Until the last quarter of the 20th century racially explicit policies of federal, state, and local governments defined where whites and African Americans should live. Today's residential segregation in the North, South, Midwest, and West is not the unintended consequence of individual choices and of otherwise well-meaning law or regulation but is…

Today's movement in support of the 99 percent is a reminder that throughout U.S. history, a major engine of change has been grass-roots organizing and solidarity. Major history textbooks, however, downplay the role of ordinary people in shaping events--especially those who formed labor unions and used the strike to assert their rights. One of the…

One of the most historical events in American history, the non-violent protest "March on Washington," August 28, 1963, is detailed in an article of remembrance by William P. Jones. His article is crowned by highlights from the "I Have a Dream" speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., but also highlights the lessor known role…

This article presents a detailed example from the Albert Shanker Institute's report that shows the error of U.S. history textbooks and how it is distorting the historical record. One of the most glaring errors in textbooks is the treatment of the role that unions and labor activists played as key participants in the civil rights movement. The…

In the high school history textbooks children read, too often they find that labor's role in American history--and labor's important accomplishments, which changed American life--are misrepresented, downplayed, or ignored. That is a tragedy because labor played (and continues to play) a key role in the development of American democracy and the…

Describes the Nashville (Tennessee) lunch-counter sit-ins in 1960, civil-rights demonstrations led by students, and the resultant boycott of downtown businesses by blacks and sympathetic, or uneasy, whites. Many participants in the Nashville sit-ins went on to larger roles in the civil-rights movement. (SLD)

Recounts experiences of the author as one of the black students who integrated Central High School in Little Rock (Arkansas) in 1957 and presents a retrospective as she looks back on her story and the civil rights movement. (SLD)