Learning Starts Here: Exploring Civil Rights from Past through Present

When you consider the purpose of a museum, you probably picture the perfect school field trip, or an indoor adventure for a rainy day. Though this may be most people’s first impression of the purpose of museums, we challenge you to think further. Museums collect stories, memories and artifacts to inform the public, but most importantly, these collections spark important conversations. This is exactly why we’ve compiled our picks for the best civil rights museums in America to explore.

National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Downtown Atlanta

Our first pick, the National Center for Civil and Human Rights located in Downtown Atlanta is an engaging cultural attraction. This center forms an important connection between the American civil rights movement to the modern day global rights movement. This connection is made through the center’s collection of imagery and artifacts, combined with powerful storytelling.

What inspires us most about this pick is that the National Center for Civil and Human Rights makes the pursuit of equal human rights an achievable #SquadGoal for us all. The Center works to encourage and empower visitors so that they can gain a greater understanding about what we all can do to play a role in protecting human and civil rights across the globe.

National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel

Our second pick on our list of must-see civil rights museums in America has a similar mission to our first: to teach visitors not only about historical milestones, but to connect these events to current day issues. The National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel is a multi-sensory, multimedia experience, immersing visitors in its collection. The museum includes exhibits that explore important aspects of civil rights history, with “A Culture of Resistance: Slavery in America 1619-1861” and “Standing Up By Sitting Down: Student Sit-Ins 1960”.

The museum partners with organizations including the Blues Cultural Center and Diversify Memphis to further its goal to innovate, inform and inspire the public to apply their historical knowledge when addressing today’s human rights challenges.

Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site

While we’ve touched on the importance of Martin Luther King Jr.’s landmark impacts on American history before, this site is monumental in its own right. This site includes King’s childhood home, which is also his birthplace as his parents refused to have King be born into a segregated hospital. Here, you can walk in the footsteps of this civil rights hero, while also having the opportunity to visit the Ebenezer Baptist Church where King would preach.

The site also includes the D.R.E.A.M gallery exhibits which work to showcase the relationship between MLK and Jimmy Carter and their efforts toward equal human rights. For children and adults alike, this site is one that shouldn’t be missed.

National Museum of African American History and Culture

Established by Act of Congress in 2003, the National Museum of African American History and Culture boasts over 36,000 artifacts and nearly 100,000 members of the museum. This is the 19th and most recent museum of the Smithsonian Institution as of September 2016, and is entirely dedicated to the documentation of African American life, history and culture.

The museum is filled interactive exhibits that explores what it means to be black in America both historically and in modern day. Its varied exhibits cover movements including Hip-Hop, the Black Arts Movement, #BlackLivesMatter and more.

International Civil Rights Center and Museum

The International Civil Rights Center and Museum (ICRCM) celebrates the nonviolent protests of the 1960 Greensboro sit-ins. These sit-ins began February 1, 1960 in North Carolina, when four A&T freshmen sat down at the “whites only” lunch counter. This act worked to spark the sit-in movement, an integral aspect of the civil rights movement as a whole.

The center functions as a memorial to this “Greensboro Four,” while also working to fortify the spirits of all those oppressed throughout the world that are working toward human freedom. The ICRCM’s mission is to ensure that the world never forgets the courage displayed by the Greensboro Four, as well as the thousands of college and community youth in American South that became a part of the sit-in movement. We love this pick not only for its incredible exhibits but also for its ability to show our children that they can #DoAnything.

Find Your Perfect Travel Bag for the Holiday Season! 

With the holiday season just around the corner, many of us will be planning to travel both near and far to spend time with family and loved ones this fall. No matter where your holiday travels take you, BD has you covered. With a wide array of different colors and styles to fit your personal preferences, you can #BeDifferent everywhere you go, expressing yourself while remembering that #RepresenationMatters. Check out some of our favorites for holiday travel bags below! 

A Lil Bougie 

Show a little sass this fall with our "A Lil Bougie" line. With bags to match a wide array of melanin skin tones and colors, you can showcase your love for your color easily this season. Having convenient travel bags like these that can showcase the importance of representation is just one reason to be thankful this fall! 

Soul Sister

Another favorite collection this fall is our "Soul Sisters" collection. These Soul Sisters travel bags are made of high-grade waterproof fabric and are durable and water-resistant. With a sturdy portable belt, durable luggage tag and comfortable shoulder strap, these travel bags can endure any weather your travels may bring you through! 

HBCU Travel Bags

Represent your home state this holiday season with our HBCU Inspired Collection! You can find your own HBCU searching by state in the link listed above. There's nothing like showing how #RepresentationMatters while also showing love to your alma mater while away from home. 

Not only are our travel bags a great way to #BeDifferent this holiday season, our backpack selection provides some extra added space for storage while on the go. 

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An Animal Lover with a Big Heart

If you’re an animal lover yourself, then you just have to meet Riley™! A member of the #BDSquad, Riley™ has a huge heart and a special love for all animals, although he says that his favorite animal is a dog. When he grows up, Riley™ hopes to become a vet so that he can help keep his furry friends healthy and happy. He knows that becoming a vet is a dream job and getting into the right college to achieve this goal is going to be a challenge. This is why Riley™ is enrolled in his school’s AVID program, to help him achieve his #SquadGoals! He enrolls in honors classes that provide him with the skills that he needs to continue on his track toward higher education.

Not only does Riley™ know that he wants to be a vet, he even knows what school he would like to attend one day. After visiting Morehouse College on a school field trip, he knew that his was the college for him. While on his field trip, Riley™ and his classmates were given a full tour of the campus, including trotting alongside fresh-faced freshman to King Chapel, where alma mater Dr. Martin Luther King has a statue displayed in his honor. Riley™ can be much more soft spoken than his classmates, as he has a few close friends that he devotes all of his loyalty and care to. Yet after seeing Dr. Martin Luther King’s statue and the Morehouse College campus, he couldn’t stop talking about walking those same hallways one day!

Having a tight-knit friend group is part of what inspires Riley™ to attend the school of his dreams. Morehouse College not only produces some of the world’s top black leaders, it also creates a brotherhood among students that cannot be broken. Often referred to as the “Morehouse Mystique”, the college, like other HBCUs, understands that young black students need the unique opportunity to find their voices and a sense of home in their continuing education by becoming the majority for perhaps the first time in their lives. Riley is not one to become distracted by materialistic things like clothes or fast cars, he stays focused on his #SquadGoals and what really makes him happy: becoming the best student that he can be, being a good friend to those that he cares for, and reaching his #SquadGoals...because he knows that he can do anything!

Shop the Riley™ Backpack now! 

WE’RE WORKING TO EMPOWER STUDENTS OF COLOR.

It’s our goal to provide gear to students that encourages them to be their best. We do this by producing bags, totes and organization tools with fun characters representing a broad range of melanin skin tones. Our products are made to be sturdy so kids can count on them to work. And we commit to giving students in less-advantaged schools free gear with the help of local community organizations.

“Tell Them We Are Rising” Documents the Impact of HBCUs in America

Following his documentary covering the Black Panthers two years prior, filmmaker Stanley Nelson wows us again with his piece, Tell Them We are Rising: The Story of Black Colleges & Universities. As you can deduce from the film’s title, the work focuses on the work of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), and their impact on the black community as a whole. Nominated for Outstanding Independent Documentary in the Black Reel Awards, and for Outstanding Documentary in the Image awards, this film is bound to shape our perceptions of the importance of black education for years to come.

A central theme to the film is an examination of the effects that HBCUs have had on American history, culture and national identity. The film, comprised of educational authorities, accounts of personal experience alongside archival footage, letters, diaries, photos and home movies, paints a picture of what it truly meant to be one of the first students to take the brave step toward education following the abolition of slavery. The film showcases the bravery of formerly enslaved blacks working to pursue an education, despite the violence and intimidation they felt, as well as the stark lack of teachers and resources to supply their newly formed universities.

As HBCUs began forming in the mid-1960’s, this was following decades of slavery in which slave owners were permitted to do anything with their slaves, except for teach them to read and write. In the age of racial oppression and discrimination, it was known that an educated black population could not be an enslaved population. This film highlights the importance of the groundwork that HBCUs and their graduates have paved for advancing justice in America. A collective black education experience allowed for black individuals to pursue careers and spearhead civil rights movements in the future to work toward equality for the races.

Most importantly, Nelson’s film speaks to the importance of a black college experience providing a place for these students to be in the majority. It is these HBCUs that define what it means to be black in America, while gathering together a group of individuals who strive to be better than the status quo. This work is a reminder of how important it is to push toward achieving your #SquadGoals, and how surrounding yourself with other motivated individuals can help propel blacks along both intellectually and politically.

Two Monumental Civil Rights Movements

“Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.” These are the wise words of Malcolm X, minister, human rights activist, and lifelong supporter and proponent of black culture. If education is the passport to the future, it is imperative that each and every student is presented with an equal opportunity to make this journey to greatness and success. However, for the majority of American history, this has not been true for black students in our country. It wasn’t until 1954 in the case of Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka that blacks were permitted to attend formerly all-white schools, and it wasn’t until years after this groundbreaking case that public schools became desegregated in the South. Being that our designs are based upon this groundbreaking case leading to the end of educational segregation in America, we’d like to explore the difference between the 1954 decision and Ruby Bridges’ role in the civil rights movement.

Jim Crow Era

Previous to the case of Brown vs. the Board of Education, an equally monumental 1896 court case, Plessy vs. Ferguson, upheld the “separate but equal” doctrine in America. This hearing upheld the doctrine that racially segregated public facilities were legal, so long as the facilities for blacks and whites were equal. This meant that blacks could be legally barred from public schools, buses and other public facilities. Back in 1892, Homer Plessy refused to sit on a train car with all blacks. This was following a movement by state legislature in the 1880’s requiring all railroads to provide separate cars for “colored” passengers. After refusing to leave the whites-only train car, Plessy was arrested and jailed.

Plessy cited the 14th Amendment in is hearing, stating that his equal rights were not being protected by the act of segregation in public facilities. The court found that the 14th Amendment only protected political and civil rights, such as voting or jury service, not social rights, including sitting on the railroad car of your choice. Plessy vs. Ferguson ensured the survival of Jim Crow era segregation in America for decades to come.

Brown vs. The Board of Education

It wasn’t until 1950 that there was a monumental breakthrough in desegregating American schools. This began with the journey of Linda Brown, a resident of Topeka, Kansas that lived about four blocks from an all-white school. Brown and her father walked through the doors of that very school in 1950, requested and being denied enrollment to the school. This request was part of a larger movement being made by their local NAACP chapter to join 200 other plaintiffs to challenge segregation in schools on a national level. Twelve other parents were denied enrollment, leading to these parents also filing their own suits.

Brown’s case and four others were combined to create Brown vs. The Board of Education, a case to be seen by the Supreme Court in 1952. Brown argued that the black and white schools available in her area were not equal in quality, violating the “equal protection clause” of the 14th Amendment. This clause states that no state can “deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”. Contrary to the findings of the court in Plessy vs. Ferguson, the court found that the segregation of public schools had a “detrimental effect upon the colored children”, contributing to “a sense of inferiority”. Ultimately, in 1954, the Supreme Court declared that the segregation of children in schools based on skin color was unconstitutional and that segregated schools were inherently unequal.

Ruby Bridges and Desegregating the American South

Although Brown vs. the Board of Education was a cornerstone of the civil rights movement, setting the precedent that “separate but equal” was inherently unequal, there was resistance from southern states to desegregate public schools. As black Americans began working toward receiving equal education opportunities as other students, this movement was spearheaded by 6-year-old Ruby Bridges. Bridges was the first black child to attend a formerly all-white school in the South in 1960, six years after the declaration.

This journey toward equality began when Bridges entered her kindergarden year and was given a test to determine whether or not she could attend an white school. In 1960, the NAACP informed bridges that she was one out of just six students to pass this test that had been designed to be particularly difficult for students to pass. This meant that Bridges would be the first black student to attend an all white school in the American south, William Frantz school.

Though this breakthrough paved the way for civil rights actions in the future, it also led to Bridges and her family facing a seemingly unending stream of discrimination and difficulty. The very admittance of Bridges made white parents deeply enraged, as protestors rallied to William Frantz to hastle our young heroine, going so far as to hurl insults and objects toward her. On her first day of school in November 14, 1960, Bridges had to be escorted through the crowd of angry protestors by her mother and several U.S. marshals.

Although public schools had been desegregated at at this point in time, classrooms had not. This meant that Bridges was secluded from white students in a classroom by herself, being taught by one volunteer, Mrs. Barbara Henry. After receiving repeated threats from protestors, the school required Bridges to bring her own lunches for fear of her school lunch being poisoned. She continued to be escorted through the school by federal marshals for her safety, even when visiting the restroom. Despite all of these trials and tribulations, Bridges and her family remained strong, realizing the importance and gravity of the opportunity to receive a quality education a matter of blocks away from their home.

A Look Toward the Future

Although civil rights leaders the likes of Linda Brown and Ruby Bridges have worked to pave the way for equal education opportunities for all, there is still a long and arduous path ahead of us truly achieve this goal. From the days of these cornerstone civil rights movements, we continue to push forward past the obstacles and diversity that face us, to become successful entrepreneurs, business owners and college graduates. At 1954, we continue to share our mission of empowerment of our future black leaders of America through the support of their education with quality products that encourage them to do their best. Celebrate these monumental breakthroughs in equality with our signature 1954 “The Headlines” backpack and bags, showcasing the news that made history with Brown vs. the Board of Education.

Shop "The Headlines" Backpack Here!