civil rights

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• 7/3/2022
  

  Organized Defiance May Be the Only Answer to an Undemocratic Court

  by Alan J. Singer

  If Democrats in the legislative branch won't use their majorities to define the scope of judicial power to stop rulings that defy the will of the public, the public must organize to defy the rulings of the courts. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  6/24/2022
  

  If the Court Can Reverse Roe, it Can Reverse Anything

  by Mary Ziegler

  The court majority's assurances that abortion rights are a special case, and that other liberties are not in jeopardy, is hollow. 

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• SOURCE: Mississippi Free Press
  6/29/2022
  

  Unserved Warrant for Carolyn Bryant Donham's Arrest in Till Lynching Discovered in Box in Courthouse Basement

  The 1955 document demonstrates that the authorities in Leflore County believed that Donham, for whose honor the lynching was allegedly carried out, was present for the teenager's abduction, torture, or murder. 

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• 6/26/2022
  

  We Are All Americans Here: The Crisis of Civic Empathy and our Besieged Democracy

  by Chris J. Magoc

  Many Americans are living in a state of grief at the rise of a movement led by an authoritarian sociopath. The answer is to rediscover through action a sense of shared humanity. 

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• SOURCE: Politico
  5/17/2022
  

  The Undiscussed Backlash to Brown v. Board: The Sidelining of Black Educators

  by Leslie T. Fenwick

  Brown v. Board was meant to ensure that children of different racial groups would share classrooms. But resistance to allowing Black teachers and principals to oversee white students' education led an estimated 100,000 Black educators to leave their profession. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  5/3/2022
  

  Is Alito's Plan to Repeal the 20th Century?

  Alito's invocation of Plessy v. Ferguson as a reason to discard precedent is galling because his opinion would destroy the kind of protection under law that Homer Plessy actually sought. 

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• 4/24/2022
  

  Footage in NYC's Archives Sheds Important Light on the Northern Civil Rights Movement and Police Efforts to Undermine It

  by L.E.J. Rachell

  Surveillance footage in the New York City Archives helps to highlight the importance of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) to the northern civil rights movement – and the techniques the NYPD used to disrupt it. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  4/19/2022
  

  These Books Tell of Change Happening Slowly, then Suddenly

  Historians Lynn Hunt, Adam Hochschild, Kate Clifford-Larse and Keenaga-Yamahtta Taylor are among the authors whose books dig beneath the surface of famous leaders to describe how social movements built the strength to change laws, institutions and ideas. 

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• SOURCE: Boston Review
  4/13/2022
  

  What Makes Laws Unjust?

  by Randall L. Kennedy

  In Dr. King's time, appraisals of his civil disobedience tactics hinged on how one defined an unjust law, an obstacle that inevitably confronts protest movements in polarized societies.

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  4/7/2022
  

  Citizen Tour Guides Protect the Memory of Civil Rights Killings in Mississippi

  "Obbie is of the opinion that if something needs to get done, especially something as important as ensuring that the legacy of your community and family doesn’t get erased, you’d better first employ yourself to do something about it."

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  4/8/2022
  

  New Book Examines Jackie Robinson's Dedication to Civil Rights

  by Aram Goudsouzian

  Unlike a typical biography, Kostya Kennedy's "True: The Four Seasons of Jackie Robinson" looks at four years of the baseball legend's life and his changin civil rights advocacy.

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• SOURCE: Axios
  4/4/2022
  

  Cynthia Orozco Sheds Light on Latino Civil Rights Pioneer Alonso Perales

  The biography of Perales comes at a time when Texas conservatives are pushing to limit the teaching of histories of racial discrimination. 

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• 4/10/2022
  

  Excerpt: A Late-Life Friend Shares Rosa Parks's Memory of Her (Widely Misunderstood) Refusal to Move

  by H.H. Leonards

  H.H. Leonards was asked in 1994 to host an elderly woman she didn't know, and didn't at first recognize as a civil rights pioneer. This spring she is publishing the lessons she learned from an unlikely friendship with Rosa Parks. 

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• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  4/4/2022
  

  The Radical MLK and a Usable Past

  by Robert Greene II

  "Above all, King’s “usable past” was part of a long tradition of Black Americans claiming a place for themselves in the larger tapestry of American history and memory."

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• SOURCE: Religion Dispatches
  4/4/2022
  

  Honoring Dr. King's Other, More Challenging Dream, 55 Years Later

  King's famous Riverside Church speech on April 4, 1967 marked the leader's decisive opposition to the war in Vietnam and reflected his moral clarity and willingness to take unpopular positions in the pursuit of justice by calling out racism, capitalism and militarism as three intertwined evils. 

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• SOURCE: The Conversation
  3/30/2022
  

  The Delicate Balancing Act of Black College Presidents in the Civil Rights Era

  by Eddie R. Cole

  Although Black college presidents were often reluctant to publicly endorse sit-ins for fear of antagonizing segregationist state officials, they often were able to increase opportunity for individual students by lobbying for increases to public scholarship funds that sent Black students out of state to pursue degrees.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  3/25/2022
  

  Law Prof: KBJ Hearings Show Right Won't Stop at Smashing Roe v. Wade

  by Melissa Murray

  Conservative skepticism of "unenumerated rights" indicates that they seek a judicial regime that peels back a host of rights implicit in the constitution that protect intimate freedom and the liberty of minority groups. 

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• 3/6/2022
  

  The Power and Urgency of Public History

  by David M. Chamberlain

  After a tour of the South's historical sites, I maintain a teacher’s optimism that knowledge of our nation’s imperfect past offers us the necessary wisdom to walk ourselves back from the edge of the political ledge on which we are so perilously perched.

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• SOURCE: Politico
  2/26/2022
  

  The History of Tying Up Traffic for Protest

  by David Greenberg

  More militant leaders in the Black freedom movement advocated obstructing traffic on a large scale as an expanded form of nonviolent direct action; the tensions these plans provoked in the movement show that there are seldom clear principles for which movement tactics are legitimate, outside of our opinions of their goals. 

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• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  3/1/2022
  

  CORE's Fight for Fair Housing in Los Angeles

  by M. Keith Claybrook, Jr.

  The fight for fair housing in Los Angeles demonstrates the way that racism has been maintained through the institutions of housing and real estate.