Black history on Long Island through the lens of Vintage Newsday Instagram

POLITICAL PIONEER. New York State NAACP President Donald Lee welcomes Rep. Shirley Chisholm, the first African American woman elected to Congress, to the group's state convention in Plainview in 1971.

PAYING TRIBUTE. Eleanor Lingo places a wreath on the grave of "Bloom," a young black enslaved girl, in 1992 in the cemetery next to First Presbyterian Church in Southold.

LOCAL BOY MAKES GOOD. Comedian Eddie Murphy visits teacher David Better in a history class at Roosevelt Senior High School in November 1981. 

CELEBRITY WATCH. Eddie Murphy's Freeport home often drew eager fans, like those who gathered here in 1983, before Murphy moved to New Jersey.

A HOME AWAY. Millie Brown tends to the garden at her 11-room home in Sag Harbor's Ninevah section in August 1974. The Sag Harbor Hills, Azurest and Ninevah Beach Subdivisions Historic District gained prominence as a place where Black residents could create a seasonal community. As Newsday reported in 1974, it was "one of the few summer communities in America where relatively affluent, middle-class Blacks can come to escape the heat, menace and excruciating pressures of the city."

VISIT FROM THE AUTHOR. Karen Hughes waits for Alex Haley to autograph a copy of his history-making book "Roots." The author visited Islip Junior High School on June 8, 1979, to make good on his promise to speak to students who had been inspired by his story.

CLASS IS IN SESSION. An African American history class meets at Nassau Community College in Garden City on Nov. 11, 1969, under the instruction of Professor Marquita James. In the story that accompanied this photo, Bob Rice of North Massapequa, a white student at NCC, said, "I took Afro-American history to unlearn lies." 

PUSH FOR EQUALITY. Lincoln Lynch, left, of the Congress of Racial Equality, leads a demonstration for desegregation outside Malverne Junior High School in 1962

PET PROJECT. Singer Roberta Flack visits North Shore Animal League in 1988 to bring awareness to plight of homeless animals.

TIME OUT FOR FUN. When the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was on Fire Island with the American Institute on Nonviolence in 1967, he took time out for some fun, going for a spin with Susan Wachtel and Daniel Deutsch. He stayed at the Wachtel home.

KING ON LONG ISLAND. Visiting Long Island communities, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. addresses a rally in Lakeview on May 12, 1965. "We are in a common struggle to free the soul of America ... we are tied together in a single garment of destiny," he said.

STANDING FOR INTEGRATION. In 1963, the Rev. John A. Belton, pastor of St. Paul's AME Zion Church of Great Neck, leads picketing parents at Manhasset's Plandome Road School. The parents sought to enroll their children in the all-white school instead of Valley School, which was 94% Black; in 1964, a federal judge ordered desegregation.

CELEBRATING AFRICAN AMERICAN CULTURE. Fatima Talbird of Freeport is assisted by Steve Lloyd in lighting a candle for Kwanzaa at the African American Museum of Nassau County in Hempstead in 1982.

IMPACT OF DISCRIMINATION. On Dec. 1, 1953, the Cotter family -- from left, daughter Phyllis, sons, William Jr. and John, and parents, William and Cynthia -- were made to leave their home because of racially discriminatory homeownership covenants in Levittown.

DRIVE FOR EQUALITY. William Cotter watches demonstrators make the case for integrating Levittown at South Village Green on Dec. 6, 1953, just days after he and his family were ousted from the Levittown home they were renting.

POWER OF COMMUNITY. Young adults in Blacks for Unity, which taught Swahili, African culture and politics, form a circle to demonstrate kinship in 1968.