Category: Politics

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Al's Place in Mineola,from a 1936 Postcard marking the Texas Centennial. Willie Lewis Brown, father of Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, is third from left standing at attention in a white duck jacket. In an interview 57 years later, he said he remembered holding the tray that day. "I wanted to have something in my hand to show I was a waiter."

Willie Brown: The Early Years

Dallas, Texas-On a drizzly January morning earlier this year, a crowd of politicians and lobbyists from California jammed into the Good Street Baptist Church, a modest brick building in the heart of Dallas’s black neighborhood. The power elite of the nation’s most populous state had

David Duke, rear, salutes a burning cross at a Klan rally in Euless, Texas in 1979, the year he said he left the KKK. Duke, a Republican, won a house seat in Louisiana by 227 votes, ran for governor and threw the state party into disarray over whether to support him or not. Photo by APF Fellow Vince Heptig.

How David Duke and the Born-Agains Wrecked Louisiana’s GOP

Louisiana has a spectacular history of corruption, most of it by Democrats. Disgust with that legacy animated Republican leaders, who took party organization as seriously as their rock ribbed conservatism. They had to. Outnumbered 3-to-1 by Democrats, Republicans held few offices until the 1980s, when

Hundreds of youths marched on Lexington Avenue on July 17, 1964 to the 67th Street police station to protest the death of James Powell, who was killed the night before by a police lieutenant. Photo by AP Wide World Photos

How a Campaign for Racial Trust Turned Sour

Glamorous young mayor John Lindsay had been in office all of two months when he threw down the gauntlet on the issue of civilian police review. The occasion, in February 1966, was the inauguration of a new police chief, a man known to be committed

Protests in Harlem in 1964 erupted after policeman Thomas Gilligan shot a 15-year-old black youth, James Powell, to death on July 16th. Gilligan said the shooting was self-defense. The killing precipitated several days of violence in Harlem. Photo by AP Wide World Photos

How a Campaign for Racial Trust Turned Sour

Glamorous young mayor John Lindsay had been in office all of two months when he threw down the gauntlet on the issue of civilian police review. The occasion, in February 1966, was the inauguration of a new police chief, a man known to be committed