civil rights

Seven of this year's eight best picture nominees are stories of lone, white heroes—stories that seem out of touch with the times. The exception is Selma.

In North Carolina, civil rights leaders are focused on the one political issue that undergirds all others: the right to vote.

They constructed the rainbow-colored crosses on holy ground. That very soil bore witness to the fact that love could overcome discrimination. It was the same plot where the Rev. Leroy and Gloria Griffith were married over forty years ago. 

Todd Purdum's work of journalistic history on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is ultimately a story about politicians doing the right thing.

I spent last week on a rural island in Wisconsin, where the Century was cosponsoring the Wisconsin Council of Churches' annual summer forum. It was a great event. It was also a pretty momentous news week, and there I was away from the office and mostly offline.

Since returning I've been taken aback by just how much more ink the Supreme Court's Defense of Marriage Act decision has gotten than its Voting Rights Act decision.

When Will Campbell replied to my letter, I expected him to call me to fight “the Enemy.” Instead he encouraged me to love my enemies.

Rush Limbaugh:

If a lot of African-Americans back in the '60s had guns and the legal right to use them for self-defense, you think they would have needed Selma? . . . If John Lewis had had a gun, would he have been beat upside the head on the bridge?

Rep. John Lewis:

African Americans in the 60s could have chosen to arm themselves, but we made a conscious decision not to.

When I left North Carolina at age 22, I never planned to be back in a Baptist church. Years later, here I am.

In 1965, MLK asked religious leaders to come to Selma and march. Decades later, plans are taking shape in Montgomery to honor those who came.

Quinton Dixie and Peter Eisenstadt focus on the first half of Thurman’s life, finding there not only the deep and complex roots of his mature works, but also a far-reaching influence on historical events and actors.

About 15 years
ago I was a guest at the annual meeting of the Association of Christians Teaching Sociology. In one session a professor reported on a
student's project. Taking the Century as a barometer of mainline Protestantism and Christianity Today as a barometer of evangelicalism, his student
compared the respective responses to the civil rights movement. The student
found that the Century was very hospitable toward the movement and that CT was critical of
it. (Full disclosure: At the time of this ACTS meeting, I was working for
CT.)

Since ACTS is comprised
largely of evangelical scholars, there was some hanging of heads in the room.
Evangelicals, they agreed, had been on the wrong side of history, not to speak
of the wrong side of justice.

William Barber has a way of getting people arrested. Since he took
charge of the NAACP in North Carolina, he's been inspiring
followers—black and white—to engage in acts of civil disobedience.

Years before Brown v. Board, the North Carolina Council
of Churches fought for integrated schools. Almost 75 years later, the council mobilized again for the same cause.

In The Help, set during the civil rights era, an aspiring
journalist decides to write a book about the African-American domestics
in the small Missis­sippi town where she grew up. The movie, adapted by
Tate Taylor from Kathryn Stockett's best seller, is a glossy Hollywood
potboiler that uses a serious theme and historical context as cover.