Category Archives: Politics

Audio: The Highlander School

Crowds surrounding the Reflecting Pool, during...

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Highlander has provided training and education for the labor movement in Appalachia and throughout the Southern United States. During the 1950s, it played a critical role in the American Civil Rights Movement. It trained civil rights leader Rosa Parks prior to her historic role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott, as well as providing training for many other movement activists including Martin Luther King, Jr., James Bevel, Bernard Lafayette, Ralph Abernathy and John Lewis in the mid- and-late 1950s. Listen to an NPR story about the school…

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Related: Employing Music in the Cause of Social Justice

Harry Bridges and the Formation of the ILWU

 

Bridges became the leader of San Francisco’s beleaguered dock workers and helped found the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). In the 1934 maritime strike, Bridges displayed his steadfastness by surviving relentless slanderous attacks on his character and principles, which in turn inspired broad numbers of port workers to follow his leadership… More>>

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Timeline: Algeria Since 1945

North Africa

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Today’s Times has a story about the relative calm in Algeria during the recent political contagion sweeping North Africa and the Middle East. It’s a bit surprising considering Algeria’s violent history since the end of WWII…

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Timeline: Vietnam Wars 1945 – 1975

Hồ Chí Minh (right) with Vo Nguyen Giap (left)...

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In the summer of 1945 the OSS Deer Team began working with Ho Chi Minh and his followers against the Japanese.

Thirty years later, after millions of casualties, the war finally came to an end when NVA troops rolled into Saigon. It had been a long and torturous ride for everyone who had lived through it. Read a chronological narrative of events…More>>