Throughout history, people working for the liberation of one group have begun to notice ways in which other communities (often ones the activists were a part of) suffered from oppression. Inspired by the model of one liberation movement, they have appl

Religious faith and religious leaders played a central role in the American Civil Rights Movement. In the 1950s, civil rights leadership and activism shifted from northern elite organizations focusing on legislative change (such as the NAACP) to southe

On August 28, 1963, more than 250,000 people descended on Washington, DC for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Coming at the 100^th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and a time at which the Civil Rights Movement faced v

Siblings in Oppression?

There is a long history of Black-Jewish partnership in the American Civil Rights Movement, and just as long a history of tension and misunderstandings. From the beginnings of organized civil rights activism in the earl

One of the ways African American communities fought legal segregation was through direct action protests, such as boycotts, sit-ins, and mass civil disobedience. The tactic of non-violence civil disobedience in the Civil Rights Movement was deeply infl

Civil Rights and the Courts

In the first half of the 20^th century, civil rights were pursued primarily through the court system, as activists, organizations like the NAACP, and lawyers worked to overturn laws that permitted segrega

The student arm of the civil rights movement, led by SNCC (the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, founded in 1960 at a conference of 120 black student activists in North Carolina), focused on fighting segregation through mass action and local,

If some parents disapproved of their children's involvement in civil rights activism, others were inspired by their children to take greater action themselves. One such parent was Polly Cowan, mother of Freedom Summer volunteers Paul and Geoff Cowan. P

In every generation, people shape their sense of themselves and their place in society within the frameworks defined by their local community and the larger national community. What does it mean to be white? What constitutes Jewishness? (Is it a race?

... Esther's life story filled my thoughts, my days and my head for years following, and reminded me to always care for others and not to take my life in rural United States for granted. Esther wrote in a way that made me feel as if I had somehow manag

"Haunting and spellbinding" is how School Library Journal critic Carol Fazioli summed up The Endless Steppe, a book that made Hautzig's name in literary circles. "After six weeks in cattle cars, we were deposited in Rubtsovsk, a tiny vill

As a proud Jew, she never experienced Christmas and wanted to. So one year I invited her to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with my family. On Xmas Eve, we did a lot of cooking, went to church, visited the Christmas displays around Washington, DC

for Rosetta Reitz

We meet in a cheap diner and I think, God,
the continuity, I mean, imagine
our still being here together
from the old days of the Village
when you had the bookshop on Greenwich Avenue

I hired Rebecca for Al Jazeera – and they don't come any better. We disagreed on just about everything, and she was usually right of course. But we agreed on one lasting thing, and that was that we would always be friends. It was impossible not l

Wendy Wasserstein possessed a genius for friendship—a superfluity of human kindness, warmth, and an un-cynical astuteness that made her the perfect companion. Fifteen years ago, during an Amherst College reunion, we met for breakfast at one of o

Wendy Wasserstein was born in New York City on October 18, 1950. Her family lived in Brooklyn until she was 12 and then moved to Manhattan. She graduated from Mount Holyoke with a degree in history in 1971, studied creative writing at City College, and

A pop music critic for the New Yorker and Rolling Stone, a writer and editor at the Village Voice, a professor of journalism at New York University, and a co-founder (with Shulamith Firestone) of the Redstockings radical wome

I will say Yes to Life
and meet him in the market-place,
openly-
between the stalls where all can see us consorting,
tasting avidly
from all the baskets
and the many sacks of condiments and bread-stuffs
and r

Born to an upper-class family in Latvia, Johanna Spector lost her husband, brother, and parents in the Holocaust; she herself was imprisoned in a series of concentration camps. After World War II, Spector immigrated to the United States. She dedicated

Sylvia Siegel, a tireless and sharp-tongued crusader who founded the utility-battling consumer group TURN (originally called Toward Utility Rate Normalization) on her kitchen table in 1973, died August 18, 2007 at a home in Marin County. Ms. Siegel, wh

"A recurring element of Jewish tradition – including Jewish religious tradition – is the expression of joy within sadness and sadness within joy... It seems to be that an expansion and deepening of the dualities of joy and sadness came with the fou