The Fine Print: Building the map to the ballot and beloved community
Now is not the time to bemoan how our votes don’t matter. It’s time to prove that they do, both by showing up just like we did in 2020 and fighting any attempt to stop us.
The Fine Print: Ibram X. Kendi and the Chain of Ideas
For many people, America’s rapid authoritarian turn came out of nowhere.
Not Ibram X. Kendi.
The author of Stamped From the Beginning and How to Be an Antiracist shows in his new book Chain of Ideas: The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age that America’s anti-democratic policies are part of a worldwide trend—one that long predates the current administration.
The Fine Print: Ta-Nehisi Coates takes America to task
In an age where fewer Americans trust the government than 70 years ago, Ta-Nehisi Coates reminds us that the road to reestablishing that trust heading into its next 250 years must be bold, consistent, and inclusive.
The Fine Print: Telling the whole history of America’s 250th anniversary
The juxtaposition of how the United States has chosen to celebrate its 250th birthday is a perfect encapsulation of our current moment:
The Fine Print: The truth-telling power of Black music
While introducing the Obama Presidential Center on the South Side of Chicago last Thursday, Former President Barack Obama didn’t use his time at the podium to call out the current president, address detractors, or stoke anger.
He did what he’s spent much of his career doing: trying to inspire hope.
The Fine Print: The joy and journey of Juneteenth
Nearly 100 years after formerly enslaved people in Galveston, Texas celebrated the first “Jubilee Day”—the holiday that would eventually become Juneteenth—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. sat in a Birmingham jail cell waiting for freedom, having been arrested for protesting segregation in Birmingham in April of 1963.
The Fine Print: ‘What Loving, and loving, are all about’
Mildred Loving never wanted to be famous. She never asked to be remembered forever as half of the couple that struck down bans on interracial marriage. And after her husband Richard’s untimely death, she avoided the limelight. But in 2007, on the 40th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court case that bears her name (Loving v. Virginia), she had one more thing she needed to say.
The Fine Print: Honoring the last ‘Mothers’ of Tulsa
Malcolm never appeared in my school history books, and he wasn’t spoken of when the Civil Rights Movement came up. When I read about him on my own, it wasn’t hard to understand why. He didn’t play by the rules.
The Fine Print: The practice of protecting belonging
This month, Embrace Boston has been highlighting figures like Kivie Kaplan, the Boston businessman and former president of the NAACP whose fierce advocacy for civil rights earned him a place on the 1965 Freedom Plaza.
The Fine Print: Malcolm X’s message for our moment
Malcolm never appeared in my school history books, and he wasn’t spoken of when the Civil Rights Movement came up. When I read about him on my own, it wasn’t hard to understand why. He didn’t play by the rules.