Curated playlist
American anti-racism activists
- LeBron JamesLeBron James led Cleveland back from a 3-1 Finals deficit, a first in NBA history. It ended a 52-year title wait.
- Orson WellesOrson Welles burned ten reels of his own Don Quixote film. He felt the 1969 Moon landings made its ending obsolete.
- Martin Luther King Jr.Martin Luther King Jr. died at the age of 39, yet his autopsy showed the heart of a 60 year old, according to his biographer Taylor Branch. Branch attributed the damage to stress. The causes were many. King was jailed repeatedly, attacked…
- Elizabeth WarrenElizabeth Warren began her bankruptcy research thinking most filers were gaming the system. She found abuse was rare.
- Muhammad AliMuhammad Ali refused three times to step forward for his Army induction in 1967. He lost his boxing title that same day.
- Malcolm XMalcolm X left the Nation of Islam in 1964 and flew to Mecca. There he saw Muslims of all colors treated as equals.
- Kendrick LamarKendrick Lamar won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2018, the first for a piece outside classical and jazz.
- Tupac ShakurTupac Shakur wrote and recorded the album The Don Killuminati in three days. Mixing took four more.
- Joan BaezJoan Baez was singing at a music festival called Bratislavská lýra in Communist Czechoslovakia in May 1989 when someone cut off her microphone. From the stage, she had just greeted members of Charter 77, a dissident human-rights group.…
- W. E. B. Du BoisW. E. B. Du Bois died in Ghana the day before the March on Washington. He was 95 and had renounced his U.S. citizenship.
- Angela DavisAngela Davis was on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list, then acquitted by an all-white jury.
- Cornel WestYale punished Cornel West for a protest arrest by canceling his 1987 spring leave. He then commuted to Paris to teach.