Freedom Rides of 1961

In 1962, tricked black Southerners into migrating north and transformed families' lives forever.

In 1961, two African-American men decided to go swimming at a whites-only Nashville pool. In response, the city closed all its public pools — for three years.

The history of blue jeans has been whitewashed.

The civil rights movement was not nearly as admired by white Americans in its own time as we imagine it being.

Moving migrants from Texas to Democratic strongholds is not new. The Reverse Freedom Rides of the 1960s hold lessons for activists of today.

What my father saw in Mississippi.

It is time to reckon with America’s racist legacy of Interstate Highway planning and engineering.

Airlines sometimes bumped Black passengers off of flights to make room for white travelers, even during refueling stops.

Lessons about organizing from the SNCC co-founder.

A review of "Set The Night on Fire", an inspiring book that points to a new generation of activists who remain unbowed by conservative historiographies.

Cynthia Tucker shares her hope that a new generation of activists can learn from Lewis' courageous and peaceful fight for “beloved community.”

Prison and police abolition were key to the thinking of many midcentury civil rights activists. Understanding why can help us ask for change in our own time.

Honoring Baker alongside Martin Luther King would highlight the long and patient work of building a social movement.

For many American liberals, RFK became a symbol of not just a better past, but also a better future that might have been.

Fifty years later, Bobby Kennedy’s passionate, inspiring, and tragic presidential campaign still fascinates.

MLK was a master television producer, but the networks had a narrow view of what the black struggle for equality could look like.

SNCC staff photographer Danny Lyon recounts his experiences in the early days of the civil rights movement.

He risked his life to expose Emmett Till’s death and the Freedom Rides to a national audience.

On the uses and abuses of civil rights heroes.

Mississippi’s outdated textbooks teach an abbreviated version of civil rights, undermining the state’s new ‘innovative’ standards.