National Center for the Study of Civil Rights and African-American Culture

National Center for the Study of Civil Rights and African-American Culture A research institute and repository in Montgomery, Alabama, for the collection of civil rights and African-American cultural documents, artifacts, etc.

The Alabama State University National Center for the Study of Civil Rights and African-American Culture is a research institute and repository in Montgomery, Alabama, for the collection of civil rights and African-American cultural documents, artifacts, and other memorabilia. Such a collection encompasses and allows for the study of the interdisciplinary, diverse, and disparate character of civil

rights and African-American culture. Although this undertaking naturally encompasses and extends to other resources throughout the state, the National Center's focus is on Montgomery and its unique role in American history as the cradle of both the Confederacy and the modern civil rights movement. Inclusive in this mission is an effort to detail lives of African-Americans in Montgomery, their socio-economic and political culture, and their history. As a repository, the National Center will networks with the lay community to gather and record the stories of importance to African-American Culture, including those mundane features of daily life that have given African-Americans in Alabama the stamina to endure and overcome racism, poverty, and illiteracy, as well as those features that have provided them the strength, brilliance, and self-esteem to nurture a rich cultural heritage. To that end, the Center will conserve the rich resources of the community by gathering oral histories, collecting privately held multimedia, and documenting the critical contributions of information and resources supplied by African-Americans and organizations such as churches, benevolent societies, federated clubs, civic organizations, fraternal orders, and business. These collections will be cataloged and made available to the public at large. It links with other research centers to connect disparate histories of significance for a comprehensive study of the civil rights movement and African-American culture.

02/26/2026

February 26, 1965

The Death of Jimmie Lee Jackson

On February 26, 1965, Jimmie Lee Jackson, a Marion, Alabama twenty-six year-old Black man, died in Selma, Alabama hospital. The murder took place eight days after being shot by State Troopers in a night march in his home town for Blacks right to vote. This event led to the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery Voting Rights March. The shy young Black man may not have anticipated that he would become involved in a campaign for Blacks’ voting rights that would transform the political landscape of the nation. To the casual observer, Jackson’s life had little to distinguish it from that other young Blacks in the Perry County town west of Selma, Alabama. But Jackson was an Army veteran, and had become involved in the ongoing struggle for Black voting rights currently taking place in Selma. He had attempted to register to vote five times, but his applications had been rejected by White voting registrars determined to keep Blacks a vote-less majority.

On the night of February 18, 1965, Jackson had joined a voting rights march in Marion when he was shot by Alabama State Troopers as he attempted to protect his mother and his elderly uncle from being attacked by the officers. He died on February 26 from his injuries. This tragedy led to a plan by voting rights leaders to march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, the state capitol, and deposit Jackson’s body at a building representing decades of a deliberate effort to deny African-Americans full voting privileges.

Jackson’s body would not be placed in front of the state capitol in Montgomery. Instead, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the civil rights organization headed by Martin Luther King Jr. would propose a new plan for a voting rights march. The SCLC had been invited to assist the local voting rights organization in its efforts to advance Blacks’ right to vote in Dallas County where Selma was located. The new plan would involve Blacks marching to Montgomery and instead of depositing Jackson’s body, they would present a list of voting rights grievances to Governor George Wallace. Based on these plans, on March 7, 1965, approximately 600 Blacks left Selma bound for Montgomery. But they were savagely attacked by Alabama State Troopers and other law enforcement officers as they advanced across the Edmund Pettis Bridge on the outskirts of downtown Selma. This event, known as “Bloody Sunday”, startled the nation but led to the actual voting rights march of 1965.

Following the “Bloody Sunday” attack, King and his organization invited freedom-loving individuals from around the country to come to Selma and stage a new voting rights march. The SCLC also appealed to a federal court to enjoin Governor George Wallace from interfering in the new proposed march. On March 21, 1965 voting rights activists set out from Selma to Montgomery. Leading the way would be King, SCLC leaders, and notable individuals from across the country.

The marchers arrived in Montgomery on March 24, 1965. They were joined by approximately 25,000 supporters of the voting rights struggle from around the country. The group spent a night of entertainment by major stars, singers and other celebrities on the grounds of the City of Saint Jude, a Catholic complex in Montgomery. The next day the voting rights activists traveled through the streets of Montgomery to the Alabama state capitol. At the capitol, they were entertained by music and heard speeches by voting rights activists. King’s speech was a highlight of this massive voting rights rally. In one of King’s most memorable civil rights addresses, the SCLC leader reviewed the history of voting rights suppression in the state and in the nation. But King ended his message with words of hope that it would not be long before Blacks achieved the full voting rights protected by the United States Constitution.

The 1965 Selma to Montgomery Voting Rights March ended when march leaders presented a list of concerns regarding their Fifteenth Amendment rights to Governor Wallace. King’s prediction that Blacks’ voting rights objectives would not be long in coming was fulfilled. On August 6, 1965 President Lyndon Johnson signed the 1965 Voting Rights Act, giving Blacks unprecedented access to the ballot and placing in power hundreds of newly elected Blacks on the local, state, and national levels.

February 25, 1987 The Death of E.D. Nixon, Montgomery Civil Rights Activist The individual who was the most vocal and un...
02/25/2026

February 25, 1987

The Death of E.D. Nixon, Montgomery Civil Rights Activist

The individual who was the most vocal and uncompromising defender of African-American civil rights in Montgomery, Alabama from 1930s to the 1950s, died on February 25, 1987. Nixon was born in 1899, the son of a preacher who sharecropped to support his family. Growing up in conditions of deep poverty, Nixon only secured three years of formal education – a condition which remained a source of embarrassment for him throughout his life. But in the mid- 1920s, his fortunes changed, and his road to civil rights activism began. During this period, he obtained work as a Pullman Porter, an employee who serviced passengers on interstate trains. This position also exposed him through his travels to a life in Northern cities where Blacks lived less encumbered systems of racial oppression than did African-Americans in the South.

In a trip to St. Louis, Missouri in 1927, he encountered A. Philip Randolph, the radical spokesperson for Blacks’ rights and the organizer of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, an all-Black union of railroad employees. Randolph urged Pullman Porters to return to their homes and work for the advancement of African-Americans. Over the next several decades, Nixon dedicated his life to this cause. In 1937, he became president of the local chapter of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. In 1940, he helped to organize the Montgomery Voting Rights League. Between 1945 and 1947, he served as president of the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The next two years saw the racial activist also serve as president of the State Conference of the NAACP chapters.

Nixon is best known, however, for his role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott, taking place from December 5, 1955 to December 21, 1956. The veteran's civil rights leader envisioned a lawsuit against segregated bus service long before a case concerning this matter came into being. He also envisioned an actual boycott of Montgomery segregated buses. On the night of Rosa Parks’ arrest, December 1, 1955, for refusing to surrender her bus seat to a white passenger, he provided bail for the forty-two-year-old Black seamstress and NAACP secretary. On December 5, 1955, Nixon cofounded the Montgomery Improvement Association, the group overseeing the bus protest and served as its treasurer.

Despite Nixon’s numerous contributions to the civil rights movement in Montgomery, Alabama, as the movement gained prominence, Nixon began to believe his place in the fight for Blacks’ constitutional rights had been overlooked or forgotten. He would be pleased to know, however, his role is a prominent theme in books and articles about the civil rights movement, and that a street and a school in his hometown are named for him.

02/24/2026

February 24, 1968

Montgomery, Alabama and Public Schools Across the State Ordered to End Segregation

On February 24, 1968, the United States Supreme Court confirmed a federal court decision calling for the desegregation of public schools in Montgomery, Alabama and across the state, fully fourteen years following the 1954 landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling. This ruling was based on the legal activism by attorneys of the National Association of Colored People (NAACP), led by Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP chief legal counsel. Alabama, like other southern states, stubbornly resisted challenges to their long existing systems of race-based education. In what became a stalemate between the NAACP and Alabama educational officials, the state used every weapon at its disposal to evade the Brown mandate, including establishing state-supported private institutions for white students.

Meanwhile, in 1963, Fred Gray, Alabama State University graduate and attorney for Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Montgomery Improvement Association during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, sued the Macon County Alabama school system in the case Lee v. Macon County Board of Education. The basis of the suit was that the Macon County school system continued the practice of segregation in public elementary and high schools, violating the Brown ruling.

Gray later amended the Lee v. Macon case to apply to Alabama school systems as a whole which still refused to comply with the Brown decision. Gray’s basis for amending the Lee v. Macon case was his realization that Governor George Wallace had blocked the earlier court ruling integrating schools in Macon County. Gray came to realize that if Wallace on the basis of his power and authority could interfere with the integration efforts in Macon County Schools, he could be forced by injunction to also open up segregated schools in the state. Gray then appealed to the federal district court to enjoin Wallace from maintaining dual-based schools in Alabama.

On February 24, 1968, the United States Supreme Court agreed with Gray on this matter. The court sustained an earlier ruling by a federal district court enjoining Wallace from maintaining segregated schools in Montgomery and throughout Alabama. Alabama school systems continued to evade the Lee v. Macon County even after it was amended, just as they had the Brown decision. But the High Court had made clear the fact that segregated public schools contradicted a bedrock principle of the American democratic system, giving Gray and the entire civil rights movement consolation in what they hoped would be a new reality for the future of Black education in the state.

February 23, 1868 The Birth W.E.B Du Bois W.E.B. Du Bois, Ph. D. Harvard historian, sociologist, and civil rights leader...
02/23/2026

February 23, 1868

The Birth W.E.B Du Bois

W.E.B. Du Bois, Ph. D. Harvard historian, sociologist, and civil rights leader, was born on February 23, 1868, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Du Bois was one of the most productive and esteemed scholars in African-American history and a persistent voice of protest for black causes. He was, also, one of the few African-American leaders whose contributions stretched from the late nineteenth century to nearly three-quarters of the twentieth century.

For more than fifty years, Du Bois demonstrated his commitment to African-American advancement. Initially, he demonstrated his intellectual skills when he became the first Black to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1895. Four years later, he published the first sociological study of Black life, The Philadelphia Negro. But Du Bois’ 1903, The Souls of Black Folk, brought to public attention his amazing insights into Blacks’ struggle for justice and dignity in American society. The work, a collection of essays focusing on Blacks’ progress from emancipation to the twentieth century, became a compelling analysis on the African-American experience. In this masterpiece, Du Bois stated that “the color line” would characterize Blacks’ existence in the coming decades. Also, in this work, he charged Booker T. Washington with articulating a philosophy which would ultimately hinder African-Americans from achieving their first-class citizenship rights. This scholar’s Black Reconstruction is a further representation of his capacity to provide a penetrating analysis of African-American life.

Du Bois’ civil rights activities, however, best distinguish his contributions to African-American life. In 1905, he founded, with twenty-nine other Blacks, the Niagara Movement, the first civil rights organization of the twentieth century. When this group folded, he helped to form the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909. For nearly thirty years, Du- Bois served as Director of Publicity and Editor of the NAACP’s Crisis magazine. In these capacities, he informed and inspired blacks towards racial activism.

Notwithstanding, Du Bois’ contributions to African-American advancement through his scholarship and civil rights activism, at times, he proved controversial and at odds with mainstream African-American thought. For example, in the 1930s, he expressed the notion of the self- segregation of Blacks, an idea which would be advanced in the twentieth century by individuals who adhered to the Black power ideology. Also, at various times in his life, he expressed his attraction to Socialism and Communism as preferable to the American capitalistic system. He even visited the Soviet Union and China during this period.

In the 1950s, Du Bois became a critic of a nation he saw as imperialistic power which violated not just its democratic creed, but also the rights of individuals abroad. Du Bois’ new view of his own country persuaded him to emigrate to West Africa. The veteran scholar, writer and social activist died in Ghana on August 27, 1963, one day prior to the March on Washington.

02/20/2026

February 20, 1956

The Mass Arrests of Montgomery Bus Boycott Leaders

On February 20, 1956, white authorities issued arrest warrants for Montgomery Bus Boycott leaders, charging them with violating a 1921 Alabama anti-boycott law. The local grand jury indicting the bus boycott activist initially charged 115 individuals with this crime. On the day in question, Montgomery officials realized they had made mistakes in the names and addresses of those charged and reduced the total number of those to be arrested to 89. The mass arrests came as a tactic to intimidate the leaders of the nearly three-month-old protest against bus segregation. The boycott had begun on December 5, 1955, following the arrest of Rosa Parks, NAACP secretary and racial activist in the city, for refusing to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a segregated city bus. In addition to Parks, police issued arrest warrants for Martin Luther King, Jr., the boycott leader, Ralph Abernathy, second in command in organizing the group leading the protest, the Montgomery Improvement Association, and scores of other ministers, Black businesspersons, civic leaders, and educators.

White authorities were shocked when the arrestees voluntarily surrendered to police, instead of waiting to be taken into custody. All of those arrested were released that same day, to the jubilation of the African-American community. Martin Luther King, Jr., however, was indicated on the city’s trumped up charge, found guilty in a local court and fined $500.

But the event strengthened the protest against Jim Crow bus service. It elevated the spirit of all those who believed that justice and a righteous cause would triumph over injustice and evil.

February 17, 1942 The Birth of Black Panther Party Co-Founder, Huey Newton During the early part of the nation’s involve...
02/17/2026

February 17, 1942

The Birth of Black Panther Party Co-Founder, Huey Newton

During the early part of the nation’s involvement in World War II, on February 17, 1942, the young Black man who would help set a new agenda in African-Americans' struggle for equal treatment in the nation, was born in Louisiana. Huey P. Newton’s family later moved to California, where the sensitive young man gradually overcame his academic deficiencies and entered college where he experienced an awakening regarding Blacks’ position in the nation. Newton determined that Black in California, like those in Louisiana, suffered from a white supremacist system. This system limited Blacks’ advancement as a people and threatened their daily lives. Newton concluded that a radical liberation movement was needed.

In 1966, Newton, along with Bobby Seale, whom he met at a junior college in Oakland, California, organized the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. The parties targeted police violence against Blacks and implemented “a system of armed neighborhood patrols in Oakland, California,” often resulting in open warfare with law enforcement.” The party also “provided free breakfasts for local children, a free clothing program, a business program for relatives of prisoners, and other health and educational initiatives.”

But it was the Panthers’ practice of armed resistance to perceived violations of African Americans rights as citizens which attracted thousands of young Blacks to the militant organization. Unfortunately, this aspect of the party’s program also made it a target of federal officials who devised a plan to bring about the party’s destruction.

Montgomery native and legendary jazz musician, Nat King Cole, died on February 15, 1965. Cole’s death marked the end of ...
02/16/2026

Montgomery native and legendary jazz musician, Nat King Cole, died on February 15, 1965. Cole’s death marked the end of life of one of the most remarkably-talented and influential entertainers of the twentieth century. Born in Montgomery, Alabama on March 17, 1919, few events indicated during his formative years for the amazing contributions Cole would make as a legendary musician and singer. His contributions would never have materialized had not his family moved to Chicago, Illinois in 1922 when Cole was not yet five years old.

By the 1920s and the 1930s, Chicago had become the center of one of the important jazz movements in the nation. The city’s South Side became a gathering place for budding jazz musicians, as well as for many of the most accomplished jazz musicians of that period. One could find in Chicago’s clubs and bars, notables as Earl Hines, jazz trumpeter, Noble Sissell, bandleader and composer. And even the legendary Louis Armstrong, could, at times, be found among Chicago’s jazz enthusiasts.

Cole had grown up in a musical family. His mother had taught him to play the piano when she served as choir director at the church his father pastored. By the time he was twelve years old, he acquired enough musical skills to play the piano and organ in his father’s church. During his high school years, Cole formed a band with his older brother, Eddie. He was only seventeen years old when Eubie Blake, a ragtime jazz pianist and composer, hired him for his traveling show “Shuffle Along”. When the show closed the next year, Cole temporarily played for night clubs in California and then formed the group, The Nat King Trio. The trio became famous in California and eventually signed a contract with Capitol Records. In the 1940s and 1950s, the trio recorded such tunes as “Straighten Up and Fly Right,” “Walking My Baby Back Home,” “Mona Lisa,” and “Unforgettable.”

The 1940s saw Cole with his own radio program. On October 3, 1956, he became the first black to host a television show. An attack by white thugs during a performance in Birmingham, Alabama before and all-white audience, demonstrated that some whites still considered Cole a typical Negro who, despite his fame and popularity, was still a member of an inferior race. Cole’s untimely death in 1965 brought into full view the entertainer’s amazing talents and skills, still recognized decades later.

February 12, 1809 The Birth of Abraham Lincoln The birth of the Great Emancipator – the United States president who issu...
02/12/2026

February 12, 1809

The Birth of Abraham Lincoln

The birth of the Great Emancipator – the United States president who issued the edict sounding the death knell of slavery and the freedom of four million slaves – took place on February 12, 1809. Abraham Lincoln’s birth in the slave state of Kentucky was not the proper beginning for the president who would issue the Emancipation Proclamation. But the future Chief Executive spent only his first seven years in Kentucky, living the greater part of his life in the free states on Indiana and Illinois.



As the slavery issue became increasingly more controversial in the 1850s, Lincoln was compelled to speak out against an institution he had come to believe was both a moral and political wrong. He believed human bo***ge robbed the slave of the benefits of his labor, and it contradicted the democratic basis of the nation. Lincoln also believed the expansion of slavery into western territories violated the Missouri Compromise and forced free white men to live in competition with slave labor.

These views brought Lincoln into the original Republican Party- an antislavery party formed in 1854. He lost a Republican senatorial campaign as an opponent of servile bo***ge in 1858. But in November of 1860, he was elected the country’s sixteenth president with a firm commitment to halt the spread of slavery beyond the southern states.

In response to Lincoln’s election, eleven of the fifteen slaveholding states seceded from the United States, believing that Lincoln would free the slaves in their states and not just attempt to ban slavery from western territories.

Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863 for slaves in the eleven states at war with the Union. Although the proclamation was issued on the basis of “military necessity,” Lincoln actually believed that slavery contradicted God’s divine order and emancipating the slaves would be according to God’s will.

President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865.

09/09/2025

in 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act into law — the first major civil rights legislation since Reconstruction.

While systemic voter suppression limited its impact on African American voter participation, the law created the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

It was only the beginning. More acts of Congress, court cases and grassroots organizing would be needed to make civil rights a reality for all.

Today, .

08/07/2025

NOW STREAMING 📣
🎥 “The State of the Voting Rights Act: 60 Years Later”
A special virtual program presented by The National Center for the Study of Civil Rights and African American Culture at ASU.

🗳️ Join us as we commemorate the 60th Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 with powerful reflections from elected officials and civic leaders on the past, present, and future of voting rights in America.
🎤 Featuring:
✅ U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell
✅ U.S. Rep. Shomari Figures
✅ State Senator Kirk Hatcher
✅ Kareem Crayton – Brennan Center for Justice
✅ Dr. Quinton T. Ross, Jr. – President, Alabama State University
💻 Watch now ➡️ https://youtu.be/zDeFQ5Pn5zY

This film is for educational use only. The use of this film or any derivative of this production is prohibited without prior permission of the National Center for the Study of Civil Rights and African-American Culture

07/31/2025

The Levi Watkins Learning Center is gearing up for a host of Welcome Week activities Aug. 11-14! From giveaways and games to a movie night and a reading party, there's something for everyone!

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1345 Carter Hill Rd
Montgomery, AL
36106

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