William J. Barber II, the pastor and activist behind “Moral Mondays,” is helping to lead a reinvigorated Poor People’s Campaign. In his new book, he explains why poverty is worse and more widespread than you think and all races need to unite to fight for the nation’s poor.
Terry Edmonds
Terry Edmonds is the former chief speechwriter for President Bill Clinton. A member of the Washington Monthly Board of Directors, he was a 2021 Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative (ALI) fellow and currently serves as a senior editor on the ALI Social Impact Review.
Posted inBooks
Confessions of an HBCU Grad
Attending one of America’s great historically Black colleges and universities changed my life. A new book shows that these institutions remain radically underfunded and academically underestimated.
Posted inBooks
Emancipation Relocation
In 1848, at a time when Black families were routinely ripped apart and Black bodies were bought and sold in public squares as chattel, a Black man and his mixed-race wife pulled off one of the most daring and ingenious feats of self-emancipation imaginable. Defying conventions of race, class, and gender, William and Ellen Craft […]
Posted inMagazine
Ten Days of Grace
A former White House speechwriter remembers a critical period that shaped the Obama presidency.
Posted inMagazine
Why We Need Speechwriters Who Look Like America
America’s first Black presidential speechwriter on how leaders can speak more effectively to a diversifying country.
Posted inMagazine
Captive Genius
Henry Louis Gates’s latest book, The Trials of Phillis Wheatley, is more than the story of America’s first black poet; it recounts the opening chapter in a struggle for literary and racial identity that began in the 18th century and continues to this day. Much like its title character, the book, though small in stature […]
Posted inMagazine
Cotton Comes to Harlem
I thought of that movie as I joined President Clinton and a cavalcade of former members of his administration at the recent opening of his post-presidential Harlem headquarters. In the wake of his overwhelming welcoming by the residents of Harlem, many pundits have speculated and some have outright insinuated that Bill Clinton has hoodwinked black […]
