Resources for Black History Month: Suggested Resources from the UST History Department

“Railroad titan George Pullman’s name was once synonymous with luxury. His sleeping cars changed how some Americans rode the rails. But when his success didn’t trickle down to the people who built, operated, and staffed his cars, a rebellion ensued. While the first major strike ultimately failed, a group of Black workers later found success through organizing, paving the way for a Black middle class and a civil rights movement that forever changed the course of American history.”

“On a September day in 1883, 21-year-old Ida B. Wells boarded a train from Memphis to her teaching job in Shelby County, Tennessee. Sitting in the ladies’ car, Wells read her newspaper. When the conductor began collecting tickets, he told Wells that the car she was in was for white ladies only. After she refused, the conductor and another train employee removed Wells by force as white passengers cheered them on. But for Ida B. Wells, the fight didn’t stop there. If anything, that moment was just the beginning of a life devoted to the fight for justice.”

“A discovered tape of a speech given by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., at the University of Minnesota in 1967; followed by an interview of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by host L. Howard Bennett for a discussion on ideas, methods and words of wisdom on how to achieve the goal of a free society for all.”

Roots of racial disparities are seen through a new lens in this film that explores the origins of housing segregation in the Minneapolis area. But the story also illustrates how African-American families and leaders resisted this insidious practice, and how Black people built community — within and despite — the red lines that these restrictive covenants created.

“For generations, Black music has been one of the foundational sources for liberation, survival, salvation, and entertainment. Gospel music has been one of the most integral and sacred forms of that music. It birthed a generation of storytellers, influential musi-cians, and agents of social change, such as Mahalia Jackson, Shirley Caesar, Kirk Franklin, and many others. The origins of gospel music lie in the transatlantic slave trade, as African musical traditions blended with new forms born out of the horrors of slavery. The rich lineage of gospel music began in earnest as a young man named Thomas Dorsey came to Chicago during the Great Migration. His own spiritual rebirth at Pilgrim Baptist Church in Chicago created a form of music that married blues influences with religious themes. Dorsey’s legacy ushered in a generation of Black artists who broke new ground by turn-ing their voices of joy and pain into something powerful.”
 

The 761st Tank Battalion was the first all-Black tank squad to see combat during World War II. See more in this scene from the special, "761st Tank Battalion: The Original Black Panthers."

Goin’ Back to T-Town tells the story of Greenwood, an extraordinary Black community in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that prospered during the 1920s and 30s despite rampant and hostile segregation. Torn apart in 1921 by one of the worst racially-motivated massacres in the nation’s history, the neighborhood rose from the ashes, and by 1936 boasted the largest concentration of Black-owned businesses in the U.S., known as “Black Wall Street.”

Raised in the small all-Black Florida town of Eatonville, Zora Neale Hurston studied at Howard University before arriving in New York in 1925. She would soon become a key figure of the Harlem Renaissance, best remembered for her novel "Their Eyes Were Watching God". But even as she gained renown in the Harlem literary circles, Hurston was also discovering anthropology at Barnard College with the renowned Franz Boas. She would make several trips to the American South and the Caribbean, documenting the lives of rural Black people and collecting their stories. She studied her own people, an unusual practice at the time, and during her lifetime became known as the foremost authority on Black folklore.