Racism and social unrest The police killings of New York 23-year-old Sean Bell in a hail of 50 shots on Nov. 25 and of Atlanta 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston on Nov. 21 were jarring reminders of the reality of racist police terror, especially in Black and oppressed...
Review of Manning Marable's autobiography of Malcolm X In commemoration of the 49th anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X, we repost this review by Eugene Puryear, originally published June 11, 2011. The review has also been published in the volume "A Lie of...
Lessons from the 1963 March on Washington and the movement we need today On Aug. 28, 1963, hundreds of thousands participated in the massive March on Washington, which many call the high point of the Civil Rights Movement. The movement radically transformed society,...
Building an anti-racist, anti-capitalist movement in Obama’s second term After the racist murder of Trayvon Martin, President Obama waited several days before making a largely apolitical statement that if he had a son, he would “look like Trayvon.” This comment alone,...
The modern Civil Rights movement burst onto the scene with the year-long bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama that began Dec. 5, 1955. Nine years later, the Civil Rights Act was signed into law. The Voting Rights Act was enacted in 1965, one year later. Legal apartheid...
MOST people outside Chicago had never heard of Barack Obama before July 2004. Since his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention, this young, Black politician from Illinois has been widely touted in the bourgeois media as a "rising star" in the Democratic...
Oppression and exploitation are basic features of capitalist society. Workers are paid wages while the capitalist owners make profits from the products created by those who work. This is the essence of economic exploitation. Almost every worker, even if they do not...
Understanding the FBI's recent attacks On May 2, the Federal Bureau of Investigation suddenly announced that they had placed Assata Shakur on its “Most Wanted Terrorists” list, making her the first woman to be so designated. The state of New Jersey also raised the...
On Feb. 1, 1960, Ezell A. Blair Jr., David Leinhail Richmond, Joseph Alfred McNeil, and Franklin Eugene McCain entered their local Woolworths store in Greensboro, N.C. The four students at North Carolina Agricultural and Mechanical University purchased some school...