Photo by Meyers Photo Shop. Barney Hillerman Collection, Oklahoma Histoircal Society, ID #: 21412.M413.1

After the war, African Americans participated in the boom economy that followed. They bought homes, went to college, and started families.

This family was photographed in June 1955 in front of their new home at 12629 NE 36th Street in Oklahoma City.

At the same time African Americans were still discriminated against throughout the United States when it came to housing, benefits from the G.I. Bill, and employment. Of course, in Oklahoma, and Texas, Jim Crow was also still the law of the land.

We have not positively identified this group, but we have reason to believe that it is a baseball team at the Excelsior Elementary School in Big Sandy, Texas. Excelsior was a black public elementary school. Internal evidence suggests that ithe photo was taken in the 1950s.

They responded with the Civil Rights Movement. While many think the Civil Rights Movement took place solely in the South, it was also fought in the West.

Here, what looks like a mother and her children participate in a sit-in at the whites-only lunch counter in Katz's Drug Store in Oklahoma City on August 25, 1958.

And the fight for civil rights only increased in the 1960s... NEXT