Topic: Civil Rights/Black Power

  • Taking us to the mountaintop

    Martin Luther King's speech in Memphis before he was killed is a dissertation on history, humanity, love and revolution.

  • Rebellion at Attica

    The Attica prison uprising broke out in an era of mass struggles for Black liberation and racial justice around the world.

  • Uprising of the Black autoworkers

    The Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement was the most significant formation of Black workers to organize in the workplace.

  • Black Power in the workplace

    In the late 1960s, radicals took Black Power into the heart of American industry, triggering a national strike wave.

  • The Black Panthers

    No revolutionary organization of the 1960s and '70s era frightened the ruling class as much as the Black Panther Party.

  • The Black Power era

    The Black Power movement was a magnificent high point of African American resistance--one that inspired and shaped radicals for years to come.

  • Turning Black Power into Black capitalism

    In contrast to groups like the Black Panthers, one wing of Black nationalism defined "Black Power" in explicitly capitalist terms.

  • Urban rebellions and social change

    Far from being "pointless violence" the Black urban rebellions of the 1960s changed the direction of U.S. politics.

  • The politics of Malcolm X

    Malcolm X gave a voice to the rage of millions of Black workers at a time when they had no means of political expression.

  • The rise of the Black Muslims

    The ideas of the Nation of Islam, including Black self-defense, appealed to Northern Blacks in an era of growing discontent.

  • The legacy of Martin Luther King

    The same politicians who turned King into a heroic icon after his death opposed him in the final years of his life.

  • King's unfinished struggle

    Martin Luther King was assassinated in the midst of a struggle he saw as the next stage for the civil rights movement.

  • The King they won’t celebrate

    As the 1960s continued, Martin Luther King began to present a radical critique of U.S. society and campaign for far-reaching change.

  • Freedom Summer and the Democrats

    The civil rights movement's challenge to the Dixiecrats in Mississippi in 1964 paved the way for a new stage of the struggle.

  • King, nonviolence and the Albany Movement

    By the time Martin Luther King gave his famous "I have a dream" speech, the pitfalls of his nonviolent strategy were clear.

  • How SNCC lit the spark

    The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was one of the central organizations of the civil rights movement.

  • The lunch-counter sit-ins

    The lunch counter sit-ins--direct action protests against a hated symbol of Jim Crow segregation--took the civil rights movement to a new stage.

  • The fallacy of "reverse racism"

    The false charge of "Black racism" has always been used to discredit militant antiracists, especially Black nationalists.

  • The origins of Pan-Africanism

    The rise of an independent Africa seemed a viable alternative to Black radicals like Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael.

  • The Montgomery bus boycott

    The story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott is not just about its leaders, but a mass movement that involving tens of thousands.

  • The Supreme Court and the struggle

    It took a militant Black struggle to pressure the federal government to enforce the Supreme Court's desegregation decisions.

  • The roots of the civil rights movement

    The economic and social changes caused by the Second World War helped set the stage for the upheaval of Black Southerners.

  • Two young victims of racist hate

    The murder of Trayvon Martin has obvious parallels with the lynching of Emmett Till by racists in 1950s Mississippi.

  • The other America

    A speech King gave three weeks before he was shot focused on issues of racism, poverty and war that are still with us today.

  • Another Montgomery is needed

    We need a struggle against discrimination today like the Montgomery bus boycott that defeated segregation in the 1950s.