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Jim Crow Laws

ew York gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon speaks at the NYC Cannabis Parade and Rally on May 5, 2018. Nixon has been criticized by black leaders for saying that marijuana licenses could be a “form of reparations.”

Cynthia Nixon called marijuana licenses a “form of reparations” for black people. Not exactly.

By Commentaries/Opinions, Reparations

Marijuana reform can help black communities. That doesn’t make it “reparations.” By P.R. Lockhart — New York gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon is facing criticism after suggesting that giving black people access to marijuana licenses could serve as a “form of reparations” for black communities. The controversy started after Nixon, who is challenging current Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the state’s upcoming Democratic primary, appeared at the NYC Cannabis Parade on May…

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Kanye West

Wake Up, Mr. West!

By Commentaries/Opinions

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…

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I’m Not Black, I’m Kanye — Article by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Image by Glenn Harvey

I’m Not Black, I’m Kanye

By Commentaries/Opinions

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…

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Visitors at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, April 26.

Lynching Didn’t Disappear, It Just Evolved

By Commentaries/Opinions

By A.T. McWilliams — While visiting the newly opened National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama — a hallowed and harrowing enshrinement bearing the names of over 4,000 black people lynched in the Jim Crow South — I was reminded of stories my grandparents told me as a child. Stories of my great-grandfather, once chased by Ku Klux Klan members on horseback before swimming to safety, preferring possible death by drowning…

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Eluard Luchell McDaniels, Spanish Civil. War Volunteer, Batea, Spain, May 1938. Image Courtesy of the Tamiment Library, New York University

African American Anti-Fascists in the Spanish Civil War

By Editors' Choice

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.…

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Diane Nash, right, represented the Southern Christian Leadership Conference at the White House in 1963.

The Selfless Servant Leadership of the African-American Women of the Civil-Rights Movement

By Editors' Choice

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…

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