Special Hour on Gay Rights
From AARP Radio | Part of the Prime Time Radio series | 59:54
The GLBT civil rights movement…this week on Prime Time Radio.
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- Special Hour on Gay Rights
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- AARP Radio
Frank Kameny was a key player in the birth of the gay rights movement, especially the Washington, D.C. branch of it. He's 84 years old, and starting in the late 1950s, he put his job and his life on the line for a cause he believed in. Now, he's an honored elder, and much of what he fought for has come to pass.
In this conversation with host Mike Cuthbert, he describes the Stonewall riots–the incident that ignited a movement–and tells his own story of being fired and shunned in Washington, D.C. years before he was embraced and honored there.
Toilet Paper Scrap Chronicles Civil Rights Ordeal
From Wisconsin Public Radio | 07:23
A six-foot piece of jail-grade toilet paper from 1963 captures Civil Rights struggle
Simply put, toilet paper is not considered much of a keepsake. Yet within the archives of the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison, rests a carefully-preserved six-foot swatch of toilet paper. Its relevance in chronicling the civil rights struggle can best be told by Miriam Real, who used it as stationery while incarcerated in a Port Allen, Louisiana Jail, in September 1963.
Real -- then Miriam Feingold -- was one of hundreds of people arrested during a voter registration drive coordinated by the Congress of Racial Equality, or CORE. In this feature, Real describes her fateful assignment.
Between Civil War and Civil Rights -6: Rosewood Reborn (1923 --
From Alan Lipke | Part of the Between Civil War and Civil Rights series | 59:31
It began on New Years Day 1923, when a white woman in a small Florida (saw-)milltown claimed that a black man had attacked her. By the week's end, hundreds of armed white men had burned the nearby village of Rosewood, and forced its black inhabitants to flee for their lives.
Seven decades later, survivors won a claim against the state of Florida. It's the only known case of reparations paid to victims of mass racial violence in U.S. history--and a pivotal event in reclaiming America's hidden history of racial terror.
By the end of the first day, vengeful Whites had lynched a man they suspected of helping the attacker escape. Local lawmen--and, over the next week, the state--did nothing to stop them.
Rosewood's fate was an open secret for decades. Black survivors and white witnesses alike kept the story to themselves: the former, in terror, the latter because the Rosewood "race riot" was unremarkable, even typical. Then the Civil Rights era completed the silence. But after two survivors filed a claim for reparations, the state (in 1994) finally awarded $2 million to survivors and descendants.
Rosewod Reborn is a story of faith and credulity; rumor and reality, heroism, cowardice and tragedy; sex, theft, murder, conspiracy, mystery, and of the cultural chasm that divides our nation. It's history forgotten, reclaimed, and falsified; and a story of how our cultural myths are created and distorted.
Voices of Courage in the Civil Rights Movement
From Janis Shields | 30:51
Mary Frances Berry, Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania explores how we can achieve true social and economic justice in American society.
How do we achieve true social and economic justice in American society? Mary Frances Berry is the Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought and Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. She served as Assistant Secretary for Education in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare during the Carter Administration and was appointed by President Carter to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. President Reagan fired her when she criticized his civil rights policies, but she sued in court and won reinstatement. President Clinton appointed her Chair of the Commission, where she served until 2004. A founder of the Free South Africa Movement, which initiated protests at the South African Embassy in the successful struggle for democracy, she shares AFSC?s vision of equality and rights for all people, regardless of color, race, ethnicity, religious persuasion or gender identification.
Jazz and Civil Rights
From With Good Reason | 28:59
Musicians' impact on the Movement.
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- Jazz and Civil Rights
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- With Good Reason
Antonio Garcia says that the personal and professional lives of musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, and John Coltrane cannot be divorced from the struggle for racial equality—they contributed in significant ways to interracial understanding and social progress. Also featured: The composers of the Civil Rights anthem "Lift Every Voice and Sing" also created musical theater at the turn of the century, transforming the image of African American characters and performers. Paula Marie Seniors looks at the lives of the composers Bob Cole, J. Rosamond Johnson, and James Weldon Johnson, whose work helped break down stereotypical portrayals of black Americans.
An Imperfect Revolution: Voices from the Desegregation Era
From American Public Media | Part of the American RadioWorks: Black History series | 59:59
The 1970s saw a tidal change in American race relations: for the first time, large numbers of white, black and other children of color began attending school together. It was an experience that shaped them for life. Using first-person accounts of the era of "forced busing," An Imperfect Revolution explores the ways school desegregation changed the nation.
Nearly everyone who experienced school desegregation has a story to tell about crossing racial lines. Together they reflect an era marked by struggle and hope, anger and idealism. American RadioWorks travels to Charlotte, NC to talk with people about their memories of integration.