The 50-year-old anti-poverty movement has seen a revival in the era of Trump. By Teke Wiggin, HuffPost — When lifelong civil rights activist Louise Brown took the mic at a Washington, D.C., rally on Saturday, she had a stark message for the thousands of people assembled before her to protest poverty. “I’m 83 years old, and only the strong survive,” she shouted. In a call to arms, she recounted how…
Report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights on his mission to the United States of America Note by the Secretariat The Secretariat has the honour to…
Lewis Myers Jr., a famed civil rights attorney and former NAACP deputy director, has died. Myers died Thursday night in a Chicago rehab facility after complications from surgery, the Chicago…
How Kanye’s ignorant comments fortify the most pernicious lies of white supremacy. By Clint Smith — This past week, in an interview with TMZ, Kanye West claimed that slavery was a choice. “When you hear about slavery for 400 years … 400 years? That sounds like a choice,” he said. Much has already been written about West’s recent exploits on and off Twitter. In the past week, he has publicly embraced…
Kanye West wants freedom—white freedom. By Ta-Nehisi Coates — I could only have seen it there, on the waxed hardwood floor of my elementary-school auditorium, because I was young then, barely 7 years old, and cable had not yet come to the city, and if it had, my father would not have believed in it. Yes, it had to have happened like this, like folk wisdom, because when I think of that…
By Chris Hedges — No leader, no matter how talented and visionary, effectively defies power without a disciplined organizational foundation. The civil rights movement was no more embodied in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. than the socialist movement was embodied in Eugene V. Debs. As the civil rights leader Ella Baker understood, the civil rights movement made King; King did not make the civil rights movement. We must focus on building new,…
Anti-fascist volunteer Canute Frankson explained his motivation in a letter home in 1937: “We will build us a new society—a society of peace and plenty. There will be no color line, no jim crow trains, no lynching. That is why, my dear, I’m here in Spain.” By Peter Carroll, BlackPast.org — Approximately 90 African Americans fought in Spain during the civil war that engulfed that nation between 1936 and 1939.…
These women didn’t stand on ceremony; they accepted the risks of activism and fought for worlds where others might have freedoms that they themselves would never enjoy. By Janet Dewart Bell — During the civil-rights movement, African Americans led the fight to free this country from the vestiges of slavery and Jim Crow. Though they all too often were—and remain—invisible to the public, African-American women played significant roles at all…
William A. Darity Jr. is the Samuel DuBois Cook Professor of Public Policy, African and African American Studies, and Economics and the director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on…
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson — There is a huge literary growth industry in counter-factual history. Or, to put it more simply, “what if” history. Now the what if question fifty…
Commemorations are planned across the US for Wednesday to honor the civil rights leader on the date of his assassination. Much of the United States will come to a halt…
Assessment 50 years after Kerner Commission points to child poverty and school segregation, along with emboldened white supremacists. By David Smith — Civil rights gains of the past half-century have stalled or in some areas gone into reverse, according to a report marking the 50th anniversary of the landmark Kerner Commission. Child poverty has increased, schools have become resegregated and white supremacists are becoming emboldened and more violent, the study says.…