Civil Rights Movement Archives

We’re re-running this fantastic post by Friend of the Blog Ari Kelman, a history professor who reminds us that MLK was never the saintly, beloved man in life that he has become in death.

In what’s become something of  a yearly tradition here at PB, we’re re-running this fantastic post by Friend of the Blog Ari Kelman, a history professor in California who blogs over at Edge of The American West. Kelman looks at the sterilization of King’s image, who was never the saintly, beloved man in life that Read More

Today, much has been said about Dr. Dorothy Height’s life and legacy. I don’t have much to add, aside from saying that she was highly revered by many of my classmates at Howard University. The WaPo has a great slideshow up now. I know some people are partial to her hats and sequins, but I’m Read More

Ta-Nehisi says that Malcolm is his heart and King is his brain. I’d never really had the Malcolm obsession that seemed to enthrall so many of the folks I grew up with, particularly around the time that Spike Lee’s biopic dropped. (In the perhaps unavoidable commodification of Malcolm’s image, every other person in Philly seemed Read More

Martin Luther King was never the saintly, beloved man in life that he has become in death. Ari Kelman over at Edge of the West gave us permission to re-run this fantastic post on Martin Luther King, Jr., and the sterilization of his image. The Martin Luther King of American memory serves this nation as Read More

Shamefully enough, I had no clue who Percy Sutton was or why he was important until I stumbled across his obituary on page 3A of my local newspaper. And though I’m usually wary of venturing into hyperbole, the Rev. Al Sharpton is not too far off in summing up the incredibly interesting and distinctive life Read More

Danielle Belton threw up a head-scratcher of a post earlier this week, in which she argued mostly by way of dubious assertion that integration came at great social cost to Black America, and to HBCUs in particular. [This] was the crux of a discussion two older black men had with me years ago for a Read More

Ta-Nehisi Coates has a good post up on those who defend their desire to fly the Confederate flag as an affirmation of heritage and not an open expression of hate: It may well be true that Alabama’s desire to fly the Confederate flag at the state capitol, or the desire of many Alabamans to use Read More

John Hope Franklin died today at age 94. I met him years ago at a conference on race at Stanford. I don’t remember much about it, other than my father being really excited to be in the man’s presence. It wasn’t until later that I understood how important he was to legitimizing the study of Read More

John Hope Franklin died today at age 94. I met him years ago at a conference on race at Stanford. I don’t remember much about it, other than my father being really excited to be in the man’s presence. It wasn’t until later that I understood how important he was to legitimizing the study of Read More
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