civil rights

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• 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. 

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• 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. 

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• 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. 

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• 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.”

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• 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.

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• 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. 

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• 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. 

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• 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.

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• 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.”

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  8/27/2022
  

  Black Women Veterans of Movement to Desegregate St. Augustine will Never Forget what they Endured

  The 1964 campaign against Jim Crown in St. Augustine, waged as the Civil Rights Act was being filibustered in the Senate, remains an understudied battle in the movement. Many surviving women activists are keepers of knowledge about this phase of the freedom struggle. 

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• SOURCE: Jacobin
  8/28/2022
  

  Recovering the Core Radicalism of the Civil Rights Movement: An Interview with Glenda Gilmore

  by Robert Greene II

  Cold war histories of civil rights have obscured the key role of communists and other radicals in establishing the economic demands of the movement and the practice of interracial mobilization. 

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• SOURCE: New America
  8/23/2022
  

  Keisha Blain's New Project Looks to Black Women Activists as Architects of Modern Human Rights Campaigns

  "As someone who is very committed to unearthing the histories of Black working-class and working-poor women, I have had to move beyond the traditional archive."

• 
• SOURCE: Boston Globe
  8/17/2022
  

  Acceptance of Natural Hairstyles a Continuing Front in Civil Rights Struggle

  by Jasmine Nichole Cobb

  Recently signed legislation in Massachusetts prohibits workplaces and schools from banning many hairstyles associated with African Americans, showing that racism can work through sartorial standards to make opportunity and acceptance contingent on conformity to white norms. 

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• SOURCE: NPR
  8/21/2022
  

  Attorney Fred Gray Still Fighting for Civil Rights at 91

  The recent Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient lived by the motto of working "to destroy everything segregated I could find." 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/18/2022
  

  Trump is Attacking the Most Conservative Agency of the Government

  by Garrett M. Graff

  The embedded conservatism of the FBI is so severe that Democratic presidents have never felt politically entitled to name a fellow Democrat to lead the Bureau. Trump's attacks on the FBI as part of a liberal "deep state" are ludicrous.

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• 8/7/2022
  

  Who's Afraid of Critical Race Theory?

  by Wallace Hettle

  An introduction to the core ideas of the Critical Race Theory movement and its founding thinkers suggests the right today isn't mad about ideas, but wants a new and scary-sounding term to justify their ongoing opposition to racial equality. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  8/2/2022
  

  SCOTUS Hasn't Always Been the Final Arbiter; Liberals Should Stop Thinking it Is

  by Joseph Fishkin and William E. Forbath

  "Liberals drew the wrong lessons from the mid-20th century federal judiciary’s fleeting embrace of social reform, and forgot that over the long arc of U.S. history, the minority rights the court has most consistently safeguarded have been those of the wealthy and powerful, the corporate, landed and enslaver elites."

• 
• SOURCE: CNN
  7/22/2022
  

  Till's Accuser's Memoir Shows the Pandora's Box She Opened has Never Closed

  by Peniel E. Joseph

  "What does it say about America that we are still in search of justice for the victim of an almost 70-year-old crime that helped spark the modern civil rights movement?"

• 
• SOURCE: PEN America
  7/20/2022
  

  Event: Entangled Histories of Free Speech and Civil Rights

  A panel including historian Tara Y. White will discuss the connection between First Amendment rights and the struggle for Black freedom. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  7/17/2022
  

  Charles Blow: Don't Shed Tears for Carolyn Bryant Donham

  In a newly-discovered unpublished memoir, the woman who accused Emmett Till of making sexual advances presents a self-serving account of her role in the events that led to his murder.