From the first roll call of the 1964 school year, William Lynn Weaver was targeted by white teachers at the Tennessee high school he and 13 other black students integrated. A few weeks later, Weaver,…

Ellaraino experienced a common teenage reaction when she learned she’d have to leave Los Angeles to spend the summer in Louisiana with her great-grandmother, Silvia. Less common was…

After being drafted in 1969, Tom Geerdes served as an Army medic in the 11th Armored Calvary in Vietnam and Cambodia.  Like many veterans, he returned home a changed man.  At…

When the Mountains Tremble, filmed in 1982 at the height of the Guatemalan Army’s repression against the Mayan indigenous people, has become a classic political documentary. It describes the…

At the height of the Cold War, sixty-five indigenous Greenlandic families were forcibly relocated from their homes to make way for an American military base. More than fifty years later in Qaanaaq,…

In 2005, Specialist Justin Cliburn deployed to Iraq with the Oklahoma Army National Guard. While serving in Baghdad, Justin formed an unlikely friendship with two Iraqi boys who lived nearby. At…

Nineteen-year-old Noe Rueda grew up on Chicago’s West Side. He is the oldest of four siblings raised by a single mom. As a boy, Noe watched his family struggle and decided to help. Noe told Alex…

In August 2005, Marine Lance Cpl. Travis Williams and his squad were sent on a rescue mission in Barwanah, Iraq. En route, their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb. Of Travis’s entire 12-person…

At eight years old, Storm Reyes was already working full time with other migrant farm workers in the fields outside Tacoma, Washington. One day, a bookmobile arrived and brought her new worlds —…