The Struggle for a Latino Place in Chicago

Like Their Black Neighbors, Mexican Americans Fought for Decades to Access Restricted Housing and Urban Space

In June of 1966, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference headed north to Chicago to lead the Chicago Freedom Movement in a series of marches through all-white neighborhoods intended to take aim at the city’s deeply-entrenched residential segregation.

They marched through Gage Park and the surrounding neighborhoods of Chicago’s Southwest Side, where rows of bungalow homes provided a perfect visual. The modest houses were within buying reach for many Black families, but decades-old restrictions and discriminatory practices by real estate agents barred African Americans from purchasing …

by Mike Amezcua | April 10, 2023

‘Sharp and Subversive’ Scenes of Integrated 1940s Summer Camps

Gordon Parks’s Photos of Black and White Kids at Play Resisted Segregation in Nature and Beyond by Presenting a Vision of America as He Hoped It Could Be

by Amanda Martin-Hardin | July 23, 2020

One day in 1923, three white boys pushed 11-year-old Gordon Parks into the Marmaton River in rural Kansas. Parks couldn’t swim and he tumbled under the surface, the current pushing …

Why Living in College Dorms Is an American Rite of Passage

Since the 17th Century, Educators Have Designed Housing to Create ‘Morally Conscious Citizens’

by Carla Yanni | September 8, 2019

Zócalo’s editors are diving into our archives and throwing it back to some of our favorite pieces. This week: For many years, American college …

The African American ‘Hidden Figures’ Who Desegregated the South’s Public Libraries

In Jackson, Blacks Endured Beatings and Dog Attacks to Gain Entrance, While in Birmingham They Used Sit-Ins to State Their Case

by Wayne A. Wiegand and Shirley A. Wiegand | October 16, 2018

Historians of the civil rights era, between 1954 and 1968, have crafted an impressive body of literature focusing on the resolve of young black community activists who bravely resisted racial …

The Black Freedom Colonies of Appalachia Where Former Slaves ‘Could Speak Their Minds’

Though Their Stories Are Still Overlooked, African Americans in Mountain Communities Like Liberia, South Carolina Are Emerging From History

by John M. Coggeshall | October 4, 2018

Beneath the brush on the sloping hillside facing the Blue Ridge Mountains in upper Pickens County, South Carolina, lay a hand-carved soapstone tombstone bearing a simple inscription: Chanie Kimp/Died/Aug. 6, …

Why the Enigmatic ‘Turks’ of South Carolina Still Struggle to Belong in America

For Generations, a Mysterious Ethnic Group Was Shunned, but New Research Sheds Light on Its Revolutionary War Origins

by Glen Browder and Terri Ann Ognibene | September 24, 2018

Sumter County is located in South Carolina’s midlands, about an hour and a half from the Atlantic coastline in one direction and from the Blue Ridge Mountains in the other. …

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