Photos & Multimedia

For a comprehensive listing of National Park Service audio, videos, photos, and podcasts pertaining to civil rights history use our civil rights multimedia search. To see more specific listings click on:

• Audio
• Video
• Podcast
• Photos

Below are some examples of the civil rights history media that can be found in the NPS Multimedia Search.

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We Will Rise: National Parks and Civil Rights (podcast series).
Join Park Rangers, researchers, authors, and activists as they discuss what liberty and justice for all means on our public lands.

Ballot Blocked (podcast series).
Explores the histories of voting rights in the United States from the Civil War to the present day.

The History of Stonewall (video series)
The 15-part history of Stonewall and its establishment as a National Monument. The video series was made for the 5th anniversary of Stonewall National Monument

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  Civil War to Civil Rights

  America's national parks tell the story of the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement.

  Duration:

  30 seconds

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  A Landmark Civil Rights Case

  Caroline Williams was a free African American living in post-Civil War St. Louis in 1867 who was the center of a landmark civil rights case. When she was thrown from a streetcar with her small child after trying to sit inside, she sought justice through the courts. This re-enactment of a conversation that Caroline might have had with her husband Neptune on the night of the incident dramatizes the courage necessary to challenge the status quo in former slave states.

  Duration:

  4 minutes, 11 seconds

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  Mill City Minute - Sarah Bagley

  Sarah Bagley became a weaver in Lowell in 1837. Within a few years, Bagley began protesting unfair labor practices and worked with other women to form the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association. Testifying before the state legislature in 1845, Bagley advocated for a shorter work day. As editor of the newspaper Voice of Industry, Bagley promoted women’s and workers’ rights. Bagley later became the nation’s first female telegraph operator. What is a cause that you care about?

  Duration:

  1 minute, 1 second

• Eileen Szychowski: Knowing her Rights

  
  

  Eileen Szychowski describes an experience during a 1981 visit to Bright Angel Lodge in Grand Canyon National Park, when she informed the staff that their preventing her from riding a mule because of her physical disability was a violation of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act.

  Credit / Author:

  NPS Park History Program

  Date created:

  06/22/2022

  Audio Transcript

  SZYCHOWSKI: I decided, “I think I need to go back.” So I went back to the ranger lodge. I waited ‘til all the other people were gone from the lines, so it would be just me and that young woman. And I said, “I’m back.” I said, “Relax, I’m not going to ask to ride the mule.” I said, “But your policy is illegal, and I would like to speak with someone about this.” So, she called her boss, and that boss called her boss, and put me on the phone with a gentleman by the name of Jan Cutler. And I told him my story and just said, “You know, the Rehab Act of 1973 contains a clause in it that prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability.” And I said, “You know, as a concessioner, you’re doing business with the federal government, so that applies to you guys, too.” And I made it clear that I was not here to sue, but that something needed to happen here.

• Podcast: The Port Chicago 50: An Oral History

  
  

  Credit: Long Haul Productions.

  Date created:

  10/14/2020

• Suffrage - Right vs. Ability

  
  

  Suffrage may be a right but that doesn't mean you would have been given the ability to exercise it.

  Credit / Author:

  White Sands/NPS

  Date created:

  10/14/2020

  Audio Transcript

  Hi, my name is Robin and I am a park ranger at White Sands National Park. Welcome to part two of our three part audio series on the 19th amendment. Let’s take a look at two different scenarios and see if we would have been able to vote.

  It’s 1872 and the fourteenth amendment was passed. That gave all those born or naturalized citizenship. That means that women can vote right? Not so much. In the Supreme Court case Minor vs. Happersett (1875) it was ruled unanimously that the constitution did not guarantee a citizen’s right to vote and that states could restrict voting rights to men. Many women would try to vote and face the same verdict years after. The supreme court would continue to rule that the constitution did not give all citizen the right to vote.

  Let’s take a leap forward in time and see if we progressed at all 48 years later.

  Now it’s 1920 and the presidential election is upon us. The 19th amendment has been signed into law and now the right to vote is ours. Not really. Depending on your state you could be required to pay as much as $3 (around $40 today) to cast your vote. Literacy tests, those were also required by certain states, as well as residency and property restrictions would be the next hurdle you would jump though. But we’ve made it through all those qualifications and requirements. We can vote now right? Well maybe but they are going to put us at the back of the line and make us wait hours and hours hoping we’d give up. This is an example of having a right but not being given the ability to fully exercise it.

  For those suffragists who were determined to vote they were willing to be fined and even sometimes jailed to get answers as to why they weren’t allowed to vote. With those answers they would then find the words and process needed for them to gain suffrage. For these women the right was suffrage, what right are you unable to exercise?

John Trudell and others at a press conference in the Senator Hotel on Ellis St., San Francisco during the Indians of All Tribes' occupation of Alcatraz. 1971

Photo by Ilka Hartmann