Civil Rights

Hip-hop artist Mysonne, co-founder of the prisoner rights group United Freedom, speaks at a mass rally at the Mississippi Capitol in Jackson in January to protest conditions in prisons where inmates have been killed in violent clashes.

National

DOJ To Investigate Mississippi Prisons After Spate Of Inmate Deaths

12:08pm February 06, 2020

by Scott Neuman

The Justice Department's civil rights division will examine conditions at four state prisons, including the oldest, Parchman, where a prison riot broke out on Dec. 29.

When McDonald's Was A Road To Black Liberation

8:02am February 04, 2020

by Gene Demby

The historian Marcia Chatelain's new book, Franchise, outlines a forgotten history of McDonald's as a site of social protest and a mechanism black entrepreneurs hoped might spur black liberation.

Georgia Rep. John Lewis near the statue of Martin Luther King Jr. in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C., earlier this year. At StoryCorps in 2018, Lewis talked about meeting King in Montgomery, Ala., at 18.

National

Rep. John Lewis' Fight For Civil Rights Began With A Letter To Martin Luther King Jr.

12:05pm January 17, 2020

As a teenager growing up in Alabama, Lewis wrote a letter to Martin Luther King Jr. during a budding civil rights movement. In a letter back, King invited the 18-year-old to join the cause.

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'Rosa Parks: In Her Own Words' Reveals The Real Person Behind The Icon

4:40pm December 05, 2019

The Alabama woman's civil rights activism did not begin or end with her famous refusal to move to the back of a bus in segregated Montgomery, a new exhibit of her writings, documents and photos shows.

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Patsy and Winfred Rembert in Hamden, Conn., at their StoryCorps interview in 2017.

National

He Survived A Near-Lynching. 50 Years Later, He's Still Healing

1:41pm November 15, 2019

As a young, black man living in Georgia's Jim Crow era, Winfred Rembert experienced an unforgettable trauma. "I still wake up screaming and reliving things that happened to me," he told StoryCorps.

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Lawmakers and civil rights groups are pressuring tech companies to come up with detailed policies about how to combat potential misinformation and disinformation about the 2020 census.

Social Media Sites Under Pressure To Prep For Census Trolls And Interference

3:11pm November 05, 2019

by Hansi Lo Wang

Civil rights groups and lawmakers are pushing tech companies to prepare for an onslaught of disinformation that could turn people off from the 2020 census, especially among communities of color.

Shirley Sherrod is co-founder of the New Communities Land Trust founded 50 years ago as a safe haven for African-American farmers thrown off their land during the civil rights movement.

5 Decades Later, New Communities Land Trust Still Helps Black Farmers

2:11pm October 03, 2019

by Debbie Elliott

October marks the 50th anniversary of a pioneering effort to provide a safe haven for black farmers evicted from their land as punishment for participating in the civil rights movement.

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Rev. Carlton Eversley, Winston-Salem Civil Rights Advocate, Dies

7:40pm September 16, 2019

by Paul Garber

Dr. Carlton Eversley, a longtime activist for civil rights in Winston-Salem has died.

A bullet-riddled sign that once marked where Emmett Till's body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River is now housed at the Till Interpretive Center in Sumner, Miss. The historic marker was taken down after three white fraternity brothers from the Univers

National

'Why Don't Y'all Let That Die?' Telling The Emmett Till Story In Mississippi

7:38pm August 28, 2019

by Debbie Elliott

Emmett Till's 1955 lynching propelled the civil rights movement, but telling his story underscores a reluctance for some in Mississippi "to come to grips with its history of racial brutality."

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Sadie Roberts-Joseph founded the Baton Rouge African American History Museum in 2001. She was a prominent civil rights activist and community leader.

National

Founder Of African American History Museum Discovered Dead In Car Trunk

5:24pm July 14, 2019

by Shannon Van Sant

Sadie Roberts-Joseph was a prominent civil rights activist and community leader in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She founded the city's African American History Museum in 2001.