of civil rights activists such as Thurgood Marshall, Roy Wilkins, Patricia Roberts Harris, A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, Nannie Helen Burroughs, and others.

Search the Library's Finding Aid Database.

• African American Odyssey: The Civil Rights Era
  

People, Places and Events

1. Marian Anderson (1897-1993) [See second entry]: Famed contralto and first African American to perform at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City
   
   Opera Singer
   
   
2. Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (1899-1974): Often said to be America's greatest composer, bandleader, and recording artist
   
   Jazz Musician and Composer
   
   
3. John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie (1917-1993): Knows as "Dizzy Gillespie," one of the founders of a new style of progressive jazz that came to be known as bebop
   
   Jazz Musician, Composer and Bandleader
   
   
4. Langston Hughes (1902-1967) [See second entry]: A major influence in African American literature during the 1920's Harlem Renaissance, expressing the mind and spirit of most African Americans for nearly half a century
   
   Poet and Playwright
   
   
5. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968): Nobel Prize winner Martin Luther King, Jr. and a prolific writer, formed the nonviolence strategy of the civil rights movement
   
   Clergyman and Civil Rights Leader
   
   
6. Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993): First African American Supreme Court Justice Jurist
   
   Civil rights lawyer, solicitor general, and associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court
   
   
7. Rosa Parks (1913-2005 ): Refused to relinquish her seat to a white passenger on a racially segregated Montgomery, Alabama bus
   
   Civil Rights Activist
   
   
8. Jack "Jackie" Roosevelt Robinson (1919-1972): First African American of the 20th century to play major league baseball
   
   Baseball Player