This statement is being distributed in the streets of Ferguson and St. Louis. All the politicians are calling for calm and peace. Fighting back in the streets, they say, accomplishes nothing. They say the people have to work within the system to bring about change....
The following is adapted from Puryear’s book “Shackled and Chained: Mass Incarceration in Capitalist America” (Liberation Books, 2013) In August 1971, a lawyer for big tobacco in Richmond, Va., sent a memorandum to an acquaintance at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce with...
The last few years has seen the resurgence of anti-racist struggle on a national scale. We had the Jena 6, Troy Davis and Trayvon Martin cases all promoting national activity and marches. Each of these dealt with the criminal justice system in the Deep South, and the...
The Trayvon Martin movement and the national question George Zimmerman’s acquittal has resulted in waves of mass outrage among Black people and all anti-racists. The verdict should, once and for all, puncture the myth of a “post-racial” or “color-blind” America. The...
Racists defeated in 1958 Battle of Hayes Pond In the 1950s, the movement for civil rights had gained serious momentum, shaking the system of Jim Crow white supremacy to its core and provoking a vicious response from its supporters. The most notorious group that fought...
A new poor people’s movement and a new system In March 1968, a meeting was held in Atlanta between representatives of 100 people’s organizations committed to building a poor people’s march on Washington under the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr. This effort to...
Fighting and defeating racist oppression 2014 is a significant year for civil rights anniversaries: The 60th for Brown v. Board of Education, and 50th for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Anniversaries like these are bound to inspire significant discussion on how to...
What is the legacy of this historic civil rights victory? Nearly sixty years ago, on May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court issued the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, declaring segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional, after an intense...
Book review: "Hammer and Hoe" Photo: Univ. of North Carolina Press “Hammer and Hoe,” a 1990 book written by historian Robin D.G. Kelley, chronicles the development of a communist movement in Alabama during the Great Depression. It highlights the struggles communists...