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White Minority Locks Out First Black Mayor of Newbern, Alabama

Equal Justice Initiative Equal Justice Initiative
Patrick Braxton, first Black mayor of Newbern, small town in Alabama’s Black Belt region, filed federal civil rights lawsuit alleging the white former mayor and city council members violated the Constitution when they locked him out of the Town Hall

This Week in People’s History, July 11 – 17

Portside
The founders of the Niagara Movement in 1905 ' No accommodation to racism' in 1905. Smoking causes lung cancer in 1957. Nixon on tape, really? in 1973. FBI admits to burglaries in 1975. CIA admits to more bad behavior in 1977. Forgetting about the Civil War 1917. One last nuke test in 1962.

books

Martin Luther King Understood Solidarity

Michael K. Honey Jacobin
Jonathan Eig’s new Martin Luther King biography stirs exhilaration and visceral pain at the unexpected triumphs and vicious violence that he and the freedom movement endured. It largely leaves out a key piece of King’s legacy: his commitment to labor

This Week in People’s History, June 6 . . .

Portside
Civil rights activist James Meredith wincing in pain just after he was wounded by a sniper Bullets don't stop March Against Fear. Strikers' play fills Madison Square Garden. Court rules for lunch-counter sit-in. Cesar Chavez gets started. CIA lawbreaking whitewashed. Environmental racism costs Shell Oil. Paul Robeson defies witch-hunters.

Harry Belafonte: What Do We Have To Lose? Everything

Harry Belafonte New York Times
"What old men know is that everything can change. What old men know, too, is that all that is gained can be lost. Lost just as the liberation that the Civil War and Emancipation brought was squandered after Reconstruction..."

books

Staughton Lynd: The Perils of Sainthood

Paul Buhle Portside
Staughton Lynd seemed like a personal force almost more than a person within the antiwar movement of the 1960s. My Country Is the World largely and usefully recounts the controversies that came with his rise in the peace movement of the middle 1960s
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