Portside

Bob Moses remembers; Southerners reflect; Passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964; Voter suppression now; The Right vs. democracy; Throwback: How Mississippi Burning defamed the movement

This weekend's Clearwater Festival will be the first without Pete and Toshi Seegers, founders and mainstays of the Clearwater organization, started 49 years ago. Pete Seeger lived their lives as peoples' artists, fighting for peace, civil rights, nuclear disarmament, defense of the environment, and as a socialists.

Reader Comments - Iraq; Ruby Dee; Cecily McMillan and Wall Street; Ukraine; Detroit Shuts Off Water to Thousands; Working Families Party; Civil Rights Movement; Children's Literature and Diversity; Common Core; Testing; Support Philly Jewish school teachers; Gabriel Kolko; Hatriot Politics and Las Vegas Killers; Argentina and US Banks; The Presbyterian Church and Divestment; Net Neutrality; Historic Slave Cemetery Bulldozed In Houston; Freedom Summer 2014

Actor, author, activist Ruby Dee took her final bow at home in New Rochelle, New York on June 11, 2014. She was a gifted and talented woman who joined with her late husband, Ossie Davis, to produce and present some of the most enjoyable and inspirational stage productions and movies of the last half century.

Freedom Summer 50th is a five-day convening to learn from the past, evaluate our present, and strategize for the future. The international conference and youth congress will be held June 25th - 29th, 2014 in Jackson, Mississippi on the campus of Tougaloo College. Work sessions will examine each issue area and explore its context in the present-day struggle for justice not only in Mississippi, but globally.

Dr. Vincent G. Harding, Civil Rights pioneer, colleague, advisor and speechwriter for Dr. Martin Luther King, died this week at age 82. He drafted King's anti-Vietnam War speech, "Breaking the Silence". As people like King and Rosa Parks became icons, Harding insisted that America could not celebrate their lives without continuing to devote ourselves to the work they and many others had done.

Reader Comments - Keystone XL; Sid Caesar; Venezuela; UAW and Volkswagen; Bernie Sanders Run for President?; Chris Hedges; Nixon, Reagan and Sabotage of Peace; Healthcare; Love and Loneliness; Song for Pete Seeger; Announcements: -Remembering Freedom Summer and the Civil Rights Era - New York - Feb. 22; Teleconference on 'Moving Beyond Capitalism' - Feb. 24

Women in the image machine; Arab idol gets the boot; French cultural workers throw down; Civil rights heroes digitized; AIPAC takes a blow

During Black History Month, let’s not forget the speech-stifling history of US government spying that has targeted communities of color.

Seeger is famous, of course, for making “We Shall Overcome” a civil and human rights anthem. The story of where he found that song is told below by historian Christopher Phelps. It is excerpted, by permission, from Christopher Phelps, "Lefts Old and New: Sixties Radicalism, Now and Then," in A New Insurgency: The Port Huron Statement and Its Times, eds. Howard Brick and Gregory Parker (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, forthcoming).