Harriet E. Wilson, one of the first female African American novelists, was born free on this day in 1825 in New Hampshire. Her novel, Our Nig, or Sketches from the Life of a Free Black was published anonymously in 1859 in Boston, and was not widely known until it was discovered in 1982 by the scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
On this day in 1965, in the State of the Union Address, President Lyndon Baines Johnson recalled the Civil Rights struggles and focused the nation by using the movement’s anthem, “We shall Overcome”
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