Portside

JFK’s Profile in Cowardice (1961), Marvin Gaye’s Greatest Hit (1971), George Washington, Frustrated Enslaver (1796), Can’t Repeal an Anti-Racist Law? Then Just Try to Forget About It. (1951) Blacklist Victim Lives to Laugh at Witchhunters (1956)

The “greatest teacher of nonviolence in America” was a mentor to generations of activists, from Martin Luther King Jr. to today’s union organizers and immigrant rights campaigners.

In the 1960s, Southern organizations tried sending African Americans to Northern states in a “cheap” PR stunt designed to embarrass and expose Northern liberals. It didn’t work.

The Freedom Ride for Voting Rights will kick off with a Juneteenth celebration in Jackson, Mississippi, and make stops in seven states, concluding with a June 26 rally in Washington, DC.

Two American heroes died Friday. The most well known was Rep. John Lewis, 80. The other was the Rev. Cordell Tindell “C.T.” Vivian, at 95. The lesser known part of his work — his years in Chicago — that changed the fate of the city and the nation.

The Freedom Rides originated with a woman. Her name was Irene Morgan, and she was a 27-year-old wartime factory worker and mother of two traveling from Virginia to her home town of Baltimore on a July morning in 1944. Morgan, recovering from a miscarriage and unable to stand for any significant period of time, was sitting in the colored section of a Greyhound bus. At some point, she and her seatmate were asked to give up their seats to a white couple. She refused...