Two films about recent American history feature in the Oscars run up this year. There’s Selma, a heroic retelling of the civil rights movement. And then American Sniper, about US Navy SEAL Chris Kyle…
Hollywood films that depict American history deeply influence our sense of national identity. Films that portray Civil Rights and Black Freedom history are particularly important. Beyond entertaining moviegoers…
The civil rights movement produced many different types of leaders. Thurgood Marshall, argued successfully before the Supreme Court that racial segregation laws violated the US Constitution. Diane Nash…
It’s been almost 60 years since Martin Luther King, Jr. became a household name during the 1955-1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott, and some may find it astonishing that, until the recent release of Selma, he’s…
While the violence that has erupted in Ferguson, Missouri, over the past few weeks appears to be subsiding, the discussion over the problems faced by those protesting in the area has not. For a historian…
July 2 2014, halfway through the second term of America’s first African American president, marked the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act being signed into law by US President Lyndon Baines Johnson…
It’s nine days before Election Day in the U.S., and here in Florida, the polls already boast long lines. This weekend over half-a-million Floridians will cast their ballots, some queuing up for nearly…
Osama bin Laden is dead - assassinated a fortnight ago by bullets sprayed from the guns of special armed forces of the United States. During the wild celebrations that followed, the word “assassination…
Managing Director of the McCourtney Institute of Democracy, Associate Research Professor, Political Science, Co-host of Democracy Works Podcast, Penn State