Jonathan Shandell is Associate Professor of Theatre Arts at Arcadia University. This interview is based on his new book, Readying the Revolution: African American Theater and Performance from Post-World War II to the Black Arts Movement (University of Michigan Press, […]
Civil Rights movement
“Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead” –MLK
Here is Martin Luther King Jr. on April 3, 1968 in Memphis: Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. […]
The Author’s Corner with Gregg L. Michel
Gregg L. Michel is Professor of History and Assistant Department Chair at the University of Texas at San Antonio. This interview is based on his new book, Spying on Students: The FBI, Red Squads, and Student Activists in the 1960s […]
The cars of the civil rights movement
Historian Travis Wright teaches us about the Sojourner Motor Fleet. A taste: On a late summer night in 1964, a small plane landed on a desolate airstrip outside Greenwood, Mississippi, carrying two of the civil rights movement’s most prominent supporters—Harry […]
Why the Democrats need to turn away from identity politics and toward a class-based politics
Over at Jacobin, Melissa Naschek interviews New York University sociologist Vivek Chibber about identity politics and the Democratic Party. Here is a taste: Melissa Naschek: The Democratic Party has become almost synonymous with identity politics. How did the Democrats get […]
The Author’s Corner with Patrick Parr
Patrick Parr is Professor of English at Lakeland University Japan. This interview is based on his new book, Malcolm Before X (University of Massachusetts Press, 2024). JF: What led you to write Malcolm Before X? PP: Back in 2012, I’d […]
The Author’s Corner with Derek G. Handley
Derek G. Handley is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee. This interview is based on his new book, Struggle for the City: Citizenship and Resistance in the Black Freedom Movement (Penn State University Press, 2024). […]
The Author’s Corner with Hettie V. Williams
Hettie V. Williams is Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts, Boston and Director of the William Monroe Trotter Institute for the Study of Black Culture. This interview is based on her new book, The Georgia of the North: […]
The Author’s Corner with Oliver A. Rosales
Oliver A. Rosales is Professor of History at Bakersfield College. This interview is based on his new book, Civil Rights in Bakersfield: Segregation and Multiracial Activism in the Central Valley (University of Texas Press, 2024). JF: What led you to […]
New information on the Emmett Till murder
Over at The Washington Post, Gillian Brockell reports on William Bradford Huie‘s research notes. Huie’s 1956 article in Look magazine was considered by many at the time to be the “true account” of Emmett Till’s killing. Here is Brockell: William […]
The Fannie Lou Hammer convention?
Maxine Waters just spoke on night one of the DNC convention. While many have been comparing this Chicago convention to the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Waters invoked Fannie Lou Hamer and the 1964 DNC convention in Atlantic City. It has […]
James Lawson training Nashville students in non-resistance
James Lawson passed away today. Here is Lawson training Nashville young people in non-violence. It’s from a documentary titled “A Force More Powerful.”
James Lawson, RIP
Lawson was the non-violent activist who mentored the young men and women involved in the Nashville Student Movement. I had a chance to meet one of his students, Rip Patton, in June 2017. I wrote a little bit about my […]
Rutgers historian David Greenberg will publish a biography of civil rights leader John Lewis
Here is Olafimihan Oshin at The Hill: A biography of late civil rights pioneer and former Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), which will draw upon hundreds of interviews and classified documents and files, is in the works. Publishing company Simon & Schuster announced […]
The Author’s Corner with Marvin Chiles
Marvin Chiles is Assistant Professor of African American History at Old Dominion University. This interview is based on his new book, The Struggle for Change: Race and the Politics of Reconciliation in Modern Richmond (University of Virginia Press, 2023). JF: […]
Episode 123: “Drew Gilpin Faust on Growing-Up at Midcentury”
She was a privileged baby boomer who grew up on a horse farm in segregated Virginia. By her twenty-first birthday she had worked for peace in Communist Europe, traveled the country in the cause of racial justice, marched for voting rights […]
The Author’s Corner with Travis D. Boyce
Travis D. Boyce is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of African American Studies at San JosĂ© State University. This interview is based on his new book, Steady and Measured: Benner C. Turner, A Black College President in the […]
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”: A short history
Over at Black Perspectives, historian Nico Slate reflects on the history of this famous phrase with a short analysis that spans from Theodore Parker to Martin Luther King Jr. to Barack Obama and beyond. Here is a taste of his […]
Bayard Rustin and the politics of class
Civil rights activist Bayard Rustin was a complicated guy. Perhaps that’s why I find myself drawn to him and his work. Today The New York Times is running a piece on Rustin by writer James Kirchick. Kirchick is the author […]
