Browse Items (75 total)

The Songbook showcases the early depiction of a minstrel show character, Jim Crow. It wasn't until the late 1800s that the expression "Jim Crow" was used to describe the laws and customs aimed at segregating society, restricting social contact and…

This picture depicts one of the separate drinking water that enforces segregation between African Americans and Whites.

"Jump Jim Crow" song sheet with lyrics of the song popularly performed by white comedians, including Thomas Dartmouth Rice.

USS Kearsarge vs. CSS Alabama, 19 June 1864 Painting by Xanthus Smith, 1922, depicting Alabama sinking, at left, after her fight with the Kearsarge (seen at right). Courtesy of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York. Official U.S.…

KKK Membership Pamphlet, mission and goals, statements of purpose.

Three Ku Klux Klan members arrested in Tishomingo County, Mississippi, September 1871, for the attempted murder of an entire family "History of the Ku Klux Klan - Preach the Cross". preachthecross.net. Accessed 11/30/15.

KKK Nathan Bedford Forrest, Leader of the KKK.
Nathan Bedford Forrest (July 13, 1821 – October 29, 1877). . http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/Confederate_Generals.htm, accessed 11/30/15, picture in public domain.

KKK Pamphlet cover
This pamphlet was by Colonel William Joseph Simmons, Imperial Wizard and Emperor of the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Original pamphlet located in the MASC collections in Holland Library, Washington State…

Masked Ku Klux Klan member riding in car, holding noose outside window during a parade through an African American neighborhood of Miami on the night before a primary election.

Photograph shows shrouded members of the Klan in the background with the candidates kneeling before them, an American flag, and a cross with three bright lights; one Klansman holds an American flag.

Black and white photograph depicting large meeting of Ku Klux Klan members in a field at night beneath burning cross.

This is an article seen in the New York Times summarizing President Johnson's reasoning for dismissing Secretary of State Edwin M. Stanton. Within this article it chronicles President Johnson’s emotions and attitudes toward Stanton. It also…

Morton McMichael declines to state whether or not he is in support of allowing freed slaves to ride in the City passenger railway cars. Daniel M. Fox states that he is in opposition of such privileges.

Photograph of Oliver Wendell Holmes, eventual lieutenant of the 20th Massachusetts Regiment of Volunteers, found in "Touched with Fire: Civil War Letters and Diaries of Wendell Holmes Jr, 1861-1864" edited by Mark De Wolfe Howe.

Photograph of Union Major General Benjamin Butler. Military governor of occupied New Orleans, American Civil War.

Citizens were required to pay a poll tax to register to vote. These fees restricted poor African Americans from voting. This receipt is from Birmingham, Alabama in 1896. The poll tax was for the entire year.

Four versions of the flag of the Confederate States of America are shown on this print from 1896. Standing at the center are Stonewall Jackson, P. G. T. Beauregard, and Robert E. Lee, surrounded by bust portraits of Jefferson Davis and Confederate…

Photograph shows Pvt. William M. Smith, Co. D, 8th Kentucky Vols. at U.S. General Hospital, Div. No. 1, Annapolis, Maryland, June 1, 1864. Source: U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center, 2013.

Field hospital at Savage Station, Virginia. This was taken in 1862, and shows how disorganized early hospitals were. We can see how easy it was for disease to spread.

These combined posters represent primary sources from the Civil Rights Movement.

The official roll call vote from Johnson’s Senate impeachment campaign - an invaluable primary source. The vote tally shows how close the vote was for Johnson - he merely won by one vote.

Soldier Samuel Decker, standing next to the artificial arms he designed for himself after losing both of his arms.

This cartoon is mocking the Southerners’ character and questioning their battlefield prowess. In the forefront are two Confederate soldiers, one pointing with a knife and another holding a musket in the back. Both appear less than gentlemanly as…

The members of the United States Supreme Court in 1896-1897. Under Chief Justice Melville Fuller, the Court established the separate but equal rule following the pivotal Plessy v Ferguson Case.

Army setting up telegraph wire