The Tragedy of Bayard Rustin

How one of the greatest American socialists ended up on the wrong side of history.

A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin Have a Model for Today

Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph’s Jobs and Freedom Strategy offers a path forward for a Left that has become increasingly insular, minoritarian, and powerless.

Bayard Rustin Showed the Promise and Pitfalls of Coalition Politics

At the height of a calamitous war presided over by a Democratic president, the brilliant socialist organizer Bayard Rustin tried to forge a mass coalition to deliver progressive change. His failure to do so in the 1960s tells us much about building one today.

Rustin the Liberal Biopic Versus Rustin the Labor Activist

Netflix’s new feel-good Bayard Rustin biopic, Rustin, claims the civil rights hero has been forgotten because of his sexuality. But it was his fiery and provocative class politics that makes him both controversial and prophetic today.

The Unfulfilled Promise of the Freedom Budget

Activist and organizer Norman Hill was present for every major development in the civil rights movement during the 1960s. He spoke to Jacobin about the arc of the movement, the legacy of its leadership, and the lessons for the modern left.

The Soapbox Issue 30

Socialists Organized in the 1950s Civil Rights Movement

In 1950s America, the Cold War was raging, but socialists were playing key roles in the early civil rights movement. We can’t afford to let that radical history be sanitized.

It’s Their Party

A generation ago, socialists and civil rights activists tried to transform the Democratic Party. Why did they fail?

MLK’s Story Behind “I Have a Dream”

Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech, like much of MLK’s legacy, is selectively remembered. It attacked the material roots of American racism, just as his anti–Vietnam War speech five years later excoriated American militarism.

Why Liberals Separate Race from Class

The tendency to divorce racial disparities from economic inequality has a long liberal lineage.

Why the Uncommitted Movement Was a Success at the DNC

Political strategist Waleed Shahid explains why the Uncommitted movement’s organizing at the Democratic National Convention should be seen as successfully moving the needle within the Democratic Party toward justice for Palestine.

The Purveyor of Half Measures

What Black Life Actually Looks Like

For too long, the Left has organized based on caricatures of black political life. If it wants to win, it needs to start recognizing the role of class in black America.

The March on Washington Advanced a Radical Vision for Society That Remains Unfulfilled

Sixty years ago today, hundreds of thousands gathered at the Washington Mall, where they heard Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Since then, we’ve beaten a retreat from the march’s vision of racial and economic justice.

Making Freedom a Fact

Economic justice has always been at the core of black freedom struggles in the US.

The Forgotten Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks may be lionized for her defiance on the bus, but that episode doesn’t do justice to her career as an organizer.

Debating Black Freedom

A look back at Liberator, an anticolonial magazine that operated during a golden age for black radical publications.

A. J. Muste Was a Prophet of the 20th-Century US Left

This Easter, we should remember the rich tradition of Christian socialism in the US. And one of that tradition’s most important figures is the radical leader A. J. Muste, whose religious faith animated his commitment to socialism and nonviolence.

MLK Was an Exemplar of a Black Socialist Tradition

Martin Luther King Jr had a rich relationship with socialist politics: he sympathized with but ultimately rejected Marxism, and he settled on a Christian socialism that viewed the struggle against racism and class oppression as fundamentally intertwined.

Sexual Liberation, Human Freedom

This century's LGBTQ liberation movement must be part of a broader project to redefine human freedom.