13th | Documentary

Ava DuVernay’s galvanizing documentary of the13th Amendment to the Constitution, which abolished slavery. A potent mixture of archival footage and testimony from activists, politicians, historians, and formerly incarcerated women and men.

Protests at Standing Rock

Lawrence O'Donnell explains why a protest by Native Americans in North Dakota reminds us of the history America always tries to forget.

A New Memorial Will Honor Victims of Lynching

Equal Justice Initiative Equal Justice Initiative
The Equal Justice Initiative plans to build a national memorial to victims of lynching and open a museum that explores African American history from enslavement to mass incarceration. Both the museum and memorial will open in Montgomery, Alabama, in 2017. (Videos.)

The First National Monument to Victims of Lynching

A dynamic new memorial to lynching victims seeks to inspire local efforts to make the history of racial terror in America more visible and tangible, challenging each county where a racial terror lynching took place to permanently install a memorial to the victim.

Did Slavery End in 1865?

Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Institute, talks about how slavery didn't just end in 1865, but how it evolved through Jim Crow, segregation and mass incarceration.

books

Homage to E.P. Thompson

Joseph White New Politics
Labor historian E.P. Thompson is perhaps best known for his monumental and path-breaking work, The Making of the English Working Class. The collected essays reviewed here, many either out-of-print or difficult to obtain, were written between 1955 and 1963. They show Thompson as also a dedicated educator of workers, a sharp polemicist, a skilled political theorist and a tireless agitator for peace, against nuclear weapons and for a rebirth of the socialist project.

50 years Since Marquette Park - A Broader View

Marilyn Katz Chicago Sun-Times
Without a grasp of history, it is hard to know the power and lessons of the past. Without knowledge of the long arc of change, it is hard to know where to go or how to get there.

books

Democracy, from King Hammurabi's Time to Tomorrow

Stephanie J. Smith New Politics
Democracy briskly and transparently recasts traditional world histories and world populations frequently left out of the narrative into a consideration of how different political alliances, including those of repressed and typically underrepresented groups, demand democracy through use of language and direct action. Democracy connects the local and the global, as well as the past and present, in understanding the complex and shifting notions of democracy.
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