Today, the N.A.A.C.P. carries the weight of history and burden of bureaucracy. But it does not seem willing to shed blood, literally, or in terms of the uncomfortable work that characterizes effective activism.
“Guerrilla” is a who’s who of 1970s radical movements, and by Episode 2 a flow chart is required to keep up with the revolutionary networks at play: The Weather Underground. Black Panthers. German Marxist-Leninists. Rhodesian revolutionaries. The Front de libération du Québec (yes, even Canada was radical in those days).
The largely unknown and pivotal role played by Black landowning families in the deep South who controlled over a million acres in the 1960s. Available through California Newsreel.
Jon Else, was the series producer and cinematographer for the classic TV documentary on the civil rights movement, Eyes on the Prize. His new book, whose new book, True South, is a moving look at the civil rights movement through one man's life, frames our present grim moment in the context of that remarkable history. It's a past worth remembering as the protest movement of the twenty-first century finds its way in a grim world.
The new labor liberalism, built with the support of proportionally more non-white workers (and women), is more progressive than the old pre–civil rights era labor liberalism. If it achieves its powerful new vision, it will be a more humane, cosmopolitan, and egalitarian movement than its predecessor. But as of now, it is a significantly smaller movement and lacks economic and political leverage in key sectors of the political economy.
Now Nissan workers are experiencing the brunt of those intimidation tactics, the Mississippi Alliance organizing this week's demonstration at Canton claims. Its website is filled with examples of unfair treatment. Signs at a recent protest organized by the UAW proclaimed, "Labor rights are civil rights."
Theodore Melfi’s film about black women mathematicians is now the biggest movie in America — just in time to teach us crucial lessons for a Trump presidency. So what’s to be done? Hidden Figures offers a crystal-clear answer: Resist.
King’s strategic advice to the striking Memphis sanitation workers is still useful: winning requires placing the struggle in a larger context that challenges elected officials and government at every level to make America a better nation!
In reviewing two new books on the 20th Century's intertwined histories of labor, the Democratic Party, the Civil Rights movement, and the African American people, Rich Yeselson offers a nuanced and deeply informed assessment of this complicated tale.
The North won the Civil War, but the South won the Reconstruction. The victorious Northern armies preserved the Union and the slaves were emancipated but the Confederates won the historical interpretation of those events by perpetrating the myths that became the accepted story over the next one hundred years.
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