Uline Arena became the largest venue in the city for sports events when it opened in 1941, but its whites-only policy in an increasingly Black city, and in a neighborhood where many African Americans lived, made it a source of controversy and a site…

As the highest court of the land, the United States Supreme Court is ultimately where significant, nationwide civil rights advances are made, and sometimes unmade. While Congress has a huge role, too, in advancing (or taking away) civil rights, it…

These first two lines of a song sung to the tune of “Down by the Riverside” by Howard University student protestors during a 1968 campus uprising capture the spirit of civic activism that has consistently defined a segment of the university’s…

Elmer W. Henderson was the plaintiff in a major civil rights case, a fair employment advocate for the federal government, and the longtime director of a national lobby for African American equality. In May 1942, Henderson was denied seating on a…

In 1948, the agency’s preparation of a 123-page amicus brief in Shelley v. Kraemer and Hurd v. Hodge—which challenged courts' enforcement of racially restrictive deed covenants that were used to create and maintain whites-only neighborhoods—marked…