The Unique Importance of This Year’s International Women’s Day

by Hatty Lee on March 8 2012, 9:06AM

While Washington squabbles over the right to control female bodies, women around the globe have long been fighting back, speaking up, and creating change.

Topics: Gender & Sexuality

Comments

Public viewing for Etta James in Los Angeles

by Jorge Rivas on January 24 2012, 3:37PM

A public viewing for the late Etta James will be held at Inglewood Cemetery Mortuary on Friday

Topics: Arts & Culture, /NOW Blog

Comments

A Political Obituary of Etta James

by Kenyon Farrow on January 24 2012, 9:09AM

James’s personal and artistic journey has a lot to teach us about the shifting politics of race, class and feminist politics over the course of the last half century. Kenyon Farrow explores the late icon’s history.

Topics: Arts & Culture, Etta James, History

Comments

W.E.B. DuBois’s Color Line From 1900, in Visuals

by Hatty Lee on March 11 2011, 10:00AM

Sociology students from Atlanta University created the graphs for Exposition Universelle in Paris.

Topics: History

Comments

Mapping America’s Brutal Past, and Humanity’s Capacity for Revolt

by Imara Jones on January 19 2011, 10:12AM

An 1860 census of the American South reveals much more than the region’s demography.

Topics: History

Comments

Remembering MLK: The Things We’ve Forgotten Would Guide Us

by Barbara Ransby on January 14 2011, 9:51AM

Civil rights historian Barbara Ransby says we are all King’s political heirs.

Topics: History, MLK Day

Comments

Rachel Maddow Breaks Down How the Racist Political Past is Present

by Julianne Hing on October 20 2010, 4:00PM

We’re still living out the Southern Strategy Republicans dreamed up in the 1960s.

Topics: 2010 Elections, History

Comments

Isabel Wilkerson Talks About Generations of Black Immigrants

by Greg Varner on October 1 2010, 10:00AM

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author discusses her definitive new study of the Great Migration with ColorLines.

Topics: Arts & Culture, History

Comments

Charges That a Civil Rights Hero Was an FBI Spy Shouldn’t Shock Us

by Barbara Ransby on September 15 2010, 10:46AM

Government snoops were always close confidants.

Topics: History, National Security

Comments

Fall Reading List: From Border Kids to the Great Migration

by Greg Varner on September 14 2010, 9:47AM

NPR’s Michele Norris mines her past, a historian brings black migration to life, a kid finds his deported mom, plus Edwidge Danticat, Charlie Chan and more.

Topics: Arts & Culture

Comments

King’s Movement Was More Interested in Justice Than Harmony

by Hatty Lee, Kai Wright on August 28 2010, 1:10PM

A look at real message in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

Topics: History, Kai Wright

Comments

Glenn Beck’s MLK Dream is Perverse, But What’s Our Vision?

by Kai Wright on August 26 2010, 11:00AM

Beck and the right have been the loudest national voices on race for too long.

Topics: Glenn Beck, History, Kai Wright, Politics

Comments

The 90th Anniversary of a Women’s Right to Vote

by Jamilah King, Hatty Lee on August 21 2010, 11:45AM

The movements for women’s rights and racial justice have a long, intertwined history.

Topics: Gender & Sexuality, History

Comments

45th Anniversary of Voting Rights Act

by Jamilah King, Hatty Lee on August 7 2010, 3:13PM

A look back at the historic blow for racial justice.

Topics: History

Comments

Is Black History Month Necessary? Tammy Johnson on KALW’s Your Call [AUDIO]

by Tammy Johnson on February 8 2010, 6:06AM

I really enjoy the push and pull of a good political conversation, especially ones that apply big questions of policy of philosophy to real life situations. That’s a good thing, since I seem to find myself in the middle of…

Topics:

Comments

Pioneering Black Cover Girl Naomi Sims Dies

by Jorge Rivas on August 4 2009, 10:22AM

Naomi Sims died of breast cancer on August 1, 2009, aged 61, in Newark, New Jersey. She was born in Oxford, Mississippi, the youngest of three daughters. She was ostracized by her community because of her color and height. But…

Topics: History

Comments

University of California Regents Vote to Give Honorary Degrees to Interned Japanese American Students

by Jorge Rivas on July 17 2009, 10:38AM

Yesterday the University of California Board of Regents voted to grant special honorary degrees to hundreds of men and women forced to leave their studies at the University of California as a result of the internment of people of Japanese…

Topics: History

Comments

Racializing Uighurs: The Story of Internal Colonialism in China

by Yvonne Yen Liu on July 9 2009, 6:20PM

China extends 3,400 miles from the west to the east and falls into five different time zones. Yet, the country operates on a single standard of time, eight hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time, all year round based on…

Topics: History

Comments

Vulnerability and Malcolm X

by Adrienne Maree Brown on May 20 2009, 11:31AM

via www.adriennemareebrown.net/blog yesterday was malcolm x’s 84th birthday. happy birthday el-hajj malik el-shabazz. here’s a wonderful post from grace lee boggs on knowing malcolm. today i’ve been thinking about the violence of last night here in Oakland, and the lessons…

Topics: History

Comments

What’s so special about February?

by Michelle Chen on February 13 2009, 2:11PM

Amid the confusion and excitement about the shape of racial politics under the new administration, the idea of Black History Month has taken on new shades of appreciation—and derision. Some thoughts about the purpose of Black History (or African…

Topics: History

Comments