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James Baldwin

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Martin Luther King Jr.

What Dignity Demands

A new book persuasively places Malcolm X and Martin Luther King at the center of each other’s most dramatic transformations.
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A Pool of One’s Own

Group biographies and the female friendship vogue.
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Black Americans in the Popular Front Against Fascism

The era of anti-fascist struggle was a crucial moment for Black radicals of all stripes.
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How Racist Was Flannery O’Connor?

She has become an icon of American letters. Now readers are reckoning with another side of her legacy.

The Myth of the “Sixties”

When we mythologize the ’60s, we lose sight of what’s truly ahead of us.

America Needs an Education in Whiteness

Not a white equivalent of Black History Month, but a better understanding of the concept of whiteness and the harm it inflicts.
Open books.

James Baldwin: ‘I Did Not Want to Weep for Martin, Tears Seemed Futile’

In memory of Martin Luther King Jr, a look back on his funeral.

The Whitewashing of King's Assassination

The death of Martin Luther King Jr. wasn’t a galvanizing event, but the premature end of a movement that had only just begun.
Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Keeping the Faith

Ta-Nehisi Coates' latest book preaches political fatalism. But black activism has always believed in the possibility of change.
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The Eternal Reinvention of the American Downtown

The rise of remote work is only the latest in a long line of challenges that US business districts have faced. This time, cities have a chance to do it right.
William F. Buckley Jr. (far right) with his brother, New York senator James L. Buckley, Ronald Reagan, and Barry Goldwater at National Review’s twentieth-anniversary celebration, New York City, November 1975

Conservatism’s Baton Twirler

A Republican administration that wages war against immigrants and colleges should be understood as the culmination of William F. Buckley conservative movement.
Man holding The New Yorker magazine like a telescope.

Onward and Upward

Harold Ross founded The New Yorker as a comic weekly. A hundred years later, we’re doubling down on our commitment to the much richer publication it became.
Title page of Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Searching for the Elusive Man Who Inspired Uncle Tom’s Cabin

John Andrew Jackson spent a night at Harriet Beecher Stowe’s home as he fled north. Why do so few traces of his visit remain?
People protesting the demolition of homes to make way for the performing arts saying "shelter before culture."

Lincoln Center Destroyed Lives for the Sake of the Arts

The terrific new doc “San Juan Hill” chronicles the 1960s land grab that gave the Metropolitan Opera a home, while scattering longtime residents.
Mural of Black leaders (from left to right) Malcolm X, Ella Baker, Martin Luther King and Fredrick Douglass

Ella Baker, Pragmatism, and Black Democratic Perfectionism

The great civil rights leader was suspicious of charisma, and she had something else in mind.
A rendering of Buckminster Fuller and June Jordan's “Skyrise for Harlem” project published in Esquire, April 1965.

Nowhere But Up

In the wake of the 1964 Harlem riots, June Jordan and Buckminster Fuller’s plan to redesign the neighborhood suggested new possibilities for urban life.
Aaron Douglas, detail from painting Aspects of Negro Life: From Slavery to Reconstruction, 1934.

The Cosmopolitan Modernism of the Harlem Renaissance

The world-spanning art of the Harlem Renaissance.
Vice President Joe Biden visits Israel on January 13, 2014.

The Shoah After Gaza

Jewish suffering at the hands of Nazis are the foundation on which most descriptions of extreme ideology and atrocity have been built.
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A Damning Exposé of Medical Racism and “Child Welfare”

A new book exposes effects of anti-Black myth-making and calls for an end to the family policing system.
Drawing of Josiah Henson

The Man Who Became Uncle Tom

Harriet Beecher Stowe said that Josiah Henson’s life had inspired her most famous character. But Henson longed to be recognized by his own name.