This year marks the 50th anniversary of several key events from the civil rights movement, including the Birmingham Campaign and the March on Washington. Lonnie Bunch, the director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, is joined by curator Elaine Nichols to introduce the museum’s Civil Rights Oral History Project, which was conducted in conjunction with the Library of Congress and the Southern Oral History Program at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. We’ll then see an oral history interview from that collection with Rev. Joseph Lowery who, along with Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and others, founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

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Tufts University history professor, Peniel Joseph, talks about his working biography of Stokely Carmichael at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. Mr. Joseph argues that Carmichael played an important role in the 1960s Civil Rights movement, working as a bridge between many factions advocating for equal rights for African Americans.

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The Detroit Historical Society's Black Historic Sites Committee hosts a panel discussion on the city's Civil Rights movement from 1950 to 1967. Panelists include a woman who was arrested during the Detroit riot of 1967, when hundreds of people were injured and 43 people died.

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Thurgood Marshall Jr., among others, considered Dwight D. Eisenhower's civil rights legacy some 50 years after he left the White House.

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University of Michigan history professor Kevin Gaines on the music of the civil rights and black power movement. Several songs and slides are featured during the class.

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The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library convened a conference on the presidency and civil rights. In this discussion, panelists consider President Kennedy's legacy and the evolution of his thinking and actions on civil rights.

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The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library convened a day-long conference on the presidency and civil rights. During the concluding panel, the achievements and struggles since the days of FDR's administration were considered -- as well as contemporary civil rights issues.  

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University of Washington American History Professor Quintard Taylor looks at the Civil Rights Movement from the 1940s through the 1960s.  Professor Taylor focuses on the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court Decision on Brown v. Board of Education and the 1957 integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.

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50 years ago, on April 16, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” while being held in prison for his involvement in a city-wide civil rights protest called the Birmingham Campaign. King’s daughter, Bernice King, CEO of the King Center in Atlanta, joins Alabama’s governor, Birmingham’s Mayor and others for the unveiling of a historical marker aside the Birmingham Jail.

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At the direction of Congress, the voices and experiences from the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-20^th century are being documented in an oral history project. This effort is a collaboration of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture, the Library of Congress and the Southern Oral History Program at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

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