Sublime

Princeton University’s first graduate student, future president James Madison, brought one slave with him to campus and another to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. The latter he had to free: all that talk of liberty had ruined him, a poison to the rest of the plantation. He took the former home with him.

In the spring of 1971, Ma returned to Nyack College and helped form a Black student union, an organization that challenged racist theology, the Confederate flags on dorm-room doors, and the paucity of Black students and programming. She started wearing African-print dresses and wrapped her growing Afro in African-print ties. She dreamed of travelin

in 1971, while speaking at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund Institute in New York City: “But you see now, baby, whether you have a Ph.D., D.D., or no D, we’re in this bag together. And whether you’re

Mary’s “trespass”—her insistence that women’s rights be included in a society founded on the basis of personal liberties—was one of her most important contributions to political philosophy and what would come to be known as feminism.

“The white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country,” Justice Harlan went on. “I doubt not, it will continue to be for all time, if it remains true to its great heritage.” A

Wells was best known as a journalist for exposing the lies behind the justification for lynching. Negroes charged with recklessly eyeballing a White woman, or worse, were often people who had found prosperity and respect despite the constraints of Jim Crow. The lynchings put them back in their place. Wells nearly met a similar fate, but escaped as

“Our Constitution is color-blind,” U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Harlan proclaimed in his dissent to Plessy v. Ferguson, the case that legalized Jim Crow segregation in 1896. “The white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country,” Justice Harlan went on. “I doubt not, it will continue to be for all time, if it remains true to its g