Recent Videos and Activities for 20th Century

Selma-Montgomery March

The 1965 Selma to Montgomery March was the climactic event of the Selma voting rights movement. On February 18 Jimmie Lee Jackson was shot and killed by police during demonstrations [more]

September 9, 2019

E.D. Nixon

Lowndes County native, E. D. Nixon was a long-time leader of the civil rights movement in Alabama. He worked tirelessly to increase the number of registered black voters in Montgomery [more]

November 19, 2018

Carl Elliot

Carl Elliott was an eight-term U.S. congressman from Walker County. Much of his work during the 1950s and 60s was in support of education and social programs for his district. [more]

November 16, 2018

Judge Frank Johnson

Haleyville native Judge Frank M. Johnson Jr. played a crucial role in shaping civil-rights law in America. Johnson’s legal decisions desegregated schools in Alabama and buses in Montgomery, eliminated the [more]

October 9, 2018

16th Street Baptist Church

The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church was the first house of worship for African Americans in Birmingham. Throughout the 1960s, the church was a center of black activism and a staging [more]

August 3, 2018

Virginia Foster Durr

Birmingham native Virginia Foster Durr was a constant presence in progressive Alabama politics and the movement for civil rights in the second half of the twentieth century. In the early [more]

August 3, 2018

Hazel Brannon Smith

Alabama born and educated, Hazel Brannon Smith owned and edited four Mississippi weekly newspapers during the 1950s and 60s. She spoke out against racial violence and intimidation and in support [more]

August 3, 2018

Tuskegee Airmen

The World war II era Tuskegee Airmen were the first African American pilots in U.S. military service. Because Tuskegee was the only training facility for black pilots in the United [more]

July 2, 2018

Blanche Evans Dean

Blanche Evans Dean was a teacher, author, and conservationist. She published widely on the flora of Alabama and many of her field guides remain the standard today. She helped establish [more]

May 28, 2018

Mary Lee Cagle

Alabama-born Mary Lee Cagle was the central figure in a large circle of southern female holiness preachers, a co-founder of the Church of the Nazarene and an organizer of at [more]

May 25, 2018