Son,

I am cleaning my office and found some old notes from college. I have written recently about racism and thought these significant dates might be enlightening.

1875 – Civil Rights Act – dealt with public accommodation.

1877 – The end of Reconstruction.

1883 – Supreme Court decision overturning the Civil Rights Act of 1875.

1895 – Booker T. Washington’s Atlanta Exposition speech. Ida B. Wells-Barnett published “Red Record.’ Frederick O. Douglas died.

1896 – Plessey vs. Ferguson, Homer Plessey’s challenge to sit in first class railroad cars is denied by the Supreme Court, noting “Distinction is not discrimination.”

1903 – W.E.B. DuBois articulates the challenge to Booker T. Washington by publishing “The Soul of Black Folk.”

1905 – Niagara Movement is organized by 29 members of the ‘talented tenth.’

1909 – National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is organized as an interracial organization with W.E.B. DuBois as the only Black person on the Board.

1915 – Booker T. Washington dies.

1917 – Great Northern Exodus begins, prelude to the Harlem Rennaisance.

1925 – A. Phillip Randolph agrees to organize the Brotherhood of the Sleeping Car Porters.

I read through my notes and was inspired again to remember the great challenge of freedom, the great challenge given to us by our Founding Fathers.

Dad