President [Barack] Obama is a man who had certain advantages because of the civil rights movement.

The civil rights movement didn't deal with the issue of political disenfranchisement in the Northern cities. It didn't deal with the issues that were happening in places like Detroit, where there was a deep process of deindustrialization going on. So you have this response of angry young people, with a war going on in Vietnam, a poverty program that was insufficient, and police brutality. All these things gave rise to the black power movement. The black power movement was not a separation from the civil rights movement, but a continuation of this whole process of democratization.

The progressive movement against the war of occupation in Iraq is a reason for hope, as is resistance to free trade agreements in Latin America. Those are moments that we have to celebrate: that people still find the resolve and energy to resist

Im a child of the Civil Rights Movement.

Yes, (Bush is a) racist. We all knew that but the world is only finding it out now. As Texas's governor, Bush led a penitentiary system that executed more people than all the other U.S. states together. And most of the people who died from (the) death penalty were Afro-Americans or Hispanics. (Bush) promoted a Conservative program, designed to eliminate everything Americans had accomplished so far in matters of race and equality.

Popular literature and culture used to reflect people's aspirations, pain, and passion. All those particular things are no longer available to us.

Freedom Summer, the massive voter education project in Mississippi, was 1964. I graduated from high school in 1965. So becoming active was almost a rite of passage.