Exhibition Sections:Top Treasures - Memory - Reason - Imagination
With AllDeliberate Speed
Felix Frankfurter (1882-1965)
Annotated draft decree regarding
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka,
April 8, 1955
Page 2
Manuscript Division / The deliberations of the Supreme Court in its landmark case of 1954, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, which found school segregation to be unconstitutional, are well documented in the Library's manuscript collections.
After the Brown opinion was announced, the Court heard additional arguments during the following term on the decree implementing the ruling. While the NAACP lawyers had proposed to use the word "forthwith" to achieve an accelerated desegregation timetable, Chief Justice Earl Warren adopted Justice Felix Frankfurter's suggestion to use a phrase associated with the revered Oliver Wendell Holmes, "with all deliberate speed." Shortly after Warren retired from the Court he acknowledged that "all deliberate speed" was chosen as a benchmark because "there were so many blocks preventing an immediate solution of the thing in reality that the best we could look for would be a progression of action."
It became clear over time that critics of desegregation were using the doctrine to delay compliance with Brown, and in 1964 Justice Hugo Black declared in a desegregation opinion that "the time for mere 'deliberate speed' has run out." This draft decree with Frankfurter's own changes in pencil, along with related unique documents in the Frankfurter and Warren papers, has helped scholars analyze the evolution of the Brown case.
We Shall Overcome
"We Shall Overcome" seems to have first been sung by striking tobacco workers in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1945. In the 1960s the song became the all-but-official anthem of the civil rights movement.
Silphia Horton, Frank Hamilton, Guy Carawan, and Pete Seeger. "We Shall Overcome."
New York: Ludlow Music, Inc., 1963.
Music Division. (9-19)
Courtesy of Ludlow Music, Inc., 11 West 19th StreetNew York, NY10011
Its first separate publication, on exhibit here, gives credit of authorship to, among others, Silphia Horton of the HighlanderFolkSchool, who learned the song from the tobacco workers, and Pete Seeger, who helped to popularize the song and gentrified its title from "We Will Overcome."
Brumsic Brandon.
"The Weary Picket," 1977.
Ink and tonal film overlay over pencil on paper.
Gift of Brumsic Brandon, Jr. Prints and Photographs Division.
Reproduction Number: LC-USZC4-6172 (9-22)
Courtesy of Mr. Brumsic Brandon, Jr.
President Lyndon Johnson stunned many of his listeners when during a speech urging the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, he closed with the words, "And we shall overcome."
Civil Rights
Danny Lyon (b. 1942)
Drinking Fountains in the Dougherty
County Courthouse,
Albany, Georgia, ca. 1963
Tottle House. . .Occupied During a Sit-in
by Some of America's Most
Effective Organizers . . . .
Taylor Washington, Ivanhoe Donaldson,
Joyce Ladner, John Lewis, Judy Richardson,
George Green, and Chico Neblett,
Atlanta, Georgia, ca. 1963
Danny Lyon was the first staff photographer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a national group of college students who joined together after the first sit-in by four African American college students at a North Carolina lunch counter. From 1963 to 1964, Lyon traveled the South and Mid-Atlantic regions capturing telling moments like these. These photographs are part of a limited edition portfolio that Lyon produced to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the civil rights struggle.
TITLE:Boycott lettuce & grapes
CALL NUMBER:POS - US .W64, no. 1 (C size) [P&P]
REPRODUCTION NUMBER:LC-USZC4-2420 (color film copy transparency)
SUMMARY:Migrant workers in lettuce field with UFW symbol and motto in setting sun.
MEDIUM:1 print (poster) : color.
CREATED/PUBLISHED:Chicago : [Women's Graphics Collective, 1978]
NOTES:
Poster produced by the Chicago Women's Graphics Collective.
Promotional goal: U.S. F24. 1978.
SUBJECTS:
United Farm Workers of America.
Agricultural laborers' unions--United States--1970-1980.
Agricultural laborers--United States--1970-1980.
Lettuce--1970-1980.
Boycotts--United States--1970-1980.
FORMAT:
Posters 1970-1980.
Prints Color 1970-1980.
REPOSITORY:Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.20540USA
DIGITAL ID:(digital file from color film copy transparency) cph 3g02420
CONTROL #:93505187
After the abolition of slavery in the United States, three Constitutional amendments were passed to grant newly freed African Americans legal status: the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, the Fourteenth provided citizenship, and the Fifteenth guaranteed the right to vote. In spite of these amendments and civil rights acts to enforce the amendments, between 1873 and 1883 the Supreme Court handed down a series of decisions that virtually nullified the work of Congress during Reconstruction. Regarded by many as second-class citizens, blacks were separated from whites by law and by private action in transportation, public accommodations, recreational facilities, prisons, armed forces, and schools in both Northern and Southern states. In 1896 the Supreme Court sanctioned legal separation of the races by its ruling in H.A. Plessy v. J.H. Ferguson, which held that separate but equal facilities did not violate the U.S. Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment.
Beginning in 1909, a small group of activists organized and founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). They waged a long struggle to eliminate racial discrimination and segregation from American life. By the middle of the twentieth century their focus was on legal challenges to public-school segregation. Two major victories before the Supreme Court in 1950 led the NAACP toward a direct assault on Plessy and the so-called "separate-but-equal" doctrine.
An elementary school in
Hurlock, Maryland
[Digital ID# cph 3c26579]
Gelatin silver prints, ca. 1935.
Visual Materials from
the NAACP Records,
Prints and Photographs Division (20A)
Courtesy of the NAACP
/ NEW SEARCH / HELP /
TITLE:New school and community center. TygartValley Homesteads, West Virginia
CALL NUMBER:LC-USF34- 060083-D [P&P]
REPRODUCTION NUMBER:LC-USF34-060083-D (b&w film neg.)
MEDIUM:1 negative : safety ; 3 1/4 x 3 1/4 inches or smaller.
CREATED/PUBLISHED:1939 June.
CREATOR:
Vachon, John, 1914-1975, photographer.
NOTES:
Title and other information from caption card.
LOT 1718 (Location of corresponding print.)
Use electronic surrogate.
Transfer; United States. Office of War Information. Overseas Picture Division. Washington Division; 1944.
Film copy on SIS roll 27, frame 1022.
TOPICS:
Tygart Valley--West Virginia
SUBJECTS:
United States--West Virginia--Randolph County--Tygart Valley.
FORMAT:
Safety film negatives.
PART OF:Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)
REPOSITORY:Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division Washington, DC20540
DIGITAL ID:(intermediary roll film) fsa8c36007
OTHER NUMBER:D 3751
CONTROL #:fsa2000040710/PP