African Americans–Civil rights–History

  • The Civil rights lawyer in the South

    Thom Hurwitz interviews three lawyers who work for the NAACP National Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Incorporated (The Inc. Fund), and who have taken part in the defense of demonstrators and the testing of the Civil Rights Act: Leroy Clark, who had been working in St. Augustine, Charles Jones, who had been working in Selma,…

  • The Courts : correlations and contradictions

    This is a recording of San Francisco attorney Howard Nemerovski in a studio recording of a talk given at the San Francisco Jewish Community Center in the series “Civil Rights: Problems, People, and Perspective.” Talk on the legal aspects of Black Civil rights from 1863 to the 1954 Supreme Court decision on school segregation.

  • The articulators of the Negro revolt (Part 1 of 2)

    Part one of a documentary prepared for the CBC (Canada) and ABC (Australia) by Colin D. Edwards from speeches, interviews, and discussions recorded at the Negro Writers’ Conference at Asilomar, California.

  • Philistinism and the Negro writer

    Poet and playwright LeRoi Jones (a.k.a. Amiri Baraka) delivers a speech at the Negro Writers Conference at Asilomar. Discusses the moral foundation for a writer, followed by a question and answer period.

  • Beyond the Black metropolis

    Sociologist and author Horace Cayton interviewed by Jack Nessel. Discussion of the status of Blacks in the United States, the development of a Black culture, and Cayton’s friendship and time in Chicago with African American author Richard Wright. Wright is famous for his book Native Son, and he wrote the introduction to Cayton’s Black metropolis: a…

  • Martin Luther King, Jr. letter from a Birmingham jail

    The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.’s statement of April 16, 1963, addressed to his “fellow clergymen,” read by Theodore Roszak, assistant professor of history at California State College at Hayward.

  • Early civil rights movement: a mid-century inventory (Part 2 of 2)

    The KPFA programmers found themselves with time left in their allotted slot after John Hope Franklin’s seminar, so they filled that time with 15 minutes of music programming in line with the theme of the seminar. Philip Elwood played blues songs aimed at the Jim Crow condition: “Jim Crow Blues” by Charles “Cow Cow” Davenport,…

  • Walk to freedom

    A documentary on Albany, Georgia, featuring field recordings made by Guy Carawan and Alan Lomax, on the Freedom Walk which resulted in the arrest of 737 persons. Issued as an LP record by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.

  • Segregation and the law

    In this recording, Elsa Knight Thompson and attorney Alex Hoffman interview attorney Len Holt. Holt discusses efforts by Southern Blacks to alter the system of Black Codes based upon the “separate but equal” Supreme Court rulings, deliberate side-stepping of desegregation laws, and the mistreatment of blacks in the judicial system. He also discusses the usefulness…

  • The battle is not yet won

    Ronnie Moore is interviewed by Elsa Knight Thompson in this recording. The student activist discusses the struggle to integrate Southern schools.