Those who fought for America’s democracy should be treated as the war heroes they are.
Tag Archives: Civil Rights Movement (1954-68)
Our Racial Reckoning Could Have Come Sooner. What Made 2020 Different?
The murder of George Floyd, a pandemic and social media released a storm.
The Expansion of Democracy Is What Does the Trick
There are minorities whose interests are harmed by majority rule. But they are not minorities as we tend to think of them; they are elites.
In Los Angeles, a Tree With Stories to Tell
At the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, each champion received a baby oak tree. In Los Angeles one of them is still alive, a witness to a forgotten chapter of Black history. But it is threatened with destruction to make space for luxury apartments.
In the U.S., Backlash to Civil Rights Era Made Guns a Political Third Rail
Other countries changed course after massacres. But American political protection for guns is unique, and has become inseparable from conservative credentials.
‘Misoginia de la era colonial’: en los fallos sobre los derechos de las mujeres se cita a un juez del siglo XVII
Tanto en India como en el borrador del fallo Roe v. Wade en Estados Unidos, todavía ocupa un lugar preponderante un juez inglés que escribió que las mujeres estaban obligadas por contrato a los maridos.
The 17th-Century English Judge Behind Abortion and Rape Rulings Today
Both in India and in the Roe v. Wade draft ruling roiling the United States, Lord Matthew Hale — an English judge who wrote that women were contractually obligated to husbands — still looms large.
Alice Walker Has ‘No Regrets’
Walker has grappled with some of the thorniest issues of 20th-century America. She’s also taken troubling stances. She has now opened up and shared her diaries, giving readers a window into her life.
Doris Derby, Civil Rights Era Photographer, Dies at 82
She was an artist who was studying anthropology when she became an activist in the civil rights movement and a rare woman to document Black life in photos.
U.T. Austin Acquires Archives That Give Insight Into the 1960s
The papers of Richard Goodwin, a speechwriter to John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, and his wife Doris Kearns Goodwin, a presidential historian, shed light on decision-making at crucial moments in American history.
How Are We Still Debating Interracial Marriage in 2022?
The Ketanji Brown Jackson hearings unleashed some deeply retro Senatorial opinions.
The Artists Turning Nina Simone’s Childhood Home Into a Creative Destination
Rashid Johnson, Julie Mehretu, Adam Pendleton and Ellen Gallagher are working both to preserve and transform the North Carolina house where she was born.
Can William Barber Reignite the Religious Left?
This is a man on the grandest of missions: to save this country from itself, to insist that morality ought to decide policy.
The Staten Island House Where Black History Lives
A 90-year-old former schoolteacher’s collection includes Muhammad Ali’s boxing shoes and Tuskegee Airmen headgear — but it also features Ku Klux Klan toys.
Autherine Lucy Foster, First Black Student at U. of Alabama, Dies at 92
Her career there lasted only three days; attacked by mobs, she was suspended and then expelled. Today, a campus building is named in her honor.
Barack Obama: What Trayvon Martin Taught Us, 10 Years Later
Not every killing connects with the culture and activates a mass movement. This one did.
In Twilight of Life, Civil Rights Activists Feel ‘Urgency to Tell Our History’
Young people who marched and organized during the civil rights movement are now in their 70s and 80s. With fewer and fewer remaining, historians rush to record their stories.
Antagonist, Activist, Operator, Survivor
A.J. Baime’s “White Lies” explores the life and times of the civil rights figure Walter F. White.
Older Americans Fight to Make America Better
We don’t want to leave the world a worse place than we found it.
Rabbi Israel Dresner, Civil Rights Champion and King Ally, Dies at 92
He was jailed multiple times in the South during the 1960s and made human rights his lifelong cause, following the Jewish doctrine of “tikkun olam” — to repair the world.
‘Civil Rights Queen,’ the Story of a Brave and Brilliant Trailblazer
Tomiko Brown-Nagin’s book is the first major biography of Constance Baker Motley, the first Black woman to serve as a federal judge, among other achievements.
Book Review: ‘South to America,’ by Imani Perry
In “South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation,” Imani Perry straddles genres to find her own — and our — South.
Three Black Senators Play Outsized Roles in Voting Rights Debate
Senators Cory Booker, Tim Scott and Raphael Warnock brought vastly different perspectives to proceedings that highlighted the Senate’s striking lack of diversity.
Sidney Poitier, Who Paved the Way for Black Actors in Film, Dies at 94
The first Black performer to win the Academy Award for best actor, for “Lilies of the Field,” he once said he felt “as if I were representing 15, 18 million people with every move I made.”
Representative Bobby Rush, Longtime Illinois Democrat, Will Retire
The decision by the pastor and civil rights activist added to a wave of Democrats deciding not to run for re-election in a difficult midterm cycle.
Desmond Tutu Knew Justice Had to Include Forgiveness
Contemporary activists can benefit from Tutu’s ideas about restorative justice and strengthen their quest for fundamental fairness.
Gordon Carey, a Force in the Civil Rights Movement, Dies at 89
An “unsung hero” of the era, he played important roles in two of its far-reaching events: the 1960 lunch-counter sit-ins and the 1961 Freedom Rides.
Frederick C. Baldwin, a Photographer Who Reveled in Storytelling, Dead at 92
He saw the camera as “a passport to the world” that helped him document nature, the civil rights movement and life in rural America.
King Family and Activists Plan Marches to Spur Action on Voting Rights
Prominent backers of stalled voting rights legislation plan a blitz emphasizing the urgent need to counter new state restrictions.
Man Exonerated in Malcolm X Murder Files Lawsuit Against New York State
Muhammad A. Aziz filed the claim on Tuesday, along with a notice seeking a settlement with the city, for the toll that being “unjustly branded as a convicted murderer” for 55 years took on his life.
The Canonization of Saint John Coltrane
The intensity of the jazz legend’s music has always inspired passion, but in the 1960s, one group of devotees was so stirred they founded a church in his name.
Malcolm X Assassination: Questions About the Case Linger
Scholars have never accepted the official explanation for the murder. That is unlikely to change.
Exoneration Is ‘Bittersweet’ for Men Cleared in Malcolm X’s Murder
An emotional crowd burst into applause in a packed Manhattan courtroom Thursday after the judge threw out the convictions of Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam.
Jason Jules and The Making of Black Ivy Style
A new book examines how Black civil rights leaders, jazzmen, artists and writers rewrote the sartorial codes of a largely white elite.
Saving the Connecticut Farm That Helped Spark M.L.K.’s Dream
Summers spent working on a tobacco farm in the 1940s opened a teenage Martin Luther King Jr. to a world beyond the Jim Crow South.
Why Wokeness Will Fail
Americans won’t support a protest movement that divides, undermines, and censors.
What ‘Structural Racism’ Really Means
As the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, “an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”
Claudette Colvin, Civil Rights Pioneer, Seeks to Have Her Record Cleared
Claudette Colvin refused to give up her bus seat to a white woman in Montgomery, Ala., in March 1955, nine months before Rosa Parks. Now 82, she says that justice from the court system is overdue.
The Supreme Court Faces a Huge Test on Libel Law
Two of the justices want to revisit a landmark decision for free expression. They may soon get the chance.
Timuel Black, Strategist and Organizer for Black Chicago, Dies at 102
He assembled attendees of the March on Washington, mentored a young Barack Obama and wielded the solidarity of the South Side as a tool for political power.
The Enduring Influence of Fannie Lou Hamer, Civil Rights Advocate
Two new biographies, “Walk With Me,” by Kate Clifford Larson, and “Until I Am Free,” by Keisha N. Blain, recount Hamer’s struggle to open up voting to Black people in Mississippi and argue for the continued relevance of her tactics.
Tarana Burke Talks About the Surprising Origins of #MeToo
Tarana Burke discusses her new memoir, “Unbound,” and how she turned away from one movement to found another.
Questions Swirl After Yet Another Emmett Till Sign Comes Down
A historical marker that stood outside the Mississippi shop where 14-year-old Emmett Till encountered the woman who accused him of whistling at her, may have been toppled by a truck. But a historical center is reluctant to call it an accident.
Stephen B. Oates, Civil War Historian, Dies at 85
In a quartet of biographies, he explored how slavery and racial oppression could exist in a land based on the ideals of the Declaration of Independence.
Lucille Times, Who Inspired the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Dies at 100
Six months before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, Mrs. Times had an altercation with a bus driver and stopped riding the city’s segregated buses.
‘Critical Race Theory’ And How American History Is Taught
What progressives want, and what conservatives are fighting.
Martha White, 99, Dies; Before Rosa Parks, She Sparked a Bus Boycott
The 1953 protest in Baton Rouge, triggered by her ejection from a bus for sitting in a “whites only” section, became a template for Martin Luther King.
John M. Patterson, Segregationist Alabama Governor, Dies at 99
He welcomed the Klan and refused to integrate schools, forging a path that would be followed by Gov. George C. Wallace.
Lee Evans, Olympic Runner Who Protested Racism, Dies at 74
One of several Black athletes who had threatened to boycott the 1968 Summer Games, he won two gold medals, then raised his fist at the presentation ceremony.
Recasting ‘Riots’ as Black Rebellions
“America on Fire,” by the Yale University scholar Elizabeth Hinton, connects the unrest of the civil rights era to shifts in social policy authorizing aggressive police tactics whose destructive repercussions are evident today.