To Fight Racism, Protect the Right to Vote

To Fight Racism, Protect the Right to Vote

The cold-blooded murder of nine people at a Charleston church made it impossible to deny the persistence of racism across the nation. So do the symbols of support for slavery and segregation that remain emblazoned on public property throughout the South, and scattered...
Flagging Hate Speech

Flagging Hate Speech

I’ve spent my whole life in the Northeast, but I have Southern roots. My late grandfather came from a long line of sharecroppers who toiled in the fields of Decatur, Georgia for generations. Their history of hardship was common in the South. Where my grandfather grew...
Obama’s Amazing Grace

Obama’s Amazing Grace

If Martin Luther King’s I Have A Dream speech is the 20th century equivalent of Abraham Lincoln’s magnificent Second Inaugural — and I think it is — then what President Barack Obama gave us in Charleston, South Carolina is our century’s Gettysburg Address. He gave a...
A Crime Against Humanity Sent Me to Harvard

A Crime Against Humanity Sent Me to Harvard

When I say publicly that I’m descended from slave owners, I almost always hear a gasp. I let the tension hang a moment and then I break it: “Well, someone has to be, right?” This usually gets a laugh, or at least a humph of recognition. Because many...