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The Police Beating That Opened America's Eyes to Jim Crow's Brutality

Chris Lamb The Conversation
Over the years, Woodward’s beating receded behind more publicized stories like the lynching of Emmett Till. But with police brutality remaining a problem in many African-American communities today, it’s appropriate to highlight an important – and unappreciated – story of the civil rights movement.

February 4 - Rosa Parks Birthday; How History Got the Rosa Parks Story Wrong

Jeanne Theoharis Washington Post
Rosa Parks was a lifelong activist who had been challenging white supremacy for decades before she became the famous catalyst for the Montgomery bus boycott. We see a woman who, from her youth, didn't hesitate to indict the system of oppression around her. As she once wrote, "I talked and talked of everything I know about the white man's inhuman treatment of the Negro." Today we honor her, as part of African American History Month.

Targeted Surveillance, Civil Rights, and the Fight for Democracy

Malkia Cyril The Center for Media Justice
On October 13th 2015, Malkia Cyril, co-founder and Executive Director of the Center for Media Justice, gave a lunch speakers series keynote address, at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference. Below is the transcript of her speech.

Elizabeth Warren Just Gave the Speech that Black Lives Matter Activists Have Been Waiting For

Wesley Lowery; Senator Elizabeth Warren Washington Post
Senator Warren's speech clearly and powerfully calls into question America's commitment to black lives by highlighting the role that structural racism played and continues to play with regard to housing discrimination and voting rights, said DeRay Mckesson, a prominent #BLM activist. Warren understands the protests as a matter of life or death - the American dream has been sustained by an intentional violence...the uprisings have been the result of years of lived trauma

Friday Nite Videos -- September 11, 2015

Portside
Odetta: Long Ago, Far Away. How Many Trees Are There in the World? Mexican Donald Trump with George Lopez. New Human Species Discovered: Homo naledi. Bernie Sanders: Why 'Socialism' Isn't a Dirty Word.

books

Was Reconstruction a Success or a Failure? And Why It Matters - A Review and Commentary on This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed

Paul Richards, PhD Estuary Press
I celebrate Radical Reconstruction, a brief moment of glory, no matter how blindly and halfheartedly we, as a nation, did it. Did Reconstruction end racism? No. Does that make it a failure? No again. Considering it a failure is like considering the civil rights movement a failure because it only abolished segregation and not racism.

The Phenomenal Life and Legacy of Leon Letwin

Angela Davis Portside
[M]inority candidates will, with some frequency, come with unconventional political backgrounds and views as judged from majority perspectives. Regentally imposed political tests which assault the academic freedom of all will fall upon such candidates with unusual severity. (Leon Letwin's letter in defense of Angela Davis in 1969, relevant today as we defend faculty members such as Steven Salaita.)
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