Author: Common Dreams

The white mobs did not care whom they killed as long as the victims were Black. They murdered people in public with guns and rocks. They set fire to houses and slaughtered families trying to escape the flames. In East St. Louis in July 1917, white vigilantes lynched Blacks with impunity. It was the prelude to what civil rights activist James Weldon Johnson would ultimately call Red Summer. The “red” referred to the blood that ran in the streets. The “summer” actually referred to the months from April to October 1919, when violence against African Americans peaked in this...

Trump’s call for the Proud Boys and other armed far-right paramilitaries to “stand by” has finally shed light on the real threat of physical intimidation around the election, to add to the threats of cyberattacks and abuses of the legal system. His call to arms is also a reminder why calling far-right domestic terrorists merely “vigilantes” minimizes and even trivializes the threat, for several reasons. A vigilante can be defined as “a member of a volunteer committee organized to suppress and punish crime summarily – as when the processes of law are viewed as inadequate,” or more broadly “a...

Progressive educators and historians fired back on September 18, a day after President Donald Trump took aim at the late historian Howard Zinn and the 1619 Project, and vowed to “restore patriotic education” in American schools he accused of teaching “hateful lies about this country.” Speaking on stolen Nacotchtank land just steps away from where Black slaves were bought and sold on the National Mall, Trump delivered an extraordinary Constitution Day address at the National Archives Museum full of patriotic platitudes and praise for the nation’s “glorious” history. The president — who lives in an executive mansion built by...