The police officer who killed Michael Brown convinced a St. Louis grand jury not to indict by likening the unarmed 18-year-old black man to “a demon” who looked “mad that I’m shooting at him” language reminiscent of an earlier era when…
Tag: William Loren Katz
The Politics of Thanksgiving Day
Thanksgiving Day is rooted in a myth of friendly cooperation between Native Americans and European settlers, celebrated a year after the Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts and nearly starved. But the reality was more of one-sided generosity and two-faced betrayal, as William…
In Case You Missed…
Some of our special stories in December 2013 focused on the Saudi role in terrorism, the importance of national security “leakers,” the collapsing case pinning an infamous Sarin attack on Syria, and the renewed war over “the war on Christmas.”
Racism Through Rose-Colored Glasses
Many Americans tend to whitewash their country’s ugly history of racism all the better to feel good about “exceptionalism” but even sophisticated writers can ignore this grim reality when praising their favored presidents, as William Loren Katz explains.
A Black American Fighting Fascism
In the years before World War II, as the U.S. military remained segregated, an African-American soldier was chosen to lead an integrated American army. But it was not an official U.S. government command, but rather part of the volunteer effort…
A Civil Rights Battle over a Streetcar
Even after the Emancipation Proclamation freed African-American slaves in the Confederacy on Jan. 1, 1863, racial bias was common even far from the rebellious South. Later that year, blacks fought to get access to horse-drawn streetcars in San Francisco, writes…
Mother of the Sit-Down Strike
From the Archive: During the late-Nineteenth-Century struggles against America’s Robber Barons and the Ku Klux Klan, Lucy Gonzales Parsons was a brave fighter for human rights. In recognition of International Women’s Day, we are re-posting William Loren Katz’s account of…
Honoring a Heroic Slavery-Fighter
The movie “Lincoln” was a dramatic depiction of the political fight to end American slavery with the 13th Amendment and presented a rare sympathetic portrayal of anti-slavery Congressman Thaddeus Stevens, played by Tommy Lee Jones. This offered a belated chance to…
Christmas Eve Freedom-Fighting in 1837
Americans often romanticize the early years of the Republic, averting their eyes from the crude racism in the U.S. Constitution and the cruel treatment of blacks and Native Americans in those decades. Overlooked are brave freedom fighters who resisted arrogant…
Mother of the Sit-Down Strike
Seventy years ago, the remarkable life story of Lucy Gonzales Parsons came to an end in a fire that destroyed her Chicago home. Though little remembered today, Parsons pioneered strategies to protest poverty and injustice, including the sit-down strike, William Loren…