Though lynching is depicted as occurring mainly in the Jim Crow South, such horrific acts were not confined to that region. Just as deadly was the racism of the Midwest, codified in Black Laws and demonstrated in discrimination, harassment and lynchings.v
Many major Negro League teams called the Midwest home, including the Detroit Stars, the Indianapolis ABCs, the Kansas City Monarchs, the Bismarck Churchills.
Toni Stone made history as one of the first African American women to play in professional baseball when she joined the Indianapolis Clowns in 1953. After years of her name being largely unknown, her story is being celebrated.
The story of Pleasant Ridge, Wisconsin, homesteaded by African Americans in the 1850s. It became a thriving multiracial farming community, with integrated schools 80 years before Brown v. Board.
Follow the journeys of early pioneering African American residents in Ohio through these interactive maps created by archivist Amy Brickey.
- June 2, 2021
Sojourner Truth was an advocate of the "Exoduster movement" of former slaves from the South to Kansas. Frederick Douglass was an opponent – believing African Americans should stay in the South and fight for their rights, despite the furious backlash of post-Civil War racism and Jim Crow.
mounted a campaign in the 1880s to win reparations for ex-slaves from the U.S. government, resulting in the first ever proposal of reparations to be introduced in the U.S. Senate.
African American Midwest Giants: Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, Rosa Parks, MLK, Malcom X and more
1st Ever Newsreel focusing on African Americans, featuring report on Cleveland & the Great Migration, Chicago's Black Troops & 99 year old Black Illinois Civil War Vet
African Americans from Kansas, not Massachusetts, were the first to serve.
- 1
- 2