Democracy

America@250: Nikole Hannah-Jones on Patriotism and Heroes

Image credit: Kettering Foundation This blog post excerpts the transcript of Alex Lovit interviewing Nikole Hannah-Jones in May 2026. Image credit: Kettering Foundation This interview is the conclusion of our three-part series called Democracy Under Construction. We’ve been commemorating America’s 250th by examining US history and asking where our patriotism should lie, who we should be lifting up as national heroes, and how history helps us find a path toward a more inclusiv

Gina Greenlee, Author

29 minutes ago6 min read

America@250: Then They Came for Us

Image Credit: Young evacuees of Japanese ancestry await relocation at Turlock, California, May 2, 1942. LMU Magazine On Feb. 19, 1942, Executive Order 9066 was issued by President Franklin Roosevelt. It authorized the incarceration (internment) of U.S. citizens of Japanese descent. About 122,000 people were sent to concentration camps. With rare exceptions, many of their homes, businesses, and farms were confiscated by banks, local governments, and speculators. Image Credit:

Gina Greenlee, Author

6 days ago2 min read

America@250: Olympic Pride, American Prejudice

At the 1936 Olympics, in Berlin, Germany, 18 African American’s challenged discrimination on the world stage. And won eight gold medals. It wasn’t only Jesse Owens, you ask? Nope. The American narrative of the 1936 Olympics is about one Black athlete named Jesse Owens. Like most narratives, there’s more to the story. ◊ ◊ ◊ The documentary, “Olympic Pride, American Prejudice explores the experiences of 18 African American Olympians who defied Jim Crow and Adolf Hitle

Gina Greenlee, Author

Aug 231 min read

America@250: A Conversation With Native Americans on Race

Image credit: New York Times In this short Opinion Documentary, what the New York Times, calls an “Op-Doc,” the media outlet asks, “What does it mean to be a Native American today?” ln their “latest installment of The Times’s Conversation on Race project, they set out to include as many perspectives on native identity as possible. And there are many perspectives.” “For this film, we spoke to dark-skinned and light-skinned individuals. Those whose ancestry ranges from one-si

Gina Greenlee, Author

Aug 161 min read

America@250: Voting, Free Speech, Right to Protest

What happens when America’s most fundamental values are put to the test? In Breaking the Deadlock: How to Fix an Election, moderator Aaron Tang (UC Davis School of Law) guides a diverse group of influential voices through an unfolding hypothetical crisis they’ve never seen before. What begins as a localized infrastructure threat quickly escalates, spilling into a high-stakes national moment involving an upcoming election, voting rights, and questions of national security. A

Gina Greenlee, Author

Aug 91 min read

America@250: Howard Zinn “We Should Be Honest About the History of Our Country”

Amy Goodman of Democracy Now: “We end today’s show with the words of the late historian Howard Zinn. We’re turning back now to 2009 when Howard Zinn appeared on Democracy Now, less than a year before he died. He’d just published A Young People’s History Of The United States. “I asked him to respond to a question he’d frequently been asked about his work: Is it right to be so critical of the government’s policies of the traditional heroes of the country?” Howard: It’s true t

Gina Greenlee, Author

Aug 23 min read

America@250: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror at the National Peace and Justice Memorial

Image credit: National Memorial of Peace and Justice dedicated to lynching, Equal Justice Initiative. The National Memorial documents the most active era of racial terror lynchings from 1877 to 1950 including Emmett Till. On a hilltop overlooking Montgomery is the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. It is the first public reflection space to acknowledge the history of racial terror lynchings in America; the nation’s first comprehensive memorial dedicated to the legacy of

Gina Greenlee, Author

Jul 269 min read

America@250: South Africa and Germany Inspire Narrative History Design at Montgomery’s Legacy Sites

Image credit: Legacy Museum Image credit: Equal Justice Initiative “When I moved to Montgomery, Alabama, in the 1980s there were 59 monuments and memorials to the Confederacy,” says Bryan Stevenson. “You could not find the word slave slavery or enslavement anywhere in the city landscape. And the absence of any acknowledgment of that history bothered me. I saw it as a problem, but it wasn’t a priority then. It wasn’t a focus then. “I was focused on trying to get people who w

Gina Greenlee, Author

Jul 194 min read

America@250: Bryan Stevenson on a New Narrative Landscape

Image credit: Legacy Museum Image credit: Equal Justice Initiative Renowned human rights attorney Bryan Stevenson, Founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative, reflects on why efforts to erase or soften Black history are intensifying, how fear and false narratives have shaped American law and culture for generations, and why preserving historical truth is essential to the country’s future. Image credit: The Grio In the Grio interview excerpted in this blog

Gina Greenlee, Author

Jul 125 min read

America@250: Author Isabel Wilkerson Honors Juneteenth 2026

Image credit: https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth124054/ “246 years. Nearly two and a half centuries. That is how long slavery lasted in what is now the United States of America,” wrote Isabel Wilkerson on Facebook in June 2026. “This is the day that we commemorate the moment that the last enslaved Americans were finally freed in the slavery stronghold of Texas on June 19, 1865. They had toiled for two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation and mon

Gina Greenlee, Author

Jul 52 min read