civil

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

SOCIAL JUSTICE

The Chief Counsel For The Protest Movement, Fred Gray To Get Medal Of Freedom For His Civil Rights Work

Over the past seven decades, longtime Alabama civil rights lawyer Fred Gray represented Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr. and the victims of the infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiment, in which the U.S. Public Health Service refused for decades to provide readily available treatment to Black men who had the disease. Gray played important roles in landmark Supreme Court decisions that outlawed segregated public transit and affirmed the strategy of the Montgomery bus boycott organizers. He protected the freedom of association guaranteed by the First Amendment by preventing Alabama officials from obtaining the NAACP’s membership list. He argued in the Supreme Court a case on racial gerrymandering that redefined the city boundaries to exclude 400 Black people – but no white people – from the ...

During The Civil Rights Era Black College Presidents Had A Tough Balancing Act

30Mar

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

SOCIAL JUSTICE

During The Civil Rights Era Black College Presidents Had A Tough Balancing Act

Historians have documented again and again how college students contributed to the civil rights movement. Less attention has been paid to the role college presidents played in the fight for equality. Here, Eddie R. Cole, author of the book “The Campus Color Line,” discusses various ways these leaders contributed. 1. What pressures did college leaders face in the civil rights era? College presidents between 1948 to 1968 had to deal with different segments of society that were at complete odds with one another. On the one hand, they oversaw schools where students were increasingly protesting segregation. But they also had to deal with segregationist politicians who controlled state funding for their institutions. Some of those politicians were not shy about their opposition to the civil rig...

Black History Month: Past Movements For Civil Rights – What America’s Voting Rights Activists Can Learn

27Feb

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EDUCATION

Black History Month: Past Movements For Civil Rights – What America’s Voting Rights Activists Can Learn

With Congress failing to pass new voting rights legislation, it’s worth remembering that throughout U.S. history, new civil rights laws designed to end racial inequities across American life have been met by stubborn resistance. Senate Democrats Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona joined Senate Republicans in blocking both the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. These bills would have combated voter suppression by creating a national automatic voter registration system, and they also would have banned partisan gerrymandering. In the wake of the vote, President Joe Biden said he was “profoundly disappointed that the United States Senate has failed to stand up for democracy.” These setbacks in Congress come on the heels of millions ...

Howard Fuller – How The Civil Rights Activist Became A Devout Champion Of School Choice

28Sep

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

Journalism

Howard Fuller – How The Civil Rights Activist Became A Devout Champion Of School Choice

Jon Hale, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign As a longtime civil rights activist and education reformer, Howard Fuller has seen his support for school choice spark both controversy and confusion. That’s because it aligns him with polarizing Republican figures that include Donald Trump and Trump’s former secretary of education, Betsy DeVos. But unlike those figures, Fuller’s support for school choice is not rooted in a conservative agenda to privatize public schools. Rather, it is grounded in his ongoing quest to provide Black students a quality education by any means necessary. I write about Fuller in my new book “The Choice We Face,” which traces the history of school choice as well as demands for radical education reform by Black activists. Unlike most other school choice advo...

From Past Movements For Civil Rights – What America’s Social Justice Activists Can Learn

13Aug

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

SOCIAL JUSTICE

From Past Movements For Civil Rights – What America’s Social Justice Activists Can Learn

Anthony Siracusa, University of Colorado Boulder With Congress considering legislation to protect voting rights and address police accountability, it’s worth remembering that throughout U.S. history new civil rights laws have been followed by resistance and the stubborn persistence of racial inequity across American life. Still, these discussions in Congress come on the heels of millions of Americans calling for change. The demonstrations that followed George Floyd’s death belonged to a broader effort to reckon with white violence and discrimination in U.S. life. The historical roots of our contemporary racial injustice were documented in the 1619 Project, a New York Times undertaking that reexamined the legacy of slavery in the U.S. This year’s widespread commemoration of the Tulsa Ra...

Black Churches In Philadelphia Overcame Disease, Depression And Civil Strife

24Feb

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

Religion

Black Churches In Philadelphia Overcame Disease, Depression And Civil Strife

The Black Church is an institution that was forged in crises. Through slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow segregation and the civil rights era, the network of places of worship serving traditionally Black congregations has seen its fair share of traumatic events. In 2016, the Rev. Robert Franklin, former president of Morehouse College, acknowledged as much in a speech on urban ministries: “Disruption is the question, but the radical love ethic of Jesus is the response.” And that was before 2020 delivered the COVID-19 pandemic, the related economic crisis and the global movement for Black Lives – forcing Black churches to find new ways to worship and serve their communities. As a scholar who looks at how the Black Church engages with the community, I believe looking at how the institution ...

How the Civil War drove medical innovation – and the pandemic could, too

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

COVID-19, HEALTH & WELLNESS

How the Civil War drove medical innovation – and the pandemic could, too

The current COVID-19 pandemic, the largest public health crisis in a century, threatens the health of people across the globe. The U.S. has had the most diagnosed cases – surpassing 6 million – and more than 180,000 deaths. But six months into the pandemic, the U.S. still faces shortages of personal protective equipment for both front-line medical workers and the general public. There is also great need for widely available inexpensive, rapid tests; the infrastructure to administer them; and most importantly, safe, effective vaccines. Moving forward, medical innovation can play a substantial role in controlling and preventing infection – and treating those who have contracted the virus. But what’s the best way to catalyze and accelerate public health developments? Research and history sh...

After the civil rights era, white Americans failed to support systemic change to end racism. Will they now?

4Apr

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IN OTHER NEWS

After the civil rights era, white Americans failed to support systemic change to end racism. Will they now?

The first wave of the Black Lives Matter movement, which crested after the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, had the support of less than half of white Americans. Given that Americans tend to have a very narrow definition of racism, many at that time were likely confused by the juxtaposition of Black-led protests, implying that racism was persistent, alongside the presence of a Black family in the White House. Barack Obama’s presidency was seen as evidence that racism was in decline. The current, second wave of the movement feels different, in part because the past months of protests have been multiracial. The media and scholars have noted that whites’ sensibilities have become more attuned to issues of anti-Black police violence and discrimination. After the first wave ...

John Lewis and C.T. Vivian belonged to a long tradition of religious leaders in the civil rights struggle

20Jul

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

POLITICS, Religion

John Lewis and C.T. Vivian belonged to a long tradition of religious leaders in the civil rights struggle

With the deaths of Rep. John Lewis and the Rev. Cordy Tindell “C.T.” Vivian, the U.S. has lost two civil rights greats who drew upon their faith as they pushed for equality for Black Americans. Vivian, an early adviser to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., died July 17 at the age of 95. News of his passing was followed just hours later by that of Lewis, 80, an ordained Baptist minister and towering figure in the civil rights struggle. That both men were people of the cloth is no coincidence. From the earliest times in U.S. history, religious leaders have led the struggle for liberation and racial justice for Black Americans. As an ordained minister and a historian, I see a common thread running from Black resistance in the earliest periods of slavery in the antebellum South, through the c...

There are many leaders of today’s protest movement – just like the civil rights movement

8Jul

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

POLITICS, SOCIAL JUSTICE

There are many leaders of today’s protest movement – just like the civil rights movement

The recent wave of protests against police brutality and systemic racism has inspired numerous comparisons with the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Commentators frequently depict the charismatic leadership of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X in sharp contrast with the decentralized and seemingly leaderless nature of the current movement. Despite the efforts of activists and historians to correct this “leaderless” image, the notion persists. Such comparisons reflect the cultural memory – not the actual history – of the struggle for Black equality. Heroic struggle led by charismatic men Through collective remembering and forgetting, societies build narratives of the past to create a shared identity – what scholars refer to as cultural memory. The civil rights movement is...