civil rights movement
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Remembering a Pioneer: Civil Rights Attorney and Activist Frankie Muse Freeman Dies at 101
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. Born in segregated Virginia in 1916, Freeman was raised in a college-educated family, ultimately attending Hampton…
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Trailblazing Civil Rights Journalist Simeon Booker Dies at Age 99
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. Booker had many accolades under his belt, including having been the first full-time black reporter at the Washington Post. He is also credited with bringing the…
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Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba Declines to Share Mississippi Civil Rights Museum Stage With White Supremacist in Chief
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. “I believe that Trump’s presence is a distraction. His policies don’t reflect his statements that this is a movement that will bring…
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Will Mississippi’s New Civil Rights Museum Tell the Truth About the State’s Troublesome Past?
Myrlie Evers-Williams once had a hard time understanding how her husband could still love their home state of Mississippi so deeply. After all, Medgar Evers grew up in the segregated South and, like many African Americans, left America to fight in Europe during World War II, only to return to a state where black veterans…
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Watch: Al Sharpton on That Time He Was Stabbed During a March
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. When Sharpton was 13…
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Violence Is Never the Answer … for Black People
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 civilization, social order or government. That subject is violence.…
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Emmett Till Memorial Sign Discovered Riddled With Bullet Holes
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. According to the report, it is not the first time that the sign has been vandalized since it was put in place in…
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16th Street Baptist Church Bomber Is Denied Parole
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. Blanton was a member of the Ku Klux Klan when the church was bombed on Sept. 15, 1963. The tragedy, which…
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Nikki Giovanni on Her Friend Nina Simone: If She Were Here, She’d Be Wearing a 'Black Lives Matter' T-Shirt
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 brutal fight for civil…
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MLK Would Never Shut Down a Freeway, and 6 Other Myths About the Civil Rights Movement and Black Lives Matter
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.” Reed’s claim was historically absurd. Martin Luther King Jr. took many a highway—most famously, perhaps, in…