








ield near the courthouse. Before climbing the gallows, he made one last prophecy, saying there would be a storm after his execution and that the sun would refuse to shine. There was, in fact, a storm in Jerusalem on that day, but Turner was not talking about the weather he was predicting a major disturbance in the American psyche. The storm he saw came in the generation of crisis that his act helped precipitate.
4.	Free at Last!
T) Felix Haywood, who was there, it was the Time of Glory when men and women walked  on golden clouds. 
To Frederick Douglass, it was a down-payment on the redemption of the American soul.
To Sister Winny in Virginia, to Jane Montgomery in Louisiana, to Ed Bluff in Mississippi, to Black people all over the South and all over America, it was the Time of Jubilee, the wild, happy, sad, mocking, tearful, fearful time of the unchaining of the bodies of Black folks. And the air was sweet with song.
Free at last!
Free at last!
Thank God Almighty! We re free at last.
W. E. B. Dubois was not there, but he summed the whole thing up in phrases worthy of the ages. It was all, he said,  foolish, bizarre, and tawdry. Gangs of dirty Negroes howling and dancing; poverty-stricken ignorant laborers mistaking war, destruction, and revolution for the mystery of the free human soul; and yet to these Black folk it was the Apocalypse. And he added.
 All that was Beauty, all that was Love all that was Truth, stood on the top these mad mornings and sang with foe stars. A great human sob shrieked in the
Events in African-American History wind, and tossed its tears upon the sea_ free, free, free. 
Contrary to the common view, the emancipation of Blacks didn t happen at one time or even in one place. It started with the first shot fired at Fort Sumter. It continued during the war and in the Jubilee summer of 1865, and it has not been completed. For the slaves, who created the foundation of American wealth, never received the 40 acres of land that would have made freedom meaningful.
It was in this milieu that African-Americans embarked on a road called freedom. As the road twisted and turned, doubling back on itself their enemies and their problems multiplied. But they endured, and endure.
5.	Booker T.
Washington vs.
W. E. B. DuBois
THERE was a big parade in Atlanta on Wednesday, Sept. 18, 1895, and a huge crowd gathered in the Exposition Building at the Cotton States Exposition for the opening speeches. Several Whites spoke and then former Gov. Rufus Bullock introduced  Professor
BookerT. Washington.  The 39-year-old president of Tuskegee Institute moved to the front of the platform and started speaking to the segregated audience. Within 10 minutes, reporter James Creelman wrote,  the multitude was
in an uproar of enthusiasm   handkerchiefs were waved . .. hats were tossed into the air. The fairest women of Georgia stood up and cheered.
What was the cheering about?
Metaphors mostly and words millions of Whites wanted to hear. Washington told Blacks:  Cast down your buckets where you are.  To Whites, he offered the same advice: Cast down your bucket [among] the most patient, faithful, law-abiding and unresentful people the world has seen        
Suddenly, he flung his hand aloft, with the fingers held wide apart.
 In all things purely social, he said,  we can be as separate as the fingers, yet [he balled the fingers into a fist] one as the hand in all things essential to mutual
P Se crowd came to its feet, yelling.
Washington s  Atlanta Compromise sneech made him famous and set the tone for race relations for some 20 years. One year after his speech, the Supreme Court rounded a fateful fork, endorsing
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6. AFRICAN AMERICANS
in 7lessy vs. Ferguson the principle of  separate but equal. 
1 Vashington s refusal to make a direct
anc open attack on Jim Crow and his im-plic it acceptance of segregation brought hin into conflict with W.E.B. DuBois and| a group of Black militants who or
gan ized the germinal Niagara Movement. At its first national meeting at
Hai pers Ferry in 1906, the Niagara militants said,  We claim for ourselves every
Ie right that belongs to a freeborn
sindl
Am< rican, political, civil, and social; and unti we get these rights we will never ceas e to protest and assail the ears of
America.
So saying, the Niagara militants laid the foundation for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
Peoj le which merged the forces of Black milit mcy and White liberalism.
6.	The Great Migration
HI >TORY does not always come with   Irums beating and flags flying.
So; netimes it comes in on a wave of silenqe.
Sometimes it whispers.
despai
It dras like that in the terrible days of lir that preceded the unprece-dentep explosion of hope and movement
that is
Thi terna and oi
called The Great Migration.
; event, which was the largest inmigration in American history le of the central events of African-
American history, started in the cracks of
histon, masse;
the stat
in the minds and moods of the of Blacks, who were reduced to
tus of semi-slaves in the post-Re-
constrjjction period. Pushed back toward
lavery by lynchings, segregation and the sharecropping systems, they turner around within themselves and decide d that there had to be another way ar d another and better place. The feeling moved, became a mood, an im-
perativ amble,
e, a command. Without pre-| without a plan, without leader-
I i
ship, tne people began to move, going from the plantation to Southern cities, going from there to the big cities of the K'    IThere, they found jobs in war-Idustries and sent letters to a
North.
time ir cousin saying:
fr an aunt or sister or brother, Come! And they came, hundreds ahd hundreds of thousands. The first wa re (300,000) came between 1910 and 192 0, followed by a second wave (1,300,0 X)) between 1920 and 1930, and
third (500,000) and fourth (2,500,000) waves, even larger, in the  30s and 40s.
In the big cities of the North, Blacks emancipated themselves politically and economically and created the foundation of contemporary Black America.
7.	Brown vs. Board of Education
THE marshal s voice was loud and clear.
 Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! All persons having business before the Honorable, the Supreme Court of the United States, are admonished to draw near and give their attention, for the Court is now sitting. 
The marshal paused and intoned the traditional words.
 God save the United States and this Honorable Court! 
It was high noon on Monday, May 17, 1954, and the Supreme Court was crammed to capacity with spectators. Among the dozen or so Blacks present was Thurgood Marshall, chief counsel of the NAACP, who leaned forward in expectation.
Cases from four states (South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware, Kansas) and the District of Columbia were before the Court, which had been asked by Marshall and his associates to overturn the Plessy vs. Ferguson decision and declare segregation in public schools unconstitutional. All America awaited the long-expected decision which would come on a Monday. But which Monday? No one knew, and there was no sign on the faces of the justices that the issue was going to be settled on this day.
The Court disposed of routine business and announced decisions in several boring cases involving the sale of milk and the picketing of retail stores. Then Chief Justice Earl Warren picked up a document and said in a firm, quiet voice: I have for announcement the judgment and opinion of the Court in No. 1 Oliver Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka. It was 12:52 p.m. A shiver ran through the courtroom, and bells started ringing in press rooms all over the world.
Warren held the crowd in suspense, reviewing the history of the cases. Then, abruptly, he came to the heart of the matter:
 Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and
other  tangible  factors ma deprive the children of tl group of equal educatio tunities?  Warren paused ai believe that it does.  The t unanimous: 9-0.
The words raced across and were received by diffe according to their diffei Southern diehards like H madge issued statements of promised a generation of li the implications of the deci enormous that many Arne shocked into silence and Farmville, Va., a 16-year-named Barbara Trent bur when her teacher announc sion.  We went on studying said later,  but things were and will never be the same
8. Montgomer the Freedom
Movement
IT was a quiet, peaceful <!
gomery, Ala., the Cradle federacy but it was unse; for December 1.
The Cleveland Avenue through Court Square, w were auctioned in the days federacy, and braked to a h the Empire Theater. There special about the bus or the the driver nor the passen; that a revolution was about would turn America and tl side down.
Six Whites boarded th' Empire Theater, and the di to the rear and ordered 1 Blacks to get up and give the White citizens. This w custom, sanctioned by 1 mores of the South, and it e due comment. Three Blacl mediately, but Rosa Parks, nered seamstress in rim kept her seat. For this acl she was arrested. Local les one-day bus boycott on Mo 1955, to protest the arrest, boycott stretched out to I 381 days changed the face Black America, creating; (Martin Luther King Jr. movement. There then quick succession a series c
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, w ins and Freedom Rides) and dra-(Birmingham. Selma, UMs the March on Washington) that constituted Black Americas finest hour one of the greatest moments in the fetory of the Republic.
9,	Little Rock
The GIANT C-119 flying boxcars cir-ded the field, like grim birds.
One by one, they glided into the Little Rock, Ark., airport and debouched paratroopers in full battle gear. There were, in all, more than 1 ,(XX) soldiers, Black and White; and they were in Little Rock to enforce the orders of a federal court. For the first time since the Ri'con-struction era, the United State's of America was deploying federal tnxips to defend the rights of Black Americans.
Escorted by city police cars, a convoy of olive-drab jeeps and trucks sped to Central High School where a howling mb had prevented the enrollment of nine Black students. The troops deployed on the double to block all entrances to the schools, and signalmen strung telephone lines and set up command posts.
Wednesday morning, Sept. 25, 1957  wiied bright and clear, and nine Black teenagers gathered at the ranch-style
29. Dramatic home of Daisy Bates, president of the Arkansas NAACP. At 8:50 a.m., there was a rumble of heavy wheels. The teenagers rushed to the window.
 The streets were blocked off,  Daisy Bates recalled later.  The soldiers closed ranks . . . Oh! It was beautiful. And the attitude of the children at that moment: the respect they had. I could hear them saying, For the first time in my life I truly feel like an American.  I could see it in their faces: Somebody cares for me America cares. 
At 9:45, U. S. soldiers with drawn bayonets escorted six Black females and three Black males into Central High School, and the Rev. Dunbar H. Ogden, pre
