African Americans–Civil rights–History

  • Adam Clayton Powell in Berkeley

    Adam Clayton Powell delivers a speech to 4,000 students in the lower plaza of the Student Union at the Berkeley Campus of the University of California, recorded on Friday, January 12, 1968. Powell speaks about Black power, and he speaks against the Vietnam war.

  • On freedom road / by Reverend Ralph Abernathy.

    The Rev. Ralph Abernathy speaking at a rally following the opening of lunch counters to Negroes in Nashville, in November 1960. Recorded at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference on October 18, 1960 by folksinger Guy Carawan.

  • An educator’s credo

    Dr. Neil Sullivan, superintendent of the Berkeley schools, discusses his view of school desegregation. Recorded at the annual conference of the Association for the Education of Young Children, meeting at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco.

  • Coretta Scott King

    Coretta Scott King (1927 – 2006) delivers a speech on the civil rights movement at a peace march in Central Park, New York on April 27th, 1968. The march took place three weeks after the assassination of King’s husband, Martin Luther King, Jr. King reads from the handwritten notes of her husband’s incomplete speech for…

  • James Bevel on Black power

    Reverend James Bevel of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference speaks on non-violence and the battle for Civil Rights at the Conference on Black Power, sponsored by the Students for a Democratic Society October 29, 1966 on Berkeley campus. Bevel is introduced by James Shaw, past co-chairman of the San Jose State College chapter of the…

  • The Berkeley schools desegregate / produced by Lou Hartman.

    A special report on the Berkeley school system, which became one of the first in California to achieve balanced integration. Producer Lou Hartman reports on the demographics of Berkeley schools; the plans proposed by the Hunter Committee, a task force headed by Richard C. Hunter; and the Committee on Instructional Program for Integration, co-chaired by…

  • America’s chief moral dilemma / Martin Luther King.

    Martin Luther King, Jr. gives a speech about the immoral consequence of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Recorded on the Sproul Hall steps at the University of California at Berkeley on May 17, 1967. Dr. King appeared under the auspices of the Inter-Fraternity Council.

  • Education goals for ghetto schools

    Superintendent of Berkeley Public Schools Dr. Neil Sullivan talks on the problems of desegregation and equality in education. The speech was delivered in San Francisco on September 22, 1966. Dr. Sullivan is a noted educator, author, lecturer, and columnist. In 1963, he reopened the Prince Edwards County, Virginia public schools, which had been closed for…

  • What the Negro writer is not saying / Nat Hentoff.

    Jazz critic and author Nat Hentoff speaks on the contradictions in American Black writing. At the Negro writers conference at Asilomar.

  • Tell it like it is: the young Negro writer

    Poet and commentator LeRoi Jones (a.k.a. Amiri Baraka) discusses the prospects for the emerging Negro writer at the Asilomar Negro writers conference.