Celebrity Life

In the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, rumors of sabotage and imminent further attacks found fertile ground in the minds of a nervous American public. In a press conference shortly after inspecting the damage, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox attributed (without evidence) their precision in hitting military targets…

At least 19 states passed 34 laws restricting access to voting in 2021, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. In Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp signed a law limiting the number of drop boxes for ballots; in Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott signed a law banning 24-hour and drive-thru voting. The laws came after record turnout…

On Jan. 11, 1897, Homer Plessy pleaded guilty in a New Orleans district court for sitting in a whites-only train car, eight months after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Louisiana’s Separate Car Act and a doctrine of “separate but equal” legislation that made way for segregation laws across the U.S. Now, nearly 125 years later,…

Jeremy Cady and I first met on the plush green grass in front of the Missouri Capitol. It was the spring of 2009, and once a week or so a group of capitol staffers, reporters, and even the occasional elected official would kick a soccer ball around on a rectangular section of lawn that more…

Amid contentious national pushback over how much of the full history of slavery in the United States should be taught in schools, the holiday season represents a particularly overlooked period. Around the time Christmas was starting to become a national holiday in the late-19th century, propagandists of the Lost Cause—the myth that the Civil War…

(PARIS) — The U.S.-born entertainer, anti-Nazi spy and civil rights activist Josephine Baker was inducted into France’s Pantheon on Tuesday, becoming the first Black woman to receive the nation’s highest honor. Baker’s voice resonated through streets of Paris’ famed Left Bank as recordings from her extraordinary career kicked off an elaborate ceremony at the domed…

A Louisiana board voted to pardon Homer Plessy, the namesake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1896 “separate but equal” ruling affirming state segregation laws.

He sits in prison after decades of fighting for Black liberation, forgotten by the nation that never understood him

In an excerpt from the new installment of John Lewis' graphic-novel memoir, the late Congressman grapples with a changing civil rights movement

When Floyd Wilson first learned of the term “prison gerrymandering,” he’d already been incarcerated for more than 35 years. He was taking a college seminar in a prison in Graterford, Pennsylvania—the fourth of five correctional facilities he’s lived in over the decades. Wilson grew up in Southwest Philadelphia and was sentenced to life in prison…

Ben Crump negotiated a record $27 million settlement from Minneapolis for the family of George Floyd, the latest in a string of civil court victories

As a jury’s guilty verdicts were handed down on Tuesday to former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, on trial for the murder of George Floyd, people across America found a moment to exhale. Houston-based artist Ange Hillz, meanwhile, went to work: in 24 hours, he created this week’s TIME cover portrait of Floyd, to accompany…