culture

The day after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, third-grade teacher Jane Elliott listened to her class in an all-white Iowa town make racist remarks about his death and decided to teach them a lesson, according to the Globe and Mail. “What I had racked my brain [for] was a…

During Thursday’s testimony in the George Zimmerman second-degree-murder trial, the defense cross-examined Trayvon Martin’s friend Rachel Jeantel, with whom he was talking on the phone when Zimmerman shot and killed him on Feb. 26, 2012. During the cross-examination, defense attorney Don West gave Jeantel a piece of paper to read for the record. But she…

Civil rights leader the Rev. Jesse Jackson tells the Associated Press that he will help embattled celebrity chef Paula Deen overhaul her image after her past use of a racial slur was revealed. He tells the AP that she shouldn’t become a “sacrificial lamb” over the issue of racial intolerance. Further, he argues that if…

In a piece at CNN, Donna Brazile argues that it is up to President Obama to convince Congress to restore the Voting Rights Act, which has been gutted by the Supreme Court. The challenge, however, will be mustering bipartisan support in a deeply divided Congress. In an earthshaking 1965 speech to Congress and to the nation,…

While supporters celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, the Washington Post‘s Eugene Robinson argues that there’s more work to be done. The Supreme Court’s work on marriage equality is far from done. But I believe this may be remembered as the day when the nation…

(The Root) — Usually, when Quinn Gentry stops talking, the women in the audience spend a few seconds sitting, shell-shocked and silent. Around Atlanta, Gentry’s speeches — rife with the nitty-gritty and completely true stories of women infected with HIV collected over the course of her research career — are the stuff of legend. In…

(The Root) — “Do you watch Love & Hip-Hop: Atlanta? There’s a married couple on the show, and the wife became pregnant. Her husband asked her to get an abortion, then questioned whether the child was his. Is it me or have the men of reality TV become just as bad as the women?” —Y.P.…

The bigoted backlash over the insanely adorable Cheerios ad has died down. But photographer Michael David Murphy doesn’t want America to forget that mixed love is here to stay, the Huffington Post reports. In a quest to celebrate interracial families, Murphy and his wife launched We Are the 15 Percent, a blog that features pictures…

Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis (D-Fort Worth), whose filibuster of a Republican abortion bill made headlines, has a long history of persisting against tough odds, CNN reports. Davis, who stood and spoke for 13 hours on Tuesday at the Texas Capitol, reportedly went from being a teen mom to graduating from Harvard Law School. She…