civil rights movement

I Interviewed John Lewis 45 Years Ago. His Commitment To Voting Rights Never Wavered.

“It’s still a source of pain that the Voting Rights Act has not been more actively enforced,” Lewis told me in 1975, 10 years after passage of the law.

After Six Decades, Ben’s Chili Bowl Faces Its Greatest Challenge Yet: Coronavirus

Since 1958, Ben's Chili Bowl has been many things, a restaurant, meeting place, community center, and landmark. Now, the iconic DC institution is struggling to survive the coronavirus.

The MLK Graphic Novel That Inspired Generations of Civil Rights Activists

The comic book that helped spark a generation of young civil rights protestors did not feature superheroes, but a 42-year-old seamstress and a 26-year-old Baptist pastor.

“Who’s Responsible For What’s Happening at Parchman?": A Historical Analysis of Mississippi’s Prisons

by Michael Murphy

These recent deaths at Parchman have a long historical tradition in Mississippi state-run institutions and are linked to underfunding and lack of support by the state government.

Listen to the Stories of Alabama’s Civil Rights Sites

A new interactive project seeks to preserve oral testimonies connected to 20 historic locations.

Influential Civil Rights Advocate Juanita Abernathy Dies at 88

by Chevel Johnson

Juanita Abernathy, who wrote the business plan for the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and took other influential steps in helping to build the American civil rights movement, has died. 

The Hidden Segregation of Military Executions During the Civil Rights Movement

How did the United States Army, during the early years of the civil rights movement, deal with the crucible issues of race and capital punishment?

Another Hero of the Civil Rights Movement You Probably Never Heard of (But Should Have)

by Tula Connell

Her name was Vel Phillips. She was a path breaker in Wisconsin. She just died.

Thomas Sugrue takes to the NYT to set the record straight about the Civil Rights Movement’s lesson for today’s protesters

by Thomas J. Sugrue

The lesson? To succeed you often have to be uncivil.

Is it ok for a professor to use the word "Negro" when discussing black history in the 1960s?

by Peter Feinman

A student at Columbia answered that it's wrong.

The Whitewashing of King’s Assassination

by Vann R. Newkirk II

The death of Martin Luther King Jr. wasn’t a galvanizing event, but the premature end of a movement that had only just begun.

Jeanne Theoharis calls out the abuse and misuse of the Civil Rights Movement

by Jeanne Theoharis

In a new book the political scientist and historian argues that the protests of Black Lives Matter are, contrary to the critics, fully in keeping with those of the sixties.

Colin Kaepernick and the Myth of the ‘Good’ Protest

by Glenda Gilmore

Rosa Parks was a hero. So were the students who sat in at the Woolworth lunch counters. But they knew that their heroism was possible only because of decades of what Ella Baker called “spade work.”

3 of the 4 Great Black Leaders Between the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement Are Well-Known. But the 4th?

by Burnis R. Morris

His name is Carter G. Woodson. It’s about time we got to know him.

The GOP has been implying Black Lives Matter is more divisive than the Civil Rights Movement

by Paul Rosenberg

Liberals say it’s factually not true.

MLK Would Never Shut Down a Freeway, and 6 Other Myths About the Civil Rights Movement and Black Lives Matter

by Jeanne Theoharis

Calling out these myths is more than setting the historical record straight. The “propaganda of history,” as W.E.B. Du Bois reminded us a century ago, becomes a way of “giving us a false but pleasurable sense of accomplishment”—for soothing and justifying inaction in the face of persistent racial inequality.

Mississippi Ends Inquiry Into 1964 Killing of 3 Civil Rights Workers

The bodies of Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman were found on a remote road 52 years ago. Nine people have been convicted in the case.

History teacher chides textbooks for ignoring the history of the Civil Rights Movement after 1965

by Adam Sanchez

NYC school teacher Adam Sanchez says that textbooks that focus on the Brown decision and the Voting Rights Act tell students that structural racism is a relic of the past.

Now it can be told: The weakening of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is the crowning achievement of GOP partisans who detested the law

A largely Republican countermovement of ideologues and partisan operatives who, from the moment the Voting Rights Act became law, methodically set out to undercut or dismantle its most important requirements.

Happy Birthday, Living Legend Rachel Robinson!

by Yohuru Williams

While Jack made the headlines, Rachel often bore the brunt of the hidden but nonetheless significant battles such as shepherding the family through the process of facing northern style apartheid.