Tag Archives: Civil Rights Movement

Lift Every Voice and Sing

Both Martin Luther King and James Weldon Johnson, in “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” drew strength and courage from the Book of Exodus.

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Obama Tells Black Graduates to Soar

Michelle Obama used images of flight in a recent commencement speech at Tuskegee University. It was reminiscent of the way Toni Morrison uses flight in “Song of Solomon.”

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Selma’s Bloody History

Gregory Orr’s poem recalls his arrests in Alabama in 1965.

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Keeping the Civil Rights Dream Alive

Great Civil Rights moments are great. Movements are better.

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Ain’t gonna let the SC turn me ’round

The Supreme Court’s assault on the Voting Rights Act means we may have to break out the old freedom songs again.

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Harper Lee’s White Liberal Fantasy

Important though it was, “To Kill a Mockingbird” was also a white liberal fantasy.

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The White Liberal in Civil Rights Lit

White Liberals suffer a downward spiral in 1960’s Civil Rights Literature, from heroic Atticus Finch to “Radical Chic” Leonard Bernstein.

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MLK: A Diamond Molded by Pressure

Nikki Giovanni’s “In the Spirit of Martin” talks about Martin Luther King and others in the Civil Rights Movement as having been molded by the immense pressure into crystalline diamonds.

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