Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse - Frank Johnson and the legend of the Free State of Winston

  Those of us who are Baby Boomers remember the tumultuous times of the 1960s. We lived through the Civil Rights revolution. Those of us who grew up here in the Heart of Dixie witnessed the transpiring of racial integration firsthand. Most of the crusades and struggles occurred here in Alabama, especially in Montgomery.

  A good many of the landmark Civil Rights court decisions were handed down in the Federal Court in Montgomery. The author and renderer of these epic rulings was Frank M. Johnson, Jr., who served as the federal judge in the Middle District of Alabama for 24 years from 1955 through 1979.

Black economic boycotts of the civil rights era still offer lessons on how to achieve a just society

  Signed into law 60 years ago, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination in the U.S. based on “race, color, sex, religion, or national origin.”

  Yet, as a historian who studies social movements and political change, I think the law’s most important lesson for today’s movements is not its content but rather how it was achieved.

Hank Sanders: Senate Sketches #1628 - The power of looking back to move forward!

  Looking back to move forward. This is a powerful concept. It is not a new concept. There is even an African symbol for this concept. It is an eagle-like bird with its head looking back while its feet are facing forward. The name of the concept is Sankofa.

  As a child, I looked back to move forward. I looked back at Thurgood Marshall, the great civil rights lawyer who was the architect of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling. This decision cracked the wall of oppressive segregation constructed by the Plessy v. Ferguson Case of 1896 that forged the specious "separate but equal" doctrine. I looked back and commenced my journey to become a civil rights lawyer.

Fifty years after Dr. King’s assassination: I remember most how he lived

  I remember the day like it was yesterday. I was walking across the Harvard Law School Yard. It was dust dark. A fellow Harvard Law School classmate was walking in the opposite direction. He just said, “They killed him.” He didn’t say who they killed, but I knew from the tone, inflection and weight in his voice. It was April 4, 1968. The “him” was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

  It has now been 50 years since that fateful day. I can still feel the intense pain. I can still feel the exploding hurt. I can still feel the profound loss. Still, I don’t want to focus on the terrible death on that one day. Rather, I want to focus on the life Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. lived during the 14,324 days starting January 15, 1929, his date of birth, and ending April 4, 1968, his date of death. It was truly an extraordinary life.

Rosa Parks, #MeToo, and the nature of the struggle

  Three and a half years before Rosa Parks sat down, Pfc. Sarah Keys refused to get up.

  Keys was in the Army and traveling home on furlough. When a new bus driver took the wheel in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, he demanded that she give up her seat to a white Marine.

  Keys refused. So the driver emptied the bus, directed the other passengers to another vehicle and barred Keys from boarding it. She was charged with disorderly conduct and jailed, paying a $25 fine.

  She filed a complaint — and in a milestone for civil rights, she won.

Hank Sanders: Senate Sketches #1438: Young people are powerful

  We forget that young people are powerful in so many ways. They change things culturally. They change things socially. They change things economically. They change things educationally. They change things technologically. We forget that young people are powerful in changing things.

  The many ways young people change things are far too numerous to explore in this Sketches. Therefore, I want to review just one front on which young people profoundly changed things. I know that Dr. King is given the credit for changes wrought during the American Civil Rights Movement. And he deserves great credit but not all or most of the credit. We forget that it was young people who were truly on the front lines in changing things.