Black history is all around us.
The street corners, churches, stores, apartments, empty lots and parks we pass by everyday share a rich history of the black lives that lived before. Black History Month offers an annual opportunity to recognize and cherish that rich heritage.
From Harlem to Selma, and everywhere in between and around, these then-and-now Huffpost photographs synch space and time into powerful images of past and present.
In the spirit of bringing Black Future Month and Black History month together as one inseparable celebration of black lives, these photographs embody the legacy of Black history in America.
Central High School, Little Rock, Arkansas
U.S. paratroopers in full battle dress escort 9 black children — three boys and six girls — on September 25, 1957, in Little Rock, Arkansas into Central High School after President Eisenhower decided the day before to send federal troops and bring the state under federal control to protect black children against white demonstrators. The Federal troops kept the children away while a crowd of over 400 white men and women jeered ‘Go home, niggers’. Today, Central High School is an accredited comprehensive public high school and a national historic site.
Credit: U.S. Government ; Adam Jones, Ph.D.
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Langston Hughes’ Home
Located at 20 E. 127th St., the home of writer and poet Langston Hughes was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. Hughes spent the last 20 years of his life in the five-bedroom brownstone. The house reportedly went on sale in 2011, and was originally listed for $1.2 million, but the price was dropped to $1 million.
Credit: Robert W. Kelley//Time Life Pictures/Getty Images ; Marc Janks
Lenox Lounge
The historic Harlem jazz club Lenox Lounge, located at 288 Lenox Ave. in New York’s East Harlem neighborhood, not only hosted legendary entertainers like Miles Davis and Frank Sinatra, it was also the venue where Langston Hughes narrated “The Story of Jazz”, Alex Haley interviewed Malcolm X for his biography, and where culture-shaping authors James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ralph Ellison became regulars. Founded in 1939, the bar passed through several different management hands and eventually closed in 2012. There have been recent disputes between present-day property owners, and restaurateur Richard Notar is scheduled to open a new jazz club on the 286 Lenox Ave. site.
Credit: Rita Barros/Liaison/Getty Images ; Damon Dahlen
(Captions by Danielle Cadet)
