President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of 1965 while Martin Luther King and others look on

The Voting Rights Act 1965: Annotated

The passing of the Voting Rights Act in August 1965 prohibited the use of Jim Crow laws and discriminatory tests to disenfranchise Black voters.
An illustration of a ball and chain from Cummins Journal

Second Chance Month Brings New Awareness to Old Issues

Second Chance Month is new, but concerns about job prospects, losing the right to vote, and high recidivism rates for the formerly incarcerated are not.
Austin Community College Fall 2017 Commencement ceremonies on Thursday, December 14, 2017 at the Frank Erwin Center.

Affirmative Action: Foundations and Key Concepts

This non-exhaustive reading list discusses the origins of affirmative action, the question of race vs. class, and the effects of meritocracy.
A teenage girl kissing a teenage boy on the cheek

Media Representation and Interracial Couples

Recent years have seen increases in both interracial adolescent romances and portrayals of young interracial relationships. What's the connection?
13 Reasons Why

Can Fiction Really Spark Suicide?

The Netflix drama 13 Reasons Why is so powerful—and so controversial—it's sparked a national debate about teenage suicide.
Watts

Did The 1965 Watts Riots Change Anything?

Sociological data from immediately after the riots in Watts, Los Angeles, in 1965 show major disparities in attitude by race.
HTML

The Internet’s Baby Pictures, 25 Years After the Birth of the Web

Tim Berners-Lee set up HTML (hypertext markup language) and HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol) twenty-five years ago today.
Close range handgun

Why Do Some States Have Citizen Militias While Others Don’t?

The occupation of a wildlife refuge in Oregon and subsequent arrest of Ammon Bundy has once again drawn ...
Contemporary mansion

The Richest Places in America

What do the richest places in America look like?
Dr. Ossian Sweet
Courtesy of the Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library
http://digitalcollections.detroitpubliclibrary.org/islandora/object/islandora%3A143138

Dr. Ossian Sweet’s Black Life Mattered

It has been 90 years since Ossian Sweet tried to move into his new home; since police stood by and did nothing as a mob threw rocks.