civil rights movement news stories on Newser

Cain Sat Out Civil Rights Movement

Kevin Spak — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 09:16:06 CST

Herman Cain came of age in the heat of the civil rights movement, but unlike many of his politically conscious peers at the predominantly black Morehouse College, he largely ignored it. “I wasn’t determined to make social change,” Cain tells the Wall Street Journal . “I wanted to earn some change...

Obama: King 'Stirred Our Conscience'

Polly Davis Doig — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 12:17:43 CDT

Forty-three years after Martin Luther King Jr. was killed by an assassin's bullets, the nation's first black president today led an all-star tribute to the civil rights activist who "stirred our conscience" and made our Union "more perfect." "I know we will overcome," proclaimed President Obama at the dedication of...

Civil Rights Hero Fred Shuttlesworth Dead at 89

Mark Russell — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 03:05:00 CDT

Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, one of the most dynamic leaders of the civil rights movement, died yesterday at the age of 89, reports the Washington Post . Shuttlesworth survived bombing attempts, beatings, and dozens of arrests in his attempts to end segregation in the South, and was key in making nonviolence a...

Obama Installs Racially Charged Painting

Polly Davis Doig — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 15:58:05 CDT

The nation's first black president has hung a painting with the N-word outside the Oval Office, in a nod to the civil rights movement, reports Politico. President Obama last month had Norman Rockwell's "The Problem We All Live With" installed in the White House; the painting shows a black child,...

Rosa Parks Nearly Raped by White Neighbor

Matt Cantor — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 10:22:10 CDT

Rosa Parks was almost raped as a young woman, and in a newly surfaced essay she tells the story in painful detail. Her white neighbor, who hired her as a housekeeper, “moved nearer to me and put his hand on my waist. I was very frightened by now,” she wrote...

Young King Inspired by Time in Desegregated Connecticut

Evann Gastaldo — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 08:26:05 CST

A young Martin Luther King Jr. might have gone on to any number of careers, but for one inspiring summer in Connecticut. He was there as a teenager, earning money for college by working on a tobacco farm, and he was shocked by the lack of segregation he found. “After...

Haley Barbour Finds Himself in (Another) Civil Rights Mess

Matt Cantor — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 11:16:05 CST

Haley Barbour still hasn’t said whether he’ll run for president, but he’s already stirring up controversy thanks to a lengthy Weekly Standard profile in which he recalls his hometown of Yazoo City, Miss., fondly, and doesn’t remember the struggle for civil rights as being “that bad"—this despite murders in...

Ernest Withers Informed on Martin Luther King to FBI

Kevin Spak — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 10:11:34 CDT

Ernest Withers, the famed “original civil rights photographer” and close confidant of Martin Luther King, was secretly a paid FBI informant, cluing the government in on all the Civil Rights Movement’s activities, according to a two-year investigation from the Memphis Commercial Appeal . Withers tailed King for the feds the very...

Obama Leads Last Salute to Dorothy Height

Kevin Spak — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:47:33 CDT

President Obama spoke at Dorothy Height's funeral today, calling on Americans to honor the memory of the late civil rights leader by serving their country and making it better. "We can all be drum majors for a righteous cause," the president declared. He said she'd lived a righteous life and...