Police raids were frequent and expected among the gay bars in Greenwich Village in the late 1960s.
In every state except Illinois, simply being gay was a crime. At the time, New York City was seen as a relatively safe haven for LGBTQ+ folks across the nation. But law enforcement routinely seized on state laws authorizing the arrest of anyone for “crimes against nature” or not wearing at least three articles of gender-appropriate clothing.
For many Americans, Donald Trump’s head-spinning array of executive orders in the early days of his second term looks like an unprecedented effort to roll back democracy and the rights and liberties of American citizens.
But it isn’t unprecedented.
As we have written, American history is not a steady march toward greater equality, democracy, and individual rights. America’s commitment to these liberal values has competed with an alternative set of illiberal values that hold that full American citizenship should be limited by race, ethnicity, gender, and class.
My family and I stopped at Buffalo Wild Wings in Georgia a few weekends ago after watching one of our kids take part in a marching band competition. Surrounding us in the restaurant were wall-mounted televisions. Most showed sports, repeatedly punctuated by political ads.
At least half of them attacked transgender people. And I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anything more rancid on a TV broadcast.
One image after another of smiling human beings, framed as a monstrous threat.
Polls show that LGBTQ rights will likely factor into most Americans’ pick for president this November as they choose between former Republican President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat.
A March 2024 survey by independent pollster PRRI found that 68% of voters will take LGBTQ rights into consideration at the polls. Fully 30% stated that they would vote only for a candidate who shares their views on the issue.
It is no coincidence, then, that LGBTQ rights issues feature prominently in the party platforms.
It wasn’t called voter suppression back then, but civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer knew exactly how white authorities in Mississippi felt about Black people voting in the 1960s.
At a rally with Malcolm X in Harlem, New York, on Dec. 20, 1964, Hamer described the brutal beatings she and other Black people endured in Mississippi in their fight for civil and voting rights.
After 14-year-old Emmett Till was kidnapped, severely beaten, and killed in the Mississippi Delta on Aug. 28, 1955, his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, made the courageous decision to reveal her son’s corpse for all to see.
Till-Mobley’s choice allowed audiences to bear witness to an act of racial violence, and the new film “Till” promises to unveil the complete story of how she responded to her son’s brutal death.
As a historian of racism and white supremacy in the United States, I’ve become accustomed to callous actions like those of Republican governors who organized transportation for Latin American migrants to states run by their political opponents.
Governors Greg Abbott in Texas and Ron DeSantis in Florida are following the playbook of segregationists who provided one-way bus tickets to Northern cities for Black Southerners in the 1960s. At that time, the fight for racial equality was attracting national attention and support from many white Americans, inspiring some to join interracial Freedom Rides organized by civil rights groups to challenge segregation on interstate bus lines.
A simmering, difficult, and timely question returns to the Supreme Court this fall: What happens when freedom of speech and civil rights collide?
The court took up similar questions four years ago in the famous “gay wedding cake” case, Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, about a baker who refused to provide services for a same-sex couple based on his religious beliefs. The justices ruled in his favor, but did so on narrow grounds, sidestepping the direct constitutional questions over freedom of religion and free speech.
Considered to be the largest social justice movement since the civil rights era of the 1960s, Black Lives Matter is more than the scores of street protests organized by the social justice group that attracted hundreds of thousands of demonstrators across the world.
From its early days in 2014 after Officer Darren Wilson killed Michael Brown, Jr. to the protests following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, Black Lives Matter has opened the door for social change by expanding the way we think about the complicated issues that involve race.
Nearly a week before the verdict in the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who murdered George Floyd by placing a knee on his neck for over nine minutes, I, Tafeni, was conducting an interview in front of the Civil Rights Memorial Center and was asked what my expectations regarding the pending verdict would be.
At the time, there was no verdict, and closing arguments were set to begin the following day. I paused. Honestly, I hadn’t thought about it. But as I reflected on this moment, I realized my expectations weren’t high at all.
Eric Peebles can do so many things.
He runs his own successful consulting business with a nationwide reach. He held a university faculty job and holds seats on two statewide boards. He gives advice to health care and consumer officials across his home state of Alabama, even though he struggles to breathe when he talks because of a condition called spastic cerebral palsy.
For all the things he can do, there is one important thing he cannot, and that is to vote – at least not easily, simply, and privately. Especially during a pandemic.
As state legislators consider hundreds of bills on election policies this spring, false claims of voter fraud are being repeated as justification for proposals to claw back recent advances that have made voting easier for Americans.
In debates about election policy, making it easier to vote and election integrity are frequently presented as opposing goals. Increasing one, it is argued, means decreasing the other.
Women’s History Month, celebrated in March, was established by Congress to recognize and celebrate the contributions of women over the course of American history.
Typically during this month, the Civil Rights Memorial Center (CRMC), where I am the director, produces a website feature and social media postings dedicated to honoring women who have shaped the civil rights movement.
We do this because we firmly believe that women’s stories – which are often overlooked – must continue to be shared. Their contributions aren’t widely discussed in the historical context of the movement.
Emmett Till's spirit is still with us. It began to rise in August 1965. Fourteen-year-old Emmett was on summer school vacation from Chicago, Illinois. He was brutally lynched on August 28, 1955. He would die an ugly brutal death. But his spirit would rise. And the spirit of Emmett Till is still rising.
It all started with a Big Lie. Even if the Big Lie were true, there was no reason for Emmett Till to die. Big Lies are usually excuses to do terrible things. What was the Big Lie? It was that this 14-year-old Black boy whistled at a White woman in a grocery store or said something out of the way to her. Like most Big Lies, it grew and got bigger and more destructive. By the time of the trial, the Big Lie was that he grabbed the White woman around her waist and spewed forth obscenities. Whatever the size of the lie or the truth, there was absolutely no reason for Emmett Till to die. The spirit of Emmett Till is still rising.
Suppose an intelligent machine deems you guilty of a crime. Suppose the police were to treat the machine’s judgment as evidence of your guilt. Would it matter that you are actually innocent?
This hypothetical was once a plot device of dystopian novels and films. As law enforcement agencies increasingly rely on traffic cameras, cell phone data, and other information technologies, we should take care that fiction does not become reality.
