• On February 1, 1862, Julia Ward Howe published her famous poem “Battle Hymn of the Republic” in the Atlantic Monthly, which became the anthem of the Union during the Civil War.
• On February 1, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Joint Resolution of Congress passing the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery in the United States.
• On February 1, 1960, four Black students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University sat down at the F.W. Woolworth Company department store lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, to protest segregation.
• This sparked a sit-in movement that spread across the South and eventually led to the desegregation of public spaces.
• On February 1, 2023, Tyre Nichols’s family laid their 29-year-old son to rest in Memphis, Tennessee, after he was severely beaten by police officers.
• The College Board also released the official curriculum for a new Advanced Placement course in African American Studies, which had been stripped of information about Black feminism, the queer experience, incarceration, and the Black Lives Matter movement.
Published February 2, 2023
Visit Letters from an American to read Heather Cox Richardson’s original post February 1, 2023
