Mar 06

Anniversary of Selma march rekindles Ferguson comparisons

WASHINGTON — In only a few minutes on national television, the beatings of civil rights marchers by police on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, dragged the inhumanity of Southern segregation into America’s living rooms as never before.

There is a shock of recognition in the scenes that begin and end “Selma,” the elegiac new work by filmmaker Ava DuVernay. Even if you know only a little about your history, the events surrounding the 1965 Selma to Montgomery,…

Apr 10

Obama pays tribute to Civil Rights Act at 50

HOUSTON -- Barack Obama was 2 years old when Lyndon Baines Johnson sat in the East Room of the White House with Martin Luther King Jr. and signed the Civil Rights Act, putting an end to an America where schools,…