Martin Luther King Jr.

On the Black music scene in mid-twentieth century Minneapolis.

He was never the caricature his critics wanted him to be.

As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence, our founding charter remains central to our national life.

On M.L.K. Day, the death of Renee Good calls to mind another woman who died protesting for the rights of others.

Coretta Scott King condemned the brutality of the Vietnam War and criticized how it drained money from housing, health care, and jobs.

Americans have looked to the Declaration of Independence when they sought to remedy contemporary problems and create new visions for the country’s future.

Efforts to surveil and undermine activists went far beyond infamous operations such as Cointelpro.

In the early 1980s Tucson, activists and religious leaders joined forces to protect refugees at the U.S.-Mexico border, galvanizing the Sanctuary Movement.

Tracing John Lewis’s lifelong fight for democracy and inclusion.

They might be surprised that the republic exists at all.

The question of what Jefferson meant by “all men” has defined American law and politics for too long.

A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin’s Freedom Budget is the key to understanding the appeal of the Democratic nominee for NYC mayor.

A biography of Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah casts the post-WWII era as a Black liberation epic rather than a psychodrama between Moscow and Washington.

The radical lives of James Baldwin.

While she always insisted that she wasn’t a ‘real’ critic, Dorothy Parker is more astute than most on matters of style.

A Republican administration that wages war against immigrants and colleges should be understood as the culmination of William F. Buckley conservative movement.

Six decades of civil-rights efforts haven’t budged the racial wealth gap, and the usual prescriptions—including reparations—offer no lasting solutions.

The torturers have been revising, the gestapos have been busy, and the prisons have been full for generations.

The progress we have seen toward civil rights for all Americans is inseparable from the history of classical liberalism.

The rollback of LGBTQ rights echoes a deeply consequential chapter of American history: the Lavender Scare.