lynchings

Civil Rights

WEB Du Bois and the NAACP, Continuing the Fight For Civil Rights

10/26/2022 Bruce Strom 7

In our continuing series of blogs and videos on WEB Du Bois, we will now reflect on these questions, among others:
What role did he play in making the NAACP the leading black activist organization?
How did he increase awareness of civil rights issues among Americans?
What were the tensions between him and the NAACP?
When studying the life and career of WEB Du Bois, we can ask ourselves another key question:
Why was he such a contrarian? […]

Civil Rights

Tensions Between WEB Du Bois and Booker T Washington, Accommodation or Activism?

10/19/2022 Bruce Strom 2

As WEB Du Bois, our contrarian activist leader, rose in prominence in the black civil rights movement, he came into conflict with the accommodationist Booker T Washington, founder of Tuskegee Institute. While Booker T Washington always encouraged blacks be subservient and work hard and save their pennies so that someday their lives will improve, WEB Du Bois demanded dignity, civil rights, and real economic opportunity for blacks. […]

Civil Rights

Autobiography of WEB Du Bois: His Youth and School Years

10/14/2022 Bruce Strom 3

To understand WEB Du Bois, you must first know that he was truly an intellectual, you could almost say that he was incapable of pouring out his feelings; rather, he can instead deliver a thirty-minute soliloquy of his feelings, displaying little emotion. Indeed, this is how WEB Dubois describes his autobiography: “This book is the Soliloquy of an old man on what he dreams his life has been as he sees it slowly drifting away; and what he would like others to believe.” […]

Five Minute History

How Did Confessing Christians Tolerate Hitler? Excerpts From Post-War Interviews

09/23/2022 Bruce Strom 1

The war softened the hearts of many Germans. One German remembers shopping during the time of the brutal Allied bombing of Berlin, the “shopkeeper was talking to another customer whom she knew and said, ‘This is the punishment for what we’ve done to the Jews.’ And she dared to say that much, although I was a stranger in her shop.” […]

Five Minute History

WWII Lessons: What Happens When Politicians Promote Violence? Comparing Mussolini and Hitler to Trump

09/21/2022 Bruce Strom 0

The Fascist movements in Italy and Germany came to power with assistance by large gangs of fascist thugs who bullied, beat up, and sometimes murdered their opponents. These fascist thugs were drawn from the millions of veterans of the bloody fighting in the tranches of World War I. After assuming dictatorial powers Mussolini promised the Pope that he would reign in his thugs, but this was a promise he never fully kept, in part because these fascist gangs were hard to control, in part because he wanted to remind the Pope who was really in charge, who alone could rein in the gangs. […]