civil rights
PHOTOS: Lost images of the march from Selma, 50 years later
By Sally Morrow — March 24, 2015
(RNS) "We didn't know what would happen when we reached the capitol. We were singing the civil rights song, 'I Am Not Afraid,' but, yes, I was afraid."
The road from Selma was paved with the blood of four unsung martyrs
By Adelle M. Banks — March 5, 2015
(RNS) A Baptist deacon, a minister, a Unitarian laywoman and an Episcopal seminarian sacrificed their lives in connection with the Alabama voting rights protests.
‘Bloody Sunday’ altered history of a horrified nation
By Marty Roney — March 4, 2015
(RNS) Images of that day 50 years ago, when law enforcement officers beat back peaceful civil rights marchers trying to cross Alabama's Edmund Pettus Bridge, provided the catalyst for passage of the Voting Rights Act.
Malcolm Boyd, the gay rights icon you’ve probably never heard of
By Jay Michaelson — March 2, 2015
(RNS) One gets the sense that the Rev. Malcolm Boyd and many others like him were a little too religious for the liberals, and too liberal for the religious.
Ralph Abernathy: Martin Luther King Jr.’s overlooked ‘civil rights twin’
By Adelle M. Banks — January 15, 2015
(RNS) “They used to call them the civil rights twins -- he and Dr. King,” recalled Terrie Randolph, who was Ralph Abernathy’s secretary when he became president of SCLC after King’s death. “You wouldn’t see one without the other."
The long march from ‘Exodus’ to ‘Selma’ (COMMENTARY)
By Jeffrey Salkin — January 2, 2015
(RNS) When you strip away the costumes, mythology, and mascara-wearing Egyptians monarchs, what do you really have? “Exodus” is a film about the birth of freedom. A people demands its rights. A leader screams out for redemption. Sound familiar?
Jim Wallis on Ferguson: Repentance has not happened there yet
By Lilly Fowler — October 10, 2014
(RNS) "I’ll say this as clearly as I can: What’s very clear is that black lives are worthless in America and the criminal justice system. It’s time to right that unacceptable wrong."
Civil rights groups to feds: Purge your anti-Muslim training materials
By Lauren Markoe — August 14, 2014
(RNS) Civil rights and religious groups are asking the Obama administration to rid federal agencies of anti-Muslim bias.
Ferguson protests draw clergy, faith voices to streets and Twitter
By Cathy Lynn Grossman — August 14, 2014
In 1965, clergy joined the march on Selma for civil rights. Today, voices of faith are in the streets and on social media calling for justice in Ferguson.
COMMENTARY: On the front lines in Mississippi
By A. James Rudin — May 1, 2014
(RNS) If the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel were the “generals” in the civil rights war of the 1960s, I was a foot soldier in the army of pastors, priests and rabbis.
Letter from MLK to Rosa Parks goes on sale
By Jolie Lee — March 26, 2014
(RNS) In the 1960 letter, the civil rights leader tells Parks that "kind and encouraging words" from her and others sustained him when foes of racial equality harassed or tried to intimidate him.
Egypt’s young Coptic Christians energized to fight for civil rights
By Monique El-Faizy — March 5, 2014
CAIRO (RNS) The Maspero Youth Union, formed to fight for civil rights, rejects the mostly passive role Copts played before the revolution, when the church’s patriarch served as proxy for the Coptic community in all matters political.
Judge rules in favor of Muslim woman on no-fly list
By Omar Sacirbey — January 16, 2014
(RNS) A Muslim woman now living in Malaysia struck a blow to the U.S. government’s “no-fly list" when a federal judge ruled that the government violated her due process rights by putting her on the list without telling her why.
Atheism is not the “new gay marriage” (or the new anything else)
By Chris Stedman — December 6, 2013
A few months ago, Bill Maher made a claim that I regularly hear from other atheists: “[Atheists are] out there, they’re thinking it, they’re just afraid to say it. But that’s changing,” he said. “It’ll be the new gay marriage.” He’s certainly not the first person to have made the comparison. Earlier this year Todd Stiefel, […]
C.T. Vivian adds Presidential Medal of Freedom to a lifetime of activism
By Adelle M. Banks — November 20, 2013
WASHINGTON (RNS) As one of the last surviving members of a generation of civil rights icons, the Rev. C.T. Vivian was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by the nation's first African-American president.
