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Worshipers at a Pentecostal church, Chicago, 1941

A Praise House of Many Mansions

In a book and documentary series, Henry Louis Gates Jr. offers a wide-ranging tour of Black religion in America.
Stokely Charmichael with microphone, speaking to crowd. Supporters are standing behind him on stage.

The Birth of Black Power

Stokely Carmichael and the speech that changed the course of the civil rights movement.
Illustration of a gavel by Vahram Muradyan

Why Do Americans Have So Few Rights?

How we came to rely on the courts, instead of the democratic process, for justice.
Yearbook photo of a an African American girl, in front of newspaper headlines and pictures of her as an adult

Meet Claudette Colvin, the 15-Year-Old Who Came Before Rosa Parks

Claudette Colvin is a Civil Rights hero you've probably never heard of. In 1955, she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat, months before Rosa Parks.
Civil rights era photo of young people protesting for voting rights in between black and white photos of black people lined up to vote

American Democracy Is Only 55 Years Old—And Hanging by a Thread

Black civil-rights activists—and especially Black women—delivered on the promise of the Founding. Their victories are in peril.
A car window with a sign in it that reads "let freedom ring" with an illustration of Martin Luther King, Jr.
partner

Martin Luther King Jr.’s Challenge to Liberal Allies — and Why It Resonates Today

King understood the perils of submerged racism.
A newspaper clipping from the Aug. 7, 1958, issue of the Enlightener, a Black newspaper in Wichita shows the Dockum Drug Store lunch counter sit-in, one of the earliest in the United States.

The Brave, Forgotten Kansas Lunch Counter Sit-in That Helped Change America

The 1958 civil rights protest by Black teens led to the end of segregation at lunch counters all over the state and inspired a wave of sit-ins across the country.
Black and White photo of demonstrators

When Medicare Helped Kill Jim Crow

By making health care broadly available, the government helps ensure our freedom.

A TV Documentary Shows the Deep Roots of Right-Wing Conspiracy

In 1964, the John Birch Society was the most active far-right group in the United States—unless you count the Republican Party.

Ebenezer Baptist: MLK’s Church Makes New History With Warnock Victory

Georgia Sen.-elect Raphael Warnock is pastor of the church where Martin Luther King Jr. preached.
James Baldwin smoking at a table in the South of France in November 1979.

The Socialism of James Baldwin

By the end of his life, inspired by the radicalism of the Black Panthers, Baldwin was again ready to proclaim himself a socialist.

Sadie Alexander Was a Trailblazing Economist and Activist

This op-ed celebrates the life and legacy of economist, attorney, and civil rights advocate Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander.
a picture of protestors

How Will We Remember the Protests?

We don't know which images will become emblematic of the Black Lives Matter demonstrations, but past movements have shown the dangers of a singular narrative.

The Civil Rights Era was Supposed to Drastically Change America. It Didn’t.

From covid-19 to the 2020 election, the specter of America’s racist history influences many aspects of our lives.
Headshot of William Faulkner

‘A Land Where the Dead Past Walks’

Faulkner’s chroniclers have to reconcile the novelist’s often repellent political positions with the extraordinary meditations on race, violence, and cruelty in his fiction.

The Firsts

The children who desegregated America.
Protestors standing on a bridge, holding signs.

Why 45% of NYC Public School Students Stayed Home in Protest

Historians say that a major milestone in the history of school integration is often left out of the civil rights story.
James Baldwin

Freedom Day, 1963: A Lost Interview with James Baldwin

After Baldwin’s biographer died, her niece opened an old desk drawer and discovered a trove of interview material, some of it unpublished.

The 1619 Project is Wrong on the 1965 Immigration Act

Nikole Hannah-Jones gives the credit for ending quotas to civil rights reformers. The truth is a bit more complicated.
Malcolm X

The Day Malcolm X Was Killed

At the height of his powers, the Black Nationalist leader was assassinated, and the government botched the investigation of his murder.

Fannie Lou Hamer's Dauntless Fight for Black Americans' Right to Vote

The activist did not learn about her right to vote until she was 44, but once she did, she vigorously fought for black voting rights
A young Julian Bond talking with Bayard Rustin at the 1968 Democratic convention

Julian Bond’s Life in Protest and Politics

A new collection of essays demonstrates how the civil rights icon’s thinking evolved amid the upheavals of the 20th century.

Why Bill Clinton Attacked Stokely Carmichael

Clinton disparaged Carmichael at John Lewis’s funeral. But Black radicalism speaks more to the present moment than Clinton’s centrist politics.
Photo of an elderly African American man seated on a wicker chair in front of a porch trellis..

The Living Son of a Slave

The child of someone once considered a piece of property instead of a human being, Daniel Smith is a flesh-and-blood reminder that slavery wasn't that long ago

A Brief History of Dangerous Others

Wielding the outside agitator trope has always, at bottom, been a way of putting dissidents in their place.

The Essential and Enduring Strength of John Lewis

What the late civil-rights leader and congressman taught the nation.
Malcom X holding up a crime scene photo of Ronald Stokes's murder.

The Death That Galvanized Malcolm X Against Police Brutality

Decades before protests against mass incarceration galvanized the black freedom struggle, Malcolm indicted the entire justice system as racist.
A photograph of Congressman John Lewis.

The Way of John Lewis

Cynthia Tucker shares her hope that a new generation of activists can learn from Lewis' courageous and peaceful fight for “beloved community.”

The History That James Baldwin Wanted America to See

For Baldwin, the past had always been bent in service of a lie. Could a true story be told?

The History of the “Riot” Report

How government commissions became alibis for inaction.

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