These are the documents that started it all.
The Charters of Freedom. As the USA celebrates another Independence Day, the National Archives presents the historical development of the Declaration, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, and their impact upon the nation and the world.
posted by netbros
on Jul 4, 2008 -
56 comments
Tracked In America --
the stories of 25 individuals who have been targeted by the U.S. government. The stories span from World War I to the post-9/11 world.
posted by amberglow
on Jan 23, 2007 -
4 comments
"If anything, a civil rights background is considered a liability." Meet the politically-appointed career staffers of the Justice Dept.'s Civil Rights Division:
... the kinds of cases the Civil Rights Division is bringing have undergone a shift. The division is bringing fewer voting rights and employment cases involving systematic discrimination against African-Americans, and more alleging reverse discrimination against whites and religious discrimination against Christians. ... Thorough Boston Globe article on how the administration disbanded the hiring committee in 2002 to appoint lawyers with a very different vision of what civil rights are, and the ensuring and ongoing results.
posted by amberglow
on Jul 23, 2006 -
24 comments
Claudette Colvin --a Montgomery teen arrested 9 months before Rosa Park's now-famous refusal to sit in the back of the bus.
There were 4 women who stood up before Mrs. Parks, yet most of us know nothing about them. It was
their actions that led to the Supreme Court overturning segregation on public transit, yet Rosa Parks is the visible symbol. On worthy and "unworthy" messengers and symbols.
posted by amberglow
on Aug 13, 2005 -
14 comments
The Uses of Canaries--and what canaries need to do --
...Why go to all that trouble when we have reduced the homosexual, himself, to nothing more than a body part? Remove the homo -- he's just a diseased body part, after all -- and the problem is solved.
Of course there will always be those so pathologically sex-panicked that they have to rely on their Think Pieces to get their pornography fix. Not worth worrying about, generally. But when United States Senators start in with the Depravity Fillip, and the DF starts showing up in the campaign literature of various groups... well, you want to keep your eye on that sort of thing. You maybe want to start thinking about that famous canary in the mine-shaft. ...
posted by amberglow
on May 9, 2005 -
51 comments
Only in 1967 did Loving v. Virginia overturn vigorously-enforced laws against interracial marriage in these 15 states--Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. Only in 1964 did the
Civil Rights Act overturn laws against equal access to voting, public accommodation, and public education. Only in 1963 did the
Equal Pay Act mandate that men and women be paid the same wage for the same work at the same job.
History isn't a superhighway, leading us in straight lines toward utopia. We
fall back and we
move forward, but over the past fifty years, the United States has become considerably more inclusive and equality of access to opportunity has widened. Take a look at
this article from the
Atlantic Monthly in 1956--1956!--if you don't believe me.
posted by Sidhedevil
on Nov 4, 2004 -
190 comments
“A nation is little more and nothing less than a conversation. [T]he conversation that is the United States has continued for more than 200 years as a lover's quarrel between equality and justice.” A gallery of ways this “conversation” is still taking place in the ways we
live the Constitution’s 27 Amendments every day.
posted by arco
on Nov 27, 2002 -
9 comments
