Civil rights are the guaranteed freedoms and protections that ensure every person is treated equally under the law, regardless of race, gender, religion, disability, or other characteristics. These rights are the backbone of a fair and just society. They protect our ability to vote, access education, live free from discrimination, and fully participate in civic life. Examples include the right to a fair trial, the right to vote, freedom of speech and religion, and protection from discrimination in housing, employment, and education.
Why are civil rights so important? Because they make the ideals of democracy real. Without them, equality and freedom become privileges for the few rather than rights for all. Civil rights movements—past and present—continue to fight for these promises to be fulfilled, especially for communities that have long been marginalized.
This curated collection of podcast episodes explores the many dimensions of civil rights in America—from racial justice and LGBTQ+ equality to disability rights, voting access, immigration policy, and beyond. Through historical reflection and contemporary analysis, these stories offer insight into the enduring struggle for equity and the power of civic action to shape a more inclusive democracy.
Whether you're diving into the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education, revisiting the fight for voting rights, or learning how everyday people are reshaping public attitudes and laws, these episodes provide an honest, powerful look at where we’ve been, where we are, and what it will take to move forward.
“All Men are Created Equal,” but not everyone feels they are. Have we gone too far with insuring equality or not far enough? In “Created Equal + Breathing Free,” we’ll examine the straining of the central – and sometimes competing – principles of equality and freedom. Does your freedom threaten my equality? And does my equality limit your freedom? We’ll dive into the last year of struggle on racial issues, gay rights and the appropriate role of the law in both insuring equality and safeguarding freedom.
This episode is part of a 13-episode series of Village SquareCast which includes specially curated episodes that speak directly to the heart and soul of the American experiment — both its extraordinary achievements and its promise yet to be fulfilled.
In commemoration of the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education (1954), Matthew Delmont discusses the symbolic and practical significance of the landmark decision. Although it deemed legal segregation unconstitutional, Brown v. Board did not result in meaningful school integration right away. In fact, the decision represents the long history of civil rights, in which activists had to outflank intense political reluctance and backlash. Matthew Delmont is the Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Professor of History at Dartmouth College and a Guggenheim Fellow.
An expert on African American history and the history of civil rights, he has written five books: Half American (2022), Black Quotidian (2019), Why Busing Failed (2016), Making Roots (2016), and The Nicest Kids in Town (2012). His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, NPR, and several academic journals. Originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota, Delmont earned a BA from Harvard University and an MA and PhD from Brown University.
“Even though Humphrey adored FDR, he also could identify the big moral gap in the New Deal coalition and in the New Deal programs.”
Samuel G. Freedman is an award-winning professor of journalism at Columbia University and author of Into the Bright Sunshine: Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Rights. We dive into Humphrey’s activism in the proto civil rights movement and his role to include civil rights in Democratic Party platform in 1948.
Hubert Humphrey was a coalition builder. After his decisive win for mayor of Minneapolis, he put together a civil rights and human rights agenda that put Minneapolis on the national map as an example of what was best in America. He also engaged in deep work to change public attitudes. Humphrey understood as mayor that electing people to the council is crucial to passing laws. Pay attention to every race on the ballot!
Joyce Ladner was at the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi in the 1950s and 60s as a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). She was mentored by Medgar Evers, expelled from Jackson State University for participating in a sit-in, and failed Mississippi’s voter literacy test three times. She discusses those experiences with us, along with the disconnect between learning the principles of civics education knowing that some of them didn’t apply to her.
Joyce also describes how Emmett Till moved her generation to action, and how Trevon Martin is doing the same for a new generation of organizers. She visited Penn State to deliver the annual Barbara Jordan lecture, hosted by the Africana Research Center.
Judy Heumann joins The Great Battlefield podcast to talk about her role in the disability rights movement, being in the film "Crip Camp" and her memoir "Being Heumann".
The Human Rights Campaign declared a state of emergency for LGBTQ+ Americans for the first time in 2023. In state houses across the country, we are seeing legislation that targets the rights and dignity of LGBTQ+ people. Kelley Robinson discusses how these attacks are part of a broader antidemocratic movement in the US and why it is important to develop a more inclusive culture for our democracy.
Kelley Robinson is the president of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People of 2024. Prior to becoming the first Black, queer woman to lead HRC, she was the executive director of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. She has over 15 years of experience in campaign organizing, community building, and coalition building for society’s most underserved populations. She is also a Kettering Foundation Senior Fellow.
Imani Brooks, Policy Fellow with Legal Defense Fund (LDF), joins the podcast this month to give us an overview on State Voting Rights Acts (SVRAs) across the country. She and Chris discuss what SVRAs do, how to build a strong SVRA, and what you can do to help pass one in your state.
America is a democracy, but is that democracy accessible to every American? When the Constitution was ratified, only white men who owned property could vote, which was only 6% of the population. In the more than 200 years since then, many Americans are still being denied the right to have a say in key decisions that impact our lives.
In this episode Simone talks with Brittany Carter from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund about the history of voting rights, and how African Americans risked their lives and safety for the freedom to vote. Then, CLC lawyers Paul Smith and Danielle Lang explain what voting access looks like today, and what barriers still exist for many Americans including people with disabilities, people of color and those with felony convictions.
Peniel E. Joseph, author of The Third Reconstruction: America's Struggle for Racial Justice in the 21st Century, joins us this week to discuss how the era from Barack Obama's election to George Floyd's murder compare to the post-Civil War Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement.
Joseph argues that racial reckoning that unfolded in 2020 marked the climax of a Third Reconstruction: a new struggle for citizenship and dignity for Black Americans, just as momentous as the movements that arose after the Civil War and during the civil rights era. However, Chris Beem and Candis Watts Smith are not so sure he's right about that conclusion. We hope you'll listen to the arguments and think critically about where you land on the question of whether America has experienced or is in the midst of a Third Reconstruction.
Joseph is based at the University of Texas at Austin, where he holds the following titles: Associate Dean for Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Barbara Jordan Chair in Ethics and Political Values, Professor of History and Public Affairs, and Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy. His career focus has been on "Black Power Studies," which encompasses interdisciplinary fields such as Africana studies, law and society, women's and ethnic studies and political science. He is a frequent commentator on issues of race, democracy and civil rights.
Host Maren Machles learns more about people’s experiences in ICE detention by talking with formerly detained activist Berto Hernandez and traveling to El Paso, Texas, to hear directly from people who were recently released from ICE facilities. She explores how immigration laws and one anti-terrorism law from the 1990s influenced the current political landscape and helped create the conditions that led to the mass detention of migrants. And she unpacks an exclusive POGO investigation that reveals ICE’s dangerous overreliance on solitary confinement.
To dig into what it’s really like interacting with ICE, Maren talks with Berto Hernandez, Oderwuil Esteban Marval Rivas, Joseph Olivas, and Diego Andres. She learns how activists are trying to help by meeting up with Las Americas Director of Cross Border Strategies Crystal Sandoval. Law professor César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, from The Ohio State University, breaks down how government policies altered today’s political landscape, and POGO Senior Investigator Nick Schwellenbach outlines his investigation on solitary confinement in ICE detention.
In this week’s episode of Politics In Question, Megan Ming Francis joins Julia, Lee, and James to discuss racism and the potential for political reform. Francis is a Visiting Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington. She specializes in the study of American politics, with broad interests in criminal punishment, black political activism, philanthropy, and the post-civil war South. Francis is the author of Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State (Cambridge University Press, 2014).
Is racial justice possible in America? Or is racism too baked-in to our politics to eliminate? What impact does activism have on American political institutions? How important is money in helping organizations facilitate change at the local, state, and national levels? Why is our political imagination and sense of possibility so important to making political reform a reality? These are some of the questions Megan, Julia, Lee, and James discuss on this week’s episode.
Sixty years ago in his most famous speech, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of his vision of an America transformed. "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character," he said.
Was this an argument for a color-blind society, or should racism be thought of as structural and systematic? Ibram X. Khendi, author of the best-selling book, "How To Be An AntiRacist", argues that "the most threatening racist movement" is the drive for race-neutrality. Our guest, Bion Bartning, argues that instead of emphasizing our common humanity, the approach of Kendhi and others lumps people into simplistic racial groupings.
Bartning founded the non-profit group, The Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR). In its mission statement, FAIR calls for "advancing civil rights and liberties for all Americans, and promoting a common culture based on fairness, understanding and humanity."
"Really, we should be anti-racism, the ideology, and not anti-racist, the individual," Bartning tells us. He calls for a pro-human approach. "There is a burning need to reaffirm the core principles of the civil rights movement... integration, healing divisions and moving forward together as one people." He says that in recent years a different form of anti-racism has emerged that goes against these ideas.
Bartning launched FAIR after pulling his two children out of one of New York City's most prestigious private schools because he thought that the new anti-racist curriculum was encouraging kids to look at themselves and others primarily through the lens of race and see the world in a pessimistic, grievance-oriented way. We discuss his personal story and ideas in this episode.
Mike talks with Juliet Hooker, the Royce Family Professor of Teaching Excellence in Political Science at Brown University. Professor Hooker is a political theorist specializing in racial justice and has authored multiple books, the latest of which is Black Grief/White Grievance: The Politics of Loss, which is the topic of their discussion.
Topics Mike and Juliet Cover Include:
– the meaning of Black grief and white grievance
– justified and unjustified political loss
– why the context of a loss is important
– differing responses to political loss
– the baseline entitlement assumptions of whites in America
– the politics of refusal
– racism and the narrowing of the political imagination
– the ‘dominant official romantic narrative’ of the civil rights movement
– repairing vs salvaging American democracy
– reasons for optimism
Engaging in civil discourse. Inspiring civic engagement. Exploring the future of our democracy.
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