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A civil rights marcher suffering from exposure to tear gas holds an unconscious Amelia Boynton Robinson after mounted police officers attacked marchers in Selma, Ala., as they were beginning a 50-mile march to Montgomery to protest race discrimination in voter registration.

The Voting Rights Act was signed 55 years ago. Black women led the movement behind it.

By Commentaries/Opinions

By N’dea Yancey-Bragg, USA Today — In March of 1965, Amelia Boynton Robinson walked with hundreds of other protesters across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Boynton Robinson, who planned the march from Selma to the Alabama capital of Montgomery along with Rev. C.T. Vivian and others, was struck with a baton by Alabama state troopers that day. “They came from the right, the left, the front and started beating people,” she told The Crisis, the official magazine of the NAACP, in…

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Rapper YG, center in white, at a June 7 protest over the death of George Floyd.

Hip-hop is the soundtrack to Black Lives Matter protests

By Commentaries/Opinions

By Tyina Steptoe — The sound of Public Enemy’s 1989 song “Fight the Power” blared as face-masked protesters in Washington, D.C. broke into a spontaneous rendition of the electric slide dance near the White House. It was the morning of June 14, and an Instagram user captured the moment, commenting: “If Trump is in the White House this morning he’s being woken up by … a Public Enemy dance party.” View…

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Hank Sanders, Faya Rose

It’s a crying shame. No, it’s a damn shame.

By Commentaries/Opinions

By Sen. Hank Sanders — It’s a crying shame. No. It’s a damn shame. It’s a damn shame what the Mayor of Montgomery and its police did to two Black women leaders. More broadly speaking, it’s a damn shame what these same forces did to four African American leaders and one White leader of Jewish background. All were fighting heroically to save hundreds of lives in Alabama per year. It’s…

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A protester holds a Black Lives Matter sign in front of the White House.

Why the Black Lives Matter movement doesn’t want a singular leader

By Commentaries/Opinions

“We don’t need someone in the Senate or House to try to build their political career off of this moment.” By Laura Barrón-López — In 2015, thousands of Black activists gathered in Ohio for the first national Black Lives Matter convention to consider where the movement would direct its energy. Attendees in the crowd held up red construction paper to signal “no” to a handful of narrow options, like focusing…

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