Harry Belafonte's "My Song" is in many ways just this sort of conventional celebrity memoir. What distinguishes it -- and elevates it to excellence -- is the quality of experience that the book chronicles. Belafonte's Brush with Death isn't an overdose in a suite at the Chateau Marmont, it's a high-speed escape with Sidney Poitier from the Ku Klux Klan to deliver a suitcase filled with tens of thousands of dollars to support civil rights activists in Mississippi. His Big Break isn't a record label intern discovering his demo at the bottom of a box of unsolicited tapes, it's walking onstage for his first gig to find that his backup band consists of jazz immortals Max Roach, Al Haig, Tommy Potter and Charlie Parker. His Happily Ever After isn't a series of Billboard and box office hits, famous paramours and big paychecks (though he enjoys all of these in abundance), it's a lifelong commitment to the cause of civil rights, both at home and abroad.

Continue Reading...

The New Black Panther Party is a cartoonish fringe group of a couple guys who play "'60s radical" dress-up and say mean things about whitey for Fox cameras in order to scare old white people. They have been explicitly rejected by the old Black Panther Party. For some reason, various conservatives have dedicated themselves to proving that this weird, marginal group of Nation of Islam cast-offs is somehow supported by or deeply connected to the Democratic Party and the Obama administration in particular, because, you know, Eric Holder and Barack Obama, those are two guys who very obviously share the values of extremist anti-white proponents of racial separation.

Continue Reading...

Here, in no particular order, are some of my "favorite" Politico comments on the story.

"J.O.B.S." writes:

Continue Reading...

On some sort of weird basement public access Christian talk show, Santorum said President Obama should support banning abortion because he is black.

Take it away, Rick:

Continue Reading...

That's why something like Sarah Palin claiming to be a victim of "blood libel" doesn't raise an eyebrow among the true believers. It's the myth that keeps the checks rolling in for most right-wingers. The liberals are all-powerful and they oppress us.

It's especially rich coming from Palin, obviously. The only thing the former governor seems to enjoy more than attacking her political opponents is acting like the entire world is aligned against her and her poor family. A tasteless joke from a late night comedian isn't simply part of the cost of living a public life, it's more proof that a cabal of liberal elites is devoted to the relentless persecution of innocent conservative Americans. (Part of the game involves purposefully conflating criticism from media figures with organized political attacks. What, after all, is the true difference between David Letterman and the DNC? They're all liberals.)

Continue Reading...

In interviews Barbour doesn’t have much to say about growing up in the midst of the civil rights revolution. “I just don’t remember it as being that bad,” he said. “I remember Martin Luther King came to town, in ’62. He spoke out at the old fairground and it was full of people, black and white.”

Asked about the first quote in that passage, Ferguson told me: "I don't think that he meant segregation wasn't that bad. I think he meant that it didn't roil the town the way some people might think it did." He added: "I get the sense that [Barbour] himself was just kind of oblivious. He was a fun loving football player, probably chasing skirts and all that."

Continue Reading...

The Senate voted Saturday to end the 17-year ban on openly gay troops, overturning the Clinton-era policy known as "don't ask, don't tell."

"It's one step in a very long process of becoming an equal rights citizen," said Warren Arbury of Savannah, Ga., who served in the Army for seven years, including three combat tours, before being kicked out two years ago under the policy. He said he planned to re-enlist once the policy is abolished.

"Even though this is really huge, I look at it as a chink in a very, very long chain," he added.

The ruling drew quick rebuke from foes of lifting the ban who argued that the military shouldn't be used to expand the rights of gays and that allowing them to serve openly would hurt troop morale and a unit's ability fight.

Supporters declared the vote a civil rights milestone.

Aaron Belkin, director of the California-based Palm Center -- a think tank on the issue -- said the vote "ushers in a new era in which the largest employer in the United States treats gays and lesbians like human beings."

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

Chile Powder

Makes about ½ cup

We'll get started by making some chile powder. It's not really necessary, but the powder you make will be better than the stuff you buy. These dried ancho, arbol and pequin peppers are easy to find in the Hispanic aisle of your local Piggly Wiggly. You might have to order the cascabels and chipotles. Or substitute other peppers. You can make your powder as spicy or mild as you like, or alternatively, you can just jazz up the powder you buy with some additional peppers.

Continue Reading...

Salon spoke to Taylor Branch, Pulitzer Prize-winning civil rights historian and scholar of mass political movements, about Stewart's role in popular culture and politics and what benefits and risks the rally holds for him. (We also asked Branch about the controversial New York Times Op-Ed he recently penned expressing sympathy for Glenn Beck's 8/28 "Restoring Honor" rally.)

What do you think the goal of Stewart's rally is?

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

As the date grew near there was much chatter on the street to the effect that malcontents from far and wide intended to disrupt the event -- or worse. We, of course, were going to make sure they'd have to go through us first. This would, in the best case scenario, have resulted in a terribly bloody skirmish or perhaps numerous ones; in the worst, we'd all go down in a blaze of glory and there would be a riot of proportions not seen in the Republic, or at least its capital, in anyone's memory.

Continue Reading...

What got the Journal blogger so wound up (along with others in the wingersphere) was my assertion that bigoted language uttered by the likes of Glenn Beck and Laura Ingraham has been echoed in racist “games” targeting President Obama on the Jersey Shore and in the Lehigh Valley this summer. What irked him even more was my suggestion that conservatives should at last repudiate such ugliness rather than encourage it.

Responding to those observations, Taranto accused me of misconstruing satire, tearing phrases from context, yearning for the '60s and, worst of all, lacking a sense of humor. No doubt he is among the most formidable wits on the right, but we just don’t share the same idea of funny. Unlike him, for instance, I wasn’t amused by the right-wing smear of Shirley Sherrod.

Continue Reading...

Certainly, the right-wing pundits who've taken to Fox News to attack the NAACP have warped the story. Glenn Beck has laughed off the notion of Martin Luther King as a radical. "The Civil Rights Movement," Beck says, "has been co-opted by progressives." He's horrified by the idea that "you need civil unrest in order to meet demands" -- apparently forgetting that civil unrest is pretty literally what the Civil Rights Movement was. For guys like Beck, black people on the receiving end of fire-hoses and police dogs were sticking up for free enterprise. As he put it, "It's the same rights that Abraham Lincoln and blacks and whites fought for in the Civil War. Those were the same rights that King fought for. Tonight, we're going to talk about those rights, individual rights." So, Lincoln and King: proto-libertarian individualists. Bull Connor and George Wallace, on the other hand? Probably liberal fascists. (Remember, they were Democrats!)

Continue Reading...

Chief U.S. Judge Vaughn Walker has given them a list of 39 questions he expects answered before he delivers his verdict.

After a months-long hiatus, Walker is scheduled to wrap the trial up on Wednesday.

Among Walker's questions for lawyers representing gay rights advocates and Proposition 8's sponsors are whether there is any proof that allowing gay men and lesbians to wed would reduce discrimination against them.

He also wants to know whether limiting marriage to a man and a woman improves the odds that children will be raised by a married mom and dad.

Continue Reading...

He supports the Civil Rights Act, he says. And he loves (and quotes) Martin Luther King.

According to Paul, the most pressing issue of 2010 -- the modern civil rights movement, if you will -- is protecting "the rights of people to be free from a nanny state." Just let that one sink in for a bit. Calorie counts on menus is Jim Crow redux and Michael Bloomberg is a modern-day Bull Connor:

Now the media is twisting my small government message, making me out to be a crusader for repeal of the Americans for Disabilities Act and The Fair Housing Act. Again, this is patently untrue. I have simply pointed out areas within these broad federal laws that have financially burdened many smaller businesses.

For example, should a small business in a two-story building have to put in a costly elevator, even if it threatens their economic viability? Wouldn’t it be better to allow that business to give a handicapped employee a ground floor office? We need more businesses and jobs, not fewer.

Continue Reading...

These guys are Kentucky Democrats. I can only imagine how Rand would go about appealing to Kentucky Republicans.

Continue Reading...

Interior Ministry spokeswoman Sabine Haddad said Chomsky was turned away for "various reasons" but declined to elaborate. Chomsky was trying to cross the Allenby Bridge from Jordan. He was scheduled to deliver a lecture at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank.

Haddad said her ministry was looking into allowing him to enter only the West Bank.

Chomsky told Channel 10 TV from Jordan Sunday: "I've often spoken at Israeli universities."

Chomsky is one of Israel's harshest academic critics. After Israel's 2009 war in Gaza, he was quoted as saying, "supporters of Israel are in reality supporters of its moral degeneration."

Continue Reading...

Thomas Hagan, the last man still serving time in the 1965 killing, was freed from a Manhattan prison where he spent two days a week under a work-release program, state Department of Correctional Services spokeswoman Linda Foglia said.

Hagan, 69, has said he was one of three gunmen who shot Malcolm X as he began a speech at Harlem's Audubon Ballroom on Feb. 21, 1965. But Hagan has said the two men convicted with him were not involved.

They maintained their innocence and were paroled in the 1980s. No one else has ever been charged.

The assassins gunned down Malcolm X out of anger at his split with the leadership of the Nation of Islam, the black Muslim movement for which he had once served as chief spokesman, said Hagan, who was then known as Talmadge X Hayer.

He has repeatedly expressed regret for his role in the assassination, which he described in a 2008 court filing as the deed of a young man who "acted out of rage on impulse and loyalty" to religious leaders.

"I've had a lot of time, a heck of a lot of time, to think about it," Hagan told a parole board last month, according to a transcript of the interview.

Continue Reading...

Civil rights advocates have vowed to challenge the law in court, saying it would undoubtedly lead to racial profiling. The Rev. Al Sharpton said that just as freedom riders battled segregation in the 1960s, he would organize "freedom walkers" to challenge the Arizona bill.

"We will go to Arizona when this bill goes into effect and walk the streets with people who refuse to give identification and force arrest," Sharpton said Sunday in New York

Gov. Jan Brewer signed the bill into law Friday. It requires police to question people about their immigration status -- including asking for identification -- if they suspect someone is in the country illegally. The law also toughens restrictions on hiring illegal immigrants for day labor and knowingly transporting them.

Supporters have dismissed concerns of racial profiling, saying the law prohibits the use of race or nationality as the sole basis for an immigration check. Brewer has ordered state officials to develop a training course for officers to learn what constitutes reasonable suspicion someone is in the U.S. illegally.

Continue Reading...