Search

The article presents a discussion on the 2000 U.S. presidential election in Florida, adapted from the book "Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America," by Ari Berman. The article discusses the 2000 U.S. Supreme Court case "Bush v. Gore" that decided the 2000 presidential election between Texas Governor (and future president) George W. Bush and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. An overview civil and voting rights issues regarding in Florida's election laws, including the mistaken felon disenfranchisement of U.S. war veteran Willie Steen, is provided.

The author discusses the actions on behalf of civil rights for African Americans of the administration of U.S. President John F. Kennedy in 1961, such as the attempt to enact an Executive Order to ban discrimination in housing. Civil rights issues in Southern states, desegregation, and U.S. foreign policy are discussed, as well as the psychological aspects of racism, civil rights demonstrations, and suggestions for civil rights strategies.

The author offers opinions on the new presidential administration of John F. Kennedy. It is stated that Kennedy has the opportunity to adopt a radically new approach to the question of civil rights. Kennedy is urged to abandon limits which the federal government has imposed on its own actions and to eliminate any possible support within the government of racially discriminatory practices.

The article discusses the U.S. African American civil rights leader Martin Luther King's role in the civil rights movement during the 1960s, including in regard to his 1963 speech titled "I have a dream." King and civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer's appeals to U.S. constitutional rights and efforts to expand democracy are discussed.

The author discusses murder trials in the U.S. South since 1961 that have failed to convict white men who killed black men or white men who were sympathetic to civil rights, such as the 1965 trail of Deputy Sheriff Thomas Coleman in Alabama, who was accused of killing student Jonathan Daniels. White jurors, the reaction of liberals to the verdict, and the segregationist organization the Ku Klux Klan are discussed, as well as federal versus state judicial policies.

The article discusses the U.S. counterterrorism policies of extrajudicial detention, torture and mass surveillance during the tenures of U.S. president George W. Bush and Barack Obama from 2001 through 2016, adapted from the book "Rogue Justice: The Making of the Security State," by Karen Greenberg. The threat posed by the terrorist organization Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is discussed. The impact of counterterrorism policies on civil rights in the U.S. is also discussed.

The author argues that the U.S. Hart-Cellar Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 has benefited the U.S. through mass immigration. Topics include the relation between the law's nationality quotas and the undocumented status of many immigrants, the relation of the law to civil-rights legislation, and changes to U.S. demographics as a result of the law. The role of liberalism in the passage of Hart-Celler is noted.

The article discusses a series of articles from the early 1900s entitled "The Treason of the Senate" by American journalist David Graham Phillips and how those articles describe the state of the U.S. legislature in 2012. The author argues that Phillips would easily detect the obstructionism in the U.S. Senate's policy whereby 41 Senators can effectively block any appointment or block passage of any legislation. He also argues that the filibuster, a legislative maneuver, is often used by Republican politicians to obstruct actions such as the 1960s civil rights legislation, unemployment benefits in 2010, and U.S. government agency nominations.

The author offers opinions on various topics in world politics. The U.S. is criticized for its support of the Chinese Nationalist government of Taiwan. It is stated that U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon will benefit from support of civil rights legislation in the 1960 presidential election. U.S. Congressional investigations are criticized for being conducted as criminal prosecutions.

The article discusses the management of the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee. The museum is located at the former Lorraine Motel where civil rights pioneer Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. The chair of the executive committee of its board is J. R. Hyde III, a white Republican who recently ran for the U.S. Senate in a racially charged election. The board has been criticized for trying to commercialize a part of black history.

Editorial. The article presents an editorial on social and political movements in United States history, and discusses President George W. Bush's stance on various issues of civil rights. As Democrats prepare for their 2004 convention in Boston, Massachusetts, they should ponder the city's catalytic role in American history. If they venture outside their hospitality suites for a walk on the Freedom Trail, they will see historic places associated with the American Revolution and be reminded that the battle for freedom was begun here. But they might also take a moment to remember that the battle for freedom was not won here. In seventeenth-century Boston, Roger Williams was banished for standing for religious freedom against the Puritan theocrats, yet he continued to preach that no sect may claim a monopoly on truth and he opposed the merging of church and state. In the eighteenth century, Boston abolitionists challenged slavery, the ultimate in property rights, and in the nineteenth century, textile workers in nearby Lowell launched the long struggle for the rights of labor in America. Women suffragists demanded not only voting and economic rights but also control of their own bodies, paving the way for the modern abortion rights movement. Everything each of these movements stood for, the Bush Administration stands against.