Niagara Movement members begin meeting on the Canadian side of the Niagara Falls. This all-African American group of scholars, lawyers and businessmen came together for three days to create what would soon become a powerful post-slavery Black rights organization. Although it only lasted five years, the Niagara Movement was an influential precursor to the mid-20th century civil rights movement.

For the complete article, go to.. history.com

Article Title

Members of the Niagara Movement meet for the first time

AuthorHistory.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/members-of-the-niagara-movement-meet-for-first-time

Access Date

July 10, 2022

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

January 21, 2021

Original Published Date

July 8, 2020

BLACK HISTORY

BY

 HISTORY.COM EDITORS

A commitment to lasting change in sport culture and the world means supporting Black communities and making a space for powerful stories. In partnership with VICE TV and Religion of Sports, our 3-part docuseries ‘Running While Black’ returns with Episode 2 ‘We Represent’.

Often referred to as “the father of long-distance running,” Ted Corbitt became the first African American to win a national marathon championship and first president of the New York Road Runners. Gary Corbitt, son of Ted Corbitt, curator of Ted Corbitt Archives and official historian for the National Black Marathoners Association discusses his father’s legacy and impact on running in the United States. Also featured are We Run Brownsville co-founders Dionne Grayman & Sheila Gordon, shining a light on their community for women of color and prioritizing physical, mental, emotional and societal wellness and growth. Episode 2 ends by highlighting Andraya Yearwood, a trans athlete who has faced discrimination on the track and continues to love running despite adversity.

Join us on our journey by watching Episode 1 and 2 online now, and tune-in July 6th to watch live on VICE TV.

Following its ratification by the necessary three-quarters of U.S. states, the 14th Amendment, guaranteeing to African Americans citizenship and all its privileges, is officially adopted into the U.S. Constitution.

Two years after the Civil War, the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 divided the South into five military districts, where new state governments, based on universal manhood suffrage, were to be established.

Thus, began the period known as Radical Reconstruction, which saw the 14th Amendment, which had been passed by Congress in 1866, ratified in July 1868.

The amendment resolved pre-Civil War questions of African American citizenship by stating that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States…are citizens of the United States and of the state in which they reside.”

The amendment then reaffirmed the privileges and rights of all citizens, and granted all these citizens the “equal protection of the laws.”In the decades after its adoption, the equal protection clause was cited by a number of African American activists who argued that racial segregation denied them the equal protection of law.

However, in 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that states could constitutionally provide segregated facilities for African Americans, so long as they were equal to those afforded white persons. The Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which announced federal toleration of the so-called “separate but equal” doctrine, was eventually used to justify segregating all public facilities, including railroad cars, restaurants, hospitals, and schools.

However, “colored” facilities were never equal to their white counterparts, and African Americans suffered through decades of debilitating discrimination in the South and elsewhere.

In 1954, Plessy v. Ferguson was finally struck down by the Supreme Court in its ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.

history.com