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In February 2018, the Cambridge Public Library hosted a conversation between Harvard University professors Tommie Shelby, Brandon M. Terry, Elizabeth Hinton, and Cornel West. The occasion was the publication of two books, To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr., published by Harvard University Press, and Fifty Years Since MLK, published by Boston Review. 2018 marks the fiftieth anniversary of MLK's death, and the conversation that night revolved around his fraught legacy and what activism today can learn from it. This podcast presents a small selection of Cornel West's remarks on MLK's politics, life, and dream.

Historian Kerri Greenidge tells the story of William Monroe Trotter, a Black newspaper editor who was a forceful crusader for civil rights in the early 20th century. He built a national following in his time as a fierce advocate for the full citizenship rights that had been promised to former enslaved people after the Civil War. Trotter organized mass protests, confronted presidents, and openly challenged leaders such as Booker T. Washington who took a more cautious approach to Black empowerment. Greenidge's new book is called 'Black Radical.'

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X are frequently seen as opposing forces in the struggle for civil rights, but Black Power scholar Dr. Peniel Joseph says the truth is more nuanced. His new book, 'The Sword and the Shield,' braids together the lives of the two civil rights revolutionaries.

As Trump vows to smash leftist movements, we take a comprehensive look at the life of the revolutionary Black socialist, antifascist, and artist Paul Robeson. University of Houston historian Dr. Gerald Horne, author of “Paul Robeson: The Artist as Revolutionary,” discusses Robeson’s life from his early years to his time in Europe on the brink of a fascist war. The son of an escaped slave, Robeson rose to international fame as a singer and actor, but committed himself to the liberation of oppressed people across the globe and was a tenacious fighter for the freedom of Black people in the U.S. Robeson was heavily surveilled by the FBI and CIA, dragged before the House Un-American Activities Committee and was stripped of his passport by a U.S. government afraid that he would become a “Black Stalin.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1933, faced with a housing shortage, the federal government began a program explicitly designed to increase — and segregate — America's housing stock. Author Richard Rothstein says the housing programs begun under the New Deal were tantamount to a "state-sponsored system of segregation."

The day that a white mob came to Greenwood Avenue in Tulsa, Okla., Viola Fletcher was just 7 years old.

Listen to this episode from Resistance on Spotify. In the low country of South Carolina the Gullah Geechee are engaged in a fight to preserve their land and determine their destiny. You can find the transcript for this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A new report documents the lack of Latino stories in media and entertainment. The Texas congressman warns that underrepresentation allows the ugliest stereotypes to hold sway.

In a recently published piece in the Nation magazine, author and scholar Barbara Smith proposes a a comprehensive racial justice program even more sweeping than the Marshall Plan to combat white supremacy and resulting systemic racism. Smith talks to HMM correspondent Corinne Carey about her proposa

Michelle Singletary has an honest conversation about affirmative action. And, we take your questions about voting this year, starting with a listener in California.

A new five-part series about building a better school system, and what gets in the way. New episodes of “Nice White Parents” are available here, brought to you by Serial Productions and The New York Times.

Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik, The Intercept’s Murtaza Hussain, and historian Kathleen Belew are this week’s guests.

What can we learn from the writings of James Baldwin, a Civil Rights era thinker who, in exploring injustice, treated the whole person, body and soul, as subject?

A moment at last week's Senate Judiciary Hearing on policing reform underscored a persistent and common misunderstanding about the difference between personal and systemic racism. 

NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro speaks with Jay Caspian Kang and William Garcia-Medina on the complex issues surrounding race relations within Asian and Latino communities and movements for Black Lives.

Where do our minds live? A simple, scientific response would be to say our minds live in our brains. But Harvard psychologist Mahzarin Banaji says we should not think of our minds as being solitary.

Professor Dorothy Brown of Emory University became a "detective," searching for data on how the tax code impacts Black Americans.

Sounds Like Hate is an audio documentary series about the dangers and peril of every day people who engage in extremism, and ways to disengage them from a life of hatred.

Just what is going on with white people? Police shootings of unarmed African Americans. Acts of domestic terrorism by white supremacists. The renewed embrace of raw, undisguised white-identity politics. Unending racial inequity in schools, housing, criminal justice, and hiring. Some of this feels new, but in truth it’s an old story. Why? Where did the notion of “whiteness” come from? What does it mean? What is whiteness for? Scene on Radio host and producer John Biewen took a deep dive into these questions, along with an array of leading scholars and regular guest Dr. Chenjerai Kumanyika, in this fourteen-part documentary series, released between February and August 2017. The series editor is Loretta Williams.

Elizabeth Martinez Smith noted the “balancing act” dilemma Black people face as they run the gauntlet of contradictory pressures. She describes the meaning of “running the gauntle…

Be Antiracist imagines what an antiracist society might look like and how we all can play an active role in building one. Dr. Ibram X. Kendi is the author of How to Be an Antiracist, the book that spurred a nationwide conversation redefining what it means to be antiracist, and in this podcast, he guides listeners how they can identify and reject the racist systems hiding behind racial inequity and injustice. Alongside notable guests, Dr. Kendi continues his journey towards building a just and equitable world and proposes how we can all help create it with him.

NPR'S partnership with the race card project explores a different kind of conversation about race.

Show About Race Podcast with Anna Holmes, Baratunde Thurston, Raquel Cepeda, and Tanner Colby. Plus special guests!

"Our goal is simple—educate white people on black history. The highest calling of humanity is to love. Whether you know it or not, the racial disparities in our country hurt us."

"I am just so happy that I have lived long enough to witness this moment," legendary activist Angela Davis says.

There's a newish acronym, BIPOC, that encompasses the victims of US colonization and slavery. But should they be lumped together? And who does that label leave out?

NPR's Rachel Martin talks to author Ibram X. Kendi, who has made a name for himself tackling one of the most sensitive topics in America: racism. His latest book is How to Be an Antiracist.