History

September 21, 2017 - "An Outrage," a new documentary by Virginia-based filmmakers Hannah Ayers and Lance Warren, is being used to educate K-12 students about the brutality of lynching across the South.

August 25, 2017 - Reared by amateur historians, the author spent childhood vacations traveling to historic sites and coming to grips with his family's role in the Civil War. The experience taught him that monuments alone are not history, but they can shed light on the dark history surrounding their erection.

August 17, 2017 - Law professor Angela A. Allen-Bell of Southern University discusses the connections between slavery and mass incarceration in the context of the planned Aug. 19 march in Washington, D.C. The gathering is calling for the 13th Amendment's enslavement clause to be amended to abolish legalized slavery in prisons.

August 16, 2017 - Following far-right violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, sparked by efforts to remove a statue of Confederate General Lee, there have been renewed efforts to take down monuments to the Confederacy. In Durham, North Carolina, activists toppled one at the county courthouse, while construction workers took down another in Gainesville, Florida. But hundreds remain — and some states have laws that aim to keep them standing.

August 11, 2017 - Back in May, the queer liberation group SONG freed scores of Black women from jail during its Black Mamas Bail Out Campaign. It chose this month to continue the initiative because of August's historical significance in the fight against mass incarceration and for Black liberation.

July 19, 2017 - The historic link between workers in the South Carolina city and the organizer training school in Tennessee was revitalized when a group of Raise Up for $15 activists from Charleston traveled there recently with others from around the South to strategize about what's next for the movement.

July 14, 2017 - A ballot initiative campaign in Florida and a lawsuit against Louisiana seek to restore voting rights to people convicted of felonies after they're released from prison. The efforts are parts of a broader movement to overturn felony disenfranchisement laws rooted in white-supremacist politics.

June 30, 2017 - In his famous July 4 speech delivered 165 years ago, abolitionist Frederick Douglass said, "With brave men, there is always a remedy for oppression." Now is the time for Congress to be brave for democracy and vote to restore the eviscerated Voting Rights Act.

May 19, 2017 - The Supreme Court ruled 63 years ago this week in Brown v. Board of Education that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. Today, integration gains are being eroded by voucher programs that use public money to support private schools — and the Trump administration wants to expand those programs dramatically.