Clint Smith
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National Archive/Newsmakers/ Getty The Infrastructure Bill Should Look After Our Future, and Our Past
It’s time for a new Federal Writers’ Project.
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Adam Maida / The Atlantic Restoring Pell Grants—And Possibilities—for Prisoners
Classes inside prison give people a sense of community, a sense of purpose, a sense of identity, and a sense of hope.
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Photograph by Aaron Turner; archival image from Library … Stories of Slavery, From Those Who Survived It
The Federal Writers’ Project narratives provide an all-too-rare link to our past.
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Virgnia Department of Corrections / AP Trump Is Putting the Machinery of Death Into Overdrive
After 17 years without a federal execution in the United States, the Trump administration has gone on what can only be called a killing spree.
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Mike Theiler / Reuters The Whole Story in a Single Photo
An image from the Capitol captures the distance between who we purport to be and who we have actually been.
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Brynn Anderson / AP Black Voters Understood What the Stakes Were
For those who remember the history of disenfranchisement, what happened in Georgia was especially poignant.
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Library of Congress / Getty In 1864, Like in 2020, America Just Got Lucky
The arc of history does not bend inevitably toward justice. Sometimes, Americans barely avoid disaster.
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Vahram Muradyan Teaching Should Be Political
How to talk about race in the classroom
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Nuccio DiNuzzo / Getty Let the Incarcerated Vote
The bodies of people in America’s prisons are counted in the design of our political infrastructure, but their voices are not.
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Smithsonian / Getty New Orleans’s Football Stadium Reflects the State of the City
When I was young, the Superdome was full of joyful chaos. Then Katrina hit, and filled it with despair. Now the stands at Saints games are hauntingly empty.
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Bettmann / Getty Telling the Truth About Slavery Is Not ‘Indoctrination’
Our country is made better, not worse, by young people reckoning with the full legacy of the institution.
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Getty / Arsh Raziuddin / The Atlantic Chadwick Boseman Gave Us Something We Had Not Had Before
He brought King T’Challa to life in a way that transfixed the world and spoke uniquely to Black Americans.
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Illustration by Mark Harris; Mark Summerfield / Alamy; … Taking My Children to See Frederick Douglass
How a visit to his birthplace helped me understand this moment of rage, reckoning, and possibility
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Gordon Parks / Gordon Parks Foundation Becoming a Parent in the Age of Black Lives Matter
When the Movement for Black Lives began, I did not have children. Now the fight means more to me—coupled with fears that are even deeper.
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Charles Krupa / AP Elite Colleges Constantly Tell Low-Income Students That They Do Not Belong
Unwritten rules underlie all of elite-university life—and students who don’t come from a wealthy background have a hard time navigating them.
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Associated Press Martin Luther King Jr. Was Bailed Out by a Millionaire
Incarcerated people today aren’t so lucky.
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Tom Mihalek / Reuters The New Tax Law’s Subtle Subversion of Public Schools
The law will facilitate private-school attendance and put more obstacles in front of the neediest students.
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Reuters The Lifelong Learning of Lifelong Inmates
If reducing recidivism is the goal of prison education, what can be gained from teaching those who will be behind bars for life?
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