Public Writings

Civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer at the 1964 DNC. (Bettmann/Getty Images)

Select Publications

**Click here to read my bi-weekly MSNBC columns.

Fannie Lou Hamer: The Civil Rights Icon Who Embraced Youth Power,” Teen Vogue, November 23, 2021.

Black Political Rights Can’t Be Divorced From Economic Justice. Why Fannie Lou Hamer’s Message and Fight Endure Today,” Time Magazine, October 27, 2021.

The Long Brutality: Black Women and the struggle to end police violence,” The Baffler, May 5, 2021.

The uprisings of 2020 showed change is on the horizon,” Penguin UK Features, March 31, 2021.

We need to retell U.S. history with Black people at the center,” Fortune Magazine, February 11, 2021.

Black Women are Leading the Movement to End Police Violence,” The Washington Post, October 1, 2020.

The Struggle to End Racism is Global,” The American Historian Magazine, September 21, 2020.

Fannie Lou Hamer’s Dauntless Fight for Black Americans’ Right to Vote,” Smithsonian Magazine, August 20, 2020.

Civil Rights International: The Fight Against Racism Has Always Been Global,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 99, no. 5, September/October 2020.

John Lewis’ Fight for Equality Was Never Limited to Just the United States,” Time Magazine, July 21, 2020.

Destroying Confederate Monuments Isn’t ‘Erasing’ History. It’s Learning From It,” The Washington Post, June 19, 2020.

The Black Women Who Paved the Way for this Moment,” The Atlantic, June 9, 2020.

A Short History of Black Women and Police Violence,” The Conversation, June 12, 2020.

(With Tom Zoellner) “Riots, Mobs, Chaos: The Establishment Always Frames Change As Dangerous,” The Guardian, June 10, 2020.

Violence in Minneapolis is Rooted in the History of Racist Policing in America,” The Washington Post, May 30, 2020.

These Overlooked Black Women Shaped Malcolm X’s Life,” Time Magazine, February 24, 2020.

God Is Not Going to Put It in Your Lap.’ What Made Fannie Lou Hamer’s Message on Civil Rights So Radical—And So Enduring,” Time Magazine, October 4, 2019.

Tennessee Just Showed that White Supremacy is Alive and Well,” The Washington Post, June 15, 2019.

I Lifted Up Mine Eyes to Ghana: W.E.B Du Bois and Pan-Africanism,” Jacobin, August 27, 2018.

Ida B. Wells offered the solution to police violence more than 100 years ago,” The Washington Post, July 11, 2017.

(with Ibram X. Kendi), “How to Avoid a Post-Scholar America,” Chronicle of Higher Education, June 19, 2017.

Why We Must Remember: Reflecting on the Charleston Massacre One Year Later,” Huffington Post, June 17, 2016.

Black Women’s Votes Matter,” Huffington Post, November 12, 2015.