Southern History
July 2, 2014 -
Today marks the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended Jim Crow segregation and led to a profound political realignment of the South that continues to shape the nation today.
June 30, 2014 -
As civil rights movement veterans met with young activists at last week's conference commemorating Freedom Summer, a message heard frequently was that workers' rights are at the heart of the movement today.
June 27, 2014 -
This week hundreds of people gathered in Mississippi at a conference to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer, a civil rights project that changed not only Mississippi and the South but the lives of participants.
June 27, 2014 -
In June 1964, volunteers from across the U.S. descended on Mississippi to help tear down barriers keeping African Americans from the ballot box. Their work led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act, but today that law is under attack -- and the effort to restore it is getting little support so far from Mississippi's elected leaders.
June 19, 2014 -
Today marks the holiday that commemorates the day in 1865 that slaves in Texas were finally set free. We celebrate with a song to honor the occasion by jazz great Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five, "Juneteenth Jamboree."
April 25, 2014 -
Mabel Williams, who with her husband, Robert F. Williams, advocated armed self-defense against racist violence in Jim Crow North Carolina, has passed away. In exile in Cuba during the 1960s, she and her husband launched Radio Free Dixie and published the influential underground newsletter The Crusader.
April 17, 2014 -
Mississippi's surveillance of civil rights activists in the 1960s turned it into a police state. Today, widespread government spying has turned the entire United States into a police state.
