When John Lewis took the stage Wednesday night to accept the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature for his graphic novel March: Book Three, the congressman was on the verge of tears. The book, co-authored with Andrew Aydin and illustrated by Nate Powell, is the final installment in the trilogy that follows the civil rights movement through the eyes of Lewis, who was at its heart. “This is unbelievable … some of you know I grew up in rural Alabama, very poor, very few books in our home,” Lewis said, his voice shaking.
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Oct 26, 2016 – From Puritan minister Cotton Mather to Thomas Jefferson, from fiery abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison to brilliant scholar W.E.B. Du Bois to legendary anti-prison activist Angela Davis, Kendi shows how and why some of our leading proslavery and pro-civil rights thinkers have challenged or helped cement racist ideas in America.
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Black Perspectives
OCTOBER 20, 2016
This year marks the 100-year anniversary of the academic achievement gap–built and continuously renovated by the 100-year-old standardized testing movement. It is a centennial that hardly anyone knows about.
The Chronicle’s 50th anniversary is an occasion to take stock of the world we cover. What ideas and arguments might shape the next 50 years?
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By Joe Donahue
Sep 16, 2016 – Young black men are 21 times more likely to be killed by police than their white counterparts. The unemployment rate for African Americans has been double that of whites for more than half a century. Award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi argues in Stamped from the Beginning, if we have any hope of grappling with this stark reality, we must first understand how racist ideas were developed, disseminated, and enshrined in American society.
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