Politics

In 1939, an American contralto singer named Marian Anderson stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and delivered a rousing hymn to her country—even though she was barred, as a black woman, from performing at the nearby Constitution Hall. On Inauguration Day 2009, Aretha Franklin called the same song—”My Country, ‘Tis of Thee”—back from…

On what would have been his 80th birthday, Martin Luther King Jr. must be smiling from whatever heavenly vista he was rewarded for giving his life for black justice and American freedom. Forty years after King was gunned down in Memphis, Barack Obama rode the promise of change into the White House. It’s as if…

On Election Night 2008, a jangling, inter-ethnic mob in Washington, D.C. toasted Barack Obama’s presidential victory, stopping traffic at 14th and U streets—the same crossroads where, 40 years earlier, in April, Bobby Kennedy had signed autographs at a campaign rally, and where Stokely Carmichael and other members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee had crouched,…

I don’t work on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. A few years ago, I just stopped doing it and decided to take a personal day instead. The federal holiday occasionally falls near my birthday or sometimes, like this year, on my birthday. It took years for me to arrive at my decision. As a journalist,…

WATCH THE ‘TOUR OF ECHOES‘ VIDEO HERE. Harry S. Truman met his successor, Dwight Eisenhower, at the exit of the U.S. Capitol minutes before the president-elect strolled to the stage to take the oath of office. Truman whispered, “There are thousands of folks out here, millions listening on the radio, and yet you’ll never feel…

Barack Obama may defy many conventional notions of blackness, but his rhetoric is firmly rooted in black soil. While some listen for echoes of Lincoln in Obama’s inaugural speech, others will hear Malcolm and Martin. Read Michael Eric Dyson’s full article on washingtonpost.com.

At 11:38 a.m. Saturday, a 10-car train carrying Barack Obama pulled out of 30th Street Station Philadelphia, taking the next American president on the symbolic final leg of his historic journey to the White House. The trip, meant to echo one that Abraham Lincoln took to Washington after his election 148 years ago, was yet…

When searching for those adjectives that best capture the inauguration of the nation’s first black president, old standards come to mind—“historic!” “momentous!” “unprecedented!” Add to that venerable list “intellectual Freaknik” and “meet market for buppies,” because among the millions attending this weekend’s revelry are plenty of single, young black men and women looking to hook…

“Am I gonna be a great man, Mammy?” “You sho’ is, youse gwine be president. The book says anybody here can be president.” “Ain’t that somethin’!” —Sammy Davis Jr. and Ethel Waters in Rufus Jones for President Before anybody had even heard of Barack Obama, before anyone had even considered his presidency a possibility, it…

Here’s how bad things got in George W. Bush’s Justice Department. In August 2004, Voting Section Chief John Tanner sent an e-mail to Bradley Schlozman—more on him later—in which he asked for a cup of coffee. Schlozman asked Tanner how he takes his java and Tanner replied, “Mary Frances Berry style—black and bitter.” Yes, he…