Clint Smith teaches you about the Black Lives Matter movement. We'll discuss some of the major events that contributed to the rise of BLM, including the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and George Floyd, and the way that social media was utilized by Black organizers to gain support for the movement.

Sojourner Truth (born Isabella Baumfree, c. 1797 to November 26, 1883) was an African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist best-known for her speech on racial inequalities, "Ain't I a Woman?", delivered extemporaneously in 1851 at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention. Truth was born into slavery but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826. She devoted her life to the abolitionist cause and helped to recruit black troops for the Union Army. Although Truth began her career as an abolitionist, the reform causes she sponsored were broad and varied, including prison reform, property rights and universal suffrage.

Martin Luther King Jr. was born in 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia. King, although he was an initial skeptic to religion he eventually became a Baptist minister, a civil-rights activist and had a seismic impact on race relations in the United States. Among his many efforts, King headed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Through his activism and inspirational speeches, he played a pivotal role in ending the legal segregation of African-American citizens in the United States, as well as the creation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. King received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, among several other honors. He was assassinated in April 1968 and continues to be remembered as one of the most influential and inspirational African-American leaders in history.

On Malcolm X's birthday, we learn more about his life and history.

Born into slavery in Maryland, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in the North in 1849 to become the most famous "conductor" on the Underground Railroad.

Marguerite Annie Johnson Angelou (April 4, 1928 to May 28, 2014), known as Maya Angelou, was an American author, actress, screenwriter, dancer, poet and civil rights activist best known for her 1969 memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which made literary history as the first nonfiction best-seller by an African-American woman.

He was the first African American nominated for vice president of the United States. He escaped enslavement to become one of America's most prominent abolitionists, an advisor to Lincoln... and a Republican statesman.

The true story of the Great Jimi Hendrix

Zora Neale Hurston - January 7, 1891 - January 28, 1960 Novelist, folklorist, anthropologist