Actors Ethel Waters, Georgia Burke, and Fredi Washington in “Mamba’s Daughters” at Philadelphia’s Locust Street Theatre in February 1940. Georgia native Burke was among the eleven African-American teachers who walked out of Wilson Colored Graded School to protest the abuse by school principal J.D. Reid and superintendent Charles L. Coon.

Photo courtesy of George D. McDowell Philadelphia Evening Bulletin Collection, Temple University Libraries, Special Collections Research Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.