“Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never did and it never will.” - Frederick Douglass Letter to Gerrit Smith, 30 March 1849...
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#InContext: Bell Hooks
Born on September 25, 1952, in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, and raised in a racially segregated South, Bell Hooks (born Gloria Jean Watkins) grew...
#InContext: Barbara Jordan
Born in Texas during 1936, Barbara Jordan, the first black congresswoman from the South, grew up during the Jim Crow Era. Barbara was known...
#InContext Malcolm X
Malcolm X (1925 – 1965) embodied the true meaning of resilience, leadership, and transformation. At a time when African Americans experienced racial...
#InContext: Fannie Lou Hamer
Fannie Lou Hamer was born on October 6, 1917, to Mississippi sharecroppers. She was the youngest of 20 children. At the young age of six, she...
#InContext: Eleanor Roosevelt
From 1933 to 1945, Eleanor Roosevelt served as the First Lady of the United States alongside her husband, President Franklin D. Roosevelt....
#InContext: Pope Francis
“Human dignity is the same for all human beings: when I trample on the dignity of another, I am trampling on my own.”– Pope Francis Before Pope...
#InContext: Yaa Gyasi
“[W]hen you study history, you must ask yourself, Whose story am I missing? Whose voice was suppressed so that this voice could come forth? Once you...
#InContext: Nelson Mandela
“Pulling the branch of a tree” — this is the literal English translation of Nelson Mandela’s Xhosa birth name, Rolihlahla. While Mandela proclaimed...
#InContext: Gary Haugen
Reflecting on history, what is most perplexing and indefensible are “the simple failures of compassion.” In these failures, we watch societies...
#InContext: Frederick Douglass
On May 25, 2020, George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer who knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes. Floyd’s death...
#InContext: Madeleine Albright
By the time Madeleine Albright was a teenager, she had escaped fascism twice. When she was almost two years old, her family fled from the Nazi...