Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) is a living legend of the civil rights movement and we get to take selfies with him. We can touch him. Wrap our arms around his shoulders. Most importantly, we get to listen to his speeches and live-tweet them.
Poet, author, singer, dancer, director and civil rights activist Maya Angelou would have been 90 years old today. In her 86 years of life, the incredible artist born Marguerite Annie Johnson in St. Louis published seven autobiographies and several books of poetry and essays, and received more than 50 honorary degrees,…
After speaking to a rapt crowd on March 18, 1968, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. returned to Memphis, Tenn., as promised, to march in solidarity with Memphis sanitation strikers.
The Rev. Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker, a fierce civil rights advocate and strategist over many generations, died Tuesday at his home in Chester, Va. He was 88 years old.
I wanted to be able to come here and speak with you on this occasion because you are young, gifted and black. ... I, for one, can think of no more dynamic combination that a person might be. ... And that is why I say to you that, though it be a thrilling and marvelous thing to be merely young and gifted in such times,…
In the 50th year since his assassination in 1968, much has and will be said about Martin Luther King Jr., the civil rights leader and icon whose legacy of nonviolent resistance inspired the world—while compelling some to distort and dilute his message of activism.
She was a fearless fighter for our freedom, and one of the first of her kind: She was Frankie Muse Freeman, a brilliant civil rights attorney, activist and icon. She died Friday, Jan. 12, at the age of 101.
Simeon Booker, the trailblazing black journalist known for detailing African-American life in Ebony and Jet magazines, died Sunday at the age of 99 in an assisted-living community in Maryland.
Chokwe Antar Lumumba, Jackson, Miss.’s revolutionary mayor, will not be sharing the stage with President Donald Trump at the grand opening of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum this Saturday, the Clarion Ledger reports.
Myrlie Evers-Williams once had a hard time understanding how her husband could still love their home state of Mississippi so deeply.
Cheers are in order for the living legend, the Rev. Al Sharpton, as he celebrates 50 years in the civil rights movement. Sharpton is one of the most recognizable activists from the movement and continues to fight the good fight, despite having been stabbed, jailed, indicted and ridiculed throughout his tenure.
There is one universal subject that cannot be ignored when explaining history, dissecting the status of marginalized people around the world, or pursuing any understanding of society, culture or politics. It is an unavoidable component that must be factored into any academic or intellectual examination of…
A memorial sign that marks the location where Emmett Till's brutalized body was discovered in a Mississippi river in 1955 was found riddled with bullet holes, the New York Daily News reports.
Thomas Blanton Jr., 86, the last living convicted bomber in the 1963 attack on the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., asked for his freedom from a parole board Wednesday and was denied, CNN reports.
The documentary The Amazing Nina Simone, by filmmaker Jeff L. Lieberman, provides an intimate look at the life of singer Nina Simone, who combined art with activism. Often called the voice of the civil rights movement, Simone made songs, including “Mississippi Goddam,” that spoke to the turbulence of the time and the…
On Saturday, as protests mounted across the country following the police killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed explained the large police presence at downtown protests to reporters: “Dr. King would never take a freeway.”
Tuesday was the day that U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and other Democrats went back to Congress to figure out what to do next on gun control. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said that afternoon that he wasn’t going to reward Democrats for their civil obedience.
Fifty years ago this Thursday, the call for “black power” by Stokely Carmichael in Greenwood, Miss., transformed the black freedom struggle.
