Civil Rights & Social Justice

In America’s almost 250-year history, you would be hard-pressed to find a more double-edged period than the ten months and five days between August 28, 1963 and July 2, 1964. Those bookends are moments of shimmering hope: the March on Washington and the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, times when a multiracial democracy really seemed possible. In between was an avalanche of anguish. There was the assassination of President Kennedy, of course, on November 22, 1963. Al

Martin Dobrow with David Nolan in July 2024. Photo by Lenny Foster Four score. Those are the first two words of perhaps the most famous speech in American history: Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, on November 19, 1863. Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Right in the middle of the Civil War, Lincoln reached back 87 years (“four score

I’m a basketball guy. I played for my high school team a million years ago, back in the Paleolithic Era: the time of short shorts, high socks, and no 3-point shots. My late father, Alan Dobrow, took this photo of his most fashionable son. I covered college basketball for years and wrote my first book about it (Going Bigtime: The Spectacular Rise of UMass Basketball). At Madison Square Garden on the night in November 1993, when UMass knocked off top-ranked North Carolina. [Pho

Happy Juneteenth, America! This is something to celebrate, the end of legalized slavery in the United States on June 19, 1865: a day when we came closer to being a country that matches the wonderful words in our founding documents. Created Equal. We the People. Before we were even a country in 1711, Alexander Pope crafted the line, “To err is human; to forgive, divine.” Indeed, nothing is more human than the erring. Making mistakes comes with the territory. Granted, not all m

Today is a big, patriotic day: a time to celebrate the very best of America. For now, let's put to the side the 80th birthday of our President and his decision to stage “UFC Freedom 250” on the grounds of the White House. It's also Flag Day, an invitation to celebrate the stars and stripes and all they are supposed to stand for. Like so many Americans, I grew up standing in the front of my elementary school classroom with my hand over my heart, pledging allegiance to the flag

Sixty-two years ago today, June 11, 1964, Martin Luther King, Jr., was arrested in the nation’s oldest city—St. Augustine, Florida—for having the audacity to order food at a whites-only establishment. Here, he and his close friend Ralph Abernathy are confronted by James Brock, the General Manager of the Monson Motor Lodge. Sometimes the most interesting parts of history, though, are off in the shadows. See that young woman in the print dress behind Abernathy’s left shoulder?

Sixty-two years ago tonight, on June 9, 1964, Andrew Young was essentially tricked into leading a nonviolent march right into the teeth of white supremacy. It happened just outside the Plaza de la Constitución—near the Slave Market—in the nation’s oldest city, St. Augustine, Florida. Young was just 32 at the time, the youngest and most level-headed of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “lieutenants” with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Fellow SCLC member Hosea Williams (

Three veterans of the civil rights movement fought segregation in St. Augustine, Fla., enduring violence and racism in America’s oldest city — The Washington Post Phelan M. Ebenhack/For The Washington Post Cora Tyson, 99, stands in front of her home in St. Augustine, Fla., on July 15. The plaque commemorates the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s stay at her home while he pushed for the racial desegregation of dining and lodging amid Ku Klux Klan violence. Read more ...

60 years after 1963 Klan rally in St. Augustine, Fla., White pastor and Black activist speak — The Washington Post Harold Valentine/AP St. Augustine Police Chief Virgil Stuart, right, watches a group of sign-carrying African American demonstrators as they march in front of the old slave market in the center of the city, May 30, 1964, St. Augustine, Fla. Read more ...

Podcast interview on campus social justice

Audrey Nell Edwards Hamilton with Martin Luther King III in 2011. She was arrested with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in St. Augustine, Fla., in June 1964. They were taken to the St. Johns County Jail, where she had already spent time after her arrest in 1963 for a lunch counter sit-in. (David Nolan) Audrey Nell Edwards was still a baby when Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color line in 1947. In 1963, when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed that it was

From the driver’s seat of his red 2014 Volvo, Dan Smith looked in on the huge protest thronging Sixteenth Street in the Northwest quadrant of Washington D.C. on Friday evening, June 5. Through the windows, he basked in all of the energy, all of the caring, all of the great messages — like the “Black and White Lives Together” sign held by his wife, Loretta Neumann. The protest, of course, had grown out of the killing of George Floyd on May 25 in Minneapolis. The gruesome eigh

An interview on public television, WGBY’s “Connecting Point”

Springfield College Professor of Communications Martin Dobrow recently spent a day at the Wilbraham & Monson Academy presenting to students about the enduring legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. Speaking at an all-school chapel event in the morning, Dobrow shared the story of Dr. King’s appearance at Springfield College in 1964. He also offered students his views on some of the critical lessons that Dr. King still teaches us a half century after his death.

From New Hampshire Gazette Last of four parts The renovated barn at the Montague Farm, as seen this month. Credit: CAROL LOLLIS The second week of August is still high summer in New England. But up in the hills of Montague, Massachusetts, not quite 20 miles south of the Vermont border, it’s not uncommon to see the reddening of maple leaves, the first hints of death of the natural year. On Aug. 11, 1968, when Marshall Bloom returned to the Pioneer Valley, America was tearing

From New Hampshire Gazette Third of four parts A story Marshall Bloom wrote for the Amherst Student newspaper. Credit: AMHERST COLLEGE ARCHIVES AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS In early 1964, the spring of Marshall Bloom’s sophomore year at Amherst College, a new battleground for civil rights was taking shape in the nation’s oldest city, St. Augustine, Florida. A quaint community with plenty of Florida schlock, St. Augustine was settled by the Spanish in 1565, decades before Jamest

From Daily Hampshire Gazette Second of four parts President John F. Kennedy arrived at Amherst College by helicopter. Credit: AMHERST COLLEGE ARCHIVES AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS When the life force known as Marshall Irving Bloom arrived in the Pioneer Valley from Denver, it was, technically speaking, the 1960s. It just didn’t feel like it. Back in September 1962 at Amherst College, hair was short. Many students hadn’t heard of marijuana. The No. 1 song in America was “Sherry” s

From Daily Hampshire Gazette PAUL BLOOM First of four parts Paul Bloom was mortified. His graduation from Amherst College, just the day before, represented the greatest achievement of his young life. But now, on June 4, 1966, he looked incredulously at the front page of The New York Times and thought his shining future was about to crash. Criticizing Amherst? Publicly protesting against the U.S. government? He would never do that. Bloom had absorbed two commandments from his

Interview on public television WGBY’s “Connecting Point”