Mar 15th, 2005 · During the upheaval of the civil rights era, the U.S. president and the nation's leading agitator had a little-known, behind-the-scenes relationship. Michele Norris talks to Nick Kotz, author of Judgment Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr. and the Laws that Changed America.
Mar 9th, 2005 · A Civil War battle of Ball's Bluff, near Leesburg, Va., forms the backdrop for the opening scene of Geraldine Brooks' new novel, March. Its principal character, Capt. March, becomes undone by the evils of war and his own moral shortcomings.
Mar 9th, 2005 · From his pulpit at the New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit, the Rev. C.L. Franklin became one of the most important African-American preachers involved in the civil rights movement. Singing in a Strange Land is a new biography of Franklin.
Mar 7th, 2005 · Thousands of people crossed Alabama's Edmund Pettus Bridge on Sunday to commemorate "Bloody Sunday" and the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march for civil rights. NPR's Ed Gordon speaks with Ameila Boynton, who participated in the first march and also in Sunday's commemoration, and two young activists who marched on Sunday -- Brenda Davenport, director of programs and development for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Kevin Peterson, executive director for the New Democracy Coalition based in Boston, Mass.
Mar 7th, 2005 · Monday marks the 40th anniversary of the infamous "Bloody Sunday" in Alabama, when hundreds of civil rights demonstrators -- black and white -- were brutally beaten as they attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala. The incident and the subsequent march led by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. influenced the signing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Mar 6th, 2005 · Forty years ago today, a civil rights march to Montgomery, Ala., erupted into violence at the Pettus Bridge, where police erected a blockade. The incident, now known as "Bloody Sunday," left 50 marchers hospitalized after police used tear gas, whips and clubs against them. NPR's Jennifer Ludden speaks with one of the march leaders, Rev. Frederick Douglas Reese.
Mar 4th, 2005 · In the '50s, a group of Montgomery, Ala., women baked goods to help fund the Montgomery bus boycott. Known as The Club from Nowhere, the group was led by Georgia Gilmore, one of the unsung heroes of the civil rights era.
Mar 4th, 2005 · President Bush taps a career civil servant and biologist to become the next head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Stephen Johnson has worked at the EPA for 24 years, most recently as the agency's acting head. He will be the first career EPA official to head the agency.