Portside

Reader Comments: Israeli Settlements--Obstacle to Peace; Grocery Bills Still High; Phil Ochs; Standing Together; Pelosi, Biden, Solipsism; We Who Believe In Freedom - Songs and Stories; Holly Near; Celebrating Barbara Ehrenreich; How to Sue the Klan;

Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Jefferson Cowie on the deep, twisted roots of American oppression

This book covers more than two centuries of American history, seeking to explain the evolution and enduring power of a racially inflected understanding of freedom.

As the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. so aptly put it, “No society can fully repress an ugly past when the ravages persist into the present.”

As African American studies faces resistance, a conversation about the continued relevance of Carter G. Woodson’s 1933 book, The Mis-education of the Negro

A conversation with the historian about the 20th-anniversary of his seminal book Freedom Dreams, how the meaning of freedom has changed in the intervening years, the reparations debate, and more.

Her central roles in the Southern Negro Youth Congress, the Civil Rights Congress, the Committee to Defend Negro Leadership and Freedomways Magazine have cemented her role in history.

I’ve celebrated this holiday all my life. It’s different this year.

Davis, one of most influential activists and intellectuals in the US, is an icon of the black liberation movement, Davis’s work around issues of gender, race, class and prisons has influenced critical thought and social movements across 3 generations

The 1960s were a period of great ferment in many musical genres, but especially in jazz, where new and musically transgressive styles were combining with the political defiance that characterized the developing Black Power movement.