Sowande Mustakeem 00 is an associate professor of history and African and African-American studies at Washington University in St. Louis and author of the highly acclaimed “Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex and Sickness in the Middle Passage.
Sowande’ Mustakeem ’00, author of “Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex and Sickness in the Middle Passage,” shares her story of loss, triumph and success, since graduating as Elon’s first African & African-American Studies major.
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Oct. 25, 1997, is a day Sowande’ Mustakeem will never forget. That’s when she and two friends traveled to Philadelphia, joined by roughly 750,000 other Black women, to cry out for social and economic development in America’s Black community. That event – the Million Woman March – would prove to be a pivotal point in Mustakeem’s story.
Black History: Timeline of the Post-Civil Rights Era
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Jesse Jackson hugging Shirley Chisholm in 1984. Credit: Jacques M. Chenet/Corbis/Getty Images
From the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., to the 2008 election of Barack Obama, to widespread global protests declaring Black Lives Matter in 2020, African American history in the United States has been filled with both triumph and strife.
Here s a look at some of the notable milestones that took place from the end of the civil rights movement to today.
Martin Luther King Jr. Assassinated
April 4, 1968: Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. is shot and killed at the age of 38 while standing on the balcony of his Lorraine Motel room in Memphis, Tenn. James Earl Ray was later convicted of the crime and sentenced to a 99-year prison term. President Lyndon B. Johnson designates April 7 as a national day of mourning.