Moranda Smith (1915-1950)

Moranda Smith (1915-1950)

Moranda Smith was a union organizer and rank-and-file leader of tobacco workers in North Carolina, who throughout the 1940s initiated a challenge to the racial discrimination, disfranchisement, and economic exploitation of workers in the South. The first...
Robert Smalls (1839 -1915)

Robert Smalls (1839 -1915)

Robert Smalls was born in Beaufort, South Carolina, on April 5, 1839 and worked as a house slave until the age of 12. At that point his owner, John K. McKee, sent him to Charleston to work as a waiter, ship rigger, and sailor, with all earnings going to McKee. This...
Forty Acres and a Mule

Forty Acres and a Mule

The phrase “forty acres and a mule” evokes the federal government’s failure to redistribute land after the Civil War and the economic hardship that African Americans suffered as a result.  As Northern armies moved through the South at the end of the war, blacks began...