Civil Rights

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The History of the 1973 Standoff at Wounded Knee

By Olivia B. Waxman

Sanitation Problems Have Plagued Black Residents of an Alabama County for Decades. The Government Might Finally Do Something About It

By Justin Worland/Hayneville, Ala.

For Breonna Taylor's Supporters, Justice Finally Came

By Josiah Bates

Interview: Jim Obergefell on Same-Sex Marriage Anniversary

By Madeleine Carlisle
More in Civil Rights

The Surprisingly Progressive Promises of General Order No. 3

The language of Order No. 3 also promised a lot that couldn’t be delivered, advising freedmen to “remain quietly at their present homes” and “work for wages” without any way to guarantee either

By Simmone Shah

The Small Tennessee Town at the Center of a Big Lawsuit

A Black town in Tennessee is in the middle of a legal battle against the state comptroller over its very right to exist

By Josiah Bates

The Tormented Rise of Abolition in 1830’s America

Abolition in America stood at a crossroads in the mid-1830s. Reviled in the national press, denounced by demagogues, and attacked by mobs, abolitionists faced unprecedented hostility and violence coordinated by Southerners and their sympathizers in...

By J. D. Dickey

The History Behind Earl Caldwell's Supreme Court Case

In the fall of 1968, journalist Earl Caldwell had just gotten back to the New York Times' offices in New York City from a reporting trip in California. As he recalls, he was at his...

By Josiah Bates

The Enduring Timeliness of Frederick Douglass’s Last Major Speech

Premiering on HBO and HBO Max on Feb. 23, a new documentary Frederick Douglass in Five Speeches looks at the life of the most famous abolitionist of the 19th century through five of his key...

By Olivia B. Waxman

Ahmaud Arbery Killers Found Guilty of Federal Hate Crimes

The three men who were convicted of killing Ahmaud Arbery were all found guilty of federal hate crimes trial on Feb. 22—after the jury spent less than 24 hours deliberating. The verdict comes just a...

By Josiah Bates

How Eleanor Roosevelt Worked to Stop Her Husband Approving Japanese Internment Camps During World War II

In the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, rumors of sabotage and imminent further attacks found fertile ground in the minds of a nervous American public. In a press conference...

By Francine Uenuma

Black Politicians Elected in the South After the Civil War

At least 19 states passed 34 laws restricting access to voting in 2021, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. In Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp signed a law limiting the number of drop boxes for...

By Olivia B. Waxman and Video by Arpita Aneja

Louisiana Gov. Pardons Homer Plessy, 125 Years After SCOTUS ‘Separate But Equal’ Ruling

On Jan. 11, 1897, Homer Plessy pleaded guilty in a New Orleans district court for sitting in a whites-only train car, eight months after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Louisiana’s Separate Car Act and a...

By Olivia B. Waxman

The Conservative Case For Prison Reform

Jeremy Cady and I first met on the plush green grass in front of the Missouri Capitol. It was the spring of 2009, and once a week or so a group of capitol staffers, reporters,...

By Tony Messenger

The Grim History of Christmas for Enslaved People in the Deep South

Amid contentious national pushback over how much of the full history of slavery in the United States should be taught in schools, the holiday season represents a particularly overlooked period. Around the time Christmas was...

By Olivia B. Waxman

The Many Lives of H. Rap Brown

He sits in prison after decades of fighting for Black liberation, forgotten by the nation that never understood him

By Rembert Browne

Read an Excerpt From the New John Lewis Graphic Memoir 'Run'

In an excerpt from the new installment of John Lewis' graphic-novel memoir, the late Congressman grapples with a changing civil rights movement

By John Lewis and Andrew Aydin

How Prison Gerrymandering Distorts Political Representation

When Floyd Wilson first learned of the term “prison gerrymandering,” he’d already been incarcerated for more than 35 years. He was taking a college seminar in a prison in Graterford, Pennsylvania—the fourth of five correctional...

By Sanya Mansoor and Madeleine Carlisle

The Forgotten Stories of America's Black Wall Streets

A century after the Tulsa Race Massacre, what happened there is finally more widely known—but other "Black Wall Street" stories remain hidden

By Video by Arpita Aneja and Olivia B. Waxman

Inside Ben Crump's Quest to Help David Beat Goliath

Ben Crump negotiated a record $27 million settlement from Minneapolis for the family of George Floyd, the latest in a string of civil court victories

By Janell Ross/Minneapolis
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