Donja R. Love’s Fireflies (the second in his trilogy, The Love* Plays, each focusing on a different era of Black American history) is at once brutal and hopeful, the hate and violence-soaked former threatening throughout to extinguish the hard-won gleam of the latter but never quite succeeding. It’s 1963 when we meet Olivia (Chanell Bell) […]
Tag: civil rights movement
Posted inMusic
Mavis Staples sanctified Friday night at Pitchfork
Even when Mavis Staples wasn’t singing gospel at Pitchfork, her powerful spiritual voice could bring together generations.
Posted inArts & Culture
Too Heavy for Your Pocket weighs the cost of making a difference
A Black college student’s decision to join the Freedom Riders has unexpected consequences for his wife and friends.
Posted inMusic
How a south-side church taught rapper and activist Ric Wilson to fight back
Rapper and activist Ric Wilson grew up attending Fellowship Missionary Baptist, a south-side congregation that helped nurture the civil rights movement.
Posted inBlogs
Mountains That Take Wing pays tribute to the women of radical U.S. history
This documentary about legendary activists Angela Davis and Yuri Kochiyama screens tomorrow night at Chicago Filmmakers.
Posted inBlogs
A brief visual history of black Muslims in Chicago
A look back at the Nation of Islam’s Influence on south-side neighborhoods during the 1960s and 1970s.
Posted inFilm
James Baldwin: Voice of a preacher, heart of a nomad
Raoul Peck’s documentary I Am Not Your Negro looks at the writer who brought his own religious issues to the civil rights movement.
Posted inBlogs
A visual history of the black vote
In this election year, we look back at the history of black voter mobilization in Chicago and in the south.
Posted inNews & Politics
The untold school segregation story behind Bernie Sanders’s 1963 arrest
Englewood parents were desperate after Chicago Public Schools officials tried to put black children in a warehouse next to unguarded railroad tracks.
Posted inArts & Culture
A new book examines the lasting impact of Emmett Till’s murder
Why a 60-year-old crime still reverberates in the American consciousness
Posted inBlogs
Fifty years after LBJ challenged the nation, the rights of African-Americans remain unfulfilled
“We’ve got to find a way to let Negroes get what most white folks already have,” Lyndon Johnson told his speechwriter in 1965.
Posted inArts & Culture
The Chicago Outlaws Motorcycle Club rides again
Documentary photographer Danny Lyon’s The Bikeriders revs up for a long-overdue reissue.
Posted inColumns & Opinion
The activist-doctor Quentin Young is still in
A new film project tries to capture the life of physician and activist Quentin Young.
Posted inBlogs
Fifty years after “I Have a Dream”: Time for a real War on Poverty
The richest nation on earth could afford to win a war on poverty, Lyndon Johnson asserted nearly 50 years ago.
Posted inNews & Politics
A new generation of activists fights injustice, from school cuts to Trayvon Martin
March on Washington anniversary: A new generation of activists fights for change, from school cuts to Trayvon Martin.