On May 24, 1961, Jean Thompson, at age 19, participated in the Freedom Ride from Montgomery, Alabama to Jackson, Mississippi as civil rights activists tested the Interstate Commerce Commission’s…

Aimée Potens was the mother of Louis Charles and Jean Baptiste Roudanez, the founder and publisher of L’Union, the South’s first black newspaper, and the New Orleans Tribune, America’s first black…

Soon after Union forces seized New Orleans from the Confederacy in 1862, calls for equality reverberated among free people of color. Hundreds assembled at frequent mass meetings and rallies at Economy…

On July 30, 1866, black Republicans attempted to reconvene the Louisiana constitutional convention in an effort to secure voting rights. Held at the Mechanics' Institute, a large crowd of black…