Category: Voices

By Louis Moore Hank Aaron knew he needed to step up to the plate. By 1966, thousands of Black men and women his age had risked their lives fighting in the Civil Rights Movement. And high-profile athletes like Jackie…

By Jim Johnson In his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. envisioned a future American society in which black children would no longer “be judged by the color of their skin but [rather] by the…

By Rhonda Y. Williams Wherever I turn, housing is. Obvious, you might say. But, I am not talking simply about housing in the most apparent sense of literal wood, steel, or brick-and-mortar structures, but housing as a…

By Keri Leigh Merritt Reflecting back upon the fifty years since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., one singular point always stands out, a searing reminder of what was (and still is) America’s grossest…

By Jakobi Williams Several political and media pundits have drawn parallels between activists of the Black Power movement of the 1960s and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement of today.

By Aram Goudsouzian As Sidney Poitier strode across the stage of the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, the audience erupted in cheers. People stood, they clapped, they whistled and roared, they yelled Bravo!

By Ibram X. Kendi When Americans remember Martin Luther King Jr., we first and foremost remember his “dream” that “my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of…

Each generation looks at history from a different perspective. As someone who came of age in the 1960s, I followed King’s agenda closely. When he urged young men to refuse the draft, I became a conscientious objector.

By Danielle L. McGuire On September 3, 1944, Mrs. Recy Taylor, a slender, copper-colored and beautiful twenty-four-year-old mother and sharecropper, walked home from a church revival in Abbeville, Alabama.

By Yohuru Williams Seeking perspective on the current chaotic state of U.S. politics, I reread a powerful speech delivered fifty years ago by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in September 1967.

By Jeanne Theoharis The air was hot and sticky. Surrounded by clergy, Rev. William Barber lambasted the voter suppression that had compromised the 2016 presidential election. “Long before Russia hacked our election, our…

By Amy Nathan Wright In May 1967, Dr. King announced to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), “We have moved from the era of civil rights to the era of human rights,” from a “reform movement,” into “an…