It’s nearing the end of Black History Month, and that history is inherently tied to strife, resistance, and organizing related to government surveillance and oppression. Even though programs like COINTELPRO are more well-known now, the other side of these kinds of stories are the ways the Black community has fought back through intricate networks and communication aimed at avoiding surveillance.
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The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade was a dark, cruel time in the history of much of the Americas. The horrors of slavery still cast their shadow through systemic racism today. One of the biggest obstacles enslaved Africans faced when trying to organize and fight was the fact that they were closely watched, along with being separated, abused, tortured, and brought onto a foreign land to work until their death for free. They often spoke different languages from each other, with different cultures, and beliefs. Organizing under these conditions seemed impossible. Yet even
Thu 25 Feb 2021 10.00 EST
Last modified on Thu 25 Feb 2021 10.02 EST
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Happy Thursday,
During the final week of Black History Month, I wanted to continue to look at the people who helped shape the Voting Rights Act, the powerful 1965 law that offered unprecedented protection for voting rights in America. As the country faces another surge of efforts to make it harder to vote, it’s a reminder of how hard Black Americans had to fight to gain and protect the rights to vote that are in place now.
Last week, I wrote about Bloody Sunday, the March 1965 protest that led directly to the Voting Rights Act. The heroes of that march – people like John Lewis, Hosea Williams and Martin Luther King Jr – have become lions of American history. But until recently, one of the most overlooked people in the march was
Fight To Vote: The Woman Who Was Key In Getting Us The Voting Rights Act historynewsnetwork.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from historynewsnetwork.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
When Julian DeShazier, a 37-year-old Black pastor, marches in Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests, he removes his clerical collar – a symbol of authority – and follows the instructions of organisers, many of whom are younger than him, and many of whom are women.
DeShazier and members of his Hyde Park University Church in Chicago, Illinois, decided that the youth, whom he describes as “faithful, but secular”, are “best positioned to lead this movement right now”. The role of the Church is “to be supportive of them in offering ourselves in the ways they show us they need us and to fill in the gaps as well.”
History books tell the stories of the mass protests in Selma, Birmingham and Washington, D.C., and the charismatic national leaders that made headlines, but that was only one part of the civil rights movement.
Charles Cobb, an activist who spent his teenage and young adult years organizing change in the 1960s, aimed to paint a more complete picture of the civil rights movement Tuesday night as the keynote speaker of Carolina’s annual African American History Month lecture.
“Largely missing from the narrative about the civil rights movement and the work that went into building it is that, in many instances, it was led by young people,” he said.