civil rights

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  11/9/2022
  

  The Gay Movement that Grew in the 1920s Didn't Collapse, it Went Underground

  Henry Gerber's Society for Human Rights complicates the narrative of a gay rights struggle emerging publicly in the 1950s. If gay and lesbian Americans were organizing in the 1920s, what happened in the decades between? Jim Elledge's book seeks to explain that gap. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  11/2/2022
  

  New Documentary uses Fight for Black Power in Lowndes County, Alabama as Lens on Present

  Vann Newkirk, whose work inspired "Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power" examines how a conservative white minority fought to keep power even after the passage of the Voting Rights Act

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  11/2/2022
  

  Can a History of America's First Two Reconstructions Make a Third one Possible?

  Peniel Joseph's book looks to the past struggles to define and achieve freedom and equality to ask what America's Third Reconstruction – begun with Obama's election and attacked since– must do to survive and advance. 

• 
• SOURCE: Substack
  10/29/2022
  

  Michigan Gubernatorial Candidate Steeped in Disinformation About Parties' Roles

  by Heather Cox Richardson

  Focusing on the tension between hierarchy and equality rather than party affiliation helps to clarify why a candidate of the "Party of Lincoln" can make white power rants on public media. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  10/19/2022
  

  Don't Pit Rosa Parks Against Claudette Colvin – Recognize the Movement Both Shared In

  by Jeanne Theoharis and Say Burgin

  Multiple myths about Rosa Parks – that she was a reluctant and accidental crusader, or that she usurped the leadership of the younger Claudette Colvin – obscure the grassroots movement in Montgomery and the intergenerational mentorship the two women shared. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  10/13/2022
  

  Charles Sherrod: An Unheralded Giant of the Civil Rights Struggle

  by Ansley L. Quiros

  "Charles Sherrod is the most important civil rights figure you've never heard of"--fighting for six decades in southwest Georgia, persevering through incremental gains after the publicity of the Albany Movement faded. 

• 
• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  10/13/2022
  

  How Pauli Murray Masterminded Brown v. Board of Education

  by Tejai Beulah Howard

  Overcoming marginalization by male classmates, Pauli Murray made a bet with a professor that segregation could be challenged by arguing that separate was inherently unequal. Murray collected on the bet only after the 1954 ruling validated the argument, but was long denied credit. 

• 
• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  10/7/2022
  

  Fannie Lou Hamer and the Meaning of Freedom in Contemporary America

  by Keisha N. Blain

  Keisha Blain responds to a round table forum on her new biography of the Mississippi freedom activist, whose thinking and leadership in the movement can inform struggles for justice today. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  10/2/2022
  

  Libraries Do Face Attacks, but Not Like the "Freedom Libraries" of 1964

  As yet, public attacks on libraries over programming and books dealing with racism and LGBTQ issues have not escalated to the routine firebombing of the libraries founded by activist groups during the "Freedom Summer" to help Black Mississippians access books and political information. 

• 
• SOURCE: NPR
  9/27/2022
  

  Law Professor Unearths Murder Cases from Jim Crow Era

  Margaret Burnham has been appointed by President Biden to a five-person Civil Rights Cold Case Review Board to increase public access to records of unsolved racially motivated crimes. 

• 
• SOURCE: Reason
  10/3/2022
  

  Will Biden Finally Pardon Callie House?

  Callie House led an organization that sought pensions as a form of reparation and relief for formerly enslaved people. In 1917 unfriendly federal officials prosecuted her for mail fraud for circulating her organization's materials. 

• 
• SOURCE: Texas Tribune
  9/19/2022
  

  At its 50th Reunion, La Raza Unida Asks How to Pass the Torch

  La Raza Unida grew out of civil rights mobilization in the 1960s and worked to mobilize the large, complex, and internally divided communities of ethnic Mexican Texans, focusing on education and voting rights, and struggling to bridge radical and moderate political outlooks. 

• 
• SOURCE: Salon
  9/17/2022
  

  A Short History of Fake History, and Why We Fight for the Truth

  by Robert S. Mcelvanie

  One of the most important parts of the civil rights struggle was an interracial effort to fight against a narrative of fake history that had been institutionalized in and out of the Jim Crow South—the white supremacist mythology of the "lost cause." That legacy should guide schools today. 

• 
• SOURCE: TIME
  9/15/2022
  

  The Promise and Peril of the "Third Reconstruction"

  by Peniel E. Joseph

  At a time when the nation is balanced precariously between advocates for multiracial democracy and white nationalists, it is important to understand the history and the incompleteness of the expansion of freedom and democracy during Reconstruction. 

• 
• SOURCE: Mississippi Free Press
  9/9/2022
  

  Filmmaker Hopes Emmett Till Movie Will Spur New Evidence and Will to Pursue Justice

  Filmmaker Keith Beauchamp hopes to "shake the trees so that a justice-seeking atmosphere could be formed that will allow people to feel comfortable coming forward with new evidence on the case.”

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/31/2022
  

  Esther Cooper Jackson, Radical Civil Rights Activist, Dies at 105

  “She shamed you out of bourgeois confidence, then devoted selfless time to your progressive re-education,” Professor David Levering Lewis said.

• 
• SOURCE: Boston Globe
  8/28/2022
  

  Three Historians on the Legacy of the 1963 March on Washington

  William Jones, Adrian Lentz-Smith and Laurie Green discuss the largely-forgotten demands of the marchers for economic redistribution, full employment and labor rights, as well as the impact the march's organizers had on the culture of protest in the United States. 

• 
• SOURCE: CNN
  8/27/2022
  

  Is King's Dream Still Alive?

  by Peniel E. Joseph

  Although things appear grim on many fronts, the recent success of the Biden administration in passing significant reforms through a divided Senate reflects the broader context of King's 1963 address: progress toward supporting human dignity on many fronts. 

• 
• SOURCE: History Matters
  8/29/2022
  

  Overshadowed in His Time, Bayard Rustin's Leadership Speaks to Today's Fights for Justice

  by Jerald Podair

  Rustin was a forward-looking radical who embraced socialist, labor, and racial justice struggles. But homophobia across the color line limited his public influence in the 1960s.

• 
• SOURCE: Associated Press
  8/28/2022
  

  Grant for Public History of Natchez, MS Civil Rights Sites

  “This is great news for Natchez,” Mayor Dan Gibson said in a news release. “These grant funds will help greatly in our efforts to better tell the entire history of Natchez to include commemorating our African American historic sites.”